Gustavo Petro says US anti-drug policies caused Latin American 'genocide'

The anti-drug policies of the United States have caused a "genocide" of Latin Americans, Colombia's Gustavo Petro alleged Friday at a meeting of regional leaders on the Caribbean island of St Vincent and the Grenadines.

"We have lived through a genocide of a million Latin Americans in the last half-century," the Colombian president told the annual summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

He blamed the United States for basing its drug strategy on "repression" and not on "prevention and public health."

"The result could not be more dramatic, more failed," Petro, the first leftist president of Colombia – which is the world's largest cocaine producer and exporter – told the summit in Kingstown.

The meeting was also attended by other leftist leaders, such as Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro, as well as UN Secretary-General António Guterres. 

Countries governed by right-wing leaders sent lower-level emissaries, such as Ecuador, represented by an ambassador.

Guterres praised the region's peace efforts, amid tensions between Venezuela and Guyana over the sovereignty of the oil-rich Essequibo territory. 

But he warned about spiralling violence in Ecuador as it fights to rein in drug-traffickers.

And he reiterated calls for aid to Haiti, the most impoverished nation in the Americas, as it combats a surge in conflict from armed gangs, which now control large swathes of the country. 

– TIMES/AFP