[We’re neutral in any war, not because we don’t believe there
is an occupation, but because many of the countries of Latin America
have suffered invasions by the same countries that today are extending
an invitation to reject the invasion of Ukraine.]
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COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT GUSTAVO PETRO ON WHY LATIN AMERICA REJECTS
WESTERN HYPOCRISY  
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Amy Goodman
September 21, 2023
Democracy Now
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_ We’re neutral in any war, not because we don’t believe there is
an occupation, but because many of the countries of Latin America have
suffered invasions by the same countries that today are extending an
invitation to reject the invasion of Ukraine. _

,

 

Colombian President Gustavo Petro joins _Democracy Now!_ for an
exclusive broadcast interview after his address to the United Nations
General Assembly in New York, where he spoke of the need to end wars
and stop the climate crisis

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. 

Part 1:  Ukraine, Palestine & Why Latin America Rejects Western
Hypocrisy

AMY GOODMAN: The United Nations General Assembly is continuing today
in New York. On Tuesday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro gave an
inspired address calling to end wars while doing more to combat
climate change, which he described as “the mother of all crises.”
Petro called for the United Nations to hold peace summits to resolve
the conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine.

Gustavo Petro is the first leftist to ever be president of Colombia,
the second-largest country in South America after Brazil. He was
elected last year after campaigning to fight against inequality and
poverty, increase taxes on the wealthy, expand social programs,
restore peace and end Colombia’s dependence on fossil fuels. Gustavo
Petro ran for office with Francia Márquez Mina, who became the first
Black woman and the first Afro-Colombian ever elected vice president.
Gustavo Petro is a former M-19 guerrilla who went on to become the
mayor of Bogotá and a senator.

Well, on Tuesday, I had a chance to sit down with Gustavo Petro for an
exclusive broadcast interview.

AMY GOODMAN: This is _Democracy Now!_, democracynow.org, _The War
and Peace Report_. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re here at Colombia’s
Permanent Mission to the United Nations, just after President Gustavo
Petro gave his speech before the U.N. General Assembly. He was the
third person to speak — first the Brazilian President Lula, then
President Biden, then Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro.

Welcome back to _Democracy Now!_

PRESIDENT GUSTAVO PETRO: [translated] Thank you. Very kind.

AMY GOODMAN: You spoke just after President Biden. In part of his
speech, he talked about the world giving more support to Ukraine. In
your speech, you called for two peace summits: one in Ukraine and one
for Palestine. You said:

PRESIDENT GUSTAVO PETRO: [translated] I ask: What is the difference
between Ukraine and Palestine? Isn’t it time to end both wars and
other wars and use the little time we have to build the roads to save
life on Earth?

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what you are calling for.

PRESIDENT GUSTAVO PETRO: [translated] Latin America, almost in
general, has not had the same position as NATO, nor the United
States, nor the European Union. We have been invited to provide arms,
machinery for war, to send soldiers to the war in Ukraine. We have not
accepted that invitation. Basically, we’re neutral in any war, not
because we don’t believe that there is an occupation, but because,
basically, we don’t believe in those who are inviting us to
participate in war, because many of the countries of Latin America
— Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Grenada, Argentina and
so on — have suffered invasions by the same countries that today
are extending an invitation to reject the invasion of Ukraine. Most of
the Latin American countries rejected the invasions of Libya, Iraq and
Syria, which were done for motives which today are illegal.

And in that regard, when I compare the situation of Palestine with the
situation of the Ukraine, I want to show a parallelism in the real
situations. There’s military occupation in both countries. But
there’s a different attitude among world powers. The European Union
is interested in pushing Russia back, together with NATO. They have
certain economic arrangements with Ukraine. Ukraine is like the role
of Mexico in relation to the United States. But they’re not
interested in Palestine. They’re not interested in the conflict with
Israel. The United States is not interested in having a conflict with
Israel — enforcing the Oslo Accords, which date back 30 years and
which spoke of two states and Palestinian sovereignty and ending a
civilian and military occupation of Palestinian territory. That is not
happening. Yet, faced with the same circumstance, we have a two-faced
situation. That is what I call the hypocrisy of international policy.
In Latin America, that’s not well received.

