Petro after meeting with Delcy Rodríguez: The border cannot belong to anyone but the peoples

The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, highlighted this Friday the importance of the common effort with Venezuela to free the peoples of the border between the two countries from the mafias.

In a joint statement with the president in charge Delcy Rodríguez, Petro stressed that they agreed to “set up a thoroughly coordinated common effort to free the border peoples from mafias dedicated to various illegal economies, starting with cocaine, illicit gold, human trafficking and other types of rare minerals.”

In this regard, he emphasized that the border should only be for the People. “Colombian people, Venezuelan people. The border cannot belong to anyone but the peoples.”

He also emphasized the strengthening of military, police and social cooperation to re-establish ties between the two nations and guarantee food security. He agreed with his Venezuelan counterpart in ensuring energy integration in the region.

“The great project of Bolívar de la Patria Grande, which at the time he called Gran Colombia, which, being re-established in other forms in this 21st century, can be and that if we achieve this type of integration, unity, even confederation, could lead us to be one of the strongest nations in the world,” he said.

He stressed that it would be “a diverse, plural nation, respecting each other's autonomies, its own history and the common history that has been a lot. A power in the world that is to be the heart of the world. We are the heart of the world. To the extent that we divide, we break the heart of the world and to the extent that we unite, we re-establish the heart of the world,” he said.