A dead fisherman, a raging president, and a continent watching as the old order of the West begins to crumble. In the Caribbean, where America has projected its power for decades, a single strike has been enough to drive the relationship between Washington and Bogotá to the freezing point. Gustavo Petro, the Colombian president, accuses the United States of having killed a civilian in Colombian waters. The man, Alejandro Carranza, was said to have been a fisherman whose boat drifted after an engine failure when a US military aircraft fired a missile. Washington calls the target a “narcotics vessel.” Proof? None, except for declassified video fragments released afterward. Petro calls it murder. Donald Trump calls him an “illegal drug dealer” - and stops all aid payments to Colombia. Our research found that 52-year-old Alejandro Carranza came from the northern Colombian coastal region of Atlántico and made his living from fishing, even though his biography was more complex than President Gustavo Petro portrayed in his first statements.
According to our research, Carranza had been listed in several judicial proceedings, including one for “Delitos de peligro común,” that is, common danger offenses, which can theoretically range from illegal fuel transport to violations of safety regulations. However, no final conviction had been recorded. Friends described him as a casual fisherman who often worked for other boat owners. On September 15, 2025, his boat was hit by a US missile in the Caribbean - according to Washington, it was a drug vessel, according to Bogotá, a disabled fishing boat with a distress signal. The United States has so far provided no evidence. Legally, the strike operates in a prohibited zone: there was neither a UN resolution nor an explicit mandate from the US Congress that would legitimize such military operations against alleged smugglers in foreign territorial waters. Under international law, such an attack would be unlawful without an immediate threat or the consent of the affected state. The Carranza case thus stands as an example of the erosion of legal boundaries in the name of drug enforcement - and of the silence of the institutions that should be enforcing them.
An entry in the Colombian judicial register TYBA confirms that Alejandro Andrés Carranza Medina was listed in several proceedings in the city of Santa Marta, including one for “common danger offenses” that can cause harm to the public. Two other files concern civil and enforcement matters. The documents show no final verdict. In Colombia, such proceedings can remain open for years and also cover minor violations, such as safety breaches or the transport of unauthorized materials - categories that often affect people working in coastal fishing or small-scale trade.
What seems like a grotesque escalation of personal vanity is in fact a geopolitical rupture. For the first time in decades, American military power is visibly being directed against allies. The operation ordered by Trump in the Caribbean - officially an “anti-drug offensive,” in reality a covert campaign against Venezuela - has already killed more than 30 people. The boats that are hit are small, unregistered, in most cases without clear origin. Their destruction is uploaded in 20-second clips on government platforms, accompanied by words like “Fentanyl” and “Narco-terrorists.” But none of these cases has yet been reviewed by a court. Legal experts speak of extralegal killings. The United Nations calls them “extrajudicial executions.”
Petro has said publicly what many governments only dare to think. He accuses Washington of having violated his country’s sovereignty and calls on the attorney general’s office to sue the United States in both international and American courts. “This is Bolívar’s homeland,” he wrote. “And they are killing his children with bombs,” a deliberate historical statement. In Latin America, Bolívar stands for self-determination and the belief that no foreign nation has the right to dictate the fate of the continent. With this phrase, Petro linked the US attack to a long chain of interventions that have shaped Latin America since the 19th century - from military incursions to covert operations to economic coercion. He spoke as the president of a country that was once Washington’s most loyal ally and now must watch as its citizens die by American missiles - without evidence, without legal basis, without a congressional mandate. In Petro’s words, the death of the fisherman became a symbol - of the return of colonial patterns under a new name and of the dignity of a state that refuses to bow its head.
His Foreign Ministry called it a “direct threat to national sovereignty” and warned of an illegal intervention. Trump’s response followed within seconds: the Republican called Petro “insane,” “populist,” and “incompetent,” announced that he would cut all aid funds, and promised new tariffs on Colombian exports. “Colombia is a drug factory,” he declared to reporters aboard Air Force One. “Your president is a lunatic, and we will shut him down soon - not nicely.”
Until recently, Colombia was considered one of the closest partners of the United States. Since the days of “Plan Colombia” - that billion-dollar anti-drug initiative of the early 2000s - hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed each year from Washington. But under Trump, it has turned into a system of punishment and reward. When Petro in January blocked US flights deporting migrants, Trump already threatened “tariffs of staggering height.” In September, the State Department revoked Petro’s US visa after he told American soldiers at a pro-Palestinian rally in New York to “disobey Trump’s unlawful orders.” The rupture was foreseeable, but the speed of it surprises even veteran observers of Latin American politics.
On October 17, the Department of Defense, acting on the orders of President Trump, carried out a lethal kinetic strike against a vessel linked to the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), a group classified as a terrorist organization, operating within the area of responsibility of US Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM). According to intelligence reports, the ship was involved in the smuggling of illegal narcotics, was traveling on a known drug route, and carried significant quantities of drugs. On board were three male narco-terrorists who were killed in the attack. The operation took place in international waters, and no US forces were injured.
These cartels are the Al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere - they use violence, murder, and terror to impose their will, threaten our national security, and poison our people. The US military will treat these organizations as the terrorists they are - they will be hunted down and killed, just like Al Qaeda.
