
Published 01/27/2025 10:30 | Edited 01/27/2025 10:40
At the height of the recent diplomatic crisis between Colombia and the United States, Colombian President Gustavo Petro responded this Sunday (26) to Donald Trump’s threats of economic and political sanctions with a blunt letter. The text, released as the two countries sought a way out of the impasse, became a symbol of Colombian resistance to North American imperialism.
In the letter, Petro not only exposed his critical view of Trump’s immigration policies, but also rescued the history of struggle of the Colombian people, defending national sovereignty and the rights of migrants. The document was widely covered by the international press and considered a milestone in Latin American foreign policy.
Read in full below:
“Trump, I really don’t like traveling to the USA. It’s a little boring, but I confess that there are admirable things. I like going to black neighborhoods in Washington. There I saw a whole fight in the US capital between blacks and Latinos with barricades, which seemed silly to me, because they should unite.
I confess that I like Walt Whitman, Paul Simon, Noam Chomsky and Miller.
I confess that Sacco and Vanzetti, who have my blood, are memorable in US history, and I follow them. They were murdered in the electric chair for being labor leaders, by the fascists who are both within the USA and in my country.
I don’t like your oil, Trump. He will end the human species because of greed. Maybe someday, over a glass of whiskey that I accept despite my gastritis, we can talk frankly about this. But it’s difficult, because you consider me to be an inferior race. I’m not, and no Colombian is.
If you know anyone who is stubborn, it’s me. It can, with its economic strength and pride, try to carry out a coup d’état, as they did with Allende. But I die in my law. I will resist torture and I will resist you. I don’t want slaveholders on Colombia’s side; We’ve had too many and we’ve freed ourselves. What I want next to Colombia are freedom lovers. If you cannot accompany me, I will seek other paths. Colombia is the heart of the world, and you don’t understand that.
This is the land of yellow butterflies, of the beauty of Remédios, but also of colonels Aurelianos Buendía, of whom I am one, perhaps the last.
You can kill me, but I will survive in my people, who come before yours, in the Americas. We are people of the winds, the mountains, the Caribbean Sea and freedom.
You don’t like our freedom, that’s fine. I don’t shake hands with white slavers. I shake hands with the white libertarians, heirs of Lincoln, and the young peasants, black and white in the USA, at whose tombs I cried and prayed on a battlefield where I stood, after hiking the mountains of Italian Tuscany and surviving COVID-19.
They are the USA, and before them I kneel – before no one else.
Take me down, President, and the Americas and humanity will respond.
Colombia now stops looking to the north and looks to the world. Our lineage comes from the blood of the Caliphate of Córdoba, the civilization of that time; of the Roman Latins of the Mediterranean, who founded the republic and democracy in Athens; and of the resistant black people that you turned into slaves. Colombia is the first free territory in the Americas, even before Washington. That’s where I take shelter, in the African corners.
My land is one of goldsmithing that existed at the time of the Egyptian pharaohs and the first artists in the world in Chiribiquete.
You will never dominate us. The warrior who rode our lands, shouting for freedom, named Bolívar, opposes this.
Our people are somewhat fearful, somewhat shy, they are naive and kind, passionate. But they will know how to recover the Panama Canal, which you took from us with violence. Two hundred heroes from all of Latin America lie in Bocas del Toro, now Panama, formerly part of Colombia, who you murdered.
I raise a flag, and as Gaitán said: Even if it remains alone, it will continue to be raised with Latin American dignity, which is the dignity of the Americas. Your great-grandfather did not know this dignity, but mine did, Mr. President, an immigrant to the USA.
Your blockade doesn’t scare me, because Colombia, besides being the country of beauty, is the heart of the world. I know you love beauty, like me. Don’t disrespect her, and she will offer you her sweetness.
From today onwards, Colombia opens itself to the world, with open arms. We are builders of freedom, life and humanity.
They inform me that you imposed a 50% tax on the fruits of Colombian human labor to enter the USA. I will do the same.
May our people plant corn, discovered in Colombia, and feed the world.”
Source: vermelho.org.br