Far-left President of Colombia Gustavo Petro proclaimed over the weekend that he wishes to “revive” Gran Colombia, a short-lived 18th century nation that encompassed much of northern South America and neighboring Panama in Central America.
Gran Colombia was a nation founded in 1819 by Venezuelan independence hero Simón Bolívar, Colombian independence hero Francisco de Paula Santander, and several other historic figures after their respective nations broke free from Spanish colonial rule.
The nation, which only lasted 12 years until its dissolution in 1831, encompassed the territories of present day Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, and Ecuador, as well as small portions of northern Peru, Brazil, and the Essequibo region. Venezuela and Guyana maintain an over 120-year-old territorial dispute over the latter — reignited by socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro in recent years.
A lengthy list of factors such as political tensions, rivalries, economic problems, and instability led to the dissolution of Gran Colombia, prompted by Ecuador and Venezuela seceding in 1830. Gran Colombia continued to exist de jure until its official dissolution in November 1831. Colombia and Panama remained as a single nation known as the Republic of New Granada until 1903, when Panama obtained its independence with the help of the United States.
Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president ever and a former member of the Marxist M19 guerilla group, expressed his intention to revive Gran Colombia in remarks during an event on Friday at the municipality of Soledad, Atlántico, calling for a public consultation for his unsuccessful leftist labor reforms after they failed to pass in Congress.
The Colombian president, citing past attempts to restore Gran Colombia in the 19th and 20th century, asserted that “no liberal generation” was able to restore Gran Colombia and proposed writing letters to the presidents of Ecuador and Panama, Venezuela’s dictator Maduro, and civil society groups in all three nations “for us to meet again to build the Great Great Colombian Confederation.”
Petro said:
I believe that today we could talk about Gran Colombia and I want to confess that this president wants us to revive Gran Colombia. And I even dare, knowing that we are not yet the majority but we can be, to write letters to the presidents of Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama — to their oppositions, so that it may be for the whole society — to their indigenous and popular organizations, to their youth, boys and girls, so that we may meet again to build the great Great Colombian confederation, which I believe is a dream that must not be forgotten, that did not die with Bolivar.
Bolivar was absolutely right — and Santander. And [former Venezuelan President José Antonio] Páez and [former Colombian President Juan José] Flores and those who destroyed that dream with weapons were wrong.
Petro continued by claiming that, if Gran Colombia existed today, the Caribbean Sea would be “a Mare Nostrum, as the Romans used to say of the Mediterranean; a cultural hotbed.”
Petro suggested using an event in July to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the founding of the Colombian city of Santa Marta, where Simón Bolívar died in 1830, to kick-start the proposal.
The Colombian president did not disclose further details as to how he plans to convince Panama, which separated from Colombia, to rejoin its neighbor under Gran Colombia. Petro also did not disclose how he plans to have citizens of Panama, Ecuador, and Colombia be part of a single nation with Venezuela, led by an authoritarian socialist regime since 1999.
Petro’s calls to reunify Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama into Gran Colombia come days after his former Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva claimed in a letter that Petro suffers from drug addiction as well as “loneliness, anxiety, depression, and other manifestations difficult to overcome, some of high risk.”
Leyva – who alluded to Petro’s “disappearances, late arrivals, ineptitudes, non-compliances, meaningless trips” and “incoherent phrases” in the letter – claimed that he confirmed Petro’s alleged drug addiction after he “disappeared” for two days during an official visit to Paris, France.
Petro and his daughter Andrea appeared to justify his alleged disappearance in Paris by claiming that the Colombian president was “disconnecting” and spending “family time” in the European nation.
Years before Petro’s calls to revive Gran Colombia, Venezuela’s late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez issued similar calls to reform the short-lived nation in 2008. Chávez justified his proposal on anti-U.S. grounds, claiming that the “the division between republics, between regions, led to an empire being installed for a long time that intends to continue dominating the world by means of war on different fronts: military, economic, psychological, media, and social — the empire of the United States.”
“The century is beginning and let us pray to God that sooner rather than later the empire of the United States over the world, which has done so much damage to this planet, will come to an end,” Chávez said at the time.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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