Latest news with #guerrilla
Bloomberg
a day ago
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Colombian Senator's Murder Threatens Petro's Radical Peace Plan
Two days before a teenage assassin shot him in the head, presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay warned that Colombia's radical peace plan was empowering violent criminals and plunging the country into chaos. His death two months later makes it harder for President Gustavo Petro to advance his 'total peace' initiative, under which the government is negotiating with several guerrilla factions and cocaine-trafficking gangs simultaneously. Prosecutors are trying to establish whether one such militia ordered Uribe's murder.
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
A U.S. senator from Colombia emerges as a Trump link for Latin America's conservatives
MIAMI — When Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno visits Colombia this week as part of a three-nation tour of Latin America, it will be something of a homecoming. The Ohio senator, who defeated an incumbent last year with the help of Donald Trump's endorsement and the highest political ad spending in U.S. Senate race history, was born in Bogota and has brothers who are heavyweights in politics and business there. Moreno has emerged as an interlocutor for conservatives in Latin America seeking to connect with the Trump administration. In an interview with the Associated Press ahead of the trip, he expressed deep concern about Colombia's direction under left-wing President Gustavo Petro and suggested that U.S. sanctions, higher tariffs or other retaliatory action might be needed to steer it straight. The recent criminal conviction of former President Alvaro Uribe, a conservative icon, was an attempt to 'silence' the man who saved Colombia from guerrilla violence, Moreno said. Meanwhile, record cocaine production has left the United States less secure — and Colombia vulnerable to being decertified by the White House for failing to cooperate in the war on drugs. 'The purpose of the trip is to understand all the dynamics before any decision is made,' said Moreno, who will meet with both Petro and Uribe, as well as business leaders and local officials. 'But there's nothing that's taken off the table at this point and there's nothing that's directly being contemplated.' Moreno, a luxury car dealer from Cleveland, defeated incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown last year and became Ohio's senior senator on practically his first day in office after his close friend JD Vance resigned the Senate to become vice president. In Congress, Moreno has mimicked Trump's rhetoric to attack top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer as a 'miserable old man out of a Dickens novel,' called on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates and threatened to subpoena California officials over their response to anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. On Latin America, he's been similarly outspoken, slamming Petro on social media as a 'socialist dictator' and accusing Mexico of being on the path to becoming a 'narco state.' Such comments barely register in blue-collar Ohio, but they've garnered attention in Latin America. That despite the fact Moreno hasn't lived in the region for decades, speaks Spanish with a U.S. accent and doesn't sit on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 'He's somebody to watch,' said Michael Shifter, the former president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. 'He's one of the most loyal Trump supporters in the senate and given his background in Latin America he could be influential on policy.' Moreno, 58, starts his first congressional delegation to Latin America on Monday for two days of meetings in Mexico City with officials including President Claudia Sheinbaum. He'll be accompanied by Terrance Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, who is making his first overseas trip since being confirmed by the Senate last month to head the premier federal narcotics agency. Moreno, in the pre-trip interview, said that Sheinbaum has done more to combat the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. than her predecessor and mentor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who he described as a 'total disaster.' But he said more cooperation is needed, and he'd like to see Mexico allow the DEA to participate in judicial wiretaps like it has for decades in Colombia and allow it to bring back a plane used in bilateral investigations that López Obrador grounded. 'The corruption becomes so pervasive, that if it's left unchecked, it's kind of like treating cancer,' said Moreno. 'Mexico has to just come to the realization that it does not have the resources to completely wipe out the drug cartels. And it's only going to be by asking the U.S. for help that we can actually accomplish that.' From Mexico, Moreno heads to Panama, where he'll tour the Panama Canal with Trump's new ambassador to the country, Kevin Marino Cabrera. In March, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate struck a deal that would've handed control of two ports on either end of the U.S.-built canal to American investment firm BlackRock Inc. The deal was heralded by Trump, who had threatened to take back the canal to curb Chinese influence. However, the deal has since drawn scrutiny from antitrust authorities in Beijing and last month the seller said it was seeking to add a strategic partner from mainland China — reportedly state-owned shipping company Cosco — to the deal. 'Cosco you might as well say is the actual communist party,' said Moreno. 'There's no scenario in which Cosco can be part of the Panamanian ports.' On the final leg of the tour in Colombia, Moreno will be joined by another Colombian American senator: Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona. In contrast to Moreno, who was born into privilege and counts among his siblings a former ambassador to the U.S., Gallego and his three sisters were raised by an immigrant single mother on a secretary's paycheck. Despite their different upbringings, the two have made common cause in seeking to uphold the tradition of bilateral U.S. support for Colombia, for decades Washington's staunchest ally in the region. It's a task made harder by deepening polarization in both countries. The recent sentencing of Uribe to 12 years of house arrest in a long-running witness tampering case has jolted the nation's politics with nine months to go before decisive presidential elections. The former president is barred from running but remains a powerful leader, and Moreno said his absence from the campaign trail could alter the playing field. He also worries that surging cocaine production could once again lead to a 'narcotization' of a bilateral relationship that should be about trade, investment and mutual prosperity. 'We want Colombia to be strong, we want Colombia to be healthy, we want Colombia to be prosperous and secure, and I think the people of Colombia want the exact same thing,' he added. 'So, the question is, how do we get there?' Goodman and Smyth write for the Associated Press. Smyth reported from Columbus, Ohio.
