Colombia’s Petro Message to Trump: I Won’t Kneel

In a long message, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro sends a strong message of defiance to Donald Trump and the U.S. Credit: Colombia Presidency / Gage Skidmore – CC BY-SA 2.0

In a long message published on X.com, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro directly addressed U.S. President Donald Trump amid the escalating diplomatic crisis between the two countries. As both nations have exchanged reciprocal sanctions in recent hours, President Petro decided to invoke his refusal to submit to Trump, whom he portrays as an illegitimate president, in the name of the freedom of the peoples, Colombia, and Latin America.

Colombia’s President Petro message to Donald Trump

“Trump, I don’t really like traveling to the U.S.; it’s a bit boring, but I confess that there are things worth noting. I like going to the Black neighborhoods in Washington, where I once witnessed an entire fight in the U.S. capital between Black and Latino people with barricades. I thought it was nonsense 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 U.S. history, and I follow them. They were executed as worker leaders in the electric chair by fascists, who are present in the U.S. just as they are in my country.

I don’t like their oil, Trump, it will destroy humanity because of greed. Perhaps someday, with a glass of whiskey, which I accept despite my gastritis, we can talk frankly about this, but it’s difficult because you consider me an inferior race, which I am not, nor is any Colombian.

So, if you know anyone stubborn, that’s me, period. You may try, with your economic power and arrogance, to stage a coup like you did with Allende [reference to US-backed coup against Chilean President Salvadore Allende in 1973]. But I die by my own laws, I resisted torture, and I resist you. I don’t want slaveholders next to Colombia, we’ve had many, and we freed ourselves. What I want next to Colombia are lovers of freedom. If you can’t join me, I’ll go elsewhere. Colombia is the heart of the world, and you didn’t understand it. This is the land of yellow butterflies, of the beauty of Remedios, but also of Colonel Aureliano Buendía [Main character of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s masterpiece ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’], of whom I am one, perhaps the last.

You will kill me, but I will survive in my town, which is before yours, in the Americas. We are peoples of the winds, the mountains, the Caribbean Sea, and freedom.

You don’t like our freedom, fine. I don’t shake hands with white slaveholders. I shake hands with the libertarian whites, heirs of Lincoln, and with the Black and white peasant boys from the U.S., before whose graves I wept and prayed in a battlefield, which I reached after walking the mountains of Tuscany, Italy, and after saving myself from COVID.

They are the U.S., and before them, I kneel.

You may bring me down, Mr. President, but the Americas and humanity will answer you.

Colombia, stop looking north, look to the world. Our blood comes from the blood of the caliphate of Córdoba, the civilization of that time, from the Roman Latinos of the Mediterranean, the civilization that founded the republic, democracy in Athens; our blood has the resistant Blacks turned into slaves by you. In Colombia, there is the first free territory in the Americas, before Washington, before all of America; there, I take shelter in their African chants.

My land has the craftsmanship that existed in the time of the Egyptian pharaohs and the world’s first artists in Chiribiquete.

You will never dominate us. The warrior who rode our lands, shouting freedom and named Bolívar [Simon Bolivar, father of Colombian independence], stands in opposition.

Our peoples are somewhat fearful, somewhat shy, naive, and kind, loving, but they will know how to win the Panama Canal, which you took from us with violence. Two hundred heroes from all over Latin America lie in Bocas del Toro, now Panama, formerly Colombia, whom you murdered.

I raise a flag, and as Gaitán [Colombian left-wing presidential candidate assassinated in 1948] said, even if I’m alone, it will still be raised with Latin American dignity, which is the dignity of America, a dignity your great-grandfather never knew, but mine did, Mr. President, immigrant to the U.S.

Your blockade doesn’t scare me because Colombia, in addition to being the country of beauty, is the heart of the world. I know you love beauty as I do; don’t disrespect it, and it will offer you its sweetness.

FROM TODAY, COLOMBIA OPENS UP TO THE WHOLE WORLD, WITH OPEN ARMS, WE ARE BUILDERS OF FREEDOM, LIFE, AND HUMANITY.

I’m informed that you impose a 50% tariff on our human labor product to enter the U.S., I’ll do the same.

Let our people sow maize, which was discovered in Colombia, and feed the world.”

Related: Colombia-US Crisis: Tariffs Withdrawn After Petro Agrees to Accept Deportees