Socialist Petro's biggest adversary helped save Colombia from the crisis with Trump
"We have differences with President Petro. He made a mistake, but we have to resolve this. How can I help?" Álvaro Uribe said to Foreign Minister Laura Sarabia.
![Álvaro Uribe, el expresidente colombiano, en noviembre del 2023.](https://imagenes.voz.us/files/image_media_main_mobile/uploads/2025/01/29/679996eebf905.jpeg)
Uribe in 2023.
Former conservative president Alvaro Uribe Velez, the biggest and most powerful adversary to socialist Gustavo Petro, helped resolve the crisis unleashed last Sunday between the Colombian government and the Trump administration.
After Petro refused the landing of two U.S. military planes with deported Colombians, Trump decided to impose a series of sanctions on Colombia that, in short, would ultimately devastate the economy of the important South American country in a matter of days.
To fix the situation and prevent the measures from finally being applied, outgoing Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo and incoming Foreign Minister Laura Sarabia spent all afternoon Sunday calling allies and opponents. Sarabia suggested that one of those who could help was Uribe, the man Petro vowed to take down.
According to the New York Times, "even his [Petro's] most powerful political adversary, former President Álvaro Uribe, jumped fast, working with his Washington contacts to help defuse" the crisis.
In his own X account, former President Uribe - who ruled Colombia with an iron fist between 2002 and 2010 and is credited with reducing Colombia's guerrillas to their minimum expression - said he spoke on phone with Laura Sarabia after being told that the foreign minister "urgently needed to talk to me."
According to the New York Times, Uribe told Sarabia: "We have differences with President Petro. He made a mistake, but we have to resolve this. How can I help?"
"Ms. Sarabia asked Uribe to call her friends in Washington, including the new secretary of state, Marco Rubio," the Times reads.
Alvaro Uribe and Secretary of State Rubio, whose wife is Colombian, have had a relationship for years. Rubio has considered Uribe a great ally of the United States and has supported him in cases of political persecution in Colombia by his left-wing adversaries.
Finally, the crisis between Colombia and the United States could be resolved when, at the end of Sunday, Petro's government agreed to all the terms demanded by President Donald Trump for the deportation of illegal Colombian immigrants. Petro did not refer to the issue further, even though earlier in the day, he had announced that he would impose 50% tariffs on the United States in response.
Petro also did not refer to his biggest adversary assisting in the crisis to save Colombia.
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