Analysis
Petro’s ‘disobey Trump’s orders’ speech and the reaction from Washington
With the U.S. casting yet another veto on a UN Security Council resolution for an immediate ceasefire on September 18, Petro has clearly had enough.
This time, Colombian President Gustavo Petro seems to have crossed a line: speaking with a megaphone at a demonstration in New York against the genocide in Gaza, he urged U.S. soldiers to “disobey Trump’s orders” and instead obey the higher orders dictated by humanity. For President Trump, who had already had enough of him, this was the last straw: he wasted no time in having the State Department announce that Petro’s visa was revoked on account of “reckless and inflammatory actions.”
Among the first world leaders to take a clear stand against Israel – breaking diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv in 2024 and permanently blocking coal exports – the Colombian president did not limit himself to calling for soldiers in the U.S. army to disobey. He also reiterated the proposal, first made during his speech to the UN General Assembly, to create an army with a humanitarian mission called United for Peace, which would be composed of military forces from countries determined to react to the genocide in Palestine.
And he went a step further, announcing a call in Colombia for anyone willing to fight for the “liberation” of Gaza, and responding to the call himself. “If the president of the Colombian Republic has to take part in this fight, it doesn’t scare me; I’ve done it before,” Petro said, referring to his past as a guerrilla in the ranks of the April 19th Movement (M-19), an armed revolutionary group active in the 1970s and 1980s.
Back in July, in reaction to what he called NATO’s complicity in the Palestinian genocide, Petro announced Colombia’s withdrawal from the Atlantic bloc, of which it was the only Latin American global partner. “There is no other way,” he said before representatives of the Hague Group, an alliance of Global South nations set up to coordinate actions against the Israeli government. “What are we doing in NATO?” he asked the group, which includes South Africa, Malaysia, Bolivia, and Chile. “Isn’t it time for another military alliance? How can we stand with armies that drop bombs on children?”
With the U.S. casting yet another veto on a UN Security Council resolution for an immediate ceasefire on September 18, Petro has clearly had enough. “The history of humanity has amply demonstrated that when diplomacy fails, we must enter another phase of struggle,” he said.
This certainly marks the lowest point in relations between the United States and Colombia, which for a long time was its most pliable ally in Latin America. While clashes between the two presidents have been constant since the beginning of the Trump administration – with the first over the deportation of migrants – the last few weeks have been the most turbulent.
Petro reacted in very harsh terms to U.S. raids in the Caribbean Sea against Venezuelan boats suspected of drug trafficking, declaring: “The U.S. government is murdering Latin Americans on their own territory.” And in his speech to the UN, commenting on the revocation of Colombia’s anti-drug certification for the first time in 28 years, the president called it “a profound insult to the country that has shed the most blood to allow societies in the United States and Europe to consume a little less cocaine.”
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/disobbedire-a-trump-e-washington-revoca-il-visto-a-petro on 2025-09-28