Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.
Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude!!

One of the aspects of Trump’s deportation of illegal aliens that I had long thought would be a problem would be if their native countries refused to accept them back in. Trump answered that question decisively a few days ago:

President Gustavo Petro posted on X that he was denying the entry  of two American planes carrying Colombian migrants into their territory, until a protocol was established for the “dignified treatment” of the people before they were received. But then, Trump responded that there would be severe retaliatory moves if Colombia continued with this stance including 25 percent tariffs, visa sanctions, and financial sanctions. “This is a clear message we are sending that countries have an obligation to accept repatriation flights,” a senior administration official said. 

Within one hour Petro cried “No Mas”:

Colombian President Gustavo Petro is offering his presidential plane to help repatriate deportees from the US who were set to arrive in the country Sunday morning, the presidency said.

The commentator Cynical Publius summed up the comparison between what Trump did and the traditional approach (the latter captured in many episodes of Yes Minister)

The Traditional Approach:

  1. Colombia announces it will not take our repatriation flights.
  2. On Monday, the State Department convenes an interagency task force with DoD, NSC, DEA, INS, ICE, Commerce, Treasury and Homeland Security.
  3. The task force meets for four days and develops a position paper.
  4. The position paper is rejected by the Secretary of State, who is unhappy that insufficient equity considerations are built into the process.
  5. The task force reconvenes a week later to redevelop three new, equity-centric courses of action and create a new position paper. 
  6. The process is delayed a week because Washington DC gets three inches of snow.
  7. SecState approves the new position paper for interagency circulation, and considerable input is received from the heads of other departments so the task force must reconvene.
  8. The original three proposed responsive courses of action are scrapped in favor of a new, fourth course of action that achieves the worst aspects of the three prior courses of action but satisfies the interagency.
  9. Someone in State who disagrees leaks to the Washington Post, who writes a story about how ineffective the Presidential administration is.
  10. The White House Chief of Staff sets up a session three days later to brief the President, who approves the new fourth course of action.
  11. Over a month after the issue is first raised, the State Department Public Affairs Officer holds a press conference announcing that Colombia has agreed to try to send fewer criminals into the US and everyone declares victory.

The Trump Approach:

  1. Colombia announces it will not take our repatriation flights.
  2. After a par-5 third hole where he goes one under par, Trump uses his iPhone to post on social media as to how the USA will destroy Colombia’s economy if they do not do what the USA demands.
  3. By the time Trump gets to the par-4 sixth hole, Colombia’s President has agreed to repatriate all the illegal Colombians in his own plane, which he will pay for.
  4. Trump finishes three under par and goes to the clubhouse for a Diet Coke where he posts a gangsta AI image of himself and the new FAFO Doctrine.
  5. Winning.

That story is correct. Trump literally handled this while playing a round of golf – and here’s the “gangsta” image.

Incredibly Petro hadn’t quite got the message yet. He continued to niggle away via other channels about future deportations. As a result protests have sprung up in his country as the people realised the stupid economic war he may have gotten them into. The U.S. imports 17% of its coffee from Colombia. But 40% of all of Colombia’s exports go to the U.S. and the top export is not coffee or flowers, but oil and almost all of it goes to the USA. A 50% tariff would be catastrophic. All over a bunch of violent criminals.

Unfortunately this caused President Petro to become completely unglued and write a 600 word rant on X/Twitter. That link is the translation, or you can go to the bottom of this article 1 and read it for yourself.

It’s hard to believe that this was written by the actual President of a nation: it’s what I’d expect from the ranting denizens of The Standard or The Daily Blog. It’s fucking unhinged. Possibly the craziest thing ever written by any nation’s leader. I liked this brief summary of just part of it:

… yelling about going to black neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., and watching blacks fighting Mexicans, liking ’60s flower child icons Walt Whitman, Paul Simon and Noam Chomsky, his devotion to executed killers Sacco and Vanzetti, icons of communists, “murdered by fascists,” whimperings about Trump being racist against him, despite his white as snow skin with bright blue eyes, calls to drink whisky with Trump despite his gastritis, claims that Trump is trying to enact a coup to him comparable to what happened to Chilean Marxist dictator Salvador Allende, meaning, Trump is Pinochet, who got blamed for the reaction, then rants about resisting torture, resisting Trump, then gibberish about yellow butterflies and some colonel he identifies with, then putrid poetry of ’60s leftists about peoples of the winds, the mountains, the sea, blah blah, blah, 

