The policy towards Venezuelan migrants is heading to become one of the main legacies of the Iván Duque government, and its best diplomatic asset. Passing through Bogotá, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, highlighted the “generous” welcome displayed by Colombia as a “model for the region and for the world”, after meeting with the president at the Casa de Nariño. With his two-day visit, which concludes this Thursday, the head of North American diplomacy became the highest official of the Joe Biden government to have met with Duque, a key ally in Latin America determined to smooth things over with the White House. .
“Colombia has shown enormous generosity by receiving some two million Venezuelan migrants displaced by the current humanitarian crisis in Venezuela,” Blinken said Wednesday, giving priority to that issue – he also attended a Ministerial Conference on Migration with 17 foreign ministers of the region–, in the midst of a diverse agenda that included the implementation of the peace agreement, anti-drug policy, human rights and climate change.
In his joint statement with Duque, the head of US diplomacy highlighted Colombia as “one of the most important allies” of his country and “the cornerstone of our shared hemisphere” – a phrase that Biden often uses, which in his long Carrera has strongly supported both Plan Colombia and the peace agreement with the FARC. Duque took advantage of the space to redouble his criticism of the “shameful, corrupt and drug trafficking dictatorship” of Nicolás Maduro in neighboring Venezuela, a government that neither Bogotá nor Washington recognize. Colombia, by far the main destination of a diaspora of more than five million Venezuelans, has launched a praised temporary protection statute, valid for ten years, which aims to regularize about one million undocumented Venezuelans who already are on its territory.
During their meeting at the Casa de Nariño, Duque and Blinken staged a seamless alliance, but various observers point out that, beyond the praiseworthy statements, the difficult moment that bilateral relations went through last year can only be fully considered overcome when there is a meeting between the two leaders. Asked about this possibility, the Secretary of State only stated that President Biden asked him to go to Colombia on his first trip to South America. “We and he see in President Duque a great friend of the United States,” he added.
The frictions, however, go back to the electoral process itself that brought the Democrat to power. Duque, who cultivated the status of Donald Trump’s privileged partner, was also one of the first presidents in the region to acknowledge Biden’s victory in last November’s traumatic elections. It was a first effort to heal the wounds left by the undisguised support of the Democratic Center, the government party founded by former President Álvaro Uribe, for the Republican’s failed reelection campaign in the crucial state of Florida – peppered with misinformation and allusions to the “Castrochavismo” -. Since then, the White House has communicated with other Latin American presidents before the Colombian, as had been tradition. The question about the cost of that interference, which irritated many Democratic leaders, has loomed over Colombian diplomacy.
In the final months of his government – his term ends on August 7 – Duque has intensified a diplomatic activity that has taken him to South Korea, Spain, the United States on two occasions and Brazil earlier this week. The priority is to rebuild the relationship with Washington. Colombia has even aligned its agenda with that of the Democratic Administration, by focusing on migration and climate change – instead of security and the fight against drug trafficking. But despite the fact that they already had a telephone conversation, Duque has not yet managed to take his portrait with Biden.
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“I would be surprised if Biden ran into Duque, at least before the last possible second. But that is mainly due to a great political problem: the interference of Duque’s party in the US elections. At the ministerial and operational level, the relationship is closer than ever, “says Adam Isacson, director for Defense Oversight at the Washington Office for Latin American Affairs. (WOLA) and expert in binational relations. “A photo of Biden and Duque smiling would send the message that there are no consequences for electoral meddling.”
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