During the People’s Social Summit of Latin America and the Caribbean, Petro declared: “Today the revolution is called life. The contradiction lies between capital and life; humanity must choose.”
This afternoon, during the first day of the Third Social Summit of the Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, taking place in Santa Marta, Colombia, President Gustavo Petro delivered a speech defending the lives and human rights of all the peoples of the region, in the face of the isolation and massacres promoted by US narco-imperialist capital through its alliance with local oligarchies, including the Colombian one.
The president addressed several issues, grouping them under the umbrella of the multifaceted confrontation with the threats and direct attacks of the “indolence of capital and political power.” He especially condemned the genocide perpetrated by the State of Israel against the Palestinian people and criticized the incapacity of the UN, which is in a true crisis and has been unable to create an army capable of halting the genocide of a poor people.
He warned that we must see this genocide as the cruel pedagogy of these empires, a demonstration of the treatment they will always give to the poor peoples of the Global South who struggle against subjugation to the predatory capitalist logic that destroys life, forests, and diverse and free cultures: “They are demonstrating the power they intend to wield over these peoples.”
He took the opportunity to remind everyone that coal still passes through Colombian waterways on ships destined for the genocidal countries that manufacture the bombs falling on the Gaza Strip, “the industry of capital” that is on the verge of destroying life on the planet. Petro was emphatic: Today, the revolution is called life. The contradiction lies between capital and life, and humanity must choose. Today, the politics of progress is called life.
The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, has launched a strong, direct accusation against the President of the United States and the Secretary of State, calling them liars regarding the recent operations in the Caribbean Sea.
Latin American integration in the face of the alliance between narco-empires and local oligarchies
The Colombian president, using eloquent metaphors drawn from the histories of our people, warned that the alliances between local mafias and oligarchies with drug traffickers and billionaires in Miami and the United States aim to isolate Colombia and all countries in the region that choose not to be governed by Donald Trump and Marco Rubio.
In this regard, and in response to the extrajudicial killings carried out by the Trump Administration in recent weeks, under the supposed banner of the fight against drug trafficking, the Colombian president refuted this strategy and reaffirmed that it only seeks to justify the massacres of the people in order to enter their countries and steal their resources: “I oppose this, liars Trump and his friends, liar Mr. Rubio; those you are killing are not drug traffickers. The drug traffickers have gone through their politicians to the offices in Miami to speak with Mr. Rubio’s senators to ask them to bomb us here as well, to remove the president elected by popular vote, and to try to humiliate us.”
In that sense, he declared that “Colombia will not be humiliated, because this is also the homeland of Bolívar,” and he directly warned these American politicians: “Be careful, you are crossing the Caribbean of the liberators. Haven’t you read the history of Bolívar?” They are arriving in the lands where armies of peasants with spears defeated Spanish and French soldiers, and they are facing peoples accustomed to battling powerful hurricanes.
He called for dialogue and an end to the killings: “Let’s talk, but face to face, without kneeling.” And then he addressed the nations of the region, urging them to truly integrate through constituent assemblies.
Colombia asks for forgiveness to end the cycle of violence.
Consistent with his pro-life and pro-peace rhetoric, Gustavo Petro took the opportunity to remind everyone that tomorrow, the Colombian state will officially apologize to its citizens for one of the recent genocides the nation has suffered: the assassination of members of the Patriotic Union (UP) party, which resulted in the deaths of more than 6,200 left-wing activists.
“Teachers, students, grassroots people, Indigenous people, murdered by the alliance of the Colombian oligarchy and drug trafficking, the same alliance that is arriving today at the office of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.” The same alliance that murdered the UP is the one that today tries to humiliate and threaten Colombia, and calls for intervention in such a way that the Colombian electorate will regret building a world power for life, and end up voting for the executioners who have already condemned them to massacres and extrajudicial killings.
“Well, tomorrow here, the President of the Republic of Colombia, following the ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, on behalf of the State of Colombia, apologizes to all the families of the UP militants murdered by that alliance of the oligarchy and drug trafficking, and hopes that Colombians will never again kill each other,” he affirmed.
In the midst of this meeting aimed at fostering the pluralistic articulation of organizations and social movements in the region, actively contributing to the consolidation of the regional integration agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean, in order to advance toward greater levels of participation and political influence within CELAC as an institutional mechanism of the States, Petro recalled the history of politics and popular struggle for life in the Caribbean, which had a magnificent example in the Haitian Revolution (1804), during which Black Haitians defeated 200,000 French soldiers.
He asserted that the lessons learned from the blood of those killed by the United States in the Caribbean Sea should serve as an impetus for integration and strengthening as a bloc, in the face of an empire that will not hesitate to drop bombs on our countries in order to seize their resources.
IMAGE CREDIT: Gustavo Petro directly warned politicians Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and all their allies: “Beware, they are crossing the Caribbean of the liberators.” Photo: Gustavo Petro / Facebook.
[ SOURCE: teleSUR ]
