Exclusive interview with Gustavo Petro: "Colombia will not receive any Colombian man or woman in handcuffs, because the migrant is not a criminal"
Félix de Bedout: President Petro, thank you very much for accepting this interview with Univision. Obviously we have to talk about the crisis with the United States. The White House has said that you accepted all the conditions that were set for the repatriation of Colombians. Donald Trump went even further and said that the Colombian government had asked for forgiveness. What is your version?
Gustavo Petro: Well, according to the 91 Constitution, the president is the head of Colombia's foreign relations. It is the president, no other official, the one who designates the foreign policy paths that the country may have. And I do so, as president of Colombia, by virtue of the popular vote. To that extent and given the current circumstances, because with the Biden istration, we never managed to sign a protocol... the issue was put under discussion, they put it there. It was the Darien crisis, , in its maximum splendor. Motivated by the Darien crisis, and this is a first point, 80%-70% of it was due to the same Venezuelan emigration that was distributed in South America and was now going to North America. This Venezuelan migration has a fundamental cause, not the only one, but a fundamental cause: the Venezuelan economic blockade. And in those discussions I asked the Biden istration that a return of Colombians had to be done with dignity. And even with a fund that would allow the reestablishment of Colombian citizenship in our country and that we could even help to build a migration bridge, on the contrary, from North America to Venezuela. So far, let's say, that was the background. It is true that they began to send, even without the president's knowledge, planes with handcuffed people, tied up, etc....
Félix de Bedout: But I want to stay with that because that has been going on since President Biden.
Gustavo Petro: Yes, that comes from the president? I don't know any antecedents, let's say, I can't say that I am certain, but that is a custom of the U.S. government.
Félix de Bedout: In fact, last year alone 53,000 Colombians were repatriated under the same circumstances, and that has not changed. An arrived from the United States, again arrived with Colombians in handcuffs. What did you gain in that discussion?
Gustavo Petro: Yes, that's right, that's right. The Colombian government had already won. From the year 2023 that neither mothers nor children of those women would come in handcuffs. That was already a previous agreement. What we are proposing, and the President of the Republic emphasizes it, is that Colombia will not receive any Colombian man or woman in handcuffs because the migrant is not a criminal.
Félix de Bedout: But sorry, President, yesterday the planes arrived the same way.
Gustavo Petro: Yes, but without... without the president of Colombia knowing.
Félix de Bedout: But how could the president of Colombia not know if that has been going on all the time, as 53,000 says? How could it be? And you yourself recognize that there was a negotiation. How can it be said that you did not know that those were the conditions, which may be criticizable, but those that were used as standard procedure by the United States?
Gustavo Petro: But that is how it is. And then the President's position is that no Colombian men or women enter here in handcuffs unless they are proven criminals. That (in) the totality of those who have arrived here in Colombia in these last four trips, there is no proven criminal and to that extent they cannot and should not arrive in handcuffs.
Félix de Bedout: I do not know when the next flight is scheduled for. It may be in the next few days. If in the next few days a new plane arrives from the United States....
Gustavo Petro: What we have done in the last few days since Sunday, except for yesterday, is that we are picking up our Colombian men and women. And that is why they are arriving in conditions of dignity, which is what you were able to record. Yesterday someone authorized, without the knowledge of the President, and that has some internal responsibilities, but the decision of the President is (that) handcuffed Colombians will not be accepted. The proposal that is on the table of the United States, being discussed, we it that they have their sovereignty over their territory, is that we bring the planes and we bring the Colombians.
Félix de Bedout: In other words, are you going to continue sending airplanes?
Gustavo Petro: Exactly.
Félix de Bedout: Last year, as we said, there were 53,000...
Gustavo Petro: And, if it increases, because it is foreseeable, then we will send cruisers, ships.
Felix de Bedout: What is that about cruise ships?
Gustavo Petro: Well, a cruise ship, depending on its size, can carry 1,000, 2,000, 4,000, 5,000 and even 6,000 people. The problem is then solved much more easily.
Félix de Bedout: Well, I understand the proposal, but you yourself have said that the country is going through a very difficult economic problem. How is this going to be financed? As I am telling you, there may be 53,000 this year. Where is the budget going to come from to do what you are achieving and that obviously, as you are saying, even cruise ships will arrive?
