Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro and Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday agreed on military cooperation to combat crime on their shared border. This is Petro’s first visit by a foreign leader to Caracas after the US ousted Nicolas Maduro from power.
Petro said the joint effort will focus on “liberating the border areas from mafias engaged in illegal businesses starting from cocaine, illegal gold, human trafficking and rare minerals”.
Catatumbo area. Which is located in northern Colombia on the border with Venezuela, became a center of violence a year ago.
Rival left-wing extremist groups in the mountainous region are fighting to gain control over human trafficking, arms trade, illegal mining, drug cultivation and the cocaine trade.
Catatumbo holds strategic importance for armed groups, with drugs from the area being easily smuggled out of the country.
“Both countries have … undertaken military planning as well as the immediate establishment of mechanisms for information sharing and intelligence development,” Rodriguez said.
Colombia and Venezuela want to cooperate on energy
The two leaders, who met at the Presidential Palace in the Venezuelan capital, also agreed to step up trade and bilateral efforts to ensure electricity provision for blackout-hit western Venezuela.
“It makes no sense to look to other latitudes, to other hemispheres, to Colombia or Venezuela for what we can achieve in our territories,” Rodríguez said in a joint statement with Petro.
“Electrical interconnection is already a step forward, and so is gas interconnection, through which we can not only supply gas to Colombia but also jointly export gas to other countries.”
Rodríguez took on the role of acting president of Venezuela after strongman Nicolas Maduro was kidnapped by US forces during the Caracas raid and eventually brought to New York City to face criminal charges.
The administration of US President Donald Trump supports Rodriguez’s interim government, which has opened up Venezuela’s state-owned oil industry to US companies.
Petro, for his part, strongly condemned the American military operation. While Trump has accused the leftist leader of not taking enough steps to fight drug production.
Colombia–Venezuela relations
Relations between Colombia and Venezuela have long been unstable.
In 2019, former Colombian President Iván Duque broke relations with Caracas after it refused to recognize Maduro’s election.
The South American neighbors restored full diplomatic relations under Petro in 2022.
Petro did not recognize Maduro as their legitimate leader following Venezuela’s disputed re-election in 2024.
However, Petro continued to maintain diplomatic relations between Bogotá and Caracas.
A meeting between Petro and Rodríguez was previously scheduled for March in the Colombian border city of Cúcuta, but was suddenly canceled.
Colombia and Venezuela also have deep historical and cultural ties, particularly along their shared 2,200 kilometers (about 1,370 mi) border. Many families in the area are biracial.
Nearly three million Venezuelan migrants have settled in Colombia over the past few years, fleeing the economic downturn in their home country.
Edited by: Shawn Sinico