By Cristina de la Torre, EL ESPECTADOR, February 9, 2026
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
The extremes were left speechless. The unexpected cordiality of the Petro-Trump meeting deprived militant Petrismo of its anti-imperialist momentum and Uribismo of its anti-communist cause.
The appointment ended up with an agreement on joint action against the drug lords—whether or not they were engaged in peace talks and whether they called themselves politicians or not—and the Caracas government might even be added to the offensive. Because the transition in Venezuela presupposes border stability and that means combat against the armed groups that operate there as narcoterrorists.
For Ricardo Arquez, the Colombian Right contradicted itself when its talk against “castrochavismo” invalidated their earnest requests of Trump to intervene in our country. You don’t invoke the fatherland in order to put it in the hands of aliens, he will say. Nevertheless, the Left ended up applauding the rapprochement with the hated Trump.
After three years of “total peace”, a resounding failure, the Petro administration makes a radical switch: security recovers the use of force for its better calculation of the end of the dialogs, if that is to be the case. Petro gave Trump a list of “high value objectives” like Chiquito Malo of the Clan del Golfo, Mordisco and Calarcá of the Dissidents, and Pablito of the ELN. Thus, he is not recognizing the political character they are postulating in order to obtain better benefits in the peace negotiations.
The fact that Petro now calls the heads of the armed groups narcoterrorists does not mean that he has bowed the knee before Trump. He told Trump that the joint pursuit of the drug traffickers is not to touch the campesinos, the other victims of this damnable business. He invites the coca farmers to carry out voluntary eradication of plantings as his government is promoting.
The first effects of this turnaround in his peace policy, a bombardment of the ELN with seven victims and the suspension of talks with the Clan del Golfo. Petro proposes to “de-narcotize the border, now brutally controlled by the ELN, and invites the armed group to accept a verification mission “for the total delivery of the infrastructure that is serving the drug trafficking, and recovery of the path to peace”. He announced a big stick while they show no real inclination to abandon weapons and drug trafficking.
Joe Broderick, the biographer of Camilo Torres, thinks that the martyr would be horrified to see what the ELN has become. In an interview with Nelson Fredy Padilla, he also says that the nucleus known as “Central Command” doesn’t command anybody. They live between Venezuela and Cuba, not in Colombia. They can’t sign any peace agreement because they aren’t in charge of anybody. The Fronts are loose cannons, and the combatants live by doing the business in their territories.
And the business of the armed groups is bloody. Human Rights Watch reports that violence in Colombia increased in 2025 with very serious humanitarian impact because of the expansion of the armed groups that increased the vulnerability of the civilian population. The criminal groups have exploded with the heat of the illegal economies, doing serious harm to the population, with massive confinements, displacement of 255,000 people just in 2025, targeted murders, disappearances, and social control of entire communities. The Consultant INVAMAR registers 65% of Colombians dissatisfied with “total peace” and 73.7% think that the government and the Armed Forces have lost control of entire territories.
If the President sticks to his announced turnaround and gets back to his reforms, and governs, we could add this achievement by Petro to the memory of his only stellar accomplishment: his debates against the parapolitics as a Senator, when he revealed a sinister alliance of the drug trafficking mafias with “decent people” in Colombia who were using the power of the government and the society. A festering sore, the cause of infinite horrors, exacerbated by armed men from every condition and origin, who sacrificed the defenseless population to their wars. Welcome to alliances with the United States and with other countries to exorcize an evil that is beyond borders.