-OpEd-
BOGOTÁ — I don’t know about you, but as a Colombian, I don’t plan to continue buying and consuming products that come from countries that — like the United States — have a government hostile to Colombia, Latin America and the Third World.
That monster Donald Trump is concocting and brazenly resorting to all kinds of aggression, including tariffs on our products, throwing our compatriots out and treating them like criminals in the process, refusing residency permits and naturalization to many foreigners who had already been granted them, and so on. It’s all threats, threats, threats.
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The Donald is also treating the rest of the world badly: raising tariffs, withdrawing from the WHO and the Paris Climate Agreement, tightening the refugee admission program, paralyzing foreign aid, dismantling USAID, withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council, sanctioning the International Criminal Court, etc., etc., threats and threats.
More threats
And the U.S. president is also threatening his fellow citizens, treating them like bandits: persecuting transgender athletes, reinstating the Global Gag Rule, applying the death penalty more severely, in opposition to the concept of Amnesty International, reestablishing “biological truth” that only recognizes the male and female genders, etc., nothing but threats.
There is little we ordinary Colombian citizens can do to stop this monster.
Trump caps off all his attacks against the world by declaring himself the owner of the planet. That the Panama Canal is his, that the little island of Greenland belongs to him, that now he is going to keep Ukraine’s rare minerals… And why? Because he says so, because he feels like it, because he doesn’t have to give explanations. And that’s it.
Boycott as resistance
There is little we ordinary Colombian citizens can do to stop this monster from hell, except for the firm decision not to buy gringo products. Coca Cola and Fanta, McDonald’s, KFC, Oreos, M&M’s, Hershey, Dunkin’ Donuts, Nike, Apple, Polo Ralph Lauren, Levi’s, Calvin Klein, Guess, Starbucks coffee and, in short, so many products that have invaded us from Gringolandia and that we can replace with national products, from Colombian brands.
We’ve got to start somewhere.
Don’t let them tell us that these gringo companies based in Colombia employ many people. Or that their products are better than ours. They are gringo, and that should be enough for us to reject them.
We’ve got to start somewhere, the minimum dignity should move us… to buy Colombian!
