Far-left President of Colombia Gustavo Petro on Thursday stressed that Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro cannot give orders to the Colombian military after Maduro called upon the Colombian army to join him and defend Venezuela against the supposed threat of a U.S. invasion.
On Wednesday, Maduro publicly called for a “perfect union” of the Venezuelan and Colombian militaries to “defend the sovereignty” of the region amid rising tensions with the United States and hours after President Donald Trump ordered a “total and complete” blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela.
The Venezuelan dictator has repeatedly accused the Trump administration of seeking to stage an invasion of Venezuela to oust him from power and steal Venezuela’s oil and other natural resources.
Maduro issued the calls during an official event marking the 195th anniversary of the death of Venezuelan founding father Simón Bolivar. The day also coincided with the 206th anniversary of the December 17, 1819, founding of Gran Colombia — a short-lived 18th century nation that both Petro and Maduro have expressed interest in restoring.
Maduro said:
And the greatest guarantee we have for peace, stability, and respect in the world is unity. That is why my call today, 200 years after the approval of Colombia’s founding fundamental law, 206 years after the founding of this great idea, this great nation that declared itself a republic in arms and gave complete freedom to South America, I make my call. Ratified with the deep love I feel as a Gran Colombian, I call on the ordinary people of Colombia, its social movements, its political forces, and the Colombian military, whom I know very well, to unite perfectly with Venezuela so that no one dares to touch the sovereignty of our countries and to exercise Bolívar’s dictum of permanent union and shared happiness.
The Venezuelan dictator justified his call using the shared history between Colombia and Venezuela, two of the nations freed from Spanish colonial rule over 200 years ago by Simón Bolívar and other historical figures. Colombia and Venezuela, alongside Panama and some areas of present day Peru, Brazil, and Guyana’s contested Essequibo region were part of Gran Colombia, a country that only lasted 12 years until its final dissolution in 1831 as a result of instability, political tensions, rivalries, economic problems, and other issues.
Following the dissolution of Gran Colombia, Panama and Colombia remained a single nation called the Republic of New Grenada until Panama, with the help of the United States, obtained its independence in 1903.
Petro, speaking to reporters at a government event on Thursday, referred to Maduro’s calls for help, stressing that the Venezuelan dictator should not issue orders to the Colombian military. He prefaced his rejection by asserting that he does not support an “invasion” of Venezuela nor a dictatorship, but instead supports a “negotiated and peaceful political solution exclusively between the forces of Venezuela and its people.”
“No, he does not have to give orders to the military,” Petro said after a reporter pointed out that he had not in fact answered his question about Maduro’s remarks before going on a historical tangent about Simón Bolívar.
“The only way for the nations to come together again, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, is with constituent power and popular sovereignty,” Petro continued. “Until that happens, no one can give orders to the other army. I cannot order the Venezuelan army to do anything. Nor can they give orders to the Colombian army.”
Petro said that the only “binational armed organization, made up of Venezuelans and Colombians” that exists is the National Liberation Army (ELN) Marxist terror group, which he described as an enemy of Colombia, Venezuela, and of Latin America.
Petro’s response to Maduro comes days after the Colombian president referred to Maduro as a dictator for the first time in public — but refused to call him a drug trafficker on the grounds that such a designation is a “U.S. narrative.” In reality, U.S. courts indicted Maduro in 2020 and he stands accused of leading the Cartel of the Suns, an international cocaine trafficking operation run by top members of the Venezuelan regime and the nation’s military. Maduro is actively wanted by U.S. authorities on multiple narco-terrorism charges and has a $50 million bounty on information that can lead to his arrest and/or conviction.
Speaking to Colombia’s Blu Radio on Friday morning, the commander of the Colombian National Army, General Luis Emilio Cardozo, denied any contact with Maduro after the dictator said he knows the Colombian military “very well.” Cardozo reaffirmed that the Colombian Armed Forces only answer to the constitution and the president elected by its people.
“We are a constitutional army that complies with the Colombian Constitution. That is our guiding principle. No one from the army is talking to any president,” Cardozo said. “When Colombians elect the president of the Republic, they also elect the supreme commander of the Colombian Armed Forces. Our guiding principle is the Political Constitution of Colombia; we do not deviate from it, and that is what we are doing at this moment.”
Petro’s response to Maduro’s calls to the Colombian military notably come months after the Colombian president publicly called for the U.S. military to disobey President Trump as its commander-in-chief during a September pro-Palestine event in New York. At the time, Petro urged the U.S. military to join his proposal to form a multi-national army to “free Palestine,” a suggestion he first expressed in his unhinged speech at the United Nations General Assembly that week.
“This must be greater than that of the United States. That is why, from here in New York, I ask all soldiers in the U.S. Army not to point their guns at humanity. Disobey the orders of Trump. Obey the orders of humanity,” Petro said at the time in the company of anti-U.S. and anti-Israel Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters and others.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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