President Gustavo Petro swore in one of his closest confidants, Laura Sarabia, as Colombia’s new Foreign Minister.
Sarabia, 30, replaced Luis Gilberto Murillo a few days before his planned resignation on February 1.
At her swearing-in ceremony, Petro urged the new foreign minister to prioritize migrant rights and the global climate crisis.
Murillo spent his last days in office trying to overcome a diplomatic crisis with far-right US President Donald Trump that was triggered by an apparent surge in violations of the human rights of Colombian migrants in the United States.
From the episode with Trump and taking away the nebulae of the sepoys of the traditional press who believe they are the bulletin makers of foreign governments and not of Colombian society, taking away those nebulae, there are a series of choices to be learned from them and from us. From them I suppose that they do not have to handcuff people they want to take out of their own country. There will be a political discussion over there about, for example, repeating the same mistake of the Germans in 1943, because they used the trains and the railroad lines to take whole wagons full of socialist and communist Jews to the concentration camp and that use of money, resources, etc. made them lose the war with the Soviets.
President Gustavo Petro
Sarabia is expected to be in charge of diplomacy with the US and the rest of the world until the end of the term of the Petro administration in August 2026.
Government critics have expressed concern about the Foreign Minister’s lack of experience in foreign affair.
Sarabia’s positions in the Petro administration
- Cabinet Chief (Aug 2022 – Jun 2023)
- Director of the Social Prosperity Department (Sep 2023 – Feb 2024)
- Director of the Presidential Administration Department (Jun 2024 – Jan 2025)
- Foreign Minister