The governments of Colombia and Venezuela announced the names of the ambassadors who will be in charge of restoring ruptured diplomatic ties between the two neighbors.
The government of President Gustavo Petro said that former Senator Armando Benedetti will be sent to Colombia’s embassy in Caracas that was abandoned in 2019.
Venezuela’s authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro said that former Foreign Tourism Minister Felix Plasencia would go to the Venezuelan embassy in Bogota.
First step to normalize relations
The appointment of the ambassadors is the first step of a bilateral effort to mend ties that were cut in 2019 after former President Ivan Duque and the US government supported a failed attempt to oust Maduro.
In a post on social media platform Twitter, Benedetti said that he would seek to reestablish trade relations between the two neighbors in order to benefit communities that live in the border region.
I will surprise him when we reach 10 billion dollars in trade, when we benefit the more than 8 million Colombians who live on the border. No imaginary line will ever again separate us as brothers.
Colombia’s ambassador to Caracas Armando Benedetti
The rupture of ties between the two neighbors plunged Colombia’s border region in an economic crisis and surged violence along the two countries’ 2,200-kilometer border.
Colombia’s failing state | Part 4: The border with Venezuela
Venezuela to have two representatives in Colombia
Maduro said that “the Foreign Ministry of Venezuela has already asked the consent of Colombia’s Foreign Ministry,” adding that his representative “will soon be in Bogota.”
The representative of Venezuela’s opposition in Colombia, Eduardo Battistini, said that he will “continue in Colombia supporting Venezuelans.”
The fact that Venezuela will have two representatives in Colombia is due to the fact that the neighboring country’s opposition doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of Maduro and claims that their leader, lawmaker Juan Guaido, is their president.
The Maduro regime and his opponents have been engaged in negotiations in an attempt to resolve the political crisis in Venezuela.
Colombia split over renewing ties with Venezuela
The spill-over of Venezuela’s crisis
On top of the political crisis, an economic crisis has severely deteriorated the humanitarian situation in Venezuela after Venezuela’s president took office in 2013.
This humanitarian crisis triggered the unprecedented exodus of an estimated 6 million Venezuelan citizens of which almost 2.5 million are believed to have sought refuge in Colombia, according to migration authorities.
Maduro said earlier this week that he had also given the order to reestablish military ties with Colombia, but this has been ignored by Petro, who has been a fierce critic of his Venezuelan counterpart’s increasingly authoritarian rule.
