Andean Group - March 2025

General Pedro Sánchez was sworn in as Colombia’s new defence minister on 19 February, replacing Iván Velásquez (2022-2025) as President Gustavo Petro bucked a longstanding norm that has seen the defence ministry under civilian control for most of the last four decades. A backlash to Sánchez’s appointment may have contributed to his announcement the following day that he was retiring from active military service. He faces a daunting set of challenges, as we explore in the first piece of this March 2025 edition of the Latin American Regional Report: Andean Group. We follow this with a second article on Colombia examining the difficulties faced by state oil company Ecopetrol, which has taken an economic hit from Petro’s demands for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels.

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