Gustavo Petro: From the budget. The budget, according to our Constitution, has a prioritization: human dignity first. Human dignity has no price. I know that there are bilateral discussions at the moment between different countries and many are centered around merchandise. But merchandise is not more important than a human being. In the world that we have lived in the last decades, it is presented to us in this way, that goods are more important than the human being. In my progressive government, the human being is more important than the merchandise.
Félix de Bedout: In other words, the news you are giving me at this moment is that you are not going to accept an airplane from the United States again.
Gustavo Petro: But I wrote it a few days ago, but that is how it is, let us say.
Félix de Bedout: But there was a negotiation on Sunday, where an agreement was reached.
Gustavo Petro: There is a negotiation process. We want to sign a protocol that I have written does not exist. But we want to sign a protocol (between the) Government of the United States (and) the Government of Colombia. I have never refused on the basis of negotiating on an equal footing to reach agreements with the United States or disagreements. I never shared the policy of complicity with the genocide in Gaza. I said so publicly. I said it to Biden face to face, but it was not an obstacle for us to reach agreements on other matters, such as the fight against drug trafficking or the fight against the climate crisis, which I myself place as a priority in Colombia's international policy, and we came to agreements. And I met with him three or four times, I no longer well, and we had no major problem. Now I am willing to talk to the United States as equals. We can talk again about drug trafficking. I want to know Trump's policy on the issue. We have 1 million dead. Colombia does not receive aid, mind you. We help each other so that cocaine does not reach the United States, with all the impact that this may have on its society, and so that the owners of cocaine do not destroy democracy and life in Colombia. It's cooperation, it's not aid. Now, if you want to change that policy, let's talk about it. I am willing. There are thesis, there are different approaches to what is being done so far. Let's talk on an equal footing. In of drugs, there has been no U.S. aid to Colombia. There has been mutual aid. We also spend our budget and invest in tens of thousands of of the security forces and we have hundreds and thousands of Colombian dead in this task that you, like me, know about. So, it is not aid, it is cooperation. We maintain cooperation. I propose that we deepen cooperation. I propose even more. Let's look at what is going wrong so that the United States cannot react in its consumption towards drugs, towards better stages, towards mitigation of the damage, but we are in a situation even worse than the one that started half a century ago.
Félix de Bedout: Going back to the issue of deportations, what happens if the United States does not accept the proposal?
Gustavo Petro: Well, we do not receive Colombian men and women. Unless they have a better proposal. We listen to them. We listen to them. But I start from a principle and this is the discussion with Trump. According to his speeches, because I have never spoken personally with him... I know that many very economically powerful Colombians who live in the United States have forged an idea of the communist, the bogeyman, etcetera. Well, he has never spoken to me, he does not know what I think. He hardly knows what I know. But Mr. Trump in his speeches says, I have heard him say, that every migrant is a criminal. Right? He has criminalized a population group. That is a fascist conception. You should not criminalize population groups. I cannot say that every white American is an exploiter because I would be making a huge mistake. And even worse, I cannot say that they are all exploiters and commit crimes because they are white, can I? Because that's exactly Felix, that's what happened in in 1933. They criminalized a population group, a religious group, and it ended in an extermination of 6 million people. Today in the streets of the cities of the United States there are razzias. Today they don't ask you if you have papers or not. They look at your face a little bit. You Felix, it happens a little bit, but they hit the one who does not the racial examination of a racial look.
Félix de Bedout: Racial profiling is called racial profiling in the United States.
Gustavo Petro: Well, then let's say that is fascism. That is born of an old racism.
Félix de Bedout: But you say that Donald Trump is a fascist?
Gustavo Petro: Well, that attitude of criminalizing population groups to achieve the applause of a majority of the population is exactly the same attitude that Hitler used with respect to the Jews, with respect to the socialists to win popular applause in 1933.
Félix de Bedout: So, you are comparing Trump with Hitler?
Gustavo Petro: Well, brother, compare concentration camps with Auschwitz. Of course, someone may say to me 'but they killed in Auschwitz and not in Guantanamo', at least massively. I say yes, but the experience of humanity since 1933, which today seems to be globalized, a global 1933, should once and for all, even Trump's advisors, even Trump's own family, even Trump's own conscience, should lead to the fact that the steps cannot be repeated. Because if we repeat history, we repeat the conclusion of what that episode was. Criminalizing a population group is a fascist thesis.
