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Colombian President Gustavo Petro speaks during his visit and after a binational council of ministers, in Jacmel, Haiti, on Jan. 22, 2025.
White House: Colombia has agreed to take deported migrants
Petro had posted an announcement refusing to accept the flights early Sunday morning, saying, “The US cannot treat Colombian migrants as criminals. I deny the entry of American planes carrying Colombian migrants into our territory. The United States must establish a protocol for the dignified treatment of migrants before we receive them.”
On Sunday afternoon, Trump posted to Truth Social that he would apply “Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States [from Colombia]. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.” Trump also imposed a travel ban and revoked the visas of Colombian government officials, their “Allies and Supporters” as well as all party members, family members, and supporters of the Colombian government.
In response, Colombia, the US’ third-largest trading partner in Latin America, threatened a 50% tariff on US goods – a risky prospect given that his country is facing a severe fiscal crisis.
By late Sunday, however, the White House said Colombia had agreed to Trump’s terms and would allow the US to send the migrants back to Colombia. This halted the threatened US tariffs, but the visa suspensions reportedly will remain in place until the first plane of deportees lands in Colombia.
We’re watching to see whether Petro continues to accept Trump's terms – or returns to tit-for-tat threats.
Arauca, Colombia.- The photo shows the site of an attack with explosive devices at a military base located in Puerto Jordán in the department of Arauca, Colombia on September 17, 2024. The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, said that "a peace process" that his Government until now maintained with the guerrilla of the National Liberation Army (ELN) is closed, after the attack that left two soldiers dead and 26 wounded in Arauca.
Colombia to declare emergency over rebel violence
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Monday he will declare a state of emergency after guerilla attacks by the ELN in the northeast of the country killed at least 80 people and forced over 11,000 to flee. The attacks came after Petro suspended negotiations with the rebels on Friday and could prove a fatal blow to his dovish “Total Peace” policy, which aims to end armed violence in Colombia through dialogue.
Background: Colombia’s internal conflict dates back decades but reached an inflection point in 1964, when two left-wing guerilla groups, the ELN and FARC, rebelled against the government. Throughout the 1960s, neither the government nor the guerrilla groups could gain an upper hand, but instability allowed drug cartels exporting to the US to become obscenely wealthy — and well-armed — worsening the violence.
Left-wing groups splintered repeatedly, while wealthy landowners organized self-defense forces that sometimes morphed into far-right death squads. US attempts to aid its key South American ally added more guns and money to the volatile mix, which has killed at least 450,000 people.
The hard line. Petro’s emergency declaration is a callback to the days of his predecessor and political rival Álvaro Uribe, who used emergencies to raise war taxes to fight the insurrectionists and cartels. Petro — a former guerilla — heavily criticized Uribe’s tactics, but the national reconciliation process he put forward instead looks like it’s falling apart. Where the conservatives managed to sign a peace agreement with the FARC in 2016 that has largely held up, the 2023 ceasefire Petro signed with the ELN is in tatters — and he is sending troops back in.
Guerrillas of the Central General Staff (EMC), a faction of the FARC that rejected the 2016 peace agreement and continued the armed struggle, inspect vehicles at a checkpoint installed on a highway in the Llanos del Yari, Colombia April 12, 2024.
Colombia ditches cease-fire with rebel groups
The Colombian government on Tuesday suspended a cease-fire with a major faction of Marxist guerrillas, highlighting the challenges to President Gustavo Petro’s attempts to rein in violence.
The background: Back in 2016, the Colombian government signed a historic peace deal with the FARC, the country’s largest rebel group. Dissident fighters who rejected those accords formed the EMC, which operates in about two-thirds of Colombia’s provinces and often provides social services that the government cannot.
Since last year, the government has been talking peace with the EMC, which has split into two main factions. The government has canceled the cease-fire with the larger of the two because its fighters have violated its terms, but it remains in talks with the smaller one.
The EMC negotiations have run alongside efforts to reach peace with other holdout Marxist groups and drug cartels, which have expanded into territory abandoned by the FARC.
Petro, a leftist former guerilla himself, was elected in 2022 in part on pledges to secure “total peace” by focusing on poverty and other root causes of militancy. But amid rising violence, he’s run into a problem: Without a firmer state presence and control, it’s hard to win local hearts and minds with social policy.
For more: See our 2022 interview with Petro here.
Suspended Jewish Columbia and Barnard students participate in a press conference outside the president of Columbia University’s house on April 23, 2024, in Manhattan, New York.
Hard Numbers: Columbia punishes deans, Iran boosts missile output, UN accuses Rwanda of fighting in Congo, Colombia protects the forest
3: Columbia University on Monday removed three deans from their positions over antisemitic text messages they exchanged in a group chat during a late-May event about Jewish life on campus in the wake of protests about Oct. 7 and the war in Gaza. The three have been placed on indefinite leave. For our complete on-the-ground coverage of the upheaval at Columbia this spring, led by GZERO’s Riley Callanan, see here.
