Bilateral relations between Colombia and Venezuela
Bilateral relations between Colombia and Venezuela are getting a new lease of life after years of ups and downs in their negotiations and frequent bouts of discord.
Colombia and Venezuela have been great allies due to their proximity and easy connection, but have had many border problems that have triggered serious diplomatic conflicts and have had a negative impact on the economy.
Venezuela and Colombia have been important trading partners with each other for many years sharing a 2.219 kilometer border and maintaining an important commercial and bilateral relationship, as shown in the following graph:
Colombian Exports to Venezuela (1990-2020)
Source: Comtrade
After the dissolution of “Gran Colombia” in 1831, these two neighbours have held multiple negotiations in order to balance and agree on what could be their most important interests and priorities: trade, investment, land boundaries, security, human rights, commerce, among others.
Thus, in 1833 the first treaty on trade, limits, navigation and cooperation was agreed upon. The Pombo-Michelena treaty, allowed both countries to grant each other mutual economic advantages for their productions through the adoption of the Most Favored Nation clause and the first steps towards the creation of a free trade zone.
Subsequently, in 1968-1969, both countries signed the Cartagena Agreement or Andean Pact, which promoted trade and regional economic cooperation ("Andean Community of Nations - CAN ''), being one of the major advances in the economy of these countries. It was the main rule governing trade and investment between Colombia and Venezuela.
This instrument boosted international trade between the two countries, since 22% of Venezuela's exports to Colombia and 6.3% of Colombia's exports to Venezuela were due to trade developed within the framework of the Andean complementation agreement.
However, over the years the relationship has been fragmented on many occasions and has been framed by key moments, most of them due to conflicts derived from terrorism and policies influenced by the U.S. government. For instance, the presence of members of terrorist groups (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) in Venezuela, turning this country into a permissive environment for those terrorist groups in contrast to US policies to eliminate terrorism, the armed conflict and drug trafficking (main aspects of US foreign policy in Colombia.
All this socio-economic context has been under the head of Hugo Chavez, who led Venezuela from 1999 to 2013. This period was characterized by high military tension due to his ideas of 21st century socialism confronted with the ideas of neoliberalism proposed and imposed by the Washington Consensus.
In addition to the above, in 2005 Venezuela ordered the suspension of trade relations with Colombia arguing the accusations presented by Colombia before the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) regarding the presence of members of the FARC and the ELN in Venezuelan territory.
The rupture of diplomatic relations between these countries led to the suspension of commercial relations, the restriction and suspension of mobility and the restrictions on imports from Colombia to Venezuela. In fact, the foreign policy of both countries went completely downhill.
In 2006, tension began to increase between the two countries and the economic relationship began to deteriorate further after the U.S. government became more involved in the Colombian government's decisions, which deeply displeased the Venezuelan government. On one hand, Colombia wanted to expand its relationship with the United States by proposing free trade agreements and on the other, in retaliation for this and in the same year, Venezuela's government unexpectedly announced its withdrawal of CAN because of the possible damages that would be caused by the Free Trade Agreements (FTA) signed by Colombia and the United States of America. This was a severe blow to the countries' economies.
Discrepancies between the last presidential mandates, Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010) in Colombia and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, increased tensions in both countries and have prevented stable development of trade and investment between them. Some of these disagreements are related to terrorism, smuggling, violation of humanitarian rights and financial crimes.
Moreover, economy has not always been the main priority for these countries. Both focused on military spending; one more on the internal armed conflict generated by terrorist groups and drug trafficking in the framework of Plan Colombia with its major partner the U.S and the second more on strengthening militarily against the U.S by applying alliance strategies with other countries such as Russia and China. The border security issue had become the axis of the relationship.
As a result of the above, in 2010 President Juan Manuel Santos agreed to relaunch the bilateral relationship and sought to increase trade and economic relations between the two countries, taking into account the favorable environment of Venezuela's entry into MERCOSUR as a member in 2006 and Colombia's entry as an associate country in 2004.