Felix de Bedout: You have said that you want to have talks with Trump.
Gustavo Petro: Undoubtedly.
Felix de Bedout: But qualifying him as a fascist you don't think that...
Gustavo Petro: Well, he calls me a socialist. I prefer to be a socialist than a fascist. But that is not the point. It is that if we are heading towards a humanitarian catastrophe in America because a population group is being criminalized, crime is individualized, said the liberals and founding fathers of the United States and our South American republics, it is individualized. You commit a crime, you are judged according to due process. But that everyone who is like you, because you committed a crime, is a criminal, that is fascism. And that has to be eradicated from the democratic mind of the peoples of America.
Félix de Bedout: I want to return to the crisis with the United States, which many have considered to be the worst crisis that has confronted the two nations in decades. The most complicated.
Gustavo Petro: The most complicated was when Panama was taken away from us, to put it in historical . We have not talked about it again.
Félix de Bedout: No, we have not talked about it again. But, but going back to the last decades, you say that this is Colombia's proposal. I mean, I want to put it in black and white so that it is clear. You will not accept again a plane from the United States with returnees under the conditions we have known.
Gustavo Petro: Inhuman conditions and cruel treatment.
Felix de Bedout: Is your offer to bring them all to you, the Colombian government?
Gustavo Petro: My offer is that if the U.S. society sovereignly decides to remove people they do not want from there, to deport them, deport them in humanitarian conditions, in dignity, because an immigrant is not a criminal. There are no illegal people anywhere in the world. You are not illegal anywhere in the world because you are a human being. Illegal are your actions. I probably respect a law, but not you. The person is not illegal.
Félix de Bedout: Yes, we can talk about irregular immigration.
Gustavo Petro: That is the first point. Now, they do not accept that. So, I am bringing the people.
Felix de Bedout: And if they do not accept that proposal?
Gustavo Petro: I asked them to put me for gasoline. They said no. Very stingy. Very stingy. Let's go on, then, what do they want to do to humiliate or do they want a population group to leave? If what they want is for a population group to leave, it is going to cost them a lot, but because I demanded that they leave in dignity and then they do not provide the gasoline (for) the airplanes, then I provide the gasoline for the airplanes. Ah, it is going to become 30,000, 50,000? 700,000 to speak in more general and therefore at South American level. Millions and millions of people transported by plane at the cost of the United States. But then we Colombians can bring the 700,000. Ah, someone here, the opposition or someone like that is going to tell me that 'how is it possible that we are going to spend the money of the budget on 700,000 Colombians'. Do we not spend the money of the budget on a single swindler like (the Brazilian construction company) Odebrecht?
Félix de Bedout: One thing I would like to ask you about this same subject. Colombia was on the verge of a trade war with the United States that would have had unpredictable consequences. At that moment, in the early hours of the morning, did you feel that we have a way to respond? Does Colombia have a way to respond to a U.S. trade war?
Gustavo Petro: But I am not going to get into trade wars. Nor in personal wars. Nor in military wars. There is a war going on inside us that we have to solve, one that has its cause in the United States. The Colombian violence for the most part, our thousands of deaths counted every year, have a cause, a specific policy of drug prohibition within the United States that expands to the world. Our violence has a cause there. We can talk about it. They may close their eyes, they may look the other way. The more violence in Latin America, the more migration. The more climate crisis, which they also closed their eyes to... Do not come to talk to us about less coal and oil, then more emigration because the water dries up here, the fertile lands are gone, the people from Central America go north. The more poverty, the more... because of greed .... Do you know that the foreign debt that a country like the United States may have in the world market has an interest rate, but the one that Colombia or Brazil has is higher by several points? Why if the United States is more insecure because it is emitting greenhouse gases that have a destabilizing effect on life and we are absorbing it in the Amazon jungle? We are providing security to the world while creating insecurity above. Discussion: they can say that the climate crisis does not exist. But why then the interest rate of the external debt rewards the United States for emitting CO2, being the second or the first as they measure it, and instead South America has to pay more interest rate for the same loan when we are absorbing CO2 through the Amazon rainforest.
Félix de Bedout: I want to focus again on the issue of repatriation?
