Now entering his third year in office, Colombia’s first left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, recently called the world’s attention to the country in the face of what he described as “the beginning of the coup” against his administration. While Petro has successfully implemented pension reform, a $4 billion tax reform, a novel anti-drug enforcement strategy, and an unprecedented shift in Colombia’s foreign policy, the Left’s effort to change Colombia has been threatened by a constant barrage of legal challenges from right-wing forces and elites.

Daniel García-Peña, Petro’s newly appointed ambassador to the United States — a historian, an award-winning journalist, the high commissioner for peace under president Ernesto Samper, and an adviser to the now-defunct M-19 Democratic Alliance — addresses these challenges in this interview for Jacobin. How will Colombia’s first leftist government relate to the United States, which has long counted on Colombia’s staunchly conservative leadership to safeguard its imperial interests?

Speaking with photographer Jesse Gwilliam and independent researcher Luca DeCola, Ambassador García-Peña discussed the issue of lawfare against Petro’s administration, the internal tensions and challenges facing Colombia’s left, the prospects for peace amid internal armed conflict, and the nation’s severing of diplomatic ties with Israel

LUCA DECOLA: I want to begin by asking about what the president has called the “advance of a soft coup” in Colombia. How do you assess the current right-wing assault on Petro’s administration in the form of misinformation campaigns and lawfare?

DANIEL GARCÍA-PEÑA: President Petro represents, without a doubt, a challenge to the elite interests that have ruled the country for decades. His administration and its supporters are taking on a well-entrenched political system and economic model with political practices that are very difficult to change overnight. Nobody on the Left expected this to be easy. Lawfare in Colombia has become an obstacle to change, a method of those elite interests to stifle the government’s progressive agenda, but it is also a sign of the Right’s desperation and, in many ways, its weakness. Petro’s 2022 election was an indirect result of the 2016 peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the culmination of a constant struggle for democracy, human rights, and the expansion of the Colombian left. So lawfare was to be expected of an elite that, unlike others in Latin America, has maintained the same people and families in power for hundreds of years.

JESSE GWILLIAM: Do you think the Historic Pact coalition has the internal strength and political coherence to achieve Petro’s ambitious goals against the right-wing onslaught and a hostile parliament? Or is it a historical moment with shakier foundations, possibly lacking longevity?

DANIEL GARCÍA-PEÑA: This is a very difficult issue, one that has to do not only with the Colombian democratic left but also with the Left internationally. How can we recognize the diversity of different ideas and forces on the Left and, at the same time, the need for a unified and organized political structure?

In its latest stage, the Historic Pact is essential because it brings together a broad gamut of groups, social movements, and political parties. Still, the party has no coherent organization or structure; the only thing that keeps the coalition together is the figure of Petro, who is busy governing the country. So we’re still trying to reach a balance between political diversity, which is necessary, and a political program that can win elections. That is what it comes down to.

Nevertheless, there is an agenda for change, a program, and ideas beyond Petro. Colombia is changing, and the realities of our present moment are forcing people to grapple with the necessity of coming together on this agenda to implement pension, health care, and education reforms, to undo the neoliberal policies previously implemented in Colombia, and to achieve a lasting peace.

LUCA DECOLA: In the United States Court of the Southern District of Florida, Chiquita Brands International was recently found liable for financing the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitaries. Can you speak to the significance of the verdict for Colombians?

DANIEL GARCÍA-PEÑA: The verdict in Florida on Chiquita Brands is huge for a few reasons. First, there is the issue of the Colombian judicial system. President Petro addressed this point when he tweeted, “Why was the US justice system able to determine in a judicial manner that Chiquita Brands financed paramilitarism in Urabá? Why couldn’t the Colombian justice system do it?” 

The paramilitaries and Chiquita Brands did not operate in a vacuum; they operated very closely with the economic elites in Colombia. But who are those Colombians involved? Who are the Colombian elites that funded the paramilitaries? There is still a considerable way to go, and the Colombian justice system is far from dealing with the involvement of the elites in paramilitarism.

The verdict on Chiquita is also a reminder of how these paramilitary groups evolved. Today the elites don’t need to have armed groups; the people they wanted to assassinate were assassinated, and the land they wanted to grab has already been grabbed. In many parts of Colombia, the paramilitaries won the war. It’s sad and frightening to say, but it’s true.

We now have a new phase of paramilitary consolidation, a new generation: the sons, the heirs to the paramilitaries, who never took up arms but were sent to study in the United States and are all businessmen. And a considerable part of their success, let’s say, is their ability to dominate the political system and infiltrate the political parties — parapolitics.

LUCA DECOLA: Can you discuss the government’s efforts to achieve its paz total (total peace) agenda and negotiate a deal with armed actors, including the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas? What are the current prospects for peace?

DANIEL GARCÍA-PEÑA: Today the most significant obstacle to the peace negotiations is the internal tensions within the ELN that culminated in the recent split of the group’s southwestern front from the guerrillas and its pursuit of separate negotiations with the government. The ELN is an organization that is very different from the FARC, with a command structure that is much more decentralized, and where each front has a great degree of autonomy.

Given their ideological and historical origins in liberation theology, in which belonging to the ELN is almost like belonging to a religious organization, the issue of unity is critical. So these internal tensions have generated a reaction on the part of the ELN command center, where the southwestern front’s split is viewed as an attempt by the government to divide the guerrillas.

And yet no negotiations with the ELN have advanced as much as they have today under President Petro, by far. Not only is this the first time the ELN has signed on to a peace process, but I’m seeing that the ELN’s social and political base is, in fact, putting political pressure on the guerrillas to come to a resolution.

Another part of this conflict that is not exclusively a problem for Petro or his government is the inefficiency and bureaucracy of the Colombian state. So the ELN is, unfortunately, correct in many ways to point toward the inability of the Colombian state to implement policy in general, which is likewise a considerable problem with the 2016 peace agreement. The fact that there have been so many signatories of the 2016 peace agreement who have been assassinatedis a sign that we have still not been able to overcome what happened with the systematic assassination of the Patriotic Union party in the 1980s, ’90s, and early 2000s. It’s hard to understand how a country with so much violence has at the same time generated democratic processes.

LUCA DECOLA: Can you address the Colombian government’s severing of diplomatic ties with Israel over its genocide in Gaza, as well as the future of Colombia and US relations?

DANIEL GARCÍA-PEÑA: The fact is, Colombia is on the right side of history. Petro’s decision to sever diplomatic ties with Israel is part of an international outcry against the Israeli government. The cutting off of arms sales to Colombia from Israel is not going to have a substantial impact on Israel’s economy; they’re going to be able to sell their arms elsewhere. But morally and ethically speaking, it’s the just thing to do. I am proud that our president and country have become so adamant and vocal on this issue.

I was recently invited to an event at the University of California in Santa Barbara. People from all over — from Sudan, from Egypt, and elsewhere — said, “Ah, your president is for the Palestinian people,” and I was like, “Wow, so it is having an impact!” In many ways, Petro is a leading voice in Latin America on Gaza.

Colombia’s foreign policy has always been very timid, and past administrations never wanted to upset the United States. In fact, in Washington, one of the staff members at the Colombian embassy recently told me that it was common practice in the past for the Colombian government to brief the United States before it made any public announcement on any policy issue.

But this time, when we severed ties with Israel, we didn’t tell the US. They can read the headline in the New York Times like everybody else. These are some of the signs of a more independent, sovereign Colombian state, and the United States will have to deal with it.