The US State Department said Friday it would revoke the visa of Colombian President Gustavo Petro after an anti-Israel rally in New York, where he said he would open enlistment for Colombians to fight alongside the Palestinians in Gaza and called on other nations to join.
Amid recent US strikes on alleged Latin American drug traffickers, Petro also urged US troops to refuse to carry out US President Donald Trump’s orders.
A source from Petro’s office confirmed to AFP that Petro was traveling back to Bogota on Friday night. Petro has said he also has Italian citizenship and would not need a visa to enter the United States.
Petro, who was in New York to address the UN General Assembly, had “stood on a NYC street and urged US soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence,” the US State Department said in a post on X. “We will revoke Petro’s visa due to his reckless and incendiary actions.”
The South American country’s Interior Minister Armando Benedetti wrote on X Friday night that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visa should have been revoked rather than Petro’s.
“But since the empire protects him, it’s taking it out on the only president who was capable enough to tell him the truth to his face,” wrote Benedetti.
On his social media account, Petro shared a video of himself speaking Spanish to a large crowd through a megaphone Friday, with his translator then relaying his comments, calling on “nations of the world” to contribute soldiers for an army “larger than that of the United States.”
“I am going back to Colombia to open enlistment for Colombians to serve to fight in Gaza, and if I need to go and join to serve, I will. But this needs to happen among other nations,” he said.
“This is a matter of humanity, not just Palestinians,” Petro said at the demonstration. “If Palestine disappears, humanity does too. All nations should volunteer to serve this army to save the world’s humanity.”
It was unclear if the army Petro envisioned would serve as a peacekeeping force or actively fight against Israel.
At the protest, Petro also called on US troops to “obey the orders of humanity” and disobey Trump, who recently ordered deadly missile strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean, and a naval build-up there that has sparked fear of a US invasion of Venezuela.
Petro also brought up his idea of an international army in Gaza during a separate speech, during which he also wore a keffiyeh, at the high-level Dialogue of Civilizations, a reunion of the UN’s anti-extremism forum Alliance of Civilization.
Employing Marxist terms, the former leftist guerrilla fighter appeared to appeal specifically to China’s communist government to support his theoretical army in Gaza.
“I apply the praxis every day. Theory and practice,” he said. “Here it’s not only theory and words but praxis, action. And the action here, comrade China, today, is that you dare.”
“We also dare to [take action],” he said. “We are opening a list of volunteers to combat in Gaza. If we join forces, we will become the most powerful army in the world. And democracy will exist, and genocide will cease to exist; there will be freedom in the world. Humanity works only when everyone is free.”
Colombia followed neighboring Bolivia in May 2024 in ending longstanding ties with Israel. Petro had for months assailed Israel’s war on Hamas, which was sparked by the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, that killed some 1,200 people and saw another 251 taken hostage, and likened the war to the Holocaust, drawing accusations of antisemitism from Jerusalem.
Bogota also supports South Africa’s case in the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza — a charge Israel has angrily rejected.
Petro has previously posed with a map of a Palestinian state in Israel’s place. He has also called on Hamas to release hostage Elkana Bohbot, who holds Colombian citizenship, “as a tribute to Colombia and its solidarity with the Palestinian people.”
In his speech at the General Assembly on Tuesday, Petro hit out at Trump, saying the US leader was “complicit in genocide” in Gaza and calling for “criminal proceedings” over the US missile attacks in the Caribbean.
Petro said unarmed “poor young people” died in the strikes — more than a dozen in total — but Washington contends the actions are part of a US anti-drug operation off the coast of Venezuela, whose president Washington accuses of running a cartel.
Trump has dispatched eight warships and a submarine to the southern Caribbean, and the biggest US deployment in years has raised fears in Venezuela of an invasion.
Petro, whose country is the world’s biggest cocaine producer, has said he suspects some of those killed in the US boat strikes were Colombian. Last week, the Trump administration decertified Colombia as an ally in the fight against drugs, but stopped short of imposing economic sanctions.
The countries are historical allies, but ties have soured under Petro — Colombia’s first-ever leftist leader. Petro came to office in 2022, promising agreements with armed groups but pivoted last year, pledging to tame coca-growing regions with massive social and military intervention. The strategy has brought little success.