{"id":314505,"date":"2026-03-30T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T11:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=314505"},"modified":"2026-03-29T17:14:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T16:14:21","slug":"u-s-takes-aim-at-president-gustavo-petro-but-hes-akin-to-a-rock-star-in-colombia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/03\/u-s-takes-aim-at-president-gustavo-petro-but-hes-akin-to-a-rock-star-in-colombia\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Takes Aim at President Gustavo Petro, but He&#8217;s Akin to a Rock Star in Colombia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"U.S. Takes Aim at President Gustavo Petro, but He&#039;s Akin to a Rock Star in Colombia\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LzFoxQVph_4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>25 Mar 2026\u00a0<\/em>&#8211;\u00a0All eyes are now fixed on the US-Israeli War on Iran, so there&#8217;s been little attention to US moves to undermine Colombian President Gustavo Petro. These could, at worst, see Petro in a US prison alongside Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, whom the US kidnapped on 3 Jan. I spoke to attorney and author Dan Kovalik, President Petro\u2019s legal representative in the US and in international courts. We agreed that, as peace and justice activists, we need to understand this as another front in a global war to crush dissidence and re-establish the hegemony of neoliberalism and US empire. He said that President Petro is akin to a rock star in Colombia where huge crowds turn out to meet him in public.<\/p>\n<p><em>_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Ann-Garrison-e1524738337587.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-110030\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Ann-Garrison-e1524738337587.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"134\" \/><\/a>Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended Stanford University and is a member of the <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/\" ><em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/em><\/a><em>. In 2014 she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize<\/em> <em>for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at <\/em><a href=\"mailto:ann@anngarrison.com\"><em>ann@anngarrison.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>Daniel Kovalik is a lawyer\u00a0focusing particularly on\u00a0human rights and a prolific author. He taught International Human Rights Law at the University of Pittsburgh from 2012-2023. His most recent books are &#8220;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.skyhorsepublishing.com\/9781510780590\/the-case-for-palestine\/\" class=\"ext\" title=\"(opens in a new window)\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" data-extlink=\"\">The Case for Palestine: Why it Matters and Why You Should Care<\/a>,&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.barakabooks.com\/catalogue\/syria-anatomy-of-regime-change\/\" class=\"ext\" title=\"(opens in a new window)\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" data-extlink=\"\">Syria: Anatomy of a Regime Change<\/a><em>.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.blackagendareport.com\/us-takes-aim-president-gustavo-petro-hes-akin-rock-star-colombia\" >Go to Original \u2013 blackagendareport.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>25 Mar 2026\u00a0&#8211;\u00a0All eyes are now fixed on the US-Israeli War on Iran, so there&#8217;s been little attention to US moves to undermine Colombian President Gustavo Petro. These could, at worst, see Petro in a US prison alongside Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, whom the US kidnapped on 3 Jan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":110030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[3143,2642,1924,1661,541,3324,2137,779,249,70],"class_list":["post-314505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean","tag-anti-hegemony","tag-anti-imperialism","tag-authoritarianism","tag-colombia","tag-latin-america-caribbean","tag-north-america","tag-south-america","tag-sovereignty","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314506,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314505\/revisions\/314506"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}