2: Iran has been ramping up its output of ballistic missiles at two key production facilities, according to satellite imagery. Tehran’s most prominent buyers of the missiles include the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah paramilitaries in Lebanon and, of course, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which signed a missile deal with Iran in 2022.
3,000-4,000: A new UN report alleges that 3,000-4,000 regular Rwandan Army forces are fighting alongside M23 rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a serious allegation that follows years of accusations that Rwanda is deliberately destabilizing its neighbor. Alarmingly, the report also implicates Uganda — which had deployed a force to fight the rebels as part of a regional military intervention to support Congo — in providing support for M23, essentially playing both sides of the conflict.
305: Deforestation in Colombia fell by more than a third last year, to just 305 square miles, the lowest figure on record. The decline comes atop a 20% fall the previous year. About half of the deforestation was in the Colombian Amazon. President Gustavo Petro has sought to rein in corporate access to the rainforest, but orders from local guerilla groups to stop cutting down trees have also helped. Experts warn that despite progress, droughts caused by the hot-weather El Niño weather pattern this year could push up deforestation.
Nicolas Petro, son of Colombian President Gustavo Petro
Fathers and sons: Colombia scandal edition
The president’s son has been arrested and charged with money laundering! No, not Hunter Biden. It’s 36-year-old Nicolás Petro, son of Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
The charges, unsealed this week, stem from allegations by the younger Petro’s ex-wife, who says she helped him amass millions in bribes while he was serving as a local politician. In one instance, she says, they tricked a drug kingpin into believing he was giving them money to support the elder Petro’s 2022 presidential campaign. Petro Jr denies all the charges, which carry decades-long prison terms.
Will this hurt his dad? Gustavo Petro, a left-wing former guerilla and capital-city mayor who was swept to power last August on a platform of radical social change, has had a rough go of it so far. He has lost key allies and had to reshuffle his government once already. His approval ratings are mired in the low-30s, down by nearly half since he took office, and plans to expand healthcare, workers' protections, and pensions are largely stalled in Congress.
While he has reached a ceasefire with Colombia’s largest remaining guerilla group, cocaine production is soaring and cartels seem to be growing more powerful, not less.To top it all off, a separate scandal involving allegations of wiretapping and drug money continues to swirl around him.
Of his son’s legal troubles, Petro said he will not intervene and that he hopes young Nicolás will “reflect on his mistakes.” Tough love indeed, and that will play well in a country used to elites bailing their kids out of trouble. But as the investigations deepen, keep an eye on whether his son’s mistakes end up reflecting on Petro himself.
See Ian Bremmer’s interview with Gustavo Petro from last fall here.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
Is Colombia’s Petro showing his true colors?
Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro sacked much of his cabinet earlier this week in a move that suggests the headstrong former guerrilla might be moving in a more confrontational direction after just eight months in office.
Evidently frustrated by opposition to his sweeping health care reform plans, Petro booted several centrist parties from his government, removing Finance Minister José Antonio Ocampo, whom investors had seen as the key guardian of Colombia’s fiscal stability.
Rewind: When Petro was elected as the country’s first left-wing president last August, he worked hard to reassure his critics that although he’d been given a mandate to shake up an elite-dominated system, he was also a consensus-minded leader. But with his approval ratings sagging and his reform agenda stalled, is Petro betting on a more radical approach now?
The biggest risk is that Petro can, if he chooses, call millions into the streets to put pressure on legislators. This was a trick he pulled back when he was mayor of the capital, Bogotá. But in a country as deeply polarized as Colombia, things could get ugly fast. Buckle up.
Check out GZERO Media's exclusive interview with President Petro here.Colombia hosts meeting on Venezuelan political crisis.
Colombia convenes new Venezuela summit
Representatives from about 20 countries, including the US, gathered in Bogotá on Tuesday as part of the Colombian government’s push to restart talks between Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and the fractious opposition. Neither side has sent representatives, but both say they support the event.
How’d we get here? Several years ago, Maduro, who had mismanaged the economy and rigged his own re-election, was on the ropes. As popular protests swelled, millions fled his country, and fresh US sanctions choked off crucial revenues. But opposition infighting and global demand for oil — Venezuela has more of it than anyone else — kept him firmly in power.
Now, with elections approaching next year, the opposition – along with the US, EU, and most of the region – wants the powerful but unpopular Maduro to guarantee a level playing field. He, however, wants the US to ease Trump-era sanctions. Maduro has shown he can hang on pretty well under sanctions, but he may not want to risk a rerun of the 2018 protests over an overtly unfair vote.