Gustavo Petro: Which also has to do with these issues. They are the real causes.
Félix de Bedout: For example, Mexico accepts the conditions, and they have already left.
Gustavo Petro: Mexico is sending us Colombians in handcuffs. This is the same as...
Felix de Bedout: But then, for example, with Mexico, are you going to say the same thing?
Gustavo Petro: No, exactly the same.
Félix de Bedout: And going back to the subject, Mexico says it is going to accept because it is in a negotiation. Are you negotiating this proposal? Is there any progress in that negotiation?
Gustavo Petro: There is a table, there is a stance of the President. I have asked the Colombian officials to express the position of the president and negotiate. I do not negotiate on human dignity.
Félix de Bedout: That is to say, period, you do not accept any more flights with deported Colombians.
Gustavo Petro: I do not negotiate over human beings. Let 's negotiate. If they bring them. If we bring them. If the trip comes from Miami or comes from San Diego, etcetera. But human dignity is not negotiable.
Felix de Bedout: I insist, what happens if the United States does not accept?
Gustavo Petro: Well, we prepare ourselves.
Felix de Bedout: And we prepare ourselves for what?
Gustavo Petro: We must prepare ourselves now. And we should have been preparing for a long time, because we could see this coming.
Felix de Bedout: And prepare ourselves for what?
Gustavo Petro: Well, I think that on a global scale, with the storms that there are, which are many .... The United States is building a wall around itself. Because of their own society, it is not Trump's fault, it is like that. The majority of the population wants to build and isolate themselves from the world. That's called fortress capitalism. In other words, they believe that this way they will be better preserved in the face of a series of fears. Fear of the climate crisis, which is real, even if they say it is not. In other words, it is going to get worse and worse. Who is going to rebuild Los Angeles? Who?
Félix de Bedout: Of course, many immigrants work in construction.
Gustavo Petro: They are not going to be there anymore. They are no longer there. I have already asked the Colombian men and women (to return), let's see what happens. Let them return. I don't want them to be chained. Many of them can, not all, many of them can take a flight back. Come, because those who are going to rebuild the United States will no longer be there. Those who are going to produce the food in the United States for the Americans are no longer going to be there. Those who had to put the gasoline in the cars to make those cars run on the huge highways are no longer going to be there. An enormous percentage of the American economy, devalued in the United States, will no longer be there. Colombia, with its Colombian men and women, will no longer be there.
Félix de Bedout: But that is, if you will, the issue of the United States and the consequences it may have in the United States. I want to come to the consequences it may have with Colombia.
Gustavo Petro: But what can happen in Colombia? In Colombia we would plant more corn. I remind you Felix, the first time we know that a corn plant came into with a human being was in Colombia, in what is today the Colombian territory, in a place called Momil, there in the Caribbean. We would grow much more corn. We have the capacity to feed ourselves. We would have an industrial development that we already had in the past and that ended and we would have to look at the whole world...
Félix de Bedout: Mr. President, you have insisted on the issue of China, but this is not done overnight. A commercial break with the United States as the one that was raised on Sunday in the communication...
Gustavo Petro: It has been raised for Mexico. The same thing that was raised is more or less raised for Mexico, it is raised for Brazil, they have not been able to talk about it; it is raised for Canada.
Félix de Bedout: Do you really believe that Colombia can withstand this economic blow?
Gustavo Petro: Yes, it can withstand it, very much. We are not Venezuela, in spite of that famous slogan, Colombia is not Venezuela. Colombia can be self-sustaining and can look at the world. I have been building it. Not because I distrusted Biden or anything like that, but because the logical thing for a country that is located in the heart of the world, as we are, is to stop looking only to one side. It should look to all sides, to the south, to the north, to Europe, yes, to Africa, I have opened as many embassies as possible. For Asia. China. Yes, Japan, and India. And we have made progress.
Félix de Bedout: President, the situation was so serious on Sunday that that is why there was the resolution that was given at that time. At least the United States lifted the sanctions and...
Gustavo Petro: There is a beginning of negotiations, a beginning that hopefully will end well.
Félix de Bedout: It depends on that, on what you have just pointed out. But, insisting, were you not aware of the economic effect this could have? Because something really caught my attention. You, at 03:00 am, via Twitter, wrote a tweet where you said that you were waiting for Colombians...