France 24
3 days ago
- Politics
- France 24
Colombian presidential hopeful in critical condition again: doctors
Conservative Senator Miguel Uribe, 39, was speaking to supporters in the capital, Bogota, when a gunman shot him twice in the head and once in the knee. He has been in intensive care since then, and undergone multiple surgeries. In recent weeks his relatives had welcomed progress in his care. But now Uribe has been put back under deep sedation, the Santa Fe Foundation hospital said in a statement. Uribe needs "new neurosurgical procedures" after presenting with a hemorrhage in his central nervous system, the statement said. "His condition is critical." Authorities have arrested six suspects in the attack. They believe the 15-year-old shooter was a hired gun and that dissident members of the defunct FARC guerrilla group are behind the attack. The government of leftist President Gustavo Petro initiated peace talks with the dissident group in mid 2024 in Venezuela, but the talks made little progress and have since been suspended. Uribe was the favored candidate of the right for the 2026 presidential elections. The attack in June stunned Colombia and raised fears of a return to the country's bloody past of political, cartel and paramilitary violence.
Times
05-07-2025
- Times
On the front line of Colombia's cocaine war
In northern Colombia, two guerrilla groups are at war. They're fighting for control of one of the world's top coca-producing regions — and the billion-dollar cocaine industry that comes with it. Across the world, people are taking more cocaine than ever. Users from the UK to Europe and the US are estimated to consume up to six tonnes of the drug every day. Since January, more than 65,000 people in Colombia have been forced to flee their homes in the worst violence in the country for a decade. The Colombian army is trying to push the guerilla groups back. But they're stretched incredibly thin. We spent weeks travelling through the mountainous region in the country's north talking to coca farmers, displaced civilians, the army and the guerrilla groups themselves to try to understand how the cocaine industry works — and why it's brought Colombia back to war.
Arab News
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
More than 50 Colombian soldiers held by residents in restive region: army
BOGOTA: More than 50 Colombian soldiers were being held captive Sunday by residents of a guerrilla-controlled region in the southwest of the country, the army said. A first platoon of soldiers was carrying out an operation in El Tambo, a municipality part of an area known as the Micay Canyon — a cocaine-producing enclave — when civilians detained them on Saturday. On Sunday another group of soldiers was surrounded by at least 200 residents as they headed toward El Plateado, another town in the region. 'As a result of both events, a total of four non-commissioned officers and 53 professional soldiers remain deprived of their liberty,' the army said. In conflict-ridden regions of Colombia, some illegal groups at times order civilians to carry out actions to impede the advance of security forces. They are usually released hours later after the intervention of human rights organizations. General Federico Alberto Mejia said in a video that it was a 'kidnapping' by guerrillas who had 'infiltrated' the community. The army has maintained that the farmers receive orders from the so-called Central General Staff (EMC), the main FARC dissident group that did not sign the 2016 peace agreement with the then government. President Gustavo Petro on Sunday urged farmers to 'stop believing in armed groups who obey foreigners,' referring to the guerrillas' alleged ties to Mexican cartels. 'We want to spread peace, but freeing the soldiers, who are their own children, is imperative,' the leftist president wrote on social media platform X. Petro has been trying for months to ensure that the Armed Forces gain access to the entire Micay Canyon. In March, 28 police officers and a soldier were held captive by local residents in the same area. All were released two days later. Colombia is experiencing its worst security crisis in the last decade. Petro attempted to negotiate peace with the EMC, but its main leader, known as 'Ivan Mordisco,' abandoned the talks.
