During a public event in Santa Marta, Colombian President Gustavo Petro floated the idea of uniting several South American nations to revive Gran Colombia, the 19th-century republic that once encompassed modern-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama, as he claims that the United States' counter-narcotics campaign in the Caribbean and the Pacific is undermining regional sovereignty.
Speaking in Santa Marta, where independence hero Simón Bolívar died, Petro invoked the memory of the liberator to call for unity among South American nations as a way to resist what he called U.S. aggression.