That is why I propose that the United Nations be consistent. If we
want a peace conference in the Ukraine and in Palestine, it’s
because we want there to be a common policy against invasions in any
part of the world, carried out by any country. It doesn’t depend on
which country invades. In the Rome Statute, which was the basis for
the International Criminal Court, an international crime was added
there, and it is called aggression, international aggression. It had
never been used before. And that formulation, which is to be found in
the Rome Statute, has not been used because almost all of the
countries that today condemn the invasion of Ukraine as a matter of
military power have also invaded other countries. It’s just that
they don’t want those invasions to be condemned.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you discussed this with President Biden?

PRESIDENT GUSTAVO PETRO: [translated] Yes, clearly, and with the
European Union, because recently we had a conference in Brussels among
all the countries of Latin America and the European Union. And note
that the first effort, instead of trying to focus the discussion on
the objective of the conference, which was to build stronger relations
between Latin America and Europe, what the European leaders wanted was
to bring Zelensky and to have a show in the midst, in the middle of
the meeting with Latin America. The immense majority of the Latin
American countries oppose that, because we are not going to that
meeting for the purpose of being used. And a good part of the
discussion at the end revolved not around how we could establish a new
era in our relations, but rather around the question of the war in
Ukraine, a war which is prejudicial to Latin America, because it has
led to greater hunger among the populations of Latin America.

What we want is peace. We said the same thing to the government of the
United States. Indeed, in my case, personally, given that previous
administrations in Colombia purchased Russian weaponry, which is there
in Colombia, there was a request on the part of both Russia, for the
Russian weapons to go back to Russia, and from the United States, for
the Russian weaponry to go to the Ukraine. I did not accept either.
What Latin America wants is peace. Today, peace is indispensable, not
only because of the consequences that that war could entail, and I
think we’re beginning to see them with an expansion of the idea of
war in the world, but because we need this time.

And that was the objective of my speech with the United Nations, in
order to act based on what is most important, the most important thing
we face today, which is defending life on the planet, which is making
effective decisions that would make it possible to bring a halt to the
climate crisis. So, what is the benefit to us if Ukraine or Russia
wins, whether NATO expands or not, if human life is limited in this
definitive manner on the planet Earth?

Part 2:  World Must Decarbonize Before “Point of No Return” on
Climate Crisis

AMY GOODMAN: So, President Petro, you said mankind has dedicated
itself to war, and that instead it must put its resources into dealing
with climate change, which you’ve called “the mother of all
crises.” How do you propose the world do this, as you’re together
with world leaders here at the United Nations?

PRESIDENT GUSTAVO PETRO: [translated] Well, I’m not very
optimistic with these meetings. There’s like a _mise en scène_, as
the French say, where there’s not necessarily conversation among
themselves, but rather each one is speaking to their own people. The
stage of the United Nations is used, but to speak to one’s own
country or to see oneself. But it has not produced a sufficient
interlocution.

There’s a little bit more of interlocution in the conferences of the
parties, the COPs, but they have no binding force. They just come up
with a list of recipes, which may or may not be taken into account.
The status of the conversation around climate change is very different
than, say, the status of the conversation around world trade. World
trade has a binding institution. If one breaches a rule of those is
subject to serious financial punishment. The World Trade Organization,
for example, is the institution of free market economies. But as
it’s more important to resolve the issue of the climate change,
because this is obviously a vital matter, yet one doesn’t find the
same binding force. Nobody fails to just obey rules. There’s no
courts for this. There’s no justice. So everybody can just slip by,
as we say, ignoring, turning a blind eye to the decisions made.

And that is why, in relation to the 2015 COP in Paris, where the
most powerful countries on Earth made a commitment to provide $100
billion, which today is a very small sum compared to what’s needed
to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis, not even 10 billion has
come in of that. Yet that same figure, in just one week, if you look
at the military contributions of Germany, the United Kingdom and the
United States, all told, then these sums have come forward, but for
war, the war in Ukraine.

AMY GOODMAN: You have called for decarbonization of the economy, for
an end to fossil fuel extraction in Colombia. Yet Colombia exports —
oil is the number one export. You have the largest open coal pit in
the world. Can you talk about how you accomplish this?

