From the restoration of bilateral ties in 2022 to the U.S. operation that captured Maduro on January 3, 2026, this report examines Colombia's posture toward Venezuela. Its central episode is the July 28, 2024 election and the diplomatic sequence that followed: the presidential silence, the OAS abstention, and the months of mediation that came after.
The decision points where Bogota had discretion, from the July 28 election to the August communiques.
The language of mediation and dialogue accompanied conduct that lowered the international cost of the fraud, the pattern this report calls whitewashing.
Colombia's posture rested on three interests with Venezuela. Paz Total was the most consequential.
On the Miranda Center's test, the Petro government's conduct after July 28 lowered the international cost of the fraud at the main points where Bogota had discretion: the silence, the OAS abstention, the August communiques, and the September address to the UN. The finding concerns the effect of these decisions and does not depend on proving the existence of a deliberate plan.
The record points to a disposition more than a strategy. A government with four foreign ministers in less than three years was poorly positioned to sustain a coherent diplomatic strategy, yet its choices ran the same way wherever it had discretion. Because the posture depended largely on presidential choices, it may prove reversible.
In March 2026, Colombia's Attorney General's Office identified the Segunda Marquetalia, a dissident armed group sheltered in Venezuela, as the alleged mastermind behind the assassination of Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay.
Download the documentary record and analysis of Colombia's diplomacy toward Venezuela under Gustavo Petro, from the 2022 restoration of ties to Maduro's capture.
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