Bogotá.- The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, again referred this Tuesday to the meeting he will hold on February 3rd with his American counterpart, Donald Trump, at the White House, a meeting that he anticipates will be “determinant” for him and for “the life of humanity”.
“It’s a key, fundamental, decisive meeting, not only of my personal life, but of the life of humanity,” said the president during an event at the Casa de Nariño, presidential headquarters.
In the same scenario, Petro questioned the fact that the United States withdrew his visa, following an impromptu speech in favor of the Palestinian cause last September in New York after his participation in the United Nations General Assembly, to grant it to him now, prior to his trip to Washington next Sunday.
«They took away my visa, now they say they put it back. So, why did they take it away from me? I don’t know if for a while or definitively, I don’t know. We will know on February 3rd,» the president indicated.
Furthermore, Petro revealed that Americans told President Trump that his wife, the First Lady of Colombia, Verónica Alcocer, had received money from Nicolás Maduro to finance groups in Colombia, an accusation that, he implies, the U.S. dismissed.
“Trump’s gringos told him that Maduro’s people had given my wife tens of millions of dollars to finance the front line. And who said that? It was a friend who had assets in the United States and it seemed more serious to him to lose the assets than to give us a lie,” he said.
«The gringos didn’t make an effort, that’s why I don’t have an ‘indictment’ (…) I haven’t received a penny from Maduro because I didn’t believe in Maduro,» he continued.
Petro asks the U.S. to return Maduro to Venezuela
Earlier this Tuesday, at another official event also in Bogotá, Petro stated that the United States should return Maduro to Venezuela to be judged by a court in that country and criticized the military attack on January 3 in Caracas, in which the Chavista leader was captured.
«They have to return him (to Maduro) and have him judged by a Venezuelan court, not an American one, because Latin American civilization is different from European Anglo-Saxon civilization», said Petro in a speech at a hospital in Bogotá.
Petro’s statements come a week before the meeting he has scheduled with Trump at the White House, after a year of disagreements between both leaders that began on January 26, 2025, when the Colombian president refused to receive a flight with migrants from the United States, denouncing “undignified treatment” for his countrymen.
Petro, who presents himself as a South American jaguar that rivals the American eagle and who feared a military operation against him like the one that deposed Maduro, was scheduled to deliver a harsh speech against Trump on January 7 at an event for sovereignty in Plaza de Bolívar, in Bogotá.
However, the tension subsided minutes before going on stage thanks to a phone call between the two in which they agreed to meet.
