I'm John Batchel with my colleague Ernest Harousia, former foreign minister of the

Republic of Brazil.

Petro much on the phone, not only to Brasilia, to Luther de Silva, not only to Amlo, Lopez-Oberdor, Mexico, and Boric of Chile.

But in these last days, we're told by the New York Times that he called the President of the United States

and that there's some arrangement to have Petro come to Washington.

A complete reversal of Petro's posture towards the U.S. previously this year.

Quickly, there's an election in Colombia, and the expectation is because Petro cannot run again one term only,

that the prize will go to the left of center party in Bogota and that Colombia will drop out of the network with Venezuela.

Do you agree with that opinion, Ernesto?

Yes, to a certain extent, I agree. Petro is seeing no way out of his commitment to Venezuela,

to Maduro. He's trying probably to attain some sort of personal political survival.

And he's seeing who runs the show now. And it's obviously Trump. At the same time, I think

he's playing in the nationalist card. He's coming back to things that he said in the beginning of his term, the idea of a huge union that would establish something that existed in the Spanish Empire between Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador. They used to be the same country, and they were the same independent country for a while.

So the idea of the Grand Columbia, Grand Columbia would be this sort of revival of a colonial

entity, but this gives some sort of sense of pride to Colombians, maybe to some Venezuelans,

Ecuadorians as well.

So I think it means that, well, Petro, he cannot run again, but maybe he can run,

he can support someone else.

And these elections are probably in the future.

And I think he's totally trying to get away, as I said, from this articulation, the St. Paulo Forum,

the alliance with the left-wing forces, and find something else.

And that's probably the sort of nationalism.

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