Is A Soft Coup Brewing in Colombia, the US’ Long-Time “Israel of Latin America”?

In the space of just a few days, Colombia has been plunged into a political crisis that could end up toppling its first ever left-wing government.

Given the present situation in Colombia, which, as Lambert was wont to say, is “overly dynamic”, particularly following the attempted assassination last weekend of a sitting senator and aspiring presidential candidate by a 15-year old sicario, this post is unavoidably quite speculative in nature.

First, a little background.

Led by former M-19 guerrilla Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s government is not only seeking to introduce sweeping labour and healthcare reforms that threaten the interests of Israel’s financial and business elite but is also in the process of realigning Colombia’s foreign and trade policy away from the US and toward the BRICS — in particular, the US’ number-one peer rival, China.

Petro has also denounced the destructive insanity of the US-led global war on drugs, including, no less, from the podium of the UN General Assembly in New York. Colombia was also one of the first (and only) countries to fully break off diplomatic ties with Israel in response to the Gaza genocide — a principled and dangerous act given Israel’s strong ties with Colombia’s police, military and paramilitary forces.

All, of these actions, needless to say, are big no-noes for a country whose government and military have been aligned with the US and Israel for over half a century, and whose political institutions and class remain firmly tethered to the US.

In fact, in 2008 Venezuela’s then-President Hugo Chavez famously labelled Colombia the “Israel of Latin America” after the Colombian military made an illegal cross border attack in Ecuador. In 2021, the Spanish left-wing politician Manuel ‘Manu’ Pineda, drew the same comparison, describing Colombia as a “North American military base that serves as both an experiment and a launch pad for destabilising the wider region”:

Colombia is playing a very important role in the destabilisation of Venezuela, for example. A country full of military bases that, with the pretext of combatting drug trafficking, are actually hosting counter-insurgency troops; because as far as drug trafficking is concerned, they seem to be wildly ineffective. Colombia is the largest supplier of cocaine to the United States, by far, according to the DEA’s own reports.

In short, Colombia has played a key role in US counter-insurgency policy in South America, particularly toward Ecuador and Venezuela. As in Afghanistan, the US’ drug control programs in the country appear to have been a lot less successful — as long as one takes the word “control” to mean “reduction”.

The US currently has seven formal military bases in Colombia, according to the Latin American Strategic Center for Geopolitics (also known as CELAG). However, a report (in Spanish) published by School of Americas Watch in April 2021 claims there are also dozens of so-called “quasi-bases” — which differ from formal bases in no other way than that they lack a formal lease agreement for use of facilities — scattered around the country, particularly in areas rich in mineral resources and/or close to Colombia’s border with Venezuela.

Since the year 2000 Colombia has received $13 billion of aid from the US, according to the Washington Office on Latin America, most of which was spent on weapons, soldiers and herbicides. Colombia was the only Latin American country to support the US-led war in Iraq and even contributed soldiers to the occupation of Afghanistan. In 2017, Colombia became one of NATO’s global partners, and the Alliance’s first Latin American partner.

The End of a 200-Year Trend

In short, Colombia was an almost perfect vassal state. But that changed in June 2022, when the former M-19 guerrilla Gustavo Petro made history by becoming Colombia’s first left-wing president since the country won independence in 1819. One of the few people who came close to achieving the feat, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala, was assassinated during his second presidential campaign, way back in 1948.

It is no exaggeration to describe Colombia as a hostile territory for left-wing politics. In the late ’80s, the then-Colombian President Virgilio Barco hired Rafi Eitan, a former Mossad chief, to help end the guerrilla conflict in the country. Eitan’s involvement in Colombia’s civil war was kept secret for 36 years, for obvious reasons: one of Eitan’s recommendations, which was enthusiastically embraced by Barco, was to exterminate the political leaders of the Patriotic Union (UP), the left-wing party that emerged from a peace agreement with the FARC guerrilla.

What followed was a brutal years-long assassination campaign that took the lives of 3,122 members of UP, including two presidential candidates, five sitting congressmen, 11 deputies, 109 councillors, several former councillors, eight current mayors, eight former mayors and thousands of other activists. According to data presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the total number of victims is more than 6,000, including murders, disappearances, torture, forced displacements and other human rights violations.

Three years ago, however, a majority of Colombians voted against the status quo. The problem, as we noted at the time, is that Petro has limited room for manoeuvre, firstly because he only has one four-year term in which to enact his government’s ambitious reform agenda. Also, he does not have a full majority in either of the two legislative chambers. As a result, many of his government’s proposed legislation has been blocked or significantly watered down in Congress, including its labour and healthcare reforms.

To get out of the impasse, Petro has decided to let the people decide. On Wednesday, Petro and his cabinet signed a decree calling for a referendum on August 7 on a raft of proposed labour and healthcare reforms that have been bogged and watered down.

