A racist president and a silent left

By: Francisco Santos - 21/07/2025

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Gustavo Petro had already hinted at this. On August 30, 2024, in Nuquí, Chocó, referring to the president of the Supreme Court, Gerson Chaverra, who is Black, he said: “I don't understand why Black men can be conservatives.” Many thought it was a joke, a simple mistake. The truth is, it wasn't. Colombian President Gustavo Petro is racist, and confirmed it when he told Black minister Carlos Rosero at his cabinet meeting this week: “No one who is Black is going to tell me that a porn actor should be excluded.”

The first question to ask is: is a white person going to be able to tell Petro that a porn actor should be excluded? Or, to go back to his previous comment, can a white Supreme Court president really be conservative? With these two comments, Petro made it clear that skin color is an indicator of mental capacity to make a political decision, on the one hand, or does skin color give a human being the capacity to give an order or make a comment to a white or mixed-race president, which is ultimately what we all are.

Two comments more racist than these could only be found in a conversation between two members of the Ku Klux Klan, the largest racist organization in the United States. In any other country in the world, the reaction to a comment like this from a sitting president would have been brutal and unsparing, especially from left-wing sectors, which supposedly represent equality or equity among human beings and, obviously, among races. In Colombia, all that was heard was a deathly silence.

Minister Rosero, obviously, resigned, right? Nothing, total silence. Did the vice president, who is Black, strongly rebuke the president for his racist comment? No, no absolute silence. Of course, in the case of Francia Márquez, it's a little more understandable, since Petro and his henchmen already demonstrated their racist and misogynistic attitude toward her in countless comments when the audio recordings of former Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva were revealed. And did the former Foreign Minister and former ambassador to Washington, Luis Gilberto Murillo, also Black, clearly and directly express his indignation? He did, obviously; he's campaigning and very effectively took advantage of this racist act by Petro to position himself. Of course, after years of enjoying the benefits of power, that's why, when Petro insulted the president of the Supreme Court, he said nothing.

Can you imagine if Álvaro Uribe had made a comment like that? Petro, along with current representatives Gloria Flórez and Alirio Uribe, or Senator Iván Cepeda, not to mention Senator Pizarro or the influencer De Francisco, would be tearing their clothes off, demanding an investigation and conviction for a racist crime and immediate rectification. Everyone remains silent, and their complicit silence opens the door to more racism.

Can you imagine the Matador cartoons on the subject? Sure, he has his little problem, but his hatred of Uribe and those who think differently has never stopped him from speaking out whenever he wanted. Now he's been recast like his friend, the local grocer Matarife, who's as silent as an Egyptian mummy. Is Petro a racist? We don't care, they say with their silence.

On the contrary, in 2008, with President Uribe, we created the Intersectoral Commission for the Advancement of the Afro-Colombian, Palenquera, and Raizal Population, which I led. We visited 18 Black communities across Colombia, examining their economic, political, and social problems. In addition, with experts, we evaluated issues of economic, salary, political, and educational discrimination. After this entire study, which lasted more than two years, Conpes 3660 of 2010 was issued, creating affirmative action measures to balance obvious economic imbalances and educational, social, and economic policies to close gaps in Colombian society with respect to these communities. The next administration, that of Juan Manuel Santos, was supposed to implement these policies, but, since they came from the Uribe administration, Conpes was shelved and absolutely nothing was done.

I know some government officials, and I don't understand why they don't resign in the face of such an affront. They're just being picky, as the saying goes, and looking the other way. The hypocrisy of that left, which only cares about the human rights of its own people or the equality of its own people, which lets this racist incident slide as if it were nothing, is shameful. That's how they operate, and that's how Petro operates; they always get away with it.

What's coming is going to be worse. Every time they push the ethical line and nothing happens, as is happening with this episode of racism, they go for more. And the most is staying in power, I repeat. When the time comes, we will remind the brave Black communities of Colombia of the president's racism, which he demonstrated with his relationship with Francia Márquez, on the one hand, and with his statements, on the other.

The opposition's lack of response is incredible. Social media should be flooded with memes of the racist president with clear messages directed at those sectors and other sectors that support him, or used to support him, and who he has mistreated. There's no one coordinating this action. That's why he gets away with it.

A racist and misogynistic president. That's clear. And it's only getting worse.

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