PRESIDENT GUSTAVO PETRO: [translated] Yes, this is certainly a
matter of debate in Colombia especially. I have wanted to show the
world that even though we live off of oil and coal, the president of
the republic can ask the world for decarbonization of the economy. It
makes sense vis-à-vis the whole world, because in many countries
— the Arab countries, many Latin American countries, even Russia,
which are powers in respect of their oil reserves, their gas reserves
— there is an attitude of wanting to stop the possibilities of a
transformation of the world by stopping our use of coal, oil and gas.
And this obviously condemns us.

Science is not wrong on this. Progressivism, as a worldwide political
movement, was always based on the idea of doing politics enlightened
by science, not irrational kind of politics like the far right has
done in the world. Today we see a conflict there, because science
tells us that if we use what is buried in Colombia in the way of coal,
or what is buried in Venezuela in terms of oil reserves, then we would
pass a point of no return, and humankind would have no possibilities,
and life on the planet would have no possibilities.

Venezuela lives off of oil — it lived off of oil — and Colombia,
coal and oil. Nonetheless, we — Colombia is calling for a change in
the economy. Now, within Colombia, that has produced a major debate.
They say, “The president must be crazy or sick. No one in the world
is listening to what he has to say. He’s taking us to an abyss.” I
believe, because I trust that humanity will not let itself become
extinguished, that in a relatively short time period — say, 10 to 15
years — in effect, the demand for oil and coal will collapse in the
world. And what we call the fossil economy, which is most of the
capitalism on Earth, has to turn to new technologies without coal and
without oil.

Now, if that is the case of the world, then what we call the
decarbonized economy today is going to impose new realities on the
world economy. There, there will be different social relations of
production. And if we don’t go in that direction, then we are going
to have tremendous inequality and economic backwardness and
backwardness in terms of knowledge vis-à-vis the world. So,
therefore, I would hope that one could move in tandem, if not move
ahead, on decarbonizing the economy.

I think it’s fundamental for a region like South America, whose
greatest potential and whose greatest wealth is precisely in its
natural biodiversity, in the amount of its water, in the amount of
sunshine that falls on the region and the winds that blow through the
region — that is to say, the sources of clean energy. In my
opinion, coal and oil for South America is a mirage, in which they
might become anchored even as a result of their own left wings. But
they would leave Latin America behind in a transformation that the
entire world is going to undergo. And that transformation is not a
negative thing. It mustn’t be seen as backsliding to poverty.

In Colombia, for example, there are five generators of electricity,
sources of companies. It’s an oligopoly. They have rates, which for
the standard of living of Colombia, the electricity rates are
extremely high. This is one of the irrational paradoxes, which is that
in the Caribbean coast, there is plentiful sol year round. Indeed,
most of South America — in most of South America and in Colombia,
most of the energy consumed is gas, whereas solar energy could be much
cheaper. That irrationality has to do today with a frontier. The
oligopoly doesn’t want to make a transition to clean energies,
because clean energies could enable us — well, could make it
possible for 1 or 2 million households in all of Colombia to generate
their own electricity based on solar energy, for example, and with
great efficiency in the case of the Caribbean. We would move from one
generator to millions.

And this could be called a democratization, that democratization that
would produce the decarbonized economy, which is the intention, which
is there. Well, it doesn’t like this big fossil fuel capitalism,
which has become a sort of a great monopoly worldwide and which is
putting up resistance. And that is why the move from a fossil fuel
economy to a decarbonized economy, under a viewpoint which I would
call of the left, should be plausible, because it would lead to
democratization of the world, and not concentration of property and
wealth, as has been the case so far.

Part 3:  Lift the Blockade on Venezuela & Cuba: U.S. Sanctions Are
Driving Migration

AMY GOODMAN: President Petro, I want to talk to you about migration,
which directly links to climate. You’ve talked about that, to
climate violence, conflict. You’ve called it “the exodus of
humanity.” Tens of thousands of asylum seekers make their way
through the deadly Darién Gap, the Darién jungle between the border
of Colombia and Panama. What should be done to ensure the safety of
asylum seekers, and especially when they get to the United States?
Your views on the U.S. seeking to persuade other countries, like your
own, Colombia, like Mexico, Guatemala, to enforce U.S. border policies
and prevent asylum seekers from going north?

