Petro, the irresponsible demagogue

By: Luis Gonzales Posada - 07/08/2025

The political and diplomatic incident provoked by Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who accused Peru of violating the Rio de Janeiro Protocol of May 24, 1934, which ratified the 1922 Boundary Treaty and the work of the 1929 Joint Demarcation Commission, constitutes a crude and irresponsible political maneuver.

The Colombian president has indeed said that Peru intends to "take over" part of his territory in the Amazon, in response to the enactment of Law 32403, which created the district of Santa Rosa in the Loreto Region of the Mariscal Castilla province, which, according to him, does not belong to us.

Petro ignores the aforementioned international instruments, just as he ignores the fact that we have exercised sovereignty over that area, which is part of the river island of Chineria, for a hundred years and that none of the 28 presidents who preceded him in office, both civilian and military, made a claim of that nature.

This is not the first incident created by Petro. In February 2023, he claimed that our police officers "march like Nazis against their own people," an infamous comparison that prompted the Congress of the Republic to declare him "persona non grata" and request the Ministries of the Interior and Foreign Affairs to guarantee his inability to enter the country. He then claimed that the trial of Pedro Castillo for the failed 1922 coup was "an insult to democracy and the American Convention on Human Rights," thus violating the 1964 Vienna Agreement on Diplomatic Relations and the OAS Charter, which establishes in Article 19 that "no State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for whatever reason, in the internal or external affairs of any other."

Petro also ignores the fact that we share a 1,626-kilometer border; that we signed a free trade agreement; that, with Mexico and Chile, we are part of the Pacific Alliance, a powerful instrument of integration; and that, with Bolivia and Ecuador, we are part of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN).

Likewise, he seems to disregard the importance of 300 companies from his country operating in Peru, with an investment of $23.5 billion over the last 30 years, which has generated 60,000 direct jobs and 300,000 indirect jobs.

We should have no doubt that the offensive will continue. For now, their Interior Minister, Armando Benedetti, has announced that they may appeal to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, and they will surely also transfer this artificial dispute to the OAS and other supranational bodies. For our part, the Foreign Ministry has issued a firm statement in defense of national sovereignty, supported by Parliament, regional and municipal governments, as well as all political groups.

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