Gustavo Petro: At one o'clock, at two o'clock.
Félix de Bedout: Yes, then he wrote another one...
Gustavo Petro: It has a picture in the middle, the one of the Brazilians entering Manaus.
Félix de Bedout: That is my point. That was your reaction, but I still do not understand, you did not know that the Colombians were arriving like that?
Gustavo Petro: No, there had been a conflict. I had put a position there and there was a return of a plane in 2023.
Félix de Bedout: But look at what Brazil did. Brazil also protested, but let them come.
Gustavo Petro: If not, then we also let them go.
Félix de Bedout: They had to... And I am going to read you the words of a Colombian who was in the group of deportees who told the BBC the following: “I think it is excellent that someone raises a voice of protest about the mistreatment, but when we were sent back they revictimized us. They put us through two more days of imprisonment and mistreatment, and we ended up without our belongings.” Wasn't it better, once it happened, to have let the planes arrive because no plane had ever been returned in flight? The planes arrived, the Colombians came down, you presented the protest note and negotiations began.
Gustavo Petro: You said it yourself at the beginning of this interview. All last year, I am not only talking about this government, there have been intense negotiations. We would have to compile the minutes. They would fill a good space in this room, the minutes of those meetings. But they send us people in handcuffs.
Félix de Bedout: As always.
Gustavo Petro: As always, no more.
Félix de Bedout: As always, no more. For you it is the end point.
Gustavo Petro: For me it is the end point. The negotiation is not about human dignity, it is about how we protect it. That if we had to pay, we had to pay, as Trump's son said, I think he spoke in one of the many social networks, Yes, we had to pay, but I am only interested in human dignity before anything else. That we can meet in many matters amicably, yes, and in others we cannot. What is going to happen in the future? We can speculate. I believe that things are not going well and that where things will go worse is in the United States, because this is going to have its reaction, that Colombia has to diversify, that it has to look towards all sides, that this is not easy, that it will need a process...
Félix de Bedout: There are economists who said that Colombia could not resist that 'hit', as we say in Colombia, six months.
Gustavo Petro: I believe so. I believe in Colombia and not because of religious belief, (but) because we have enough productive capacity for the basic needs of Colombians, only that it is poorly distributed. That is another problem, but we have them. We have fertile lands, we have our work capacity and, unfortunately, a low educational level that our oligarchy did not want to develop, but that we have to develop. We have friends everywhere. I have helped to build them. They came from before too. We have a world that needs to be united. And here I would like to make a few a few a is the fact that the Latin American presidents were summoned to a meeting (the CELAC, Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) and it did not take place. I think this is the worst mistake that Latin American nations can make.
Félix de Bedout: They got scared.
Gustavo Petro: Well, I believe that the coup destabilized several people because it was a coup for several parties.
Félix de Bedout: That is why they got scared. That summit, which you requested, the CELAC, was cancelled. Doesn't that tell you something?
Gustavo Petro: Yes, of course we are repeating the same stupid country as before. I am going to be president of CELAC in a month. Obviously, I am going to be facing a somewhat pachydermic organization because they have not allowed it to function. But what I do believe is that if something is needed at this moment, either to protect goods, or to protect people, as I propose, or both -because people first, then goods- is to get together, to talk to each other. Look, when the covid crisis came, that terrible one, which we resisted as a nation, we are not going to discuss whether it was good or bad...
Félix de Bedout: Some say that this could be worse than the covid.
Gustavo Petro: Well, but let's say, the covid crisis was an existential crisis. What did the Latin American presidents of that time, right, left, etcetera, do? They never talked to each other. They never spoke to each other. While the Europeans, and I was a witness because I was sick there, I got sick there in Italy, I saw how they met by telephone with the famous videos that came out at that time, the zoom. They agreed to negotiate and to on their experiences and to have a common policy in the face of that epidemic. Here in South America and in Latin America in general and the Caribbean, there was not a single call between presidents. And the disease ed through here, being younger populations, with more virulence than in most parts of the world. In Brazil it was a humanitarian disaster. Are we going to repeat the same thing? That is to say, already knowing in our existential experience that the South American countries were not able to unite before an enemy like covid, now that we have foreseen economic, social and humanitarian storms, are we not going to talk to each other? are we not going to get together?
