Colombia is the U.S.’s most important ally in Latin America today.
I wish I could say that now without wincing.
But I do wince, because even if America’s friendship with Colombia is decisive, these days it’s also dysfunctional. It promises to get even messier after Colombia’s upcoming presidential election. And a key reason involves two of the messiest creeps on the planet: Russian dictator-war criminal Vladimir Putin and U.S. dictator-wannabe Donald Trump.
WLRN is committed to providing the trusted news and local reporting you rely on. Please keep WLRN strong with your support today. Donate now. Thank you.
First, you may ask, how can I describe U.S.-Colombian relations as dysfunctional when just last week President Biden and Colombian President Iván Duque had a friendly White House sit-down? Biden announced he’ll make Colombia a major non-NATO ally, only the tenth nation in the world to be granted a status that confers a host of military and financial benefits.
That disguised the tensions that have lately plagued a relationship whose major shared effort, aside from promoting democracy, is eradicating Colombian coca leaf — and cocaine lords — to reduce the amount of blow sold on American streets.
READ MORE: The U.S. now has a Mad-utin problem. It's solvable — if we drop the dictator hypocrisy
If anything, Colombia’s major non-NATO ally designation is Biden’s way of mending cross-Caribbean fences. They were damaged during the 2020 U.S. presidential election — when Duque’s ruling, right-wing party overtly stumped for Trump and branded Biden and the Democrats “socialistas” eager to help Colombia’s now defunct Marxist guerrillas regroup and pillage Christian civilization.
They were strained again this month when Biden Administration officials met with Venezuelan officials in Caracas and discussed, among other issues, the possibility of easing the de facto U.S. embargo on Venezuelan oil because of the Ukraine crisis. Many Colombians considered that a yanqui blindside, since their country is the U.S.’s most committed partner in the drive to oust the disastrous, dictatorial regime of left-wing Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
The fact that presidential favorite Gustavo Petro is a former leftist guerrilla shouldn’t by itself raise red flags. But his recent statements about Russia’s murderous invasion of Ukraine do.
So what could muddle Washington-Bogotá bonhomie further? Colombia’s May 29 presidential race. After Sunday’s primary voting, the general election looks all but sure to be won by leftist Senator Gustavo Petro, himself a former leftist guerrilla. That by itself shouldn’t necessarily raise red flags. But Petro’s statements about Russia’s murderous invasion of Ukraine do.
Like so many leaders in Latin America — right-wing (Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro) and left-wing (Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador) — Petro has been nauseatingly non-committal about Putin’s medieval siege. Check out this doublespeak dumpster fire Petro recently tweeted:
“There are those who would stupidly like to reproduce the Russian/Ukrainian conflict in our own region of coexistence: South America. What [our] constitution orders is not to participate ‘diplomatically’ in wars, but to seek world peace.”
TRUMP TROUBLES
¿En serio, Senador? I’ll go out on a short limb here and conclude that Petro approaches Russia as spinelessly as other leftist leaders in the hemisphere do. Putin’s supportive alliance with the socialist dictatorships in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua apparently matters more to them than Putin’s bombing of maternity hospitals in Ukraine.
If Petro assumes the presidency in August, all that may well make Biden-Colombian relations as edgy as they’ve been under Duque’s Trump-admiring government.
But why does the Donald — himself a Putin bromancer who called Russia's Ukraine blitz "genius" — still matter in this relationship? Because the U.S.-Colombia Trump troubles wouldn’t end with a Petro victory. They’ll be reignited — especially in South Florida, where Colombian voters, like so many Latinos here, took a hard right turn to Trump in 2020 and haven’t turned back. A Bendixen & Amandi poll this week has Latinos in Miami-Dade County choosing Trump over Biden in 2024 by almost 10 points.
Like conservatives in Colombia, most Colombian expats will never blame the rise of a Petro presidency on their country’s chronic social and economic flaws — like its epic inequality, among the world’s worst. Forget the fact that Duque’s unfavorable rating in Colombia is 73 percent because he refused to tackle those problems. No, no, it’ll be so much easier to accuse Biden.
That promises to make Florida’s large Colombian community even more Trumped-up, wedging Colombia policy in the remainder of Biden’s term between a Putin-apologist lefty in Bogotá and Donald-devoted reactionaries in Weston — who’ve conveniently chosen to ignore Trump's own Vladimir veneration.
Americans will just have to remind themselves that Colombia is the U.S.’s most important ally in Latin America. Even dysfunctional relationships are sometimes worth the wincing.
