Petro travels to Caracas to meet Delcy Rodríguez following failed Cúcuta summit
Colombian President Gustavo Petro will meet at midday on Friday in Caracas with Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez, in what marks the first official meeting between a head of state and the Venezuelan leader since she took office on January 5, following the capture of former president Nicolás Maduro in a US military operation on January 3 of this year.
The meeting takes place a month after a failed attempt in Cúcuta, on the Colombian side of the border, cancelled at the last minute by Caracas, which cited force majeure while the press waited at the crossing. Thursday evening, Miraflores confirmed the meeting after technical delegations from both countries began talks that morning. Petro had signalled the move during a visit to Spain last week with a remark that became public: If Mohammed will not come to me, I will go to the mountain. So I’m going to Caracas.
The Colombian leader indicated the agenda would focus on border security. The frontier between the two countries stretches more than 2,000 kilometres, with particular attention on the jungle region of Catatumbo, scene of one of Colombia’s most intense armed conflicts, with the presence of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissident factions of the former FARC, and home to one of the largest coca-growing areas in the country. The issue is security and a joint plan, Petro said, proposing the strengthening of binational intelligence as the cornerstone of the scheme. If there is no intelligence, the bombs fall in the wrong place, he warned.
On the Venezuelan side, in late 2024 then-Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello launched Operation Catatumbo Lightning, which resulted in the detention of opposition mayors, judges, and prosecutors. Cabello at the time linked, without presenting evidence, former Colombian presidents Iván Duque and Álvaro Uribe, along with opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado, to criminal organisations operating in the region.
Beyond security, economic interests are also at stake. Colombia has expressed interest in entering the Venezuelan electricity sector — a key piece in the oil sector’s reactivation being promoted by Washington following the easing of sanctions approved by the Trump administration — and has pressed for the reopening of the Antonio Ricaurte binational gas pipeline, against a backdrop of rapidly declining domestic natural gas production.
The Colombian delegation currently in Caracas comprises 83 officials working in technical committees alongside nearly a hundred Venezuelan counterparts on border, migration, consular, energy, trade, and food security matters. During his stay in Spain, Petro also floated a proposal that Miraflores did not take up: a one- or two-year power-sharing government between chavismo and the opposition as a prelude to what he called truly free elections.