Félix de Bedout: You know that you have received a lot of criticism. I would like to mention one: María Ángeles Olguín, who was Chancellor and who was present at the time of the first Trump istration, says that we are left with the title of Donald Trump's first humiliation.
Gustavo Petro: As long as I do not allow it, and every Colombian who arrives here without guilt tied up, without having committed a crime, it is a failure of mine and a humiliation of the nation. Me, as a person, and of the nation, because it is her human beings, her children of this homeland, who mistreat, then she would be right. As long as someone is fighting here as a person and a nation, hopefully as a society, because Colombians are not treated indignantly, no one has been humiliated, nor do we have to humiliate. I do not want to humiliate Trump or anything like that. I am not the one who burns the gringo flag, nor do I lead a rabid anti-American discourse. I know their culture; I have read it. I ire some things. But on an equal footing.
Félix de Bedout: President, some people, and I want to ask you directly, say that here there is a question of personal convictions that are clear. But also, that these personal convictions and ego put Colombia at risk and that if this leads to a new commercial confrontation, this ego would be taking precedence over the general interest of the nation.
Gustavo Petro: Let's see Felix, we have been at risk every day, every hour. For various reasons, let's call it the climate crisis, I don't have to repeat the facts, let's call it anti-drug policy. Every day we pick up corpses linked or not linked to this business, but every day. What happens is that we have normalized the risk in which we permanently live. We are one of the most sacrificed countries on earth by international public policies. Now, since for the first time a president dares to say to another president of the United States 'Stop! ...They didn't even say it to him when they took Panama. Not even there, the president said 'Stop!'. The Colombians wanted to go and defend their land. There in Bocas del Toro, on the border with Costa Rica, which was Colombia, in Bocas del Toro, there is a mass grave with 200 Colombians buried. They have been taking them out because López Obrador wanted to recover them... Liberals from all America had gathered there at the call of Rafael Uribe Uribe, the Cuban independence fighters, Jamaicans, Nicaraguans and some sailors killed those people with a battleship instigated by the Conservative Party of Colombia, which was in the government. They were already thinking of taking over Panama, which is what happened in the end. But there are 200 Colombians buried there, Colombians of today. Born in these lands of the current Republic of Colombia.
Félix de Bedout: So, for you, it is not a fight of egos.
Gustavo Petro: And then that time there was not a no. Because for the first time a Colombian president says No! And not defending its own business. I am a landowner and so I am looking to see how I can get my meat into the United States or my coffee, no. I am defending the life of the people of Colombia. I am defending the lives of the people of Colombia. So, they say, he put them at risk. We have been at risk every day and every day they kill us. For the first time, I want the risk to be for living, not for dying.
Félix de Bedout: President, I want to come back to an issue you mentioned, Guantánamo, and the announcement made by President Trump to open Guantánamo to take undocumented, irregular, irregular immigrants, who are going to be deported. What happens if Colombians end up in Guantánamo?
Gustavo Petro: Well, many South Americans would end up in Guantanamo. And if the South American presidents are not capable of talking to each other and to the world, then we would see the beginning, the first phase of Auschwitz, in a territory that belongs to the Republic of Cuba.
Félix de Bedout: In other words, do you think that what is being set up is a kind of concentration camp?
Gustavo Petro: Well, they have been setting them up years ago, years ago and not only Trump. Walls, barbed fences, dogs, guards, whips, horses. Treatment of non-human beings to human beings, like Latin Americans and other peoples.
Félix de Bedout: When do you expect the response of the United States to the proposal you have just made?
Gustavo Petro: That will be discussed, but the only thing I am saying is that Colombians do not enter here in handcuffs.
Felix de Bedout: And finally, President, how would you define today Colombia's relations with the United States?
Gustavo Petro: Well, they were going well, very well, even to my surprise, because obviously I also had prejudices. Prejudice is very bad in human thinking. But as soon as I arrived to these cold rooms, the first ones to arrive were the Americans, from their entities, very kindly. Treating and knowing what I was like, I think they had studied my psychological profile, and there was always a kind treatment from me and from them. As for Biden, let's say the four or five times I met him, I exchanged words and we talked, a gentleman who, let's say because of his age, I respected. I think he was a brave and revolutionary young man at the time. He told me he was a Catholic. When I told him that the world financial system had to be restructured to allow countries to have resources to be able to carry out the Marshall Plan that was needed to stop the climate crisis, he accepted it, he tried to fight for it. The U.S. Treasury prevented him from doing so. But, let's say, we had a very good relationship.
