USA, to pay the costs

By: Francisco Santos - 09/07/2025

When there are inept or corrupt officials in a government, and a self-serving leader with messianic ambitions, it's only natural that things won't go well. What just happened in the United States was delayed for several reasons, the most important being that the previous US administration, that of Joe Biden, turned a blind eye to the brutal increase in drug trafficking in Colombia. What's more, Biden was so complicit in this misguided decision that he halted the measurement of hectares of coca to avoid the fight he obviously saw coming.

On his first trip to the United States, to the United Nations General Assembly, Petro arrived two hours late to a dinner hosted by President Biden, and we already know why, although they said it was due to "traffic." However, on his first visit to Washington, he showed where this relationship was headed when he was rude to the members of the House of Representatives in charge of approving aid to Colombia. He told them, more or less, "I'm not interested in, and I don't want, aid from the United States." The president of the country that had received nearly $10 billion in aid ended Plan Colombia with an ungrateful slam of the door, without any diplomacy. The Biden administration, with that disastrous national security adviser for Latin America, Juan González, said and did nothing.

Now comes this crisis, which is just the beginning of something worse, but as the State Department clearly states in its statement, it leaves the door open for an improvement in relations when a new government is in place. It clarifies this clearly by stating that "despite political differences with the current government, Colombia remains an essential strategic partner." Blanco is a chicken, and he's fried. They're charging Petro for his foreign policy blunders, starting with the planes that transported migrants and now including his implausible accusation against the Secretary of State of promoting a coup against his government. As if Marco Rubio didn't have anything more important to do.

This remaining year of government is going to be very difficult. The first issue will be the certification, which will undoubtedly not be granted. And it will not be conditional, because the truth is that in these three years of government, drug trafficking has had a free hand to expand its cultivation, production, and export of coca. The data is very clear, although we must not overlook the fact that the person largely responsible for this drug crisis was former President Juan Manuel Santos, who allowed the number of hectares of coca to grow from 40,000 to 200,000 between 2013 and 2018. That is the true legacy of his administration.

In 2022, when Petro's administration took office, Colombia had 200,000 hectares of coca; Iván Duque's administration failed to reduce this, to be honest, and 1,700 tons of coca were produced and exported. Three years later, in 2025, coca hectares are between 270,000 and 300,000, and production is between 2,600 and 3,000 tons of coca produced and exported. The power of criminal organizations in Colombia, of the coca cartels, including the ELN and the FARC (they are not dissident groups, let's stop fooling ourselves), has grown, and their territorial control has expanded. This is undoubtedly also a legacy of the Santos administration, which, in the face of a supposed peace, which we don't see anywhere, dismantled the fight against drug trafficking and weakened the military and police forces. Once again, the next government failed to do the same, and Petro obviously completed Santos's task of weakening the entire security apparatus, which facilitated the growth of organized crime.

What's next? The visa issue is the least of it, and surely more than one Petro supporter is trembling. The decertification could come with various sanctions, especially tariffs on export products. It's very important to work now with the United States government and with congressmen—and I'm not referring to the members of the government who have the slightest influence—to make them understand that harming the productive apparatus only benefits Petro's radical rhetoric, which needs this kind of confrontation to somewhat salvage his plummeting popularity.

Of course, the issue of visas and the monitoring of the resources of the most important members of the government and their associates, who steal and continue to steal wholesale, must be a fundamental part of the sanctions for the collapse of this administration's anti-drug policy. Paying the just for sinners only serves Petro, the criminals, and the regional and extraregional enemies of the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as he made clear in this week's statement, is clear on this.

In any case, we must prepare for the worst. A president who thinks he's a top dog, who when he disappears, like in Manta—which is enough for another column, because there are so many questions and so much information to reveal—does all kinds of crazy things, and who only thinks about himself, is the perfect recipe for disaster.

Dear passengers on Colombia Flight 22-26, please fasten your seatbelts, as we are entering a turbulent zone and our pilot is not in the best condition. Until August 7, 2026.

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».