The proposed labour reforms include the strengthening of union guarantees, an increase in the mandatory surcharge for night shifts, the strengthening of controls on temporary work agencies, the extension of paternity leave and the regulation of work on digital platforms. The health reforms, meanwhile, seek to expand the state’s role in financing and providing health services at the expense of private providers.

Like the labour reforms, they have also faced stiff opposition in Congress. Interestingly, the Senate, after a mammoth 12-hour session yesterday, did finally approve 75% of the articles proposed by the government in its labour reforms, which suggests the call for a public consultation is already concentrating minds and lubricating the wheels of government.

Early Stirrings of a Coup?

Now, in his third (and penultimate) year in government, Petro faces what could be the early stirrings of a soft coup against his government, The first major act came on Saturday when 39-year old Miguel Uribe Turbay, an opposition MP and potential presidential contender, was shot in the head by a 15-year old sicario as he was addressing a campaign event in a public park in Bogota.

The handgun used has apparently been traced back to a gun shop in Mesa, Arizona. It appears to be yet another example of how US gun smuggling is fuelling deadly violence throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Somehow, Uribe Turbay survived the assassination attempt but is still in critical condition. The grandson of former President Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala, he is a member of Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s Centro Democratico party.

Among right-wing circles, Álvaro Uribe Vélez is widely credited with bringing some semblance of order and stability to Colombia after decades of fratricidal warfare. This he did, however, at great human cost, by mobilising the army and ruthless paramilitary organizations — including one allegedly set up by Uribe himself and his brother — against leftist guerrilla groups.

When they ran out of guerrillas to kill, the military and paramilitaries began killing entire villages of innocent civilians and dressing them up as guerrillas. It was one way of ensuring that the “aid” money kept flowing from the US. In total, 6,402 civilians were murdered by the military between 2002 and 2008 and passed off as rebels in a practice dubbed “false positives.” According to the findings of Colombia’s Truth Commission, the US-supported paramilitary groups killed almost twice as many people as the guerrilla groups.

For the moment, we do not know is behind the assassination attempt on Uribe Turbay. However, comparisons have been drawn with Fernando Villavicencio, the journalist-turned-presidential candidate who was assassinated just weeks before the first round of Ecuador’s elections in 2023.

Villavicencio’s assassination was widely credited with galvanising support for the eventual election winner, Daniel Noboa, the US-born and raised son of the Ecuador’s richest man, a banana magnate. A couple of months ago, Villavicencio’s widow accused Ecuador’s Attorney General, Diana Salazar, of pressuring her into blaming Ecuador’s former left-leaning President Rafael Correa for the murder of her husband.

As happened in Ecuador, the attempted assassination of Uribe Turbay has created an atmosphere of fear and panic in Colombia, a country that has spent much of the past 100 years in a state of civil war. Some opposition figures appear to be more than happy to fan the flames of fear and hatred.

“We must understand that today we took a massive step back towards the Colombia of death,” said Vicky Davila, a former journalist and television presenter who is currently leading the polls among the right wing candidates.

As happened in Ecuador, many opposition figures and media outlets have already pinned the blame on the Petro government — just as Villavicencio’s death was blamed on the Correista Citizen Revolution Movement. In both cases, no solid evidence has been presented.

Again, from Vicky Davila:

“I tell you now, the whole country: the main politician responsible for this is President Gustavo Petro because he has promoted an atmosphere of violence, an atmosphere that has brought us bloodshed and pain.”

It is against this backdrop that Petro announced on Wednesday to a crowd gathered in Cali that a far-right leader of the Andean country, whose identity he did not reveal, has been in contact with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to organise an alleged coup d’état against him. From Swiss Info:

“I have information and I know that a certain leader of the extreme right in Colombia has been talking to the secretary of state,” Petro said, adding that this person would be “allied with drug trafficking” and looking for sectors of the extreme right in Colombia and the United States to “carry out a coup d’état” in the South American country.

During a speech to a crowd gathered in the centre of Cali, in the southwest of the country, to talk about the popular consultation with which he seeks to approve his labour reforms, Petro assured that there is a recording that supports his accusations and that it has already been heard by Colombia’s Attorney General Luz Adriana Camargo.

Although he did not reveal the identity of the alleged suspect, he clarified that it is not the right-wing former president Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), founder of the Democratic Center party.

“I want (to ask) the owners of that recording to make it public in the newspapers of the United States, hopefully,” the president said.

Boy Who Cried Wolf?

This is not the first time that Petro has alerted of an approaching coup or lawfare attempt against himself or his government. In fact, it has happened so often that there is almost a “boy who cried ‘Wolf'” quality to his warnings. However, this time it may actually be true, for four main reasons.