Félix de Bedout: That's gone. Now there is another president.
Gustavo Petro: Now it is starting.
Félix de Bedout: And how is that relationship?
Gustavo Petro: It is bad. It is bad. It is wrong to stop aid and not to understand that there is cooperation and you do not help in many issues. That is to say, that we also help them in the specific field of drug trafficking and a society that is martyred by fentanyl, which fortunately has not spread to the world, seems to me to be a mistake. It is a self-destruction of the United States, that they say that for 90 days, I told them hey, let's talk about this because this is dead there, prisoners there, dead here, prisoners here. This is a life issue, this is not for 90 days. If in 90 days, let's suppose that they reflect there and say hey, yes, we have to build cooperation here in the fight against these mafias that are becoming more and more powerful, well, in 90 days they are more powerful. We have hit them less during these 90 minutes. This is a continuous and permanent fight in which we sometimes wear ourselves out. Sometimes, when I see the marijuana issue, sometimes I don't know if we have seen so many Colombians die for free when the streets of Wall Street smell of marijuana everywhere. Felix, when you go to Wall Street, don't you get dizzy?
Félix de Bedout: It is legalized and commercialized and everything else.
Gustavo Petro: It is already legalized and it is very interesting. Well, but how many Colombians died here when marijuana was prohibited?
Félix de Bedout: There is a whole debate on the drug war, no doubt.
Gustavo Petro: That we have to move it forward, without fear.
Félix de Bedout: I told you that I am going to ask you one last question. First, because as a journalist I have to thank you for this interview, which has given a lot of news. But as a Colombian I feel anguish for the consequences that this crisis with the United States may have and I think it is the anguish of many Colombians. What would you say to those Colombians?
Gustavo Petro: Me too. I did not sleep last night, I did not sleep. I also have my worries, and I weigh them carefully-not like certain journalists say, that one takes a drink of alcohol, not because I am a prohibitionist, but because we have to concentrate here.
Félix de Bedout: What do you say to Colombians who are anxious at this moment?
Gustavo Petro: But look, I think there is a moment when they want to humiliate us, right? The United States, I am not generalizing, the U.S. government would like, because of their way of understanding the world, to remove some population groups from their country, well we help because they are our nationals. But they not only want to take them out. They want to show the world a humiliation of the Latin American people. That is the reason for the way they do it. To get them out, they get out. The vast majority of the people are innocent. All they did was work. The dream of a house and a car. One of those things. But the ways they treat them, the images that they show.... Biden, let's say, Trump per week, this week has brought out fewer Latin Americans than Biden. And Biden, less Latin Americans than the great Obama, who so far holds the record. But they weren't doing humiliation images. They were simply in their crazy idea, in my opinion, of preventing a human exodus that they themselves have provoked. But there is a paraphernalia here. There is a staging. There are some audiovisuals to show in networks, in X and others. What they want to show is a humiliated people. And that is what I believe should not be allowed. It is not because they want to take you out. I don't know if Trump was told what it was, that I didn't it Colombian citizens, if they are owners of this land, children of this land, but not humiliated. And that made them very angry. It was not because I returned the plane, because I was still going to bring them as I brought them and they are here. It was because I said that they should not be handcuffed. That simple phrase of saying, which seems natural to me in any part of the world, if you do not commit a crime, why should I, as a ruler, have to handcuff you? What kind of person would I be?
Félix de Bedout: It is said that it is for security reasons in airplanes.
