Radical Marxist Colombian President Gustavo Petro released a video Sunday of a recent speech in which he challenges Secretary of State Marco Rubio to arrest him and describes his government as “a jaguar about to awaken,” appearing to issue a warning to the United States.
Petro’s remarks appeared to respond to President Trump’s administration sanctioning him over Colombia’s failure to curb drug trafficking, which the U.N. says has driven record-high global cocaine production. Colombia remains the world’s top cocaine exporter. According to Argentina’s Infobae, Petro delivered the speech Friday at a political event, directing his anger at the U.S. for calling out the surge in drug trafficking under his presidency.
“One does not order Colombia to kneel,” Petro wrote on the social media site Twitter, sharing the clip. “Free Colombia is beautiful and free.”
In his speech, Petro went after Secretary of State Rubio, who has long drawn ire from the Latin American left as the first Hispanic to hold the top U.S. diplomatic post. Petro insinuated that Rubio wants to arrest him — and openly dared him to try.
“So I have to say to Mr. Marco Rubio, brother, ‘If you are going to arrest me, let’s see if you can,’” Petro declared. “If you want to put me in the — what is it? — orange pajamas [jumpsuit]? Try it. But this people does not kneel. Your hate of the past, what I do not know nor is any other Colombian guilty of what happened to your grandfather or your father in Cuba.”
He addressed the U.S. government, stating, “You have to kneel, because here there is a jaguar about to awaken. Don’t threaten us, don’t deceive us, we know the plays. Two centuries of knowing, going from war to war in this people. Wars of all kinds, for no reason sometimes.”
A Colombia no se le da órdenes de arrodillarse. Colombia Libre y hermosa es libre. pic.twitter.com/zWG9e5nrLB
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) November 23, 2025
Since taking office in 2022, Petro has repeatedly provoked the U.S. government, a sharp shift from his friendlier stance under President Biden. Tensions with President Trump escalated in September when, during a pro-Hamas protest in New York alongside antisemitic activist Roger Waters, Petro took a megaphone and urged the U.S. military to defy Trump’s orders.
“From here in New York, I ask all soldiers in the U.S. Army not to point their guns at humanity. Disobey the orders of Trump. Obey the orders of humanity,” Petro said at the time.
The United States revoked Petro’s visa after his call for the military to commit treason. A month later, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced sanctions against Petro and several family members over newly uncovered links to drug-trafficking operations.
“Since President Gustavo Petro came to power, cocaine production in Colombia has exploded to the highest rate in decades, flooding the United States and poisoning Americans,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent noted at the time. “President Petro has allowed drug cartels to flourish and refused to stop this activity.”
Trump personally called Petro an “illegal drug dealer” in a message on his website, Truth Social, a week before the designation, writing, “It has become the biggest business in Colombia, by far, and Petro does nothing to stop it, despite large scale payments and subsidies from the USA that are nothing more than a long term rip-off of America.”
Petro brushed off the backlash over his strip-club charges, arguing they showed no drug purchases and posting a strange social-media rant claiming he was too “seductive” to ever pay for sex — despite that not being the purpose of a strip club.
“I don’t need to buy sex, I don’t like it. I still have some capacity for seduction that allows me to avoid resorting to those practices of sad men,” Petro wrote. “Sexuality must always be combined with culture; that is called eroticism. I advise you to do so.”
Colombia has endured 70 years of guerrilla violence from communist groups like the FARC and ELN, which together have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. Petro himself belonged to the smaller Marxist M-19 group, responsible for the 1985 Supreme Court siege that left nearly 100 people dead, including 11 justices. He still embraces his ties to M-19 and has even used its symbols at official events.
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