'He has inherited an institutional disaster': Marco Rubio backs De la Espriella and signs new agreements with Colombia after slamming Gustavo Petro's legacy

Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Barranquilla on Tuesday for his first visit to Colombia since taking office, aiming to dismantle the legacy of the outgoing administration of leftist Gustavo Petro, a political rival of the Trump administration.

"Unfortunately, this administration has inherited a series of disasters—bad decisions that were made. To a certain extent, we felt the same way when we took office a year and a half ago. But you are facing the mistakes of the last four years and have to fix that," Rubio said in a joint statement with President De la Espriella, a conservative ally of Washington whom President Donald Trump has recently praised.

The head of the Department of State noted that the rift between Washington and Bogotá during the Petro era was an anomaly in an otherwise strong relationship.

"Obviously, the country has just faced the disaster of an earthquake, but there is also an institutional disaster—the result of four years of poor governance that severely damaged the relationship between the United States and Colombia, something that is not natural," the secretary of state explained.

Rubio also acknowledged that too much time had passed since he last set foot on Colombian soil in an official capacity.

"I last came here as a senator, but over the past four years—first as a senator and then as Secretary of State—I hadn't traveled here. And I think that, to a certain extent, that reflected some of the distance that had developed between our governments," he admitted, before assuring that Washington now seeks "not only to restore that, but also to usher in a golden age of relations between our two countries and our people."

The meeting, held at the alternate headquarters of the Colombian Presidency, took place just weeks after De la Espriella took office, promising to rebuild ties with the United States, a longtime ally of the South American country. The Colombian president dubbed the agreement the "Barranquilla Accords," structured around three pillars: rebuilding the country following the recent earthquake that left more than 300 dead, reviving the economy and "fortifying the hemisphere" in terms of security.

In addition to the secretary of state's remarks, the meeting produced concrete actions. Rubio and Colombian Foreign Minister Omar Bula signed two memorandums of understanding. The first concerned strategic civilian cooperation on nuclear matters, and the second aimed to secure supply chains for critical materials and rare earth minerals in the mining sector, with De la Espriella serving as an honorary witness.

"It's a new era for one of our most historic alliances," Rubio wrote on X following the signing.

De la Espriella also confirmed that Colombia has joined the Shield of the Americas, the Washington-led regional security alliance, and said the organization's headquarters will be in Medellín. In this context, he presented the "Plan Patriota Siglo XXI" to Rubio, a formal request for U.S. investment to modernize aircraft, radars, drones, helicopters, air defense, cyber defense, and special forces. The president did not mince words when describing the objective of the anti-narcotics offensive: "We're going to start spraying; we're going after the labs, the precursors, the trafficking routes, and the drug lords... Any criminal who does not submit will be neutralized as required by law."

In turn, De la Espriella used the press conference to publicly ask Rubio to have the United States reopen a consulate in Barranquilla, a city he described as "Colombia's alternate capital."