Colombian President Gustavo Petro told reporters on Thursday that his leftist American counterpart Joe Biden is “interested” in a scheme to pressure the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other global banking institutions to offer debt relief to countries that promise to invest in fighting the “climate crisis.”
Petro spent much of the week in Washington, DC, for engagements with the Organization of American States (OAS) and other bodies in addition to meeting with Biden. During his address to the OAS, Petro openly boasted of his former membership in the Marxist Colombian militia M-19, stating that Latin Americans – “and I, personally” – responded to military junta governments in the region in the 1970s with “armed insurgency, with revolutionary wars, with revolutions.” M-19 is named after an election in Colombia on April 19, 1970, that the radical left deemed fraudulent. Petro addressed the OAS on that date, which is also his own birthday.
“Well,…