Petro travels to Caracas for security talks with Venezuela's Rodriguez

Gustavo Petro crossed into Caracas for a security-first meeting with Delcy Rodriguez at Miraflores Palace, putting the 2,200-kilometer border, armed groups and migration corridors at the center of the agenda. The talks came as both leaders faced pressure from Donald Trump and as Colombia and Venezuela kept trying to manage a relationship that remains politically fraught but operationally necessary.

The frontier they are trying to stabilize is one of the most combustible in South America. Nearly 3 million Venezuelan migrants have settled in Colombia in recent years, while the border region still generates an estimated $1 billion in annual trade. It is also a main route for drug trafficking, smuggling and other illegal activity tied to criminal gangs and Colombian guerrilla organizations. Human rights groups and previous Colombian governments have accused armed groups of operating with the support or tolerance of the Venezuelan military, an allegation Caracas denies. Petro and Nicolas Maduro had already increased troop deployments along the border to confront drug trafficking, underscoring how quickly a diplomatic problem can become a security one.

The Caracas meeting followed a March visit by Colombian foreign and defense officials, who discussed security, trade and energy cooperation. It was also Rodriguez’s second meeting with another head of state after a brief April trip to Grenada, a sign that she has been widening her foreign contacts even as she works under close U.S. scrutiny and sanctions pressure. Washington removed U.S. sanctions against Rodriguez on April 1 and had already been engaging her government through energy and interior secretaries, sanctions waivers and visits by potential investors. Rodriguez has argued that special licenses and waivers are not enough to make investors feel secure or to revive Venezuela’s economy.

Petro has kept his own line open despite repeated clashes with Trump over counter-narcotics cooperation. The two men were positive after a face-to-face meeting earlier this year, and Petro later held a friendly call with Trump in March about the economy along the Venezuelan-Colombian border. Petro has argued that Colombia recorded record drug seizures during his tenure. For both governments, the practical test is not the language of diplomacy but whether they can disrupt armed groups, choke off smuggling routes and keep violence from spilling deeper into the borderlands.