Colombia and Argentina Discuss Recovery of Bilateral Relations

Colombia and Argentina are in dialogue to restore normality in bilateral diplomatic relations, after the crisis experienced last week, due to statements made by the Argentine president, Javier Milei, in which he called the Colombian president a “terrorist assassin”.

In a joint communiqué, the Foreign Ministries of both countries announced the return of their respective ambassadors to Bogota and Buenos Aires, to resume normal political relations between the two countries, just 201 years after the beginning of these relations.

In the last chapter of insults by the Argentinean president, last Thursday, March 30, Javier Milei repeated his derogatory adjectives towards his Colombian counterpart, with whom he has maintained a dialectical tension since long before the Argentinean president began his presidency, in December 2023.

As of this week, the Colombian ambassador will return to Buenos Aires and the new Argentine diplomatic representative will be accepted in Bogota. “The Colombian government has given indications for Ambassador Camilo Romero to return to Buenos Aires while granting its approval to the new ambassador proposed by the Argentine government in Bogota,” stated the communiqué, which includes the announcement of an imminent visit of the Argentine Foreign Minister, Diana Mondino, to Bogota.

Poor personal relations

Last week was the most recent chapter in the bad personal relations between the two politicians. Already in the middle of the campaign for the presidency in Argentina, the differences and tensions between Javier Milei and Gustavo Petro surfaced.

It happened, for example, when Milei, who was still a candidate, defined the Catholic pope, who is Argentinean, as the “representative of the devil”, which prompted the Colombian president to respond. Milei has taken advantage of every interview to charge against Gustavo Petro, his main ideological enemy in Latin America.

Recalling the Colombian president’s past as a member of the M19 guerrilla, he has used harsh words such as “murderer”, “terrorist” and others to label the Colombian politician as a “communist”. For his part, Gustavo Petro even compared Milei’s political profile with “Hitler”.

These disagreements and outbursts not only mark the confrontation between two opposing ways of understanding politics but also point to the internal conflicts of two presidents who, for different reasons, are not living a good moment as leaders of their respective nations.

Two opposing political projects

The two politicians today represent two antagonistic projects in the American subcontinent. On the one hand, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who took office in August 2022, embodies the first leftist government in Colombia, one of the most traditionally conservative nations in the region.

Petro, through his social reforms, defends a leading role for the State and public management, over the historical preponderance of private enterprise, in key sectors such as health and pensions. His argument is based on European social democracy, defending the role it gives to the State as a redistributive agent of wealth.

Javier Milei, president of Argentina since last December, defines himself as “ultraliberal”, championing an extreme right-wing project in which he intends to reduce the role of the State to the minimum expression, leaving the economy in private hands and aligning himself with the thesis of the new conservative wave represented by politicians such as Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro.

Two centuries of political and commercial relations

Political and commercial relations between Colombia and Argentina officially began in 1823. This reality makes the two countries historical and close regional allies, so a supposed diplomatic rupture would have adverse consequences for both nations and for the political stability of South America.

Amid the crisis, the Colombian Foreign Minister, Luis Gilberto Murillo, affirmed that diplomatic relations had not been broken off, despite the expulsion order from Bogota of the Argentine representatives and the departure of Camilo Romero, the Colombian ambassador from the Argentine capital, months ago, when he was recalled for consultations.

Colombia imports many goods from Argentina, among which delivery trucks (17.9%), corn (17.9%), cars (12.7%), barley (7.20%), iron pipes (7.18%), soybean meal (4.59%) and soybean oil (3.37%) stand out. In total, imports from the Argentine economy represented approximately 2.2% of the 2023 total, so a supposed rupture of relations could cause “problems of shortages”, according to economic experts.

The need to normalize relations is imperative for both countries. While it is known that Petro and Milei have not spoken, nevertheless they have allowed their diplomatic apparatus to rebuild what, between them, seems complicated: normality in the historical relations between two countries of the same region.