Colombia’s President Petro at the UN: Calling Out the U.S. “Drug Mafia” and Trump’s Complicity
- CUBNSC
- Sep 25
- 3 min read
By Javar Juarez | CUBNSC | September 25, 2025
In a dramatic address before the United Nations General Assembly, Colombian President Gustavo Petro laid bare what many marginalized communities — particularly Black Americans — have long understood: U.S. drug policy is less about protecting people and more about protecting power. His remarks were so searing that U.S. delegates reportedly walked out, underscoring the political earthquake his words triggered on the global stage .
Colombia’s President Petro's Indictment of U.S. Hypocrisy
Petro accused the U.S. of weaponizing anti-drug policy to dominate the Global South rather than to address its own public health crisis. He noted that Colombia under his administration has seized historic amounts of cocaine without killing a single youth, while Washington justifies missile strikes on poor Colombian youth in speedboats by branding them as traffickers.
“The real drug traffickers don’t live in Bogota or Cartagena, they live in New York and Miami, where they strike deals with the DEA,” Petro charged. This is not simply rhetoric; it is a direct challenge to a system that has criminalized poverty and scapegoated migrants while shielding elite beneficiaries of the drug economy.
Trump and the Cocaine Mafia
In a stunning moment, Petro alleged that former President Donald Trump’s foreign policy toward Colombia and Venezuela was shaped by Colombian politicians aligned with the cocaine mafia. “I don’t know if Trump even knows that his foreign policy is being advised by allies of drug lords,” he said.
He demanded investigations and criminal accountability, stating that missiles launched against poor Colombian youth and migrants were sanctioned under Trump’s watch — acts Petro labeled as crimes that should be prosecuted at the international level.
Echoes of Black Experience in the U.S.
For Black Americans, Petro’s speech rang familiar. The “War on Drugs” in the U.S. has long been understood not as a public health policy but as a tool of mass incarceration, political repression, and racial control. Petro’s framing of the drug war as a mechanism of domination — not eradication — mirrors decades of scholarship and lived experience in Black communities.
His linkage of U.S. drug hypocrisy with systemic racism — describing how “rich, white, and racist” societies blame migrants and the poor while fueling death through fentanyl and fossil fuels — aligns with the critiques that Black activists have sounded for generations.
A Call for Global Accountability
Petro went further, calling for criminal cases against U.S. officials, including Trump himself, for authorizing violent anti-drug actions that killed poor Colombians. He tied these policies not only to domestic corruption but to global crises: migration, genocide in Gaza, and the climate emergency.
His solution? A united global movement for democracy, decarbonization, and the subordination of capital to life. In his words, “Either life or greed, either freedom or death.”
A very real and very present call to action!
President Petro’s address was more than a rebuke of U.S. foreign policy — it was an indictment of a global order that sacrifices the poor while protecting elites. His insistence on holding the United States and Trump accountable should not be dismissed as rhetoric from the Global South. Instead, it is a challenge for the world, and especially Black communities in the U.S., to recognize the shared struggle against a system where drugs, capital, and politics intertwine in deadly ways.