Petro would later claim to renounce the violence, but he did not truly renounce M-19’s politics. In 1991, he was first elected to office in Colombia’s Chamber of Representatives. In 2022, he won election as president.

Unsurprisingly, Petro was deeply divisive.

In 2022, shortly after taking office, he restored diplomatic relations with the regime of another fanatically anti-American leftist, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela. The decision earned him little political capital at home or abroad.

Petro refused to condemn the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in Israel, in which the Iranian proxy terrorists invaded the Jewish state and slaughtered more than 1,200 innocents. Instead, he repeatedly compared Israelis to Nazis, an antisemitic trope with roots in Soviet propaganda.

In another sign of his extremism, Petro’s government severed relations with Israel in May 2024, ending what had been seven decades of close ties.

Petro’s animus and fervently anti-Western ideology were also on display in broadsides against the United States. He called Trump a “new Hitler,” and in a 2025 speech at the United Nations, he called for criminal proceedings against the U.S.

Rhetoric of this sort sours relations where goodwill is needed most. It also discourages foreign direct investment, which fell during Petro’s tenure, especially in sectors most affected by his hostility to oil, mining, and traditional industry.

Like other Latin American leftists, Petro seemed more interested in railing against oil companies and big business than in delivering tangible results such as job growth, security, and quality-of-life improvements for his citizens.

An ideologue to the end, Petro blamed Israel for his party’s loss in a June 21 social media post and claimed that the Jewish state had somehow interfered in the election.

But the larger story goes beyond Gustavo Petro. Across Latin America, the Left may finally be losing its grip.

The Cold War never ended in Latin America. Spearheaded by Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, Marxism and its ideological descendants experienced a rebirth in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Latin America’s so-called pink wave was a full-throated embrace of the same failed policies and politics that much of Eastern Europe had cast off more than a decade before.

Rulers such as Rafael Correa of Ecuador, the Kirchners of Argentina, and Evo Morales of Bolivia relied on anti-American rhetoric to mask their economic failings. Led by Chavez and the Castro regime in Cuba, they opened their doors to American adversaries such as Iran and China.

Now many of these rulers are long gone. Maduro sits in a New York jail cell. Morales is a fugitive. Correa is in exile. Even the Castro regime, in power since 1959, is teetering amid a collapsing economy and routine islandwide power shortages.

Only Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, both in their 80s, remain as bulwarks of anti-American socialism.

Voters in the region seem increasingly aware that capitalism, not socialism, is the path to a more prosperous future. In 2023, voters in Argentina chose Javier Milei, an unabashed proponent of free markets who is both pro-American and pro-Israel. De la Espriella’s apparent victory is the latest step in that direction.

The turnabout is coming from citizens of these countries demanding change at the polls. But it is also linked to a more assertive and more effective U.S. foreign policy.

CALIFORNIA’S ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT WELFARE PARADISE

The Trump administration has forcefully reasserted American prerogatives in the region, including through the use of U.S. military power against Maduro. Commensurate cuts to USAID have helped ensure that American tax dollars are not working at cross purposes by funding anti-American nongovernmental organizations.

In Latin America, the era of blaming the West for the failures of poor governance may finally be coming to a much-deserved and much-belated end. The free world will be better off as a result.