Thousands of Colombians rallied around the country on Tuesday to support President Gustavo Petro as he met at the White House with President Trump, a visit that appeared to have gone smoothly despite past tensions between the two leaders.
Colombian officials had stressed that the meeting would focus on cooperation between the two governments on combating drug trafficking.
Before he left for Washington, however, Mr. Petro had portrayed himself as a leader willing to stand up to American hegemony rather than someone cooperating with Washington. He called on Colombians to take to the streets and implied on social media that he was going to the White House to defend the nation. In one message on X, he posted a photo of his deceased mother and said he had gone to “say goodbye” before leaving for the United States.
Soon after the U.S. military removed Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, President Trump had threatened Colombia with military action, too, accusing the country of flooding the United States with cocaine. The threats galvanized public support for Mr. Petro.
In Plaza Bolivar, Bogotá’s central square next to the presidential palace, hundreds of people gathered on Tuesday with Colombian flags and signs with slogans such as “Our Energy, Our Sovereignty.”
One large banner read, “Petro is not a drug trafficker.”
Hamilton Carpio said he was at the rally representing Indigenous people displaced by a long-running conflict involving the government and armed groups near Colombia’s Pacific Coast. He said he supported Mr. Petro because his administration was the first to engage directly with those communities on the challenges they face as people uprooted by violence.
“We identify with him,” he said.
Mr. Carpio said he was optimistic about the White House meeting, which he believed could offer Mr. Petro an opportunity to address what he described as Mr. Trump’s misconceptions about the Colombian head of state.
In the days leading up to his visit, Mr. Petro, the country’s first leftist leader, had extolled his government’s success in seizing cocaine. Colombia is the world’s largest cocaine producer.
But at the same time, Mr. Petro spoke out against Mr. Trump, as he consistently has over the past year, saying the U.S. president resembled Mr. Maduro in their shared dependency on oil — Mr. Petro is a proponent of clean energy — and denouncing the “bombing” of Venezuela by the U.S. military on Jan. 3.
Experts said that Mr. Petro’s recent remarks were likely intended to convey to his supporters that even if he is willing to work with Mr. Trump, he is not abandoning his progressive — and anti-Imperialist — ideals, said Alejandro Gaviria, who served as a minister in Mr. Petro’s government and wrote a book about him.
“Someone once told me that he would rather die,” Mr. Gaviria said, “Than look like he has surrendered.”
Annie Correal is a Times reporter covering Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
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