Although Gustavo Petro will become the new president of Colombia until August 7, he has already begun to design the plan that will allow him to carry out one of his campaign flags: rebuild relations with Venezuela.
This implies, among other things, reopening the seven land border crossings along 2,100 kilometers that have remained closed due to the disputes between Bogotá and Caracas.
SEMANA learned that Petro will appoint, in a matter of days, a political leader he trusts to start building bridges and achieve dialogue with the neighboring country that will allow them to put an end to tensions. Three names are being considered for this mission.
Petro does not want to politicize the matter. For this reason, he is looking for a person with negotiating skills, who is not part of his cabinet, who knows the convulsive Venezuelan reality and who is not identified with the left or the right. Ultimately, that he has the capacity for dialogue.
The new president seeks to normalize trade relations. In 2008, when Hugo Chávez closed the border, exports from Colombia amounted to 6,000 million dollars a year. But in the second half of 2009, amid the tensions, they plummeted to $150 million, Segun Analdex.
Petro, whose government estimates that, if relations are reactivated, there would be income of 10,000 million dollars for Colombia and a million jobs would be generated, is cautious. He will not make any announcements until the presidential sash is out of respect for President Iván Duque.
However, a source, who requested confidentiality, told this medium that the new president already had his first telephone conversation with Nicolás Maduro earlier this week. The details of the dialogue, which lasted for more than 20 minutes, have not been released.
The new president seeks that neither he nor Maduro be the protagonists in the negotiation. He wants it to be a purely commercial and diplomatic conversation, one that is not contaminated by the peace process that Juan Manuel Santos held with the FARC and neither by the one that he intends to develop with the ELN, if that armed group shows the will to put an end to the war.
Moreover, the person appointed by Petro will initiate the dialogue with autonomy and will report the progress exclusively to the president and foreign minister Álvaro Leyva. One of the first announcements would be to reopen the consulates in both nations as a gesture of trust.
So far, a meeting between Maduro and Petro is not scheduled. However, it is not ruled out that, in the middle of the talks or at the end, both leaders could meet. The new head of the House of Nariño will insist that the talks be channeled through the presidency, although he will not oppose the talks that will begin on July 20 between the Colombian Senate and the National Assembly of Venezuela, as Senator Gloria Flórez of the Historical Pact told SEMANA.
What is ruled out is that Senator Piedad Córdoba forms part of the new government’s delegation to seek rapprochement with Venezuela. Petro, who asked Córdoba not to take office in Congress, has direct bridges with Maduro and the Miraflores Palace, and has already used them.
Although the controversial congresswoman announced that she will soon travel to meet Maduro in Caracas, it will not be to play a mediating role. “I don’t have to get involved in any of that, nor do I want to. I am not interested at all, that is a matter of President Petro”, Córdoba told SEMANA.
This is not the first time that the Colombian Congress and the Venezuelan National Assembly have attempted a rapprochement to lower the tension in the diplomatic conflict. In October 2021, the president of the Senate, Juan Diego Gómez, sent a letter to Jorge Rodríguez, president of the Bolivarian National Assembly, in which he spoke of the need for dialogue. The letter generated a storm because, although it was endorsed by Congress, President Duque disavowed the parliamentarians. Rodríguez is part of the official legislature of Nicolás Maduro and the Colombian Government validates Juan Guaidó as Bolivarian president.
In 2019, the House of Representatives led several dialogue spaces with the National Assembly in search of the same objective. Liberal Party congressman Carlos Ardila, then vice president of the Second Commission, managed to establish contacts with opposition deputies and the Maduro government, but in the end no progress was made due to a lack of will between both parties.
Today the scenario is different. Although Petro and Maduro have not seen each other for several years, they agree on the need to improve bilateral relations, and that is the first step to start a dialogue.
Javier Díaz, president of Analdex, said: “Venezuela needs to supply itself and its natural market is Colombia. I would estimate that it would start with small figures, but it will be reactivated. What they need most is food, medicine, toiletries,” she reported. In the past, more than 4,000 companies from this country supplied the neighboring country.
Although the expectation is great, the total reopening of the border is not so simple. From the outset, the interim government of Juan Guaidó will demand that they take it into account for the reestablishment of relations, but, as deputy Williams Dávila recognized, it will not happen in the Petro government. “The elected president of Colombia should talk to Guaidó and Maduro,” he proposed.
Beyond that, the real challenge is the one that Maduro will have to take on to confront drug trafficking and the Colombian armed groups that are hiding in Venezuela under his protection, according to Colombian intelligence sources.. The relationship between Maduro with the ELN and the FARC dissidents is not a secret.
Not to go so far, Iván Márquez, head of the Second Marquetalia, receives medical care in a Caracas hospital after being injured in an attack against him. “He is being protected by the regime of Nicolás Maduro”, Defense Minister Diego Molano confirmed.
Given this scenario, several questions arise: what demands will the Petro government put on the table to reestablish relations with Venezuela? Will he demand a strong hand against the armed groups that operate on the border and are guarded by the Bolivarian Guard? Will Maduro commit to expel the leadership of the FARC dissidents from Caracas? What role will he play with the ELN leaders who cross the border without any control? Those questions will be resolved as the talks progress.