PRESIDENT GUSTAVO PETRO: [translated] Three years ago, nobody was
going through the Darién Gap. This year, it might end up being as
many as half a million. And given the flow, which is 3,000 persons a
day, next year could be a total of 1 million people going through the
Darién Gap. After going through the Darién Gap, the figure is
doubled, going through Central America and Mexico. And then, about 2
million people reach the United States each year trying to get in.

It’s an exodus. It’s an exodus that Colombia was not familiar with
before. And it goes through the most inhospitable jungle worldwide.
Not even the old guerrilla forces in Colombia had used that region as
part of their geography, because it is just so inhospitable. Recall
the difficulties that engineering faced when it came to building the
Panama Canal, so many workers who died at that time. Well, here it’s
even worse, because this is a jungle which is very biodiverse but at
the same time is very inhospitable for human beings, and so no one
would go through there. And now we’re approaching a million people,
most of them children, older people, women.

And as Pope Francis said, and quite rightly so, at a conference when I
was mayor of Bogotá a few years ago — he taught me, because I had
not seen that concept — he tied the concept of exodus to the concept
of new forms of slavery. Well, in effect, I am seeing this with my
very own eyes. That human exodus, that began moving from Venezuela to
Colombia, expanded throughout South America, and now much more with
other countries, they’re going across the Darién Gap — that
exodus is a victim of a series of forms of new slavery — mafias,
armed organizations, that are taking women to prostitution in the
United States. They’re using child labor to transport drugs. They
are raping women along the way. The children die of dehydration.

That is to say, there’s a human catastrophe which happens. Why?
Well, and this is where we have the discussion with the United States,
62%, according to Panamanian figures, and we find that 75% of the
population that has been crossing through the Darién Gap is
Venezuelan. That is the population which, after the blockade and
before COVID, were already going en masse into Colombia, and from
Colombia dispersed throughout South America. That population now wants
to go to the United States. That is to say, the blockade against
Venezuela has had a boomerang-type response, now hitting the very
United States, which are the ones who decided to impose the blockade.
So, knocking at their door are the population that they drove into
poverty.

Venezuela is a rich country. They have an endless amount of oil and
gas, and Venezuela’s population was relatively stable, whatever the
regime, whether it was under Chávez or what they call el Punto Fijo.
But with the blockade, the standard of living of these persons
collapsed. They basically totally threw off the equilibrium that the
majority of Venezuelans were accustomed to. Many of them have left,
and now what they want is to make it to the United States. How can one
partially reduce the exodus? Well, lift the blockade against
Venezuela.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you discussed with President Biden lifting the
embargo against Venezuela, and also — you were just in Cuba for the
G77 meeting — lifting the embargo there, the effects that these
embargoes have?

PRESIDENT GUSTAVO PETRO: [translated] The Cuban case is even more
strident, we could say, because Cuba is on two lists: one, the
blockade, or embargo, which dates back so many decades, and the other,
which was it was added to a list of countries that sponsor terrorism.
And the second list imposes even more radical measures, such as, for
example, that they’re not able to buy medicine abroad, medicines
which are necessary for health inside the country. It’s a real
crime. It kills people who are ill.

That list, which was put together by the United States — or, in the
face of that list, the president of Colombia, who was an enemy of
peace in Colombia, used it, insisting that the Trump administration
should put Cuba back on that list, succeeded in doing so. And the
excuse was that Cuba was the scenario of peace talks between
the ELN guerrillas and the Colombian government. It was the
Colombian government under President Santos that asked Cuba to provide
its territory, and Cuba did so in good faith. And then, when Duque
came in as president, and he was not happy with that peace process and
shut it down, he asked Cuba to turn over as prisoners the ELN,
National Liberation Army, peace negotiators. So this was a real
betrayal. The two states had already signed an agreement saying that
couldn’t happen, because that was to guarantee peace talks. And
given Cuba’s unwillingness to turn over these persons, who today are
negotiating peace with me and who are about to reach a situation where
that war would be put to an end, taking advantage of that, Duque asked
Trump to put Cuba on the terrorist list.

