Now entering his third year in office, Colombia’s first left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, recently called the world’s attention to the country in the face of what he described as “the beginning of the coup” against his administration. While Petro has successfully implemented pension reform, a $4 billion tax reform, a novel anti-drug enforcement strategy, and an unprecedented shift in Colombia’s foreign policy, the Left’s effort to change Colombia has been threatened by a constant barrage of legal challenges from right-wing forces and elites.

Daniel García-Peña, Petro’s newly appointed ambassador to the United States — a historian, an award-winning journalist, the high commissioner for peace under president Ernesto Samper, and an adviser to the now-defunct M-19 Democratic Alliance — addresses these challenges in this interview for Jacobin. How will Colombia’s first leftist government relate to the United States, which has long counted on Colombia’s staunchly conservative leadership to safeguard its imperial interests?

Speaking with photographer Jesse Gwilliam and independent researcher Luca DeCola, Ambassador García-Peña discussed the issue of lawfare against Petro’s administration, the internal tensions and challenges facing Colombia’s left, the prospects for peace amid internal armed conflict, and the nation’s severing of diplomatic ties with Israel.