It seemed to be a reboot. However, in 2013, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro came to power maintaining the military tension and with an economic policy more socialist adopting measures with a strong reluctance to private sector participation. For instance, there was no development of domestic production and restrictions on import continued, creating a lack of imported inputs, raw materials and capital goods. In addition, it increased spending, foreign debt and came into conflict with several countries due to his own ideas of governance such as Argentina, Peru, Chile and Uruguay, among others. This generated a return to the diplomatic crisis, reaching high inflation figures.
Similarly, under Ivan Duque´s term in Colombia, the relationship did not go well, as he led a campaign against Venezuela, arguing that “the dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro was in collusion with drug trafficking and terrorism”.
On February 23, 2019, Venezuela decided to close the borders between both countries, halting all types of exchanges and hindering the mobility of citizens as a response to Iván Duque´s recognition of opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president of Venezuela. This led to the rupture of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
All these measures greatly affected trade, causing a shortage in Venezuela of products that were generally purchased in Colombia such as medicines, food and basic production at low transportation costs. In fact, about 60% of Venezuela’s food is imported, which means that it’s a country highly dependent on its imports. These have been the industries most affected:
Source: Departamento Nacional de Estadística (DANE), Cámara Colombo Venezolana. Author’s own translation.
Source: Departamento Nacional de Estadística (DANE), Cámara Colombo Venezolana. Author’s own translation.
Since 2022 Colombia has Gustavo Petro as president with a clearly different political ideology and one of his main objectives is to reestablish commercial, diplomatic and consular ties with Venezuela, as was noted with the reopening of the border between Colombia and Venezuela on September 26.
On November 1, 2023, in Caracas, Venezuela, Gustavo Petro and Nicolas Maduro had their first meeting to reestablish their broken relationship and to settle common interests for both countries for future dialogues. As a result of the first approaches, Nicolas maduro stated:
“We talked about security and proper functioning of the border, strengthening cooperation, multilateral issues, and Venezuela’s re-entry into the CAN, which would be good news for South America and for CAN”.
On his part, Gustavo Petro stated:
“It is anti-natural in human terms, and anti-historical for Colombia and Venezuela to separate….It should not happen because we are the same people; blood ties bind us; common genes unite us; we are the same, we are mixed by history through common roots and blood. Separating Colombia and Venezuela is a suicidal venture. Whatever the policies adopted in one or the other nation, the Friendship of our peoples must be maintained”.
In addition, the Venezuelan and Colombian parliaments signed a joint declaration in which they agreed to relaunch bilateral relations in order to move towards full integration.
In economic matters, they agreed to work on an active exchange in the agro-industrial, agricultural, livestock, agricultural and petrochemical sectors. Along the same lines, this new resurgence will be accompanied by new agreements and measures in investment promotion and protection, market access, industrial services and infrastructure development.
For instance, the agreement signed by the National Association of Supermarkets and Self-Service Stores of Venezuela (ANSA) and the National Federation of Colombian Merchants (Fenalco) to promote trade between the two countries.
It seems to be a restart and hopefully a longer one, but it will take time to rebuild trust and defuse bilateral tensions. It’s true that the reconstruction of the relationship is indispensable to trade and ¨the only way to resolve this problem is by both governments working together. There is simply no other path.’
One cannot lose sight of the fact that there are still many burning issues to discuss, prickly issues to be concerned about, ideological discrepancies (despite the fact that both presidents are left-leaning) and memories of past events echo in the heads not only of them, but also of citizens and the international community. Simultaneous negotiations are also taking place, such as the one with the ELN, in which Venezuela plays an important role since many of its members reside in this country.
Thus, the tension between the two countries will continue throughout the negotiations, but there is an enormous interest in boosting trade ties to maintain the dialogue. Indeed, it is to be expected that the conduct of the negotiations will be very cautious, and the negotiators will have to balance their imperative interests. In my view, each issue should be handled independently, i.e. trade policy should be followed and once the border is open, trade continuity should be ensured, despite the fact that there are still other issues under discussion on which no agreement has been reached and on which work is still ongoing.
Restoring diplomatic ties is therefore the best start to negotiations and could be an opportunity to open the door to dialogue on other sensible issues. There is a deep mistrust to build and there must be a strong will to cooperate on the part of both governments, encouraging other chips in play to do the same.
*Image used from BBC article.