A study conducted by the Argentina-based research agency CB Consultora Opinión Pública found Colombian far-left President Gustavo Petro stood among South America’s lowest-ranked presidents in October.
In its report, published this week, the Argentina-based research agency presented a detailed breakdown of a series of surveys held across ten South American nations between October 17-22. Participants were asked to express what image they had of their country’s respective president and cabinet of ministers.
According to the survey’s results, 59.7 percent of Colombian respondents said they have a negative image of Gustavo Petro and as many as 31.5 percent deemed his image as “very bad.” Another 38.1 percent answered that they hold a positive image of the Colombian president.
The results ranked Petro 7th out of the ten countries surveyed, surpassing only Peru’s recently inaugurated interim President José Jerí, Bolivia’s outgoing socialist President Luis Arce, and Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, who are the only three heads of state that hold a higher negative image than Petro.
Regarding Petro’s 19-member cabinet of ministers, CB Consultora Opinión Pública found that the three lowest ranked ministers are Interior Minister Armando Benedetti, Transport Minister María Fernanda Rojas, and Equality Minister Juan Carlos Florían, all three close allies of the Colombian president.
Benedetti is a controversial key member of Petro’s inner circle who has been embroiled in numerous scandals and controversies over the past years and has publicly admitted to drug and alcohol addiction. Similar to Benedetti, albeit in a much lesser proportion, Transport Minister Rojas has also been embroiled in different scandals since she took office this year.
Florian, who ranked as the least liked Colombian minister in the survey, is a former gay pornographic actor who refers to himself as “female” and a self-described person of “non-hegemonic” gender whose designation as Equality Minister broke Colombia’s 50/50 gender-parity laws, prompting Petro to rapidly reshuffle his Cabinet in September to rebalance the ministerial gender quotas as Florían. Colombian courts rejected Florían’s claims to being a woman, asserting that he broke the ministerial gender parity in favor of men.
Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president ever and a proud former member of the Marxist M19 terrorist guerrilla, has maintained a highly antagonistic stance towards the United States and President Donald Trump. Petro’s numerous actions against the United States have single-handedly eroded the over 200 years-long friendly relations between the United States and Colombia.
The Colombian president dramatically increased his animosity towards President Trump in recent weeks, accusing Trump of being an “accomplice of genocide” in Gaza at the United Nations and of “murdering” drug traffickers, calling for the U.S. military to disobey Trump as commander-in-chief, and demanding Trump’s arrest.
Last week, Petro urged for President Trump’s “removal” at the end of an unhinged two-hour interview with Univisión on the grounds that Trump’s presence at the head of the United States government represents an “obstacle to democracy, science, and truth,” in addition to numerous other strange remarks and accusations.
“Humanity has a first offramp, and it is to change Trump. In various ways. Perhaps the easiest way may be through Trump himself. If not,” Petro said during the interview, and snapped his fingers, “get rid of Trump.”
Days after the interview, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Petro for “having engaged in, or attempted to engage in, activities or transactions that have materially contributed to, or pose a significant risk of materially contributing to, the international proliferation of illicit drugs or their means of production.”
“Since President Gustavo Petro came to power, cocaine production in Colombia has exploded to the highest rate in decades, flooding the United States and poisoning Americans,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said last week. “President Petro has allowed drug cartels to flourish and refused to stop this activity. Today, President Trump is taking strong action to protect our nation and make clear that we will not tolerate the trafficking of drugs into our nation.”
OFAC also sanctioned Interior Minister Benedetti, Petro’s spouse Veronica Alcocer Garcia, and son Nicolás Petro Burgos, who is presently on trial over allegations that he funneled money from drug traffickers into his father’s election campaign.
Petro is slated to leave office at the end of his four-year term in August 2026. The Colombian president cannot ever run for president again, as the nation’s constitution strictly forbids presidential re-elections. His leftist coalition, the Historic Pact, chose Senator Iván Cepeda as its 2026 presidential candidate in Sunday’s primary election.
At press time, it remains unclear if Cepeda will be the only leftist candidate in the election. The “Broad Front,” different leftist coalition, is slated to hold a joint inter-party primary election in March 2026 to determine a unified leftist candidate. Cepeda’s participation in the March leftist primary remains undetermined pending a ruling from Colombian electoral authorities over the legal status of Historic Pact, who aims to become a single, unified party under the same name and not a coalition of smaller leftist parties.
According to CB Consultora Opinión Pública’s report, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Argentina’s Javier Milei, and Uruguay’s Yamandú Orsi stand as the top three South American presidents with the highest positive image among their respective countries’ respondents. Out of all ten presidents surveyed, President Milei experienced the highest percentage increase in his positive image, going from 42.5 percent in September 2025 to 45.9 percent in October.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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