Petro and Milei make peace after a tough confrontation that led to a diplomatic crisis

The animosity between two characters as different as Gustavo Petro and Javier Milei is more than evident. Petro said, during the Argentine campaign, that Milei's victory would bring barbarism to that country and openly supported Sergio Massa, a Peronist with whom he has more ideological affinity. The same day Milei won, the president of Colombia was not very diplomatic and instead of congratulating him he assured that it was the advent of the extreme right. The new president of Argentina has also not missed an opportunity during this time to attack Petro in violent and provocative language. The last time, in an interview with journalist Andrés Oppenheimer for CNN that aired this Sunday, he called him a “terrorist murderer.” There were days of diplomatic tension to the point that the Colombian Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday the expulsion of a group of diplomats from the Argentine Embassy in Bogotá. It was the first serious gesture of what seemed like it was going to lead to an escalation of mutual retaliation, but both Petro and Milei put the brakes on this Sunday and announced a stage of reconciliation.

The expulsion of the Argentine diplomats has been put on hold, in fact it is not even mentioned in the statement made public by the foreign ministries of both countries. Colombia has agreed to send the ambassador, Camilo Romero, back to Buenos Aires and accept the credentials of the new Argentine representative in Bogotá proposed by Milei. This peace, signed under the influence of Easter Sunday, also includes a visit to Colombia by the Argentine Foreign Minister, Diana Mondino. Mondino, in these almost four months of Government, has had to manage the insults from her president to Petro, but also to the presidents of two Latin American giants, such as Lula Da Silva or Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Not even Diego Armando Maradona has been spared from the invectives of the libertarian economist, of whom he said that he was inferior to Pelé in 2016.

Petro and Milei's commitment to maintaining good relations seems firm, but it is difficult to ensure that confrontations will not be repeated. The Colombian president reacts impulsively on social networks to current events and especially to what he considers unfair. The people around him have timidly suggested to him that greater reflection would be needed when giving his opinion on certain topics. However, the Government's positions on any issue are set by Petro's X account. The ministers simply follow suit. Prudence is not the greatest of Mieli's virtues either, as he practices an incendiary tone that gave him popularity in the electoral campaign, but which now turn into diplomatic crises.

The link between Argentina and Colombia, despite having two centuries of diplomatic relations, has never been particularly close. Not only because they are at opposite ends of South America, but because of diplomatic decisions, such as when the Andean country abstained from supporting Buenos Aires in the Malvinas war. But none has reached the current level of tension, with the announcement by the Petro Government that it will expel Argentine diplomats. The accusation is particularly strong in Colombia because it touches on the sensitive point of armed conflict and the search for peace. Petro was a member of the M-19 guerrilla group, a group with a more social democratic than communist tendency, which signed a peace agreement more than 30 years ago. The M-19 maintained its decision to lay down its arms and become a political party despite the prompt assassination of its leader and then presidential candidate, Carlos Pizarro Leongómez, in April 1990. The group, already a party, was one of the fundamental forces in the drafting of the 1991 Constitution, recognized as a great advance in democratic openness and social rights. Calling Petro a murderer, when he was never even a true man of arms within the guerrilla, but rather an activist, ignores the entire path of national reconciliation that he has promoted throughout his political life. This infamy touches a sensitive nerve for the president. Milei knows that key and we don't know when he will press it again.

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