Colombia and Venezuela announced military cooperation to combat border “mafias” during President Gustavo Petro’s visit to Caracas. Petro is the first leader to travel to Venezuela after Nicolas Maduro’s removal.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Venezuelan acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday agreed to military cooperation to tackle crime on their shared border. Petro’s visit marked the first to Caracas by a foreign leader since the US ouster of Nicolas Maduro.
Petro said the joint effort would focus on “freeing border areas from the mafias engaged in a range of illegal businesses, starting with cocaine, illicit gold, human trafficking and rare minerals.”
The Catatumbo region. which lies in northern Colombia on the border with Venezuela, became an epicenter of violence over a year ago.
Rival left-wing extremist groups in the mountainous area have been fighting to gain control over human trafficking, the weapons trade, illegal mining, the cultivation of drugs and the cocaine trade.
Catatumbo holds a strategic importance for the armed groups, with drugs being easily transported out of the country from the area.
“Both countries have undertaken the task of making…military plans, but also the immediate establishment of mechanisms for sharing information and for developing intelligence,” Rodriguez said.
Colombia and Venezuela look to cooperate on energy
The two leaders — who met at the presidential palace in the Venezuelan capital — also agreed to step up trade and bilateral efforts to ensure electricity provisions to blackout-prone western Venezuela.
“It makes no sense for Colombia or Venezuela to look toward other latitudes, another hemisphere, for what we can get in our own territories,” Rodriguez said in a joint statement with Petro.
“Electrical interconnection is already a step forward, and so is gas interconnection, through which we can not only supply gas to Colombia but also jointly export gas to other countries.”
Rodriguez assumed the role of Venezuela’s acting president after strongman leader Nicolas Maduro was kidnapped by US forces during a Caracas raid and ultimately brought to New York City to face criminal charges.
US President Donald Trump’s administration backs Rodriguez’s interim government, which has opened Venezuela’s state-owned oil industry to US companies.
Petro, for his part, had staunchly denounced the US military operation. While Trump has accused the leftist leader of not doing enough to battle drug production.
Colombia-Venezuela ties
Relations between Colombia and Venezuela have long been shaky.
In 2019, Colombia’s former President Ivan Duque severed ties with Caracas after refusing to recognize Maduro’s election.
The South American neighbors restored full diplomatic ties under Petro in 2022.
Petro did not recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate leader following the latter’s disputed 2024 re-election.
However, Petro continued to maintain diplomatic relations between Bogota and Caracas.
A meeting between Petro and Rodriguez was earlier scheduled for March in the Colombian border town of Cucuta, but was abruptly canceled.
Colombia and Venezuela also have deep historical and cultural ties, particularly along their shared 2,200-kilometer (about 1,370-mile) border. Many families in the region are binational.
Some 3 million Venezuelan migrants have settled in Colombia over the last few years after fleeing an economic collapse in their home country.
Edited by: Sean Sinico
DW News