A previous round of talks in Mexico stalled late last year, but Colombia’s left-wing President Gustavo Petro is hoping that his good relations with neighboring Caracas will enable him to broker a new deal where others have failed.
Members of parliament hold placards after the result of the vote on the first motion of no-confidence against the French government at the National Assembly in Paris, France, March 20, 2023.
What We’re Watching: Slim win for Macron, protests in South Africa, Trump’s legal woes, Colombia peace collapsing?
Macron’s narrow escape
It came down to the wire, but Emmanuel Macron’s government narrowly survived a no-confidence vote in France’s National Assembly on Monday, with 278 voting to topple the government, nine votes shy of the threshold needed to pass.
Quick recap: The motion was triggered after Macron used a constitutional provision last week -- bypassing a vote in the lower house -- to pass a controversial pension reform despite weeks of protests (more on that here).
Not only do 70% of French adults abhor Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62 by 2030 – which he says is necessary to plug the growing debt hole – but the French electorate, which has long had a libertarian streak, is also furious that the government used what it says is an anti-democratic loophole to pass the measure.
Macron’s troubles are only just beginning. Hundreds were arrested in Paris over the weekend and on Monday as anti-government protests turned violent and smelly. Unions have called for nationwide demonstrations and strikes in a bid to pressure the government to roll back the measures (which will never happen).
Prime Minister Élizabeth Borne will likely take the fall and resign. Still, Macron, already unpopular before this debacle, will emerge a diminished political figure. After previously saying he understood that people were “tired of reforms which come from above,” it will be very hard for the ideological chameleon to regain the trust of vast swathes of the population.
South Africa’s day of demonstrations
Amid rolling blackouts and a slumping economy, the Marxist-linked Economic Freedom Fighters Party called for a national day of protests Monday, putting law enforcement on high alert.
The EFF, the country’s third-largest party led by longtime leader Julius Malema, is largely backed by poor Black South Africans, many of whom live in townships, as well as younger voters who feel they haven't benefited from the ruling African National Congress Party’s tenure in the post-apartheid era. Indeed, around one-third of South Africans are out of work and the economy is slated to grow by just 0.3% in 2023, down from 2.5% in 2022.
President Cyril Ramaphosa mobilized more than 3,000 troops nationwide in anticipation of mass protests. But turnout was lower than expected, prompting Malema to claim that the government was blocking buses transporting protesters.
The EFF “will still claim the wall-to-wall media coverage around the protests as a victory,” says Ziyanda Sturrman, a South Africa expert at Eurasia Group.
None of this is good news for Ramaphosa, who, after a series of political scandals, looks set to lose his parliamentary majority in next year’s general election. Still, Stuurman notes that if the ANC falls just below the 50% threshold, several small parties have already put their hands up to join an ANC-led coalition.
Trump vs. prosecutors
Former US President Donald Trump faces possible legal challenges on multiple fronts. The state of New York could charge him with fraud for alleged hush money payments to a porn star. The Justice Department could charge him with many suspected crimes related to efforts to overthrow the result of the 2020 election as well as the misuse of hundreds of classified documents recovered by the FBI from his Florida home. Prosecutors in Georgia could charge him with election fraud as part of his alleged effort to overturn that state’s 2020 election result.
If Trump is indicted, he’ll likely present himself for charges, while also calling for protests. He would then be released on bond pending trial, and it’s unlikely that any trial in any of these potential cases would take place in 2023.
Trump would continue his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. There’s nothing in the US Constitution to prevent him from being elected president. His fate would remain with voters. If elected, his presidency would begin in court. In theory, a president could pardon himself for federal crimes. That would have to be tested. But no president can pardon state-level crimes, like those he might be charged with in New York and Georgia. In short, prosecutors and Trump may be about to steer American politics into uncharted waters.
Colombia: Is Petro’s “total peace” going to pieces?
Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro took office last year pledging to reach a negotiated “total peace” with the country’s various armed and criminal groups. But on Monday that strategy took a big hit when he was forced to suspend a three-month-old ceasefire with the fearsome Clan del Golfo (Gulf Clan), the Andean region’s most powerful narco-trafficking outfit. The Clan had allegedly attacked an aqueduct and opened fire on police officers.
The move puts Petro in a tough spot — ramping up military action risks escalating a conflict he was elected in part to end peacefully. But allowing cartels to run riot isn’t an option either.
The setback comes amid a broader season of discontent for Petro: a corruption investigation of his son, the departure of several key coalition ministers, and an approval rating that is net-negative barely six months since he took office.
Petro, a former guerilla who is the country’s first left-wing president, has made an effort to build bridges across the political spectrum so far. But his critics worry that if the going gets tougher, he might resort to a more populist style that could be explosive in a country as polarized as Colombia.