On Monday, March 3rd, 2025, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said that cocaine trafficked by armed groups and organized crime in Catatumbo, a troubled region in the northeast of the country on the border with Venezuela, "is financing the violence in Haiti."
President Petro said during a televised cabinet meeting that the drug produced in this area "goes in a direct line to the upper Guajira (Colombian peninsula in the Caribbean Sea) and in a few hours arrives in Haiti, finances the violence in Haiti and from there, continues its route to Miami."
Petro issued this warning as he presented a plan by his government to eradicate at least half of the illegal coca crops in Catatumbo, a mountainous territory in the northern department of Santander, where 50,000 hectares of coca leaves are clandestinely cultivated under the control of armed groups.
"That’s the route," Petro added. "Catatumbo is financing armed violence in Haiti, so we’re talking about a geopolitical strategy, on one side there’s Venezuela, Haiti to the north and our own Colombian territory."
Posted March 6, 2025