The Pentagon justifies the strikes as part of an “armed conflict against cartels.” War Minister Pete Hegseth declared over the weekend that another boat, allegedly operating for the Colombian guerrilla ELN, had been destroyed on Friday. Again without evidence, again with a dramatic video, again a killing. Trump himself posted a clip on Truth Social: a submarine in the Caribbean, seconds later an explosion. “Loaded with fentanyl,” he wrote. That Washington speaks of “fentanyl shipments” sounds like proof that disproves itself. Colombia does not produce fentanyl, has no laboratories for it, and plays no role in the global trade of synthetic opioids. The country exports cocaine, not chemistry. The claim reveals less about the boats than about the politics behind them - a rhetoric that moves America’s domestic war on drugs outward to justify it where no one asks questions. Two men survived - one Colombian, one Ecuadorian. Both were initially treated aboard a US warship, then handed over to their home countries. The Colombian, Jeison Obando Pérez, lies with brain trauma in a hospital in Cali and will be indicted as soon as he can speak. That was “part of the cooperation with the United States,” explained Interior Minister Armando Benedetti.
That Colombia is now indicting the survivors of the US strikes exposes the political dilemma in which Bogotá finds itself. Petro cannot condone the attack without undermining his own accusation of violated sovereignty - and he cannot leave it unpunished without exposing himself in Washington to suspicions of collusion with the cartels. The government tries to do both at once: it rejects any cooperation with the Pentagon and yet prosecutes those who were hit by American missiles. It wants to project strength at home and damage control abroad. It is a balancing act that is legally dubious and morally untenable - for anyone who denounces an illegal killing cannot at the same time put its victims on trial, where proof of drug smuggling is missing, especially of substances that are not produced in Colombia.
The numbers are grim. Seven US attacks since early September, at least 32 dead. Among them mostly uninvolved civilians, innocent people. Our investigations are ongoing. There is no independent inquiry, and the Trump administration relies on a legal opinion claiming that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with the drug cartels. That, it argues, permits lethal force beyond national borders. In a letter to Congress, Trump stated that smugglers are “unlawful combatants.” The legal foundation is more than fragile; many experts in international law consider it unsustainable. But as long as no one dares to challenge it, it remains in force.
See also our article: “Deaths That Aren’t Worth Headlines - How Trump’s Caribbean War Targets Innocent Fishermen” at the link: https://kaizen-blog.org/en/tote-die-keine-schlagzeilen-wert-sind-wie-trumps-karibikkrieg-unschuldige-fischer-trifft/
For Colombia, the price could be immense. Already, American support has been drastically reduced: from over 700 million dollars in 2023 to an estimated 230 million in this fiscal year. With Trump’s latest order, a complete halt now looms. That would affect not only military and police programs but also civilian projects securing peace with former FARC rebels. Elizabeth Dickinson of the International Crisis Group warned that the United States is “on the verge of alienating its most important partner in Latin America - at the most delicate moment of the Venezuelan crisis.” The loss of American support, she said, could have “catastrophic effects” on regional stability.
At the same time, hypocrisy is exploding. The United States, which for decades has declared Latin America the front line of its “war on drugs,” remains itself the world’s largest consumer market for cocaine. Colombia is still the main producer, but demand comes from New York, Miami, Los Angeles. Petro, who since taking office has positioned himself as a reformer and opponent of the cocaine economy, speaks of a “new approach that seeks peace, not war.” His opponents in Bogotá call that weakness. Trump calls it “collaboration with criminals.” That Petro’s government nonetheless regularly destroys laboratories and seizes tons of drugs does not fit the American rhetoric, which requires simple enemies.
While Trump in Florida feeds his supporters with toughness against “narco states,” Latin America’s fear of a militarization without borders is growing. The B-52 bombers circling off Venezuela’s coast recall times when Washington dictated Latin American policy. Today it does so with missiles, drones, and sanctions. That Petro does not want to see Maduro fall is less ideology than realism: Colombia has already taken in over two million Venezuelan refugees; a war in Caracas would destabilize the country. But Trump, surrounded by advisers speaking of a “new Panama moment,” wants results.
In the anger of the two presidents lies more than personal vanity - it is the collision of two worldviews. On one side, a nationalist who confuses power with punitive expeditions and replaces law with strength. On the other, a leftist who invokes sovereignty while his country remains economically and militarily dependent on the North. Between them lies a sea in which the dead drift, and no one knows who they were.
And somewhere in between, on the night of September 15, sat a man on a damaged boat that carried no weapon and followed no command. His name was Alejandro Carranza, 52 years old, father of three children, a fisherman since his youth. The missile that struck him was American. It came from a war no one declared and from a policy that no longer distinguishes between enemy, suspicion, and coincidence. That Trump wants to erase him from the headlines says everything about the time we live in - an age in which truth is only what survives in one’s own feed.
Investigative journalism requires courage, conviction – and your support.
Please also strengthen our journalistic fight against right-wing populism and human rights violations. We do not want to finance ourselves through a paywall so that everyone can read our research – regardless of income or origin. Thank you very much!
English 
German 