And I’m surprised that Biden has continued with that. I discussed
that topic with him. I discussed the Venezuelan question with him,
seeking for there to be a progressive unblocking or removal of the
blockade, at the same time as certain credible guarantees would be
given for free and fair elections in Venezuela. It’s a very long
process. It’s very slow. What one finds is increasing poverty in
Venezuela. And I’ve spoken with Cuba and with the United States
about the need to at least remove Cuba from the list of countries that
help terrorism, because Cuba is helping us to make peace. It’s just
the opposite of what that list is all about. Nonetheless, we have also
seen in the U.S. government a great sluggishness. And at the end of
the day, it makes the Biden administration look like the Trump
administration.

And it is leaving certain scars with Latin America that I think we
need to have heal. We need to overcome them, because at the end of the
day, both those in the North, the English speakers in the North, and
the Latinos in the South and the Afro-descendant peoples throughout
the Americas and the Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas, we
all need to understand one another, because we have common problems.

One of those that I proposed to Biden is that as the United States is
the largest emitter of CO2, well, we have the greatest sponge for
soaking up CO2 in the South — the Amazon jungle — and we need to
come to an agreement. Having in South America great potential for
generating clean energy — great potential — and we cannot
capture it all because of the lack of funds, and as the United States
has a great need, which is also a need of all of humankind, to
transition to a clean energy matrix, how can we come together? All we
need, electrical cable and investment in South America. The money is
here, $600 billion, for that objective. But in the United States,
it’s much more expensive, because it doesn’t have the same
potential as what we have in South America, which is where the sun is,
where the wind is, where the waters are, the waters that come down
from the Andes. That complementarity, which would be useful for the
United States, which would be useful for South America, because those
investments would generate economic prosperity, and which would be
useful for all of humanity, isn’t happening. And all we need is to
sit down, engage in dialogue and take action.

The scars of history, the invasions from before, the old imperialism,
the old domination continue to weigh against humanity. That is why a
government such as the Biden administration should take the step,
close the heals, let the scars heal. They’re not going to go away,
but let them heal. End blockades and open up a plural dialogue, which
I think would benefit all of us, both in North America and in South
America.

Part 4:  U.S. Intervention in Americas, from Chilean Coup to Drug
War

AMY GOODMAN: You just returned from Chile, where President Boric and
so many thousands of Chileans were observing the 50th anniversary of
the coup d’état that led to the death of Salvador Allende, the
democratically elected president of Chile, in the palace, September
11th, another September 11th, September 11th, 1973. Can you talk about
that history of empire, as a number of progressive U.S.
congressmembers are calling on the Biden administration to release all
documents around the U.S. support, the Kissinger support, the
President Nixon support, of that coup that led to so many thousand
Chileans and others dying?

PRESIDENT GUSTAVO PETRO: [translated] I was 13 years old at the
time of the coup against Allende. I was a child. But in the mindset of
the time, in a very conservative country, Salvador Allende seemed to
us to be a sort of a man who had sought justice and who came to power
peacefully. What we had in the world at the time was war. The Vietnam
War was going on. It was said at that time around the world that
revolutions had to be armed. And that was what was happening in
Africa. And this man came to power peacefully, and he began a
transformation which we would watch on black-and-white TV. And then,
all of a sudden, came the coup, the brutality of the bombing, the
president bombing, in the ashes of the presidential palace. And it
moved us. I went out to the street in the small town where I lived.
And we, who had no idea of politics, blocked a street. And that helped
me move into politics and to become who I am, from a perspective which
is that of Allende, not of those who carried out the coup against him.
And there, it was clear that the United States had helped those who
carried out the coup, the Nazis. They were really Nazis. And that
marked us. That’s one of the scars that I speak of.

And it’s fine for that to be evidenced, for the facts to be known,
for all of the truth to come out. Fifty years later, I went back to La
Moneda Palace. I had wanted to go to Chile until very recently, when
Boric won. I cried when I was in the palace, because that cycle of 50
years — well, it’s really 30, for once the coup was carried out
against Allende, almost all of the progressive movements in Latin
America took up arms. We became insurgents. I was an armed insurgent.
And I was tortured. I was imprisoned. And I resisted ’til 1990. And
many of us in Latin America, young at the time, did so — and
dictatorships, as well. So, Latin America became a battlefield between
bloody dictatorships, who were Nazis, and armed revolutions. Central
America was one of the effects of this. And it was a 30-year period
that went by.

