{"id":610248,"date":"2025-12-03T20:48:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T20:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/610248\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T20:48:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T20:48:18","slug":"colombias-president-warns-trump-do-not-wake-the-jaguar-with-threats-of-military-strikes-colombia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/610248\/","title":{"rendered":"Colombia\u2019s president warns Trump: \u2018Do not wake the jaguar\u2019 with threats of military strikes | Colombia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colombia<\/a>\u2019s president has warned Donald Trump<\/a> that he risked \u201cwaking the jaguar\u201d after the US leader suggested that any country he believed was making illegal drugs destined for the US was liable to a military attack.<\/p>\n

During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, the US president said that military strikes on land targets inside Venezuela would \u201cstart very soon\u201d. Trump also warned that any country producing narcotics was a potential target<\/a>, singling out Colombia, which has long been a close ally in Washington\u2019s \u201cwar on drugs\u201d.<\/p>\n

Shortly afterwards, Colombia\u2019s president, Gustavo Petro, hit back in a social media post, saying: \u201cTo threaten our sovereignty is to declare war; do not damage two centuries of diplomatic relations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Petro also invited Trump to visit Colombia \u2013 the world\u2019s largest producer of cocaine \u2013 to see his government\u2019s efforts to destroy drug-producing labs. \u201cCome with me, and I\u2019ll show you how they are destroyed, one lab every 40 minutes,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Since August, the Trump administration has escalated tensions in Latin America to levels unseen since the 1989 invasion of Panama, under the pretext of anti-narcotics operations. The Pentagon has deployed a sizable naval force with nearly 15,000 troops on Venezuela\u2019s doorstep in the Caribbean<\/a> and killing more than 80 people in strikes on small boats alleged to be carrying drugs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to start doing those strikes on land, too,\u201d said Trump on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, the land is much easier, much easier. And we know the routes they take. We know everything about them. We know where they live. We know where the bad ones live, and we\u2019re going to start that very soon too.<\/p>\n

When asked whether the efforts would be limited to Venezuela<\/a>, the US president said they would not.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hear Colombia, the country of Colombia, is making cocaine. They have cocaine manufacturing plants, OK? And then they sell us their cocaine. We appreciate that very much. But yeah, anybody that\u2019s doing that and selling it into our country is subject to attack,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Longtime allies in the \u201cwar on drugs\u201d, the US and Colombia have found their relationship fractured almost from the moment Trump took office for his second term.<\/p>\n

Their first clash came as early as January, when Petro \u2013 a former guerrilla and Colombia\u2019s first leftwing president \u2013 refused entry to American planes carrying deported Colombians, insisting that they be treated with dignity.<\/p>\n

He later reversed that decision<\/a>, but relations further deteriorated in September, when, after attending the United Nations general assembly, Petro joined a pro-Palestine protest in New York and urged US soldiers to disobey Trump\u2019s orders to \u201cattack humanity\u201d. He has also been a fierce critic of the airstrikes on the alleged drug boats.<\/p>\n

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In response, the US state department revoked the Colombian president\u2019s visa. Trump has since accused Petro, without providing evidence, of being an \u201cillegal drug trafficker\u201d and of fostering massive narcotics production, turning it into \u201cColombia\u2019s main business\u201d.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s threat to Colombia came just hours after a former Honduran president convicted of drug trafficking and corruption walked free from a US prison after receiving a pardon from Trump.<\/p>\n

Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez had been sentenced to 45 years for allegedly creating \u201ca cocaine superhighway\u201d to the US. During his time in office, Honduras became a major transit point for South American cocaine heading north and also a cocaine-producing hub<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the cabinet meeting, Trump described the investigation into Hern\u00e1ndez \u2013 which had started before his own first term in office \u2013 as a \u201cBiden horrible witch-hunt\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have some drug dealers in your country and you\u2019re the president, you don\u2019t necessarily put the president in jail for 45 years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colombia\u2019s president has warned Donald Trump that he risked \u201cwaking the jaguar\u201d after the US leader suggested that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-610248","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115657605310512751","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}