Colombian President Gustavo Petro has admitted that he cannot communicate with other world leaders without a translator. His lack of English fluency, seemingly trivial, becomes emblematic of a deeper problem: Petro struggles to engage with global debates on their own terms.
One wonders if the former M-19 guerrilla has ever grasped the words of Roger Waters, whose album The Final Cut remains one of music’s most searing reflections on the futility of war. Like the poetry of Wilfred Owen, the record is laced with grief and rage at political profiteers. Waters’ wailing guitar solos and fragile voice embodies what Owen once called “the pity of war.”
But if Waters used his art to mourn the men in the trenches, Petro has used his stage to provoke. During the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Petro took to the streets of Manhattan draped in a red keffiyeh and megaphone in hand. Standing not as Colombia’s president but as a political agitator, he urged a pro-Palestinian crowd to imagine a global armed force to liberate Palestine.
He then crossed an indelible line: calling on U.S. soldiers to “disobey the orders of (President) Trump” and to “not point their guns against humanity.” He went further, stating that “humanity itself will only survive if those soldiers decide to disobey the empire.”
The U.S. State Department’s response was immediate. By Friday night, Petro’s visa was revoked, based on the following declaration: “Earlier today, Colombian president Gustavo Petro stood on a NYC street and urged U.S. soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence. We will revoke Petro’s visa due to his reckless and incendiary actions”.
The speed at which the Trump administration reacted to Petro is extraordinary – faster than when Washington cancelled President Ernesto Samper’s visa in 1996 over alleged drug money from the Cali Cartel infiltrating his campaign.
Unlike for former Pink Floyd bandsman, Petro does not stop at metaphor. He deliberately urged members of a foreign army to defy a Commander-in-Chief, an act tantamount to rebellion, if not, outright treason.
Imagine the uproar if Argentina’s Javier Milei had stood in Bogotá’s Plaza de Bolívar calling on Colombian soldiers to turn against Petro. The consequences would have been equally swift: expulsion, condemnation, and rupture. Petro, as a guest in the United States, forgot what diplomacy demands – restraint and, above all, respect.
Instead, he leans toward martyrdom. “I don’t care,” he posted defiantly after the revocation. “I no longer have a visa to travel to the United States. I don’t care. I don’t need a visa because I am not only a Colombian citizen, but also a European citizen. I truly consider myself a free person in the world.” He then accused Washington of hypocrisy: “Revoking it for denouncing genocide shows the U.S. no longer respects international law.” For Petro, this was not a setback but a stage. As political analyst Pedro Burelli observed, the president thrives on victimization, and nothing fuels that narrative more than being “mistreated” by Washington.
Yet, the consequences run deep. Many countries, including Canada and United Kingdom, often follow U.S. visa restrictions. A ban on Petro’s entry into those nations would reduce his capacity to operate internationally, even as he tries to cast himself as a world leader. What will happen next is that Petro’s call to “resistance” risks shrinking Colombia to a diplomatic footnote.
Back home, Petro’s calculated performance triggered a wave of condemnation. Former senator Juan Manuel Galán dismissed it as the president’s latest distraction to mask domestic failures. “That the president of Colombia has his U.S. visa revoked is just another smokescreen,” he wrote, “a way for him to continue in permanent campaign mode. He acts irresponsibly with Colombia, managing foreign relations against the country’s interests. It is a shameful and incoherent episode.”
Former Bogotá mayor Enrique Peñalosa warned that Colombians, especially rural workers, could pay the price if Washington soured on trade relations. “The United States is by far the main buyer of Colombian products such as flowers, coffee, bananas and many more,” Peñalosa wrote.
“If they suspend imports of our products, hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost, and farmers, for example, coffee growers, would be directly harmed. That does not matter to Petro, as long as he can stage his pathetic shows to seek notoriety,” posted Peñalosa. “He thinks that with these antics he becomes a great world leader, when in reality almost nobody even notices his shows and simply sees him as a lunatic.”
Senator and presidential hopeful David Luna was equally scathing. “These last months will continue to deteriorate and become more delirious,” he said. “Today, President Petro renounced being a president to become an international agitator. The consequence: he was left without a visa. Tomorrow he will invent that he doesn’t need one because he is Italian or will come up with some new madness.”
Even Petro’s defenders are struggling. Colombia’s Foreign Ministry accused the United States of abusing visa policy as a diplomatic weapon and floated the idea of moving the UN to a neutral host state. “The UN should find a completely neutral host country,” the ministry said, “that would allow the organization itself to issue authorization to enter the territory of that new host state.” Yet such rhetoric fails to mask the embarrassment: Colombia’s head of state was barred from entering its most important trading partner.
Petro now must grapple between radical posturing and diplomatic deep freeze. His words in Times Square – uttered not in the marbled halls of the UN – will linger. They blur the line between protester and president. They also reveal the paradox of Petro’s politics: he rails against imperialism while depending on the U.S. market for Colombia’s fresh-cut flowers, avocados, coffee, and bananas.
Roger Waters’ The Final Cut is a testament to despair and work consigned to music history like the names of the fallen in World War One. It is a lyrical masterpiece of atonement and redemption; for anyone who has listened to the entire album – over and over again – Water’s message is one of deep condemnation to those who peddle in cultural paranoia and divisive rhetoric.
By contrast to his ideological mentor, Petro weaponizes grievance to the point of confrontation. While Waters sang of “tyrants” retiring to the Fletcher Memorial Home, perhaps Petro should have listened closely. If he ever did listen.
One truth from The Final Cut endures: Owen’s ‘pity of war’ is found not in megaphones and slogans, but in the resounding grief Waters captures in The Gunner’s Dream – a vision of peace forever lost to leaders who mistake provocation for purpose. “What’s done is done. We cannot just write off his final scene.”