And then, as a precursor, perhaps, the M-19 in Colombia, in 1989,
reached a peace agreement and laid down its weapons. A few months
later, there was a vote, but it’s — on the Constitutional
Assembly, even though our commander was assassinated. And we won the
elections for the constitution. It was a precursor, but this was a
peace process. The idea was, going back to Allende’s thesis, that
one could reach power peacefully, and one could have an electoral
triumph. Once again, it was a precursor, because it was some years
afterwards that, one after another, progressive presidents were
elected. The first progressive movements appeared, the dictatorships
disappeared, and the weapons disappeared. The only place they’re
still to be found is in Colombia in certain parts of the country. So
we entered into a spring, a springtime with mistakes, errors, taking
different paths. One can’t really compare Venezuela with Bolivia,
nor Bolivia with Brazil, nor Brazil with Colombia, and so on. But we
accomplished it.

And so, today, having closed out that cycle of weapons and violence,
in my opinion, we need to rethink democracy. There are dangers that
crop up, persons who are insinuating coups. In Washington, the
takeover of the Capitol, which was then repeated in Brazil, the
gestures in Peru with many persons assassinated by the state, by the
government, which has happened to us in Colombia, and which happened
in Bolivia, and so on — all of this shows that the transition to a
more profound democracy is not yet assured.

But what happened in Chile marked an initial era of violence. I
believe that the government of the United States, since then, has not
known — did not know what to do, and it launched a policy of
violence against Latin America, which also became a boomerang, because
at the end of the day, we were not defeated. Many people died, but we
were not defeated. And today, what is being proposed by a certain
progressive movement in the United States and the progressive movement
in Latin America is to talk. Instead of setting up flags here or there
and organizing coups here, there, here, instead of preparing ourselves
for combat in the Andean mountains, what we’re preparing for is to
engage in dialogue to understand one another. Now, that is an
understanding in which someone is standing and the other one is
kneeling down? No, it is an understanding where we can all talk, you
to you, about problems that we share. And I believe that that is the
path which today, 50 years after the coup — and I spoke there in
—

AMY GOODMAN: Did you — did you ever think you would go from M-19
guerrilla to president of Colombia?

PRESIDENT GUSTAVO PETRO: [translated] No, never. I wanted to carry
out a revolution. And I still want to do so. It’s a different
concept. I once helped — once we put the insurgency behind us, the
armed insurgency, I helped various presidential candidates, whose
votes tended to climb with the support of the progressive movement in
Colombia, progressive movement that has been very hard hit. In
Colombia, an entire political party was assassinated, like in
Indonesia. Five thousand activists were killed, assassinated in their
homes right in front of their children, without weapons in hand. And
this helped us to think more that we needed to take up arms and go
along the armed path. We have experienced such a violence. I was
scared when I saw Pinochet when I was 14, 15 years old, what happened
with Videla, watching it on television from Colombia. But now that we
have the figures of persons disappeared, of persons assassinated,
Colombia is by far and away — suffered, say, a genocide, because
also drug trafficking became involved in Colombia.

There’s an episode that it needs to be investigated further, and
this is another scar. When the Sandinistas overthrew Somoza, the
United States began to build the counterrevolutionary forces, la
Contra. And in a scandal that —

AMY GOODMAN: In Nicaragua.

