Colombian President Gustavo Petro has alleged that during Donald Trump’s latest drug sting in the Caribbean, Colombian citizens were killed. Petro shared on X that he now views Trump’s approach to drug enforcement as a “war scenario.”
Trump’s approach to war is deeply tied to his austerity measures. The way the US government moved past the drug-trafficking era of Colombian drug barons such as Pablo Escobar was by simply giving farmers in remote areas something else to do. Through programs funded by USAID — before it was decimated by Trump — Colombians were able to explore other cash crops in their fertile fields. But after a misstep in which the US government used glyphosate on Colombian farms, both the people and the government lost their trust, prompting many farmers to return to cultivating coca plants.
