'Do not wake the jaguar' Bogotá hits back against US threat

Colombia’s president has warned Donald Trump that he risked “waking the jaguar” after the US leader suggested that any country he believed was making illegal drugs destined for the US was liable to a military attack.

- Tiago Roger

During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, the US president said that military strikes on land targets inside Venezuela would “start very soon”. Trump also warned that any country producing narcotics was a potential target, singling out Colombia, which has long been a close ally in Washington’s “war on drugs”.

Shortly afterwards, Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, hit back in a social media post, saying: “To threaten our sovereignty is to declare war; do not damage two centuries of diplomatic relations.”

Petro also invited Trump to visit Colombia - the world’s largest producer of cocaine - to see his government's efforts to destroy drug-producing labs. “Come with me, and I’ll show you how they are destroyed, one lab every 40 minutes,” he wrote.

Since August, the Trump administration has escalated tensions in Latin America to levels unseen since