Duval Times

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has criticized Colombian President Gustavo Petro's policies, claiming they are undermining two decades of progress in the country. In a piece published on Medium on May 14, 2024, Rubio stated that Petro's decisions to renege on campaign promises and rewrite the Colombian constitution were causing significant damage.

Rubio recalled that from the 1970s to the early 2000s, Colombia was a hub of revolutionary violence and crime. He noted that Foreign Terrorist Organizations claimed more than 10,000 lives during this period, including almost 4,000 civilian lives. Drug dealers thrived in this chaos, with Colombia supplying up to 90 percent of the world’s cocaine.

However, Rubio highlighted that the situation began to change when the United States invested over $10 billion in assisting the Colombian government to reestablish security. In contrast, he accused President Petro of reversing these gains. According to Rubio, killers and drug dealers have "expanded their territorial control, enhanced their power of recruitment, and diversified their income."

The senator further argued that the Colombian people have gained little from Petro's policies. He pointed out that last year terrorist-affiliated homicides rose by as much as 72 percent while kidnappings increased by 77 percent and extortion by almost 15 percent across the nation. With the collapse of "Total Peace," Rubio warned of an increase in crime rates including child sex trafficking.

Rubio also expressed concern about regional instability caused by Petro's policies affecting neighboring countries like Ecuador and Haiti. As a response strategy, he suggested that U.S foreign aid should be conditioned on a decrease in Bogotá’s appeasement tactics and stressed that extradition rights for Colombian gangsters should not be relinquished.