Petro says his youngest daughter is leaving the country because she has suffered “psychological persecution”

Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Friday that his youngest daughter, Antonella Petro, will leave the country because she “has suffered psychological persecution.”

“I have to live these two days in mourning because my last daughter is leaving (…) I failed to perform public acts, but I did not have the strength to stand before an audience and speak when my heart was crying. My daughter has suffered psychological persecution,” said the head of state.

Petro explained that for this reason he did not attend the XXVII Meeting of the Ordinary Jurisdiction held on Thursday in Quibdó, capital of the department of Chocó, bordering Panama. The same occurred with other government events scheduled for that day.

In his speech, Petro spoke about fascism and how this phenomenon has affected his family.

“My daughter Antonella, learning ideas from her father and from her school, without me indicating a precise path because I wanted her to choose it, was reading there among the networks, hearing in the corners of her school, from her classmates, that her parents taught them these kinds of ideas, she was feeling the constant and daily persecution,” said the president.

She stressed that her daughter, a minor, “has suffered more or less the consequences of this growing fascism in Colombian society, in its wealthy classes, in its upper middle classes, who cannot understand why the priority of a State has to be to reach out and embrace the people, the humble.”

Petro did not say which country Antonella will go to. The other two daughters, Andrea and Sofia, have been living in France for years.

What happened to Antonella is not the first such incident. In November last year, during the 2026 World Cup qualifying match between Colombia and Brazil, the girl left the Metropolitan Stadium in Barranquilla crying.

On that occasion, a group of people shouted ‘Petro out’ at the box where Antonella and other relatives and friends of the president were sitting.

Bogota / EFE