Did you expect something different?

By: Francisco Santos - 24/10/2025

Gustavo Petro and the left they represent, the drug traffickers and the world they've enjoyed, even American Democrats seem oblivious to the fact that everything has changed. The 2024 elections buried the world they were accustomed to, and today, with great force, a new world is emerging where relations are one of open, brazen power, some might say, and the truth, in the face of the "nonsense" of the past, is better, or at least clearer.

Let's start with the nonsense. Every American president since Hugo Chávez came to power has allowed a narco-dictatorship to consolidate, turned a blind eye to all the human rights violations, and that country, now in the hands of Nicolás Maduro and a mafia-like kleptocracy, has become the New York Stock Exchange of drug trafficking and an epicenter of destabilization for the entire region.

The "nonsense" with Nicaragua is the same. Today, it's an epicenter of Russian intelligence; it's home to the largest electronic intelligence center in the world outside of Moscow, and, moreover, not a single Nicaraguan enters it. This week, the mobsters, Ortega, Daniel, and his wife Rosario Murillo, began expropriating land across the country for exploitation by Chinese companies. Oh, and we can't forget that that country was the concentration center for illegal migration arriving from all over the world, whose objective was, and is, to generate destabilization along the borders of various countries.

Mexico isn't far behind. Today, Cuba lives off what Mexico gives it. President Claudia Sheinbaum increased the aid the previous president gave to the failed Cuban state to $3 billion. According to the website Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, "shipments to Cuba of 'Gasolina Bienestar,' a Pemex subsidiary, totaled $3 billion between May and August 2025, while shipments during the entire previous six-year term totaled $1 billion."

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union gave Cuba approximately $4 billion a year. Cuba has already milked that country, Venezuela, and is now on its third cow, Mexico, where it has a very friendly milker. As if this weren't enough, the shipment was made on a ship sanctioned by OFAC, the "Sandino." Not to mention the issue of drug trafficking, as the structural relationship between these criminal organizations and the ruling Morena party is already beginning to be revealed.

Let's go to Colombia. Trump is right, Petro is a "lunatic" or a "crazy" if we want to soften the term. "Gasoline is worse than cocaine," he told us in his first speech at the UN. Not to mention all the stupid things he said in his interview last Monday with Univision. It's absolutely clear that Colombia has a sick president, an extreme megalomaniac, whose consumer problems could destroy the country. He wants to be "unforgettable," he said, which makes it clear he wants to play the victim.

We shouldn't be surprised by what has happened in the last three years. His relationship with drug traffickers during his campaign is very clear, even if justice hasn't acted, and the results of his administration in this area only benefit drug traffickers: more hectares of coca, more coca exports, and greater territorial control for the criminal organizations that produce and export coca. Not to mention when he released drug traffickers from prison to attend one of his political events, or the law he's passing through Congress, or the paramilitaries—all drug traffickers, moreover, whom he has bought and aligned to attack those who oppose him and to delegitimize political adversaries.

This scenario, which is likely to become even more complicated, is what President Donald Trump is facing by declaring war on the drug cartels. These governments are clearly allied with drug trafficking and also have a common goal: to destabilize the region.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has a new foreign policy document on his desk proposing two things: the first is that the United States now emphasizes, above all other regions, security in the Americas as a priority. Of course, it doesn't abandon other regions of the world, but it hands over the primary responsibility to the European and Asian allies. The free pass on security these countries enjoyed since the postwar period is over.

Second, the American continent today faces a very serious drug trafficking problem that has grave implications for the national security of the United States. The Albanian, Russian, Chinese, Colombian, Mexican, Venezuelan, and Hezbollah mafias operate in this criminal business with two common objectives: maximum profit and destabilization of US allies. Drug trafficking today is an instrument that authoritarian regimes use to attack liberal democracies around the world. It's not just a business.

The naval force in the Venezuelan Caribbean, the revocation of visas for more than 50 politicians from Morena, the ruling party in Mexico, and the measures coming to Colombia are just the beginning of the implementation of this new US foreign policy.

The deployment of new technological instruments in this war is already underway. A solar-powered aircraft that can fly for months, thus controlling vast territories, is already in preparation, as are fumigation and laboratory-destroying drones. Furthermore, soon, with the support of this aircraft, we will see the use of drones to stop or destroy speedboats in rivers and seas, and the use of underwater drones to monitor ports and track these types of cocaine shipments.

This war on drugs is now going to be a war. In our countries, civilians, in many cases, are paying the price for this struggle. I was kidnapped by Pablo Escobar and am miraculously alive. The technology that's coming will change the advantage drug traffickers previously had in this illegal industry.

Yes, times are changing, and the war on drugs is just beginning. The impunity with which the Maduros, the Petros, the Sheinbaums, the Correas, the AMLOs, and the Benedettis of the continent have ended. Today, they will finally begin to pay the consequences of their alliance, active or passive, with drug traffickers.

It was about time.

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