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Notes -
I’m not sure what the internal political situation in Colombia is at the moment, but I expect there’s lots of pressure on the president to “stand up to Trump” in some way. Hence the aforementioned Spanish-language Twitter rant.
It reminds me a bit of ritual tribal warfare. Everyone gets dressed up, lines up on opposite sides of a valley, shakes their spears and yells at each other for a few hours, then everybody goes home satisfied that they really showed the outgroup who’s boss this time.
As I said - looks and quacks like a worked shoot. Trump upsets an arrangement which is working just fine (120 deportation flights to Colombia in civilian planes in 2024) in order to look tough for a domestic audience (the military! deporting illegals, handcuffed!) and get noisily applauded by friendly media, Petro noisily defends the dignity of his citizens (the point of sending Colombian planes at his expense is that the particular group of Colombian deportees who have attracted media attention are not handcuffed, so his friendly media can nosily applaud him for that), and then things carry on as usual.
I don't think anyone actually cares about the military vs civilian planes issue, although the Colombians get to stand on their dignity about the US needing permission to operate military planes in Colombian airspace.
I'm pretty sure this happened after Trump made his threats, which would make it a face-saving measure.
I think he just overplayed a bit. Trump is odious to many so they want to stand up to him, anyone familiar with American politics saw he was very constrained in 2016 both within and outside his administration so I suppose you can be forgiven for thinking you can make hay of a symbolic issue to get a win.
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