During his last speech as president of Colombia at the UN, Gustavo Petro condemned Israel’s aggression against the Palestinian people and the attack days ago against vessels in the Caribbean Sea that allegedly trafficked drugs.

Barbarism today falls on all humanity, said the president, who also referred to climate change, migration and other scourges that affect the planet today. So far in his presidency it is the period in which more traffickers were arrested and extradited to the United States, also the period where the most cocaine was seized in the country, he said.

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Petro defended “anti-drug trafficking policy” as an alternative to the “war on drugs” which, in his words, is to dominate the peoples of the south. They don’t look at drugs, they look at power. They need violence to control Latin America, he said.

The U.S. government is influenced by Colombian politicians linked to the mafia in their country who intend to control political power through ill-gotten money, the president continued. His words allude to a disposition by Donald Trump’s executive to decertify Colombia in the fight against drugs and affirmed that with that decision, the Military Forces of his country will no longer depend on Washington’s weapons. “In Colombia, the largest amount of drugs in the history of the world has been seized and they desertify me,” said Petro, who defended his government program and its results in his years at the helm of the executive.

Cocaine killed 3,000 people in a year, fentanyl kills 100,000 in the same period of time, did the situation in that country improve or worsen in that time, after 50 years of an absurd policy? The president questioned.

Later he said that the young people killed in the Caribbean were not from the Tren de Aragua, they just wanted to escape poverty. Trump launches missiles at boats with people in the Caribbean Sea if they have a single weapon with which to defend themselves, the Colombian president condemned. Later, the Colombian head of state praised his government’s progress in employment, poverty eradication, and progress in agriculture and tourism; and thanked the countries that “helped him sow peace: Cuba, Venezuela, Qatar, among others.”

He highlighted Latin America’s potential to generate clean energy that could make the region a standard-bearer in this policy; only investment is needed, the president emphasized, but that type of investment is not in the interest of Western powers, he said.

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