Nicolás Maduro receives Gustavo Petro in Caracas to step up the thaw in relations that have been practically broken for ten years
Venezuela and Colombia resumed diplomatic ties on Tuesday, having broken for three years and severely damaged them for nearly a decade. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has hosted his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, in Caracas to kick off the thaw between the two countries.
Petro is the first Colombian president to set foot in Venezuela since 2013, when Juan Manuel Santos attended Hugo Chávez’s funeral. The left-wing president, the first in Colombian history, pledged when elected in August that he would resume relations with the neighboring country.
Contacts had been frozen since Petro’s predecessor, Iván Duque, recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as “the boss” of Venezuela in 2019.
Now “the bilateral relationship between the two countries, the reopening of borders and Venezuela’s return to the inter-American human rights system” are the topics on the lunchtime agenda between the rulers, according to a statement released by the Colombian presidency on Monday.
One of the first major decisions in the rapprochement between Caracas and Bogota was the reopening of the 2,200-kilometer-long border between the two countries in September last year. The passage has been restricted since 2015 and completely blocked since 2019.
As a result, trade relations have been severely undermined. In 2008, the best year for bilateral trade, Colombia exported $6,000 million and imported 1,200. Today, the figure is depressing, reaching just 383 million.
For his part, Guaidó has reacted angrily to Petro’s decision to go to Caracas. The leader of the Venezuelan opposition has criticized the Colombian leader’s visit to “normalize the dictatorship”. In this sense, Guaidó Petro has asked to demand the holding of “free” elections in Venezuela, despite the Colombian head of state already recognizing the 2018 elections that gave Nicolás Maduro the victory.
Source: La Verdad
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