The President of Colombia Gustavo Petro has been revoked of his U.S. visa following remarks during a rally in New York City.
The South American head of government was speaking to a small crowd alongside Roger Waters of the Rock ‘n’ Roll band Pink Floyd. Surrounded by his Colombian security detail while sporting a pair of Ray-Ban Aviators and clad in a red keffiyah, Petro addressed the crowd using a loudspeaker.
On Friday, three days after his speech to the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, standing on a small podium, Colombia’s president made one of several incendiary remarks that stirred quite a bit of controversy on social media that caught fire hours later.
Gustavo Petro called for the U.S. States and Israel not to sanction a “genocide” in Gaza, and then reminding the crowd, “Human history has shown us across millennia that when diplomacy ends, we must pass to a different stage of struggle”, alluding to a recourse of physical violence in response to events transpiring in Gaza.
President Petro of Colombia has a history of making statements without filter. A former M-19 guerrilla fighter in the hills of Colombia during the years of civil violence in the 1980s, voters felt enamored by his to-the-point method of speaking, and opted to take a chance on the ex-rebel and his promise to heal the wounds of Colombia’s bloody past.
During his speech to the U.N., Petro called on the body to establish an international army to intervene in Gaza and stop the bloodshed. “I invite the armies of Asia, the great Slavic people who defeated Hitler with great heroism, and the Latin American armies of Bolívar… We’ve had enough words; it’s time for Bolívar’s sword of liberty or death”, Petro argued.
Petro also criticized the United States during his U.N. speech, accusing the U.S. “of no longer honoring international law”, adding that the “United States no longer teaches Democracy, but rather kill, kill Democracy, especially among its immigrants, filled with greed.”
But on the streets of New York City three days later before a cheering crowd of pro-Palestine demonstrators, in a speech that caught the ire of the administration in Washington, Gustavo Petro pleaded, “I ask all the soldiers of the United States’ army, don’t point your rifles against humanity, disobey the order of Trump, obey the orders of humanity.”
The statements were quickly addressed a few hours later when the U.S. State Department posted on its X account: “Earlier today, Colombian president [Gustavo Petro] stood on an NYC street and urged U.S. soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence. We will revoke Petro’s visa due to his reckless and incendiary actions”.
In response to the news from the U.S. State Department after his arrival in Bogotá, President Petro issued a statement, saying: “I’m arriving in Bogotá. I no longer have a visa to travel to the U.S. I don’t care. I don’t need a visa, but rather an ESTA [Electronic System for Travel Authorization, the automated system that determines the eligibility of visitors to travel to the United States under the Visa Waiver Program], because I am not only a Colombian citizen, but a European citizen”.
Gustavo Petro also added, “Humanity must be free throughout the world. We have the human right to live on this planet. I am free, and every human being must be free on Earth.”