Gustavo Petro: There was a conflict in an airplane here last year. I already knew more or less the details. It was because they were handcuffed. As soon as they saw some Latino policemen, but from the United States, they came on the plane, I don't know why, but they were there. They arrive here, opened the doors. As soon as the people sit down, they start to cut the handcuffs, the restraints, and they see the policemen. That's when they jumped on the U.S. police. Our personnel had to prevent major problems. But, why does that happen? Because it is a reaction to humiliation. Don't humiliate, you won't get that reaction. I'm not saying there can't be a criminal out there, because there always are. Is the percentage of criminals with respect to the Latin American people who are in the United States of Latin American criminals, compared to the percentage of Anglo-Saxon criminals with respect to the Anglo-Saxon people of origin who are in the United States, higher or lower? Well, I dedicated myself to compare the statistics. Of course, an unethical politician can say that all crimes in the United States come from Latinos. That is not true. Or all crime in the United States comes from people of African descent. Not true. It is not true. The criminality, or as a mayor said here, is that all crimes come from Venezuelans. A Colombian could say that, that all crimes come from Venezuelans. Of course there are Venezuelans who commit crimes in Colombia. We opened the doors to millions, didn't we? And one million stayed in Colombia and we are not going to take them out by force. They will decide freely. But I can say that Colombian criminality is less than Venezuelan criminality? I have to hire a study and it will give one yes in some places and no in other places. Population groups are not criminal per se. And to say that is fascist thinking.
Felix de Bedout: I insist on something: the anguish of many Colombians.
Gustavo Petro: Ah, well, I was going to answer that, but we went somewhere else. We all live in anguish. Of course, me too, because Trump is moving the table and is destabilizing the world. Not just Colombia, the world. I have to look out for Colombia and for South and Latin America. There is a moment, I have thought, when it is the people who have to decide. There is a moment in which a ruler, in Europe it is almost daily, but here it is strange, because the president makes the decisions and that's it.... But there is a moment in which the future of all, when being compromised, we go to a war, for example, we can all end up compromised...
Félix de Bedout: Are you afraid that this may happen?
Gustavo Petro: No, I don't think so
Felix de Bedout: A trade war?
Gustavo Petro: We have ways to avoid it. But what I wanted to tell you is that there is a moment when the President must say: “It is up to the people to decide”. And I believe that if they come to corner us to the extreme, there is a moment in which I, knowing twhat is at stake and that the life of every family in Colombia, rich or not, is at stake, that it is up to the people to decide.
Félix de Bedout: What would the people decide?
Gustavo Petro: Well, if they want to be vassals or if they want to be sovereign. That is my political opinion.
Felix de Bedout: In other words, would you put relations with the United States to consultation if they reach a critical point?
Gustavo Petro: Not relations, no; receiving Colombians in humiliating conditions.
Felix de Bedout: You intend to present...
Gustavo Petro: Relations with the peoples are not put in consultation per se. The people of Colombia must be in connected with all the people of the world.
Felix de Bedout: Do you want to present a popular referendum...?
Gustavo Petro: No, I am considering the extreme where what we encounter from the United States side is arrogance.
Felix de Bedout: That is to say, if the United States rejects your proposal that you receive the Colombians...
Gustavo Petro: At a convenient time.
Felix de Bedout: You would submit this referendum to the Colombian people so that it is the Colombian people who decide.
Gustavo Petro: That's right, under the existing rules that you will be able to investigate them.
Felix de Bedout: That takes some time.
Gustavo Petro: Not long. I was reading it last night in my hours of anguish, the whole procedure. What happens is that it has not been implemented in Colombia. But I think it is time to discuss it in the cafeterias, in the street, at home. Well, what is the future? That would be very interesting because it is more or less putting all Colombia to debate very calmly, because we are not going to kill each other for it, which is our immediate future as a nation. A little bit Bolivar or Santander? A little bit brought to the current conditions. Are we going down a sovereign path or not?
Félix de Bedout: And I want to ask you about that. Your continuity in the government of Colombia could depend on that result?
Gustavo Petro: No, no, because you would then do what Uribe did, or not, let's say the Colombian extreme right. A decision that has to be made. Where a left-wing person can say 'no', right? And a right-wing person can also say 'no'. A person who does not understand neither what is left nor right can say 'yes', put it as a kind of plebiscite on the presidency... because that is why we are not going to reelection.
Félix de Bedout: And you are thinking about it? It is prohibited. But it has been forbidden other times.
Gustavo Petro: No, because you know that it is forbidden, it is forbidden by those who reelected themselves. Morally, ethically, let's say, immoral, no? I reelect myself... But that is not under discussion. If we wanted to do that, then....
Félix de Bedout: I mean, the news is the consultation. To make it clear, if the United States rejects the proposal you are making, you would call for a popular consultation for the Colombian people to decide on that determination.
Gustavo Petro: Yes.
Félix de Bedout: Chairman, thank you very much.