Hence why I quoted the final lines of Márquez’s famous book, which I read long ago after being given it as a gift. It employed magical realism to tell its story set in Colombia. Perhaps Petro was inspired by it, or perhaps Márquez had simply observed many such Latin American politicians living in a city of mirrors.

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  1. Trump, I don’t really like travelling to the US, it’s a bit boring, but I confess that there are some commendable things. I like going to the black neighborhoods of Washington, where I saw an entire fight in the US capital between blacks and Latinos with barricades, which seemed like nonsense to me, because they should join together.

    I confess that I like Walt Whitman and Paul Simon and Noam Chomsky and Miller. I confess that Sacco and Vanzetti, who have my blood, are memorable in the history of the USA and I follow them. They were murdered by labor leaders with the electric chair, the fascists who are within the USA as well as within my country.

    I don’t like your oil, Trump, you’re going to wipe out the human species because of greed. Maybe one day, over a glass of whiskey, which I accept, despite my gastritis, we can talk frankly about this, but it’s difficult because you consider me an inferior race and I’m not, nor is any Colombian.

    So if you know someone who is stubborn, that’s me, period. You can try to carry out a coup with your economic strength and your arrogance, like they did with Allende. But I will die in my law, I resisted torture and I resist you. I don’t want slavers next to Colombia, we already had many and we freed ourselves. What I want next to Colombia are lovers of freedom. If you can’t accompany me, I’ll go elsewhere. Colombia is the heart of the world and you didn’t understand that, this is the land of the yellow butterflies, of the beauty of Remedios, but also of the colonels Aureliano Buendía, of which I am one, perhaps the last.

    You will kill me, but I will survive in my people, which is before yours, in the Americas. We are peoples of the winds, the mountains, the Caribbean Sea and of freedom.

    You don’t like our freedom, okay. I don’t shake hands with white slavers. I shake hands with the white libertarian heirs of Lincoln and the black and white farm boys of the USA, at whose graves I cried and prayed on a battlefield, which I reached after walking the mountains of Italian Tuscany and after being saved from Covid.

    They are the United States and before them I kneel, before no one else.

    Overthrow me, President, and the Americas and humanity will respond.

    Colombia now stops looking north, looks at the world, our blood comes from the blood of the Caliphate of Cordoba, the civilization of that time, of the Roman Latins of the Mediterranean, the civilization of that time, who founded the republic, democracy in Athens; our blood has the black resistance fighters turned into slaves by you. In Colombia is the first free territory of America, before Washington, of all America, there I take refuge in its African songs.

    My land is made up of goldsmiths who worked in the time of the Egyptian pharaohs and of the first artists in the world in Chiribiquete.

    You will never rule us. The warrior who rode our lands, shouting freedom, who is called Bolívar, opposes us.

    Our people are somewhat fearful, somewhat timid, they are naive and kind, loving, but they will know how to win the Panama Canal, which you took from us with violence. Two hundred heroes from all of Latin America lie in Bocas del Toro, today’s Panama, formerly Colombia, which you murdered.

    I raise a flag and as Gaitán said, even if it remains alone, it will continue to be raised with the Latin American dignity that is the dignity of America, which your great-grandfather did not know, and mine did, Mr. President, an immigrant in the USA.

    Your blockade does not scare me, because Colombia, besides being the country of beauty, is the heart of the world.

    I know that you love beauty as I do, do not disrespect it and you will give it your sweetness.

    FROM TODAY ON, COLOMBIA IS OPEN TO THE ENTIRE WORLD, WITH OPEN ARMS, WE ARE BUILDERS OF FREEDOM, LIFE AND HUMANITY.

    I am informed that you impose a 50% tariff on the fruits of our human labor to enter the United States, and I do the same.
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