PRESIDENT GUSTAVO PETRO: [translated] — became a big scandal in
the U.S., carried out by the U.S. press, the Iran-Contra scandal, it
showed that cocaine was being used to buy weapons for the Contra
forces. And where did that cocaine come from? Well, it came out of
Colombia. Well, that part of the story has not all been told. In one
way or another, the Colombian drug traffickers believed or let it be
known that if one were to kill communists, then they could export
cocaine to the United States. And that killed a whole political party
in Colombia. Then it generated a genocide. Drug trafficking dressed up
as the far right. It wasn’t so hard for it to do so. And there was a
sort of Nazi-type discourse tied to a business that the Nazis
weren’t familiar with: exporting cocaine to the United States. That
whole movement won over sectors of political party in Colombia. There
was an articulation with the state. And I denounced that in the course
of 10 years of investigations, and from there, for once the criminal
has political power, the crime becomes much stronger, much heavier.
That showed — that’s how a criminal can kill one, two, maybe a
hundred, but if it joins together with state power, then you can kill
millions. And something similar to that happened in Colombia. So we
had major — we had violence that was greater than what I had seen
in Chile and in Argentina as a child and which terrified me.

Nonetheless, Colombia proposed peace for the first time — the M-19
movement did so — in a Latin America that was up in flames, and
achieved a peaceful electoral triumph and made the current
constitution of Colombia. We have experienced two paths at the same
time, the possibility of peace and genocide at the same time. And the
deeper the genocide, the more peace becomes necessary.

Today, for example, the governments in the United States have helped
us to build this peace. There’s a change in outlook, which has been
very interesting. Thus far, in dialogues about drug policy or what’s
happening with fentanyl here, it was thought here that it was
necessary to make marijuana illegal 50 years ago, and that led to many
people being killed in Colombia. But now you can go out and buy it at
the corner store here in New York. And so many dead on our side, and
who is apologizing? That was not our war, but the violence of our
political wars was compounded by drug trafficking. A hundred thousand
disappeared. Political parties have been annihilated because of being
leftist parties. And certain wounds, there was a destruction of
democratic society that was very profound. And it’s only because
Colombian society has strong cultures of resistance — that is what
has enabled society to continue and to continue seeking. I am a hope.
Millions of young people voted because they want their own country to
have a possible different path forward. I believe that the government
of the United States that I have encountered today is not the one that
made the decision to overthrow Allende. It’s divided. It’s not the
same. But in the United States, a part of society that sees the world
differently is growing. Another part of society doesn’t see the
world; it sees itself. There are regions in Colombia that are similar:
They don’t see the world; they see themselves. And so they think
that one must use the same methods as before.

I believe, and I am optimistic, that going forward, we’re going to
be able to find common ground and together adopt solutions. Look at
geopolitics today. It is opening up, and some of those political
leaders in the United States have told me this, that it’s a
multipolar world. You have China over there. You have Russia and Iran,
the BRICS. Let’s get involved there as a sort of reaction to U.S.
power over history. And I sometimes think, “Well, does Iran show me
a better model of society than what we can build in Colombia,
respecting its culture and so forth? Russia, do we want to have the
same revolutionary echoes of 1917, or is it just as capitalistic a
country as the United States, even more plunged into the fossil fuel
economy, so it depends so much on oil?” It does not teach me the way
forward, because I need to have ties here or there. The world has
changed. It’s no longer the Cold War.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned that there will be a coup d’état
in Guatemala even before the democratically elected president, perhaps
a man after your own heart, Bernardo Arévalo, takes office, because
the _pactos corruptos_, the government-corporate elite, doesn’t
want him to take power?

PRESIDENT GUSTAVO PETRO: [translated] The state practically became
narcotized, we could say. A Colombian who was the head of the
Commission Against Impunity and Corruption — he’s now my minister
of defense — he went there. He survived, as a matter of — as a
miracle. The current president, or the current attorney general,
wanted to take Mr. Velásquez prisoner, my minister of defense,
because he had led the Independent Commission on Corruption and
Impunity, which discovered the ties between drug trafficking and
politics, the same thing that happened in Colombia. And this is not
just Colombia, Guatemala. This has happened in a large number of our
countries, because drug trafficking became empowered. That is what has
happened over the last 50 years.

Guatemalan society has responded by electing a progressive president.
I’ve spoken with him by phone. I don’t know him personally. But
here, the entire inter-American system of human rights is going to be
put to the test. Are we going to allow a president who’s been
elected to — are we going to allow a mockery to be made of the
popular vote? And here we can find — progressives from South
America and the U.S. government can all find common ground, a common
objective. Are we going to allow for the popular vote, or are we going
to see a repeat of Allende?

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