Colombia: Petro facing mounting pressure
A deepening clash with Washington, rising violence and mounting economic strain have pushed Colombia into its most volatile moment in decades.
In a nutshell
- Colombia’s diplomatic relations with the U.S. have deteriorated sharply
- Coca cultivation and armed-group influence have expanded
- Political violence and the country’s fiscal outlook are worsening
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On October 19, United States President Donald Trump accused Colombian President Gustavo Petro of being an “illegal drug dealer” who promotes drug cultivation in his country, and announced the suspension of all payments and subsidies to Colombia. Mr. Trump added that if Mr. Petro does not destroy the drug crops, “the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely.”
President Petro has adopted a confrontational approach toward the U.S. since President Trump began his second term, while openly aligning himself with Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro. The Venezuelan leader has been accused by American authorities of leading the so-called Cartel of the Suns, a network of senior military and political figures allegedly involved in large-scale drug trafficking.
This combative stance has become more radical in recent weeks, as evidenced by the Colombian president’s inflammatory speech before the 80th United Nations General Assembly. There, he urged the U.S. military to rebel against President Trump. President Petro now finds himself among Mr. Trump’s targets in ongoing American efforts against drug trafficking and terrorism.
Facts & figures
Who is Gustavo Petro?
Economist Gustavo Petro has been president of Colombia since August 7, 2022. In his youth, he was a member of the April 19 Movement (M-19), a Marxist guerrilla group that carried out murders, kidnappings and acts of terrorism from 1974 until its demobilization in 1990. He later served as congressman, mayor of Bogota and senator. On June 19, 2022, Mr. Petro won the presidential runoff election with the support of a coalition of parties called the Historic Pact. He belongs to the Sao Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group and is one of the leaders of Progressive International, a radical left-wing organization founded by U.S. Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders.
Colombia before Petro
Prior to this escalation, Colombia long had a special security relationship with the U.S. rooted in the fight against drug trafficking. Colombia has been at war against subversion since 1960, when armed guerrillas linked to Cuba and the Soviet Union – including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), National Liberation Army (ELN) and M-19 – rose up in rebellion. More than six decades of conflict followed, leaving around 7 million people dead, injured or displaced.
In 1998, after repeated failed peace talks, President Andres Pastrana (1998-2002) proposed a joint military strategy with the U.S., leading to Plan Colombia. His successor, Alvaro Uribe, continued the effort with notable results: steep drops in homicides, kidnappings and terrorist attacks, a sharp rise in foreign investment and business creation, and a reduction in coca cultivation to about 62,000 hectares.
Later, under President Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018), national security and economic indicators deteriorated, partly because his peace agreement with FARC granted the group senate seats without electoral support. Although a referendum rejected the deal in 2016, Mr. Santos implemented it anyway, enabling FARC to gain political influence through the lower house of parliament while preserving armed structures through dissident factions.
Mr. Petro later rose to power through a mix of street violence by allied groups such as the First Line, which disrupted cities during the election period, and campaign funding reportedly far exceeding that of his rivals and linked to organized crime networks.
Colombia under Petro
In September 2022, a month after becoming president, Mr. Petro addressed the 77th UN General Assembly and proposed abandoning the war on drugs because, he claimed, it had failed. As a result of this new policy, the area under coca leaf cultivation rocketed. According to the annual report of the UN Integrated Illicit Crop Monitoring System, there were 253,000 hectares of coca in Colombia by the end of 2023 – 67 percent of the world total.
At the same time, President Petro implemented the “Total Peace” policy, which consisted of negotiating with all armed groups and criminal organizations in the country. In practice, this meant an increase in the territory controlled by narco-terrorist groups.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, so far in 2025, around 1.4 million people in Colombia have suffered various forms of violence, including threats, homicides, kidnappings, disappearances, forced recruitment and other attacks. A case in point is the assassination of presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay. Both the Democratic Center party and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio pointed to President Petro as the “politically responsible” party.
Colombia is also facing one of its most severe economic crises in recent years. During the first half of 2025, the fiscal deficit reached 3.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Former Finance Minister Jose Manuel Restrepo summed up the situation as follows: “This is the worst half-year in the country’s history in fiscal terms. The fiscal disaster is enormous.” If the current trend continues, this year’s deficit could exceed 7.5 percent and debt could reach 65 percent of GDP.
The alliance with Chavismo
In October, Venezuela’s former military intelligence chief, Hugo Armando “El Pollo” Carvajal, pled guilty to belonging to the Cartel of the Suns during a hearing before Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in the Southern District Court of New York. Mr. Carvajal stated that both former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and President Maduro financed Gustavo Petro’s election campaigns with money from drug trafficking.
President Petro’s close relationship first with Chavez and later with President Maduro is well documented. The first time Chavez traveled to Colombia after being released from prison following two coup attempts in 1994, it was at Mr. Petro’s invitation. The two traveled to the historic site of the Battle of Boyaca and took an oath together to dedicate their lives to promoting the “Bolivarian integration of Latin America.”
