They began to exchange messages from Sunday at 3.00 am. At that time, Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo, and his advisors organized the workday they had ahead. They commented that a few hours before, Ann Hardman, the political counselor of the United States Embassy in Bogotá, had asked about the status of the two flights with deported Colombians that would arrive shortly. None caught his attention the call, it was a routine procedure. Shortly after, President Gustavo Petro, who had not yet slept, asked his team what Mexico and Brazil had done in these cases. The officials began to prepare a report.
At 3.41, the president wrote in X: “Dis -authorship the entry of American airplanes with Colombian migrants to our territory. US must establish a decent treatment protocol for migrants before we receive them. ” In the Foreign Ministry and the rest of the government entered shock. A dome member anticipated what was to come: “Be careful, Trump is crazier than Maduro.”
The president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, allowed an airplane with deportees to land in his country, but then sent Washington a protest note. Immigrants had arrived with wives in feet and hands, as if they were terrorists. Petro wounded the blood when reading that. He consulted Carlos Fernando García, former director of Migration Colombia and now ambassador to Mexico, according to sources aware of what happened. Garcia told him the bad conditions in which Colombians arrive on those flights and that was when the president acted on social networks. Within the cabinet, Garcia is criticized not to warn Petro that this situation is extended from the administration of Democrat Joe Biden and that everything is collected in protocols signed by himself. That decent treatment required by Petro is already reflected in writing.
The new White House tenant took out all his arsenal to respond to Petro. The conflict climbed from zero to one hundred. Trump ordered to impose a 25% tariff on all the products imported from Colombia and revoke the visas to all members of his government. The roundness with which the announcement was a notice to the rest of the countries that criticize their aggressive antimigration policy. He did it thinking about those who have already warned: Canada, Mexico, China and Europe. Far from amilasting, Petro carried in a series of tweets against Trump in which he hinted that he prepared a coup against him. The conato has served him to show himself as a leftist leader willing to give Trump the battle, that is, to what he considers “fascism.” He quoted Allende, Bolívar, Walt Whitman and Noam Chomsky, among others. He said that going to the United States was “a little boring” and that on one occasion he witnessed in Washington a fight between blacks and Latinos with barricades that seemed “a pendejada, because they should join.”
He said that Colombia was “the heart of the world” and he, one of the last Aurelians Buendía (the heroic character of One hundred years of loneliness). “Maybe the last.” Petro was on.
Around them, however, people tried to keep calm. A commercial war with the United States would have a very big impact on the Colombian economy, a luxury that, a year and a half of the end of his mandate, the president could not give. The difficulty was to convince him that everything was really about a misunderstanding that should be resolved by diplomatic route. It was not an easy task. Petro believes in a new world order. In his opinion, the White House has caused chaos and death with its armed conflicts in other countries. In addition, he criticizes the war on drugs that Richard Nixon began. Consider that Trump uses “fascist policies” that denigrate the human being, especially Latinos. He came to tell him: “I do not close my hand with white slaves.”
When reading those messages, his advisors thought that Petro had pressed a nuclear button. They did not remember that no world leader had directed Trump that way. At least, publicly. Military aircraft with the deportees on board were already back on American soil. The first had to land at 6.10 in the morning. He was revoked for permission between 4.30 and 5. That was the trigger for the entire crisis.
A few hours later, Trump’s orders began to execute. A Colombian official, a worker at the Houston Consulate, was forbidden to travel from São Paulo. Two other World Bank employees, with Visa G4, an official type of visa for diplomats, did not allow them to reach Washington. Panic broke out between ambassadors, consuls and legations workers. Petro ordered its Minister of Commerce also raising 25% tariffs on American products and asked all irregular Americans that there are Colombia, about 15,600, regularize their situation with the immigration authorities.
Some of the officials involved in this crisis know the Trump’s first administration, that of 2017. They knew about the irascibility of the real estate tycoon, an erratic and impulsive man. There was no way to predict his next steps. I relieved that Trump did not know Spanish and have no idea who Allende, Bolívar and, much less, Aureliano Buendía. Even if he knew the language, Petro’s rhetoric is not simple to follow for a non -native. They only feared that some of his close poison, translating and explaining what he wanted to say in those long penions. In Bogotá there was the doubt even if Trump knew exactly who Petro was. During the campaign, an exassor of the Republican president said he was sure that he did not identify him.
At 3 in the afternoon, Petro met with his closest nucleus. They were the most frantic hours of the crisis. There were present Foreign Minister Murillo and number two of the president, Laura Sarabia. In a few days, she will replace him, who meditates to present himself as a candidate for the presidential elections of 2026. There was also Jorge Rojas, of maximum confidence, and the ambassador to Washington, who for a family issue spent the weekend in Colombia. They explained to Petro, in detail, how the issue of deportations worked and what was the protocol. They assured him that there was no need to open a diplomatic crisis with Washington, but that it was enough to ask that the signed be fulfilled. According to those present, Petro was disturbed for an intense day in which he attacked and was attacked. They tried to make him see that who informed him at first had not taught him the full picture. All day, Murillo spoke three times with him on the phone.
The heavyweights of the government gathered in the Foreign Ministry after 4.00 PM. Colombia was in suspense. The political and economic elite accused Petro of creating an unnecessary crisis and putting the stability of the nation at risk. His most to the left allies applauded him for having faced a racist and abusive president who had responded exaggerated to a reasonable request, to treat the expelled from the United States with dignity. The storm broke out outside, but not in the Petro administration. At that time they already knew that it would not take more than a couple of hours to fix the situation.
Murillo came into contact with Marco Rubio, Trump’s Secretary of State, and Mauricio Claver-Carone, a veteran Falcon of foreign policy appointed now special envoy for Latin America. At the same time, calls were called congressmen and people close to Trump who could mediate. Colombian officials explained that Petro had bothered that the deportees were chained from feet and hands -a fact that has not yet been confirmed -but that it was not necessary to turn this into a personal matter. Colombia had already launched the hook, now it was time to wait. On the 9 PM, Rubio called and said that Trump was settled by the matter, he would not impose the sanctions. Of course, they would make a statement making it clear that Colombia had accepted all its demands to reach an agreement.
As soon as they hung, in the government they knew that the White House would make a statement in which they would take for winners. Thus it was: “Colombia has accepted all the terms of President Trump, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal foreigners in Colombia returning from the United States, even in US military aircraft, without limitations or delays.” Murillo, shortly after, read a more elegant and diplomatic statement. The morning had thrown over. He Affaire Petro-Trump resolved with the art of diplomacy.
