As it stands, Gustavo Petro’s government has some interesting ideas about how to actualize and restructure critical areas of the state, but it remains to be seen whether U.S. control of the Latin American nation for Hybrid War purposes against other regional actors will indeed lessen.
In this article I will focus on certain fragments from the presidents elects celebratory speech in which he layed out some interesting yet vague comments that might give us some clues on what his new administration will indeed utilize to tackle the various domestic and foreign policy problems that Colombia faces. It was a welcome surprise when many members of the various right leaning governments and parties, within and outside of Colombia did not commence their usual Hybrid War programming of challenging the election results with fabricated evidence, instead most of them congratulated Petro at the same frequency as left leaning regional leaders.
Regarding the political violence in the country, the president elect Gustavo Petro has given signs that he is interested in fulfilling the agreements signed in Havana in 2016 between the Colombian state and the FARC and resuming dialogue. Petro also indicated he wishes to stop the use of the mobile anti-riot squad by the state, symbolically showing his administration will not be unnecessarily violent or terroristic against the population, seeking instead to have an attitude of dialogue and not repression in the face of all protests. Regarding political violence Petro said in his speech that there needs to be communication “…firstly from the great national dialogue between the whole Colombian society, and secondly, achieving that the weapons stop firing, that the weapons stop being used, that the weapons stop existing outside the Colombian state.”
Regarding the lack of democratic security in Colombia, as well as the structural lack of efficiency of the justice and state security apparatus, a key issue has been that Colombia’s police is still part of the Ministry of Defense and not of the Ministry of the Interior and Justice. The Colombian police is a totally militarized police force with a very military background and practically no civilian training, this obviously becomes an obstacle in dealing effectively with citizen coexistence or in solving low level crime. These are structural problems of the overall security in Colombia that the Petro administration must solve in order to move forward.
On the economic front there was a part of his speech which was specially telling on what Petro’s strategies will be, stating that:
“… they were shouting at us … that we were going to expropriate the goods of Colombians, that we were going to destroy private property, well … we are going to develop capitalism in Colombia, not because we worship it but because we have first to overcome pre-modernity in Colombia, feudalism in Colombia, the new slavery. We have to overcome atavistic atypical mentalities linked there to that world of serfs, to that world of slaves that had as counterpart the lords and slave owners, we have to build a democracy. And we are going to build that democracy by allowing… an economic pluralism, economic pluralism means overcoming the old slavery and the old feudalism… to have a popular economy that can be strengthened through connectivity, through education, through cheap credit, from which will come forms of capitalism, hopefully democratic, hopefully productive, hopefully not speculative. From there will also come new forms of human relations based on new technologies, from there will become a strong productive economy, that is why we want to move from the old extractivist economy … to a new productive economy that can make Colombia grow.“
As it stands, Gustavo Petro’s government has some interesting ideas about how to actualize and restructure critical areas of the state, but it remains to be seen whether U.S. control of the Latin American nation for Hybrid War purposes against other regional actors will indeed lessen. Colombia’s role in the region is that of a U.S. neo colony that even has some ties with NATO, as Nino Pagliccia noted in a 2020 article titled “The Hybrid War On Venezuela Moves To A New Stage of Aggression”: ”the escalation in Venezuela from violent riots to armed mercenary incursions and sabotage, likely aided by the U.S. and its proxy Colombian government, indicates that the Hybrid War on Venezuela is moving to the next stage of aggression…”
We shall have to wait and see what happens, for If Petro’s government were able to be sovereign and not be used as a tool of the US and its Hybrid Wars in the region then positive changes might arise from this. Also he has to further develop Colombia economically and industrialize it, which the right wing won’t or can’t do at a fast enough pace. In order to achieve most, if not all, of the goals for his administration, Colombia will undoubtedly have to step on the toes of the Monroe Doctrine, not to mention Colombia’s relationship with NATO, and strengthen its sovereignty by developing a functional, independent, Colombian state that is not a vassal of the USA, but its own master, ready to exchange and function in the multipolar order.