On July 17, Presidents Maduro and Petro announced the creation of a “binational economic zone” on the border, precisely where the guerrillas and drug traffickers are most powerful. On October 18, President Petro and his defense minister, Pedro Sanchez, announced an exchange of military intelligence between Colombia and Venezuela to “strengthen cooperation mechanisms.”
Deteriorating diplomatic ties
President Petro’s pro-drug policy has antagonized the U.S. government. In September, for the first time in almost 30 years, the Trump administration added Colombia to a list of nations failing to cooperate in the drug war, a process known as decertification because, among other reasons, Colombia suspended aerial eradication of coca fields with glyphosate.
Mr. Petro participated in a rally in New York where he called on U.S. soldiers to disobey President Trump’s orders. The response of the State Department came almost immediately: “We will revoke Petro’s visa due to his reckless and incendiary actions.”
President Petro has also confronted Israel, a country that has historically been an important supplier of weapons and technology to Colombia. On October 2, President Petro ordered the expulsion of Israel’s entire diplomatic mission from Bogota after two Colombian women were detained during an Israeli raid on the Global Sumud flotilla bound for Gaza. The next day, President Petro called for a global general strike for Palestine.
Colombia has not only lost its hard-won special relationship with the U.S., but has provoked President Trump’s ire, placing President Petro in a dead-end situation as the U.S. military seeks to take down the Cartel of the Suns.
More by Latin America expert Alejandro Peña Esclusa
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- Venezuela: Maduro’s end is near
- Seven elections will determine the future of Latin America
Colombia’s opposition politicians, however, are taking steps to prevent further chaos. On October 8, the director of the Democratic Center party, Gabriel Vallejo, and Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal spoke to the European Parliament to warn against a scenario in which President Petro plunges the country into violence and steals the 2026 elections. They also explained that the opposition feels seriously threatened, not only by the murder of Miguel Uribe Turbay, but also by the control exercised by terrorist groups in large areas of the country.
On October 20, former President Alvaro Uribe reacted to President Trump’s new measures by stating:
Colombia, painful as it is to say, supplies more than 1,800 tons of cocaine to the market annually. This causes all kinds of internal problems and generates the most negative international reaction. We have to change this course, which was restarted with the 2016 FARC Agreement, which gave impunity to drug trafficking, and has continued with Total Peace. The only achievement is violence and internal destruction. … We are moving decisively toward a new government, determined to transform Colombia, which needs to rebuild its relationship with the United States.
However, to move toward a new government, as Mr. Uribe proposes, it is necessary to overcome widespread division and fragmentation within the opposition. There are already 70 presidential candidates registered for the upcoming elections and 30 additional candidates seeking party endorsements.
Scenarios
Most likely: Petro and his party are defeated in the elections
President Trump’s accusation that President Petro is an “illegal drug dealer” changes Colombia’s domestic political landscape. It gave the opposition a breath of fresh air amid ongoing threats of violence and political oppression.
President Trump’s threat to use U.S. military force to strike drug trafficking mafias within Colombian territory weakens the ability of irregular armed groups to engage in violence. Under these circumstances, it becomes more difficult for President Petro to plunge Colombia into violence to suspend or steal the elections.
Mr. Petro’s allies in Colombia’s congress, who were sabotaging investigations against him, and judges controlled by the government through corruption, will act more cautiously for fear of being sanctioned by the U.S. or losing their visas and those of their families.
The application of tariffs on exports to the U.S., which account for more than 30 percent of Colombian exports, will hit the economy hard and weaken President Petro politically. The impact should strengthen the opposition during the preelection period.
Once a change of government takes place, Colombia will resume its historical relations with the U.S. and Israel, the war on drugs will be reactivated and the economy will begin to recover. President Petro’s defeat will have a regional impact, as it will contribute to Latin America’s shift to the right, which began with Rodrigo Paz Pereira’s victory in Bolivia.
Unlikely: President Petro’s party manages to remain in power
On October 20, President Petro expressed confidence that American progressives will succeed in weakening President Trump and implied that, as a result, the White House’s measures against the Colombian government could be reversed.
Yet, Mr. Petro is losing support and his disapproval rating rose from 37 percent in September 2022 to 58 percent in August 2025. To win the 2026 elections, his party, Historic Pact, would need the vocal support of radicals in the U.S. Democratic Party as well as widespread chaos and electoral fraud.
As a result, the Cartel of the Suns, battered in Venezuela, moves to Colombia and continues its operations from there. Coca production remains at 253,000 hectares and even increases. The economy continues to collapse. An exodus of Colombians to other countries begins, as happened with Venezuela. Colombia gradually becomes a dictatorship similar to Cuba and Nicaragua. Historic Pact’s continued hold on power partially slows Latin America’s shift to the right.
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