On Wednesday, Colombia's President Gustavo Petro called on Latin American governments to establish a common agenda to face the global crisis and manage the migration tragedy.
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“Latin American economies are being emptied. Latin America is being looted. All our currencies are falling,” he warned at the "Binding Regional Dialogue held in Turbo, in Uraba.
Petro pointed out that the global economic crisis is plunging over 800 million people into hunger, among whom, unfortunately, there are also millions of Colombians.
"Economic stagnation threatens us. We are threatened by the Federal Reserve's high interest rates, which seek to save the U.S. economy but take away capital from South American countries. They are leaving us empty."
President Petro's tweet reads, "Today, the government is sending food, drinking water, and health brigades to monitor the extent of the epidemics in this terribly overcrowded community in La Rioja. Thousands of Indigenous people from 94 communities were displaced by violence towards Bogota."
William Parra's tweet reads, "Images inside La Rioja. After taking over the national park, the Embera Indigenous citizens were moved to an area of this building. In some zones, they have been without water for fifteen days and without electricity for three months."
The size of the U.S. economy can destroy Latin American economies "but it can also help them," Petro said in Uraba, a region experiencing a large exodus of migrants seeking to cross the Darien jungle to reach Central America.
Over the last year, at least 150,000 South Americans and Caribbeans have passed through Uraba on their way to the United States, where "they believe there is a dream waiting for them. That is why they leave our countries in one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in recent history,” the Colombian president stressed.
“The U.S. rejects those migrants. That nation, which does not want them, should understand that it is necessary to create prosperity in our nations to stop the exodus,” Petro said.