At a packed Bogotá rally, Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, recast U.S. sanctions as a public check of energy.
Hours after Washington put him on the “Clinton List”—a counternarcotics blacklist that freezes belongings below U.S. attain and bars Americans from coping with designees—he instructed 1000’s in Plaza de Bolívar that the United States had “chosen the mafia,” and vowed to press forward with a Constituent Assembly.
The phrase was rhetorical, not literal: Petro argues the sanctions align Washington with entrenched political and enterprise networks he calls “mafias,” which he hyperlinks to narco-related or corrupt practices.
The scene mattered as a lot because the message. Petro walked from the presidential palace to the sq. with senior officers and allies, greeting a crowd of scholars, union members and Indigenous delegations.
Drums, banners and a large M-19 flag (the previous guerrilla group Petro as soon as belonged to) set the tone: this may be answered on the street, not in a press room.
What the checklist means, in plain phrases: it’s a U.S. Treasury blacklist that sometimes freezes belongings below U.S. attain and bars U.S. individuals from doing enterprise with these named.
In apply, world banks are likely to observe swimsuit. Even in case you by no means step on U.S. soil, your funds, procurement, insurance coverage or journey can all of a sudden get more durable as a result of compliance departments hit pause.
Petro Transforms U.S. Blacklist Sanctions right into a Public Challenge to Power in Colombia
Petro framed the choice as punishment for his foreign-policy stands—particularly his criticism of Israel’s marketing campaign in Gaza on the U.N.—and as a transfer inspired by Colombian opponents with ties in Washington.
He linked the second to Sunday’s social gathering consultations and to his core political guess: accumulating 2.5 million signatures to pressure constitutional change that, in his view, Congress has blocked.
The story behind the story is an extended battle over the best way to battle the drug economic system and who will get to rewrite the social contract.
Petro argues for concentrating on prison funds and rural inequality; critics level to expanded coca acreage and empowered crime.
The sanctions drop into this argument like a hammer, turning a coverage debate right into a monetary choke level.
Washington has indirectly engaged Petro’s line that it “selected the mafia.” Treasury has caught to its counter-narcotics rationale, outlining authorized and monetary penalties relatively than debating rhetoric.
White House voices have sharpened private criticism of Petro, whereas political allies of the administration amplified allegations tying his circle to the drug commerce.
In quick: the U.S. aspect is doubling down on enforcement framing, not the label—and that retains banks and ministries, not speechwriters, on the middle of what occurs subsequent.
