Colombian President Gustavo Petro (left) and his US counterpart Donald Trump (right) with their national flags in the background. Photo: El Expreso/file photo.
Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—A few hours after Colombian public media reported Saturday night on the extrajudicial killing of a national, Alejandro Carranza from Santa Marta, by a US missile on Sept. 15, US President Donald Trump charged against Colombian President Gustavo Petro, calling him “an illegal drug dealer.” Trump announced the cancellation of “war on drugs” aid and veiledly threatened US military strikes on Colombian territory.
On Sunday morning, Trump posted the following message on social media: “President Gustavo Petro, of Columbia, is an illegal drug leader strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs, in big and small fields, all over Columbia. It has become the biggest business in Columbia, by far, and Petro does nothing to stop it, despite large scale payments and subsidies from the USA that are nothing more than a long term rip off of America. As of today, these payments, or any other form of payment, or subsidies, will no longer be made to Colombia. The purpose of this drug production is the sale of massive amounts of product into the United States, causing death, destruction, and havoc. Petro, a low rated and very unpopular leader, with a fresh mouth toward America, better close up these killing fields immediately, or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Trump is a maniac. While waging war on Venezuela, he now threatens to attack Colombia too (although he can't spell it correctly).
Trump falsely claims Colombian President Petro is a "drug leader". This is a total lie.
Now he's threatening sanctions and attacks.
Imperial psycho https://t.co/kqnxyyTsGA
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) October 19, 2025
Before Trump’s unprecedented statement against a sitting president, Petro had written the following in reference to the same incident, accusing the oligarchic Colombian news outlet Noticias Caracol of twisting the story: “Why, I wonder, does a national news outlet not care that a US missile killed a humble Colombian fisherman in Santa Marta? The US destroyed a fishing family in the city that will host the Latin American [CELAC] and European [Union] summit. The US has invaded Colombian territory with a missile fired to kill a humble fisherman, destroying his family and his children. This is the homeland of [Simon] Bolívar, and they are murdering his children with bombs. The US has offended Colombian national territory and murdered an honest, hardworking Colombian. Let the sword of Bolívar be lifted!”
A few hours after Trump’s social media post, President Petro used social media to respond. He clarified that he is not against the US and its culture, telling Trump that he is the one being ignorant and rude toward Colombia and accusing him of having “enough greed to care about running a drug network.” He added that he is a socialist and his values are humanity and life, not greed, like mobsters.
“Mr Trump, Colombia has never been rude to the US; on the contrary, it has deeply loved its culture. But you are rude and ignorant toward Colombia. Read, as you did, your chargé d’affaires in Colombia, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and I assure you that you will learn something from solitude. I don’t do business, like you do. I am a socialist. I believe in aid and the common good, and in the common goods of humanity, the greatest of all: life, endangered by your oil. If I’m not a businessman, much less a drug trafficker, there is no greed in my heart. I could never relate to greed. A mobster is a human being who embodies the best of capitalism: greed. I am the opposite, a lover of life and therefore a millennial warrior of life. Greed eludes us, because life is more powerful,” President Petro wrote on X.
Petro later added in another post that Colombia has “reduced the growth rate of coca leaf crops to almost zero. Past administrations saw almost 100% annual growth. Today, half of the total coca leaf crop area has been abandoned for three years.”
The Petro administration has intensified its efforts to reduce coca cultivation by 40% and convert 50,000 small coca farmers to legal crops by 2026, in a three-year strategy announced in 2023. Colombia set a new record in 2024, seizing 960 tons of cocaine and cocaine base, 14% more than the previous year, according to official figures. However, between 2022 and 2023, before Petro’s arrival, the area of land dedicated to coca cultivation increased by 10%, reaching 253,000 hectares, according to a report by the Integrated Illicit Crop Monitoring System (SIMCI).
For decades, the US occupied Colombia under the “war on drugs” argument, installing military bases and penetrating its institutions under the puppet far-right governments that ruled Colombia before President Petro. Decades of US interference and control over Colombia only served to increase the amount of cocaine produced in the country, as UN reports have pointed out for years.
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Some analysts wonder if the current US campaign against Colombia is a response to the real anti-drug policies implemented by President Petro, which are similar to the tough anti-narcotics policies of Venezuela. They claim that those most interested in keeping the US drug business alive live in the United States, not in Colombia, Venezuela or Latin America and the Caribbean.
These recent events are evidence of the deterioration caused by the reckless US military campaign in the region, which has already caused the death and injury of citizens of Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and Trinidad and Tobago. In many other Latin American countries, the question of upcoming US extrajudicial killings against their nationals is becoming increasingly debated in public opinion, along with a growing rejection of the United States and its supremacist and colonialist system.
Special for Orinoco Tribune by staff
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