A delegation of “progressive” Democrats led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) met with Colombian radical leftist President Gustavo Petro on Monday on the last leg of a tour of friendly socialist governments in Latin America.
During the encounter, Petro proposed to build an “alliance for life and nature” with the group and a “change of the economic system” to overcome “climate change.”
Colombia was the last stop on the Democrat delegation’s weeklong Latin American tour sponsored by the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) think tank. The lawmakers also visited Brazil and Chile, where they held meetings with far-left Chilean President Gabriel Boric and Brazilian government officials.
Ocasio-Cortez was reportedly accompanied by fellow Representatives Nydia Velázquez (D-NY), Joaquin Castro (D-TX), Gregorio Casar (D-TX), Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-FL), and Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) Chief of Staff Misty Rebik.
The Latin American trip, according to Ocasio-Cortez, sought to “tackle issues of migration, climate, and democracy” by holding encounters with three of the region’s far-left governments.
Petro is Colombia’s first leftist president in history. During his meeting with the Democrat delegation held at the Casa de Nariño presidential palace, the former member of the Marxist M19 guerilla and staunch enemy of oil and coal proposed to form an “alliance for life and nature as the axis of unity,” adding that a change of the “economic system” is necessary to fight off “climate change.”
“Today there is no global political movement that places the change of the [economic] system as a central objective, because it has to be so in order to overcome the climate crisis,” Petro said on Monday.
According to Petro, the proposed alliance seeks to convince “progressive” movements to separate themselves from the defense of oil and coal as natural resources in the “global fight against the climate crisis.”
“Sometimes they do not understand, sometimes simply because of interests generated in each country, which have been exporting for half a century, in some countries, basically fossil raw materials: gas, coal, oil,” Petro said. “Tuning in to the struggle of humanity, which is for life, has been difficult.”
The Colombian radical leftist president continued by asserting that the situation is more acute in the United States because “the interests of coal and oil almost limit, to a great extent” the actions of so-called progressive groups.
“And if the struggle fails in the United States, the whole of humanity fails,” Petro continued. “That is why it has seemed important to us, and in spite of history, to relate with the American people and institutions, even without knowing them very well.”
According to the Colombian presidential palace, Rep. Velázquez agreed with Petro on the need to build a “progressive alliance,” claiming that she was one of the few who spoke of “progressive policies and human rights in Latin America” when she was first elected to Congress in 1992.
“For the first time, 42 Latinos elected to the House of Representatives are determined to use our political muscle to try to move progressive legislation,” she stated. “I think we are at a moment in which we can get the progressive movement in the United States to pay more attention to Latin America, and the thread that can unite and strengthen that relationship is climate change.”
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez stated that it is evident that “we have hope that we can focus more on human rights, labor rights and unite not only the progressive movement but the Latin world and change the narratives about Latin America and Colombia.”
The delegation also met with Colombian Vice President Francia Márquez over the weekend to discuss subjects such as Colombia’s new Ministry of Equality and Equity, racial justice, climate change and the Colombian government’s “total peace” initiative.
Prior to their arrival in Colombia, the Democrat delegation traveled to Chile last week, where they met with President Boric to discuss “different matters of interest,” such as democracy, climate change, and social rights.
Ocasio-Cortez also held meetings with the socialist former president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, and the president of the Chilean Socialist Party, Paulina Vodanovic. The New York lawmaker also made calls for the United States to declassify documents pertaining to the United States’ alleged involvement in Augusto Pinochet’s rise to power in 1973.
“It’s very important to frame the history of what happened here in Chile with Pinochet’s dictatorship. And also to acknowledge and reflect on the role of the United States in those events,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Last week, the delegation led by Ocasio-Cortez held meetings with Brazilian ministers, government officials, lawmakers, and representatives of social movements during their three-day stop at the South American nation.
Ocasio-Cortez reportedly met with Celso Amorim, top foreign policy adviser to Brazilian radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to discuss the “risks of the extreme right in the world, especially in Brazil and the United States.”
On January 8 – in response to thousands of Brazilians opposed to convicted felon Lula becoming president again – stormed Brasilia, and Ocasio-Cortez made calls to expel former President Jail Bolsonaro from the United States. Bolsonaro arrived in Florida in December and was hospitalized on January 9 with “severe abdominal pain,” a potentially serious condition as a result of a failed assassination attempt against him by a former socialist party member during Bolsonaro’s campaign in 2018, which left him with recurring health complications. Bolsonaro returned to Brazil in March.
The Democrat’s delegation also scheduled meetings with Brazil’s Racial Equality Minister Anielle Franco and Finance Minister Fernando Haddad. The Delegation had scheduled encounters with Brazilian Senator Eliziane Gama, rapporteur of the Brazilian Senate’s January 8 commission, and with representatives of some of Brazil’s Marxist worker organizations such as the Central Workers’ Union (CUT), the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) and the Homeless Workers’ Movement (MTST) to reportedly learn “about the different social struggles in the country.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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