First, because the US is stepping up its destabilisation efforts throughout Latin America, from Cuba to Mexico, to Panama, Venezuela, Bolivia and Colombia. Some analysts, including Juan Carlos Monedero, a former senior political strategist for Podemos, are even talking of a “Plan Condor 2.0”. Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, a man who knows a thing or two about Washington-supported coups, has also accused Rubio of plotting to “overthrow” the Colombian government.

One can also infer from its interactions with the government of Panama that the Trump administration is deadly serious about reasserting US influence in its direct neighbourhood, even if that means threatening to send in US troops. However, with his all-stick, no-carrot approach, Trump has little to offer the region’s countries besides the usual fare of fear, exploitation and death.

In Panama, Trump’s recent statements and actions have fuelled a resurgence of classic protest slogans from old struggles, reports Spain’s La Vanguardia:

“Yankis go home!” or “Panama’s Southern Command out.”

Known for his blithe disregard for soft power, Trump may be turning a friend into an enemy.

“Panamanians are one of the most pro-American peoples in Latin America and have been that way for three decades,” said Noel Maurer, author of… The Big Ditch, (Princeton, 2011), an essay on the history of the Panama Canal. But if Trump really wants to take control of the channel, “there would be resistance (…) mass demonstrations,” he adds.

Second, because of the potentially constitutional nature of this crisis. If there is one thing that tends to lead to attempted coups in Latin America these days, it is when left-leaning governments try to change or bypass the constitution. Recent examples include the coup against Manuel Zelaya in 2009, an attempted coup against Rafael Correa in 2010, and Pedro Castillo’s “auto-golpe” in 2022.

Needless to say, when right-wing, US-friendly governments change, ignore or bypass the constitution, there’s far less of a fuss from the US embassy. Examples: Nayib Bukele’s re-election in 2024 and Noboa’s decision to allow US forces to use the Galapagos Islands US ships and crews to use the Galapagos Islands for control and patrol activities, both of which violated their respective constitutions.

Third, due to the way tensions have escalated in Colombia since the assassination attempt. Some politicians and opinion makers have called on Petro to abandon his public consultation altogether. Many opposition groups are refusing to even recognise the Petro government as a guarantor of the electoral process. According to El Paìs,  these groups account for 60 of the 105 seats in the Senate.

At the same time, accusations are swirling that Petro is effectively carrying out an internal coup (“autogolpe“) by launching a referendum on his proposed labour and healthcare reforms. These allegations are reminiscent of the charges levelled against Peru’s former left-wing president Pedro Castillo, who, in September 2022, tried to close Congress, intervene in the justice system and govern by decree. Like Petro, Castillo was accused of organising an “autogolpe”.

A virtual political nobody before riding to power on a wave of popular anger at establishment parties, Castillo had little support in government and was ultimately toppled and replaced by his vice president, Dina Boluarte, in an operation that enjoyed the full support of the US Ambassador to Peru, Lisa Kenna, and Peru’s military command. He is now facing up to 34 years in prison on charges of rebellion, abuse of authority and serious disturbance of public order.

Meanwhile, the scandal-tarnished Boluarte government, which began life by launching a ruthless crackdown on political protests that resulted in the deaths of dozens of pro-Castillo supporters, is arguably the least popular national leader on the American continent, with a public approval rating of just 2.4%.

Fourth, and perhaps most important: the myriad motives the Trump administration and Colombia’s comprador class have for toppling Petro. Not only is Petro seeking to pass reforms that may actually benefit the poorest and most vulnerable sectors of Colombian society, he is also seeking to shift the focus of Colombia’s foreign and trade policy away from the US and toward the BRICS, in particular the US’ most powerful peer rival, China.

At the recent Beijing summit between the People’s Republic of China and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), Petro, currently president pro tempore of CELAC, joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative. He also pledged to join the BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB). Even more controversial still, the PRC offered to sell Colombia up to 24 J-10CE Chengdu Fighter aircraft, a proposal that would, in the words of the media outlet Infobae, “redefine the landscape of the Colombian Aerospace Force (FAC)”

Petro also visited the facilities of Huawei in Shenzhen, a strategic rival of Western tech companies that could provide a broad range of cloud, data, and telecommunication services for the Colombian government and commercial infrastructure. Given Colombia’s long-established ties to the US military industrial complex as well as the fact that it is one of just two countries in South America, together with Ecuador, whose largest trade partner is still the US, these moves will not have gone down well in Washington.

Like Peru, Colombia’s political institutions remain firmly tethered to US policy interests while the majority of its political elite are still slavishly loyal to Washington. As such, while Petro may be a more experienced and astute political operator than Castillo, he still needs to tread carefully, especially given his levels of public approval are around 40-45%. Now that he is taking actions that genuinely threaten the interests not only of Colombia’s business and financial elite but also the Blob in Washington, the stakes are clearly rising.