Colombian President Gustavo Petro criticised Donald Trump in a scathing statement, saying the US president is going to “wipe out the human species because of greed.” The post came after Petro announced he would be imposing a 25% tariff on imported US goods, hours after Trump said he would do the same because the Colombian President rejected two planes carrying migrants.
‘You will kill me, but I will survive in my people’
“Trump, I don’t really like traveling to the US, it’s a bit boring, but I confess that there are some commendable things,” Petro wrote on X. “I like going to the black neighborhoods of Washington, where I saw an entire fight in the US capital between blacks and Latinos with barricades, which seemed like nonsense to me, because they should join together.”
“I confess that I like Walt Whitman and Paul Simon and Noam Chomsky and Miller,” he continued. “I confess that [Nicola] Sacco and [Bartolomeo] Vanzetti, who have my blood, are memorable in the history of the USA and I follow them. They were murdered by labor leaders with the electric chair, the fascists who are within the USA as well as within my country.”
“I don’t like your oil, Trump, you’re going to wipe out the human species because of greed,” Petro raged. “Maybe one day, over 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 and I’m not, nor is any Colombian.”
“So if you know someone who is stubborn, that’s me, period,” he added. “You can try to carry out a coup with your economic strength and your arrogance, like they did with Allende. But I will die in my law, I resisted torture and I resist you. I don’t want slavers next to Colombia, we already had many and we freed ourselves.”
“Petro went on to call Colombia “the heart of the world” and said that Trump “didn’t understand that.” “You will kill me, but I will survive in my people, which is before yours, in the Americas,” he said. “We are peoples of the winds, the mountains, the Caribbean Sea and of freedom.”
Petro also said that he does “not shake hands with white slavers.” “I shake hands with the white libertarian heirs of Lincoln and the black and white farm boys of the USA, at whose graves I cried and prayed on a battlefield, which I reached after walking the mountains of Italian Tuscany and after being saved from Covid,” he added.
However, hours later, Petro reversed course about accepting flights of deported migrants from the US after Trump threatened emergency tariffs of up to 50% on the country. Petro even offered up the official Colombian presidential plane to help bring migrants back to the country, saying it was a response to “the Government’s commitment to guarantee decent conditions.”
