Oct. 24 (UPI) — The Treasury Department announced sanctions against Colombian President Gustavo Petro Urrego over cocaine production and smuggling into the United States.
The sanctions include Petro’s wife, first lady Veronica del Socorro Alcocer Garcia, his son Nicolas Petro and “close associate” Armando Benedettie, the Treasury Department announced Friday in a news release.
“Since President Gustavo Petro came to power, cocaine production in Colombia has exploded to the highest rate in decades, flooding the United States and poisoning Americans,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.
“President Petro has allowed drug cartels to flourish and refused to stop this activity,” Bessent said.
“Today, President [Donald] Trump is taking strong action to protect our nation and make clear that we will not tolerate the trafficking of drugs into our nation.”
The sanctions are imposed in accordance with the president’s Executive Order 14059, which targets foreigners who are involved in the global trade of illicit drugs.
The sanctions freeze all property or interests in property owned by the Petro, his wife, son and associate that are located in the United States or territories controlled by the United States.
All such properties must be reported to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
The Treasury Department said Colombia is the world’s leading producer and exporter of cocaine that often is bought by Mexican drug cartels and smuggled into the United States.
Petro on Oct. 8 said an alleged drug-smuggling vessel that was sunk by the U.S. military in the Caribbean was manned by Colombian citizens.
He has recalled the Colombian ambassador to the United States after the U.S. military sank a vessel that was near Colombian waters and Trump halted U.S. financial support for Colombia.
Petro also met with U.S. diplomat John McNamara on Monday to ease tensions between Colombia and the Trump administration.
Petro is a former guerrilla member who became Colombia’s president in 2022 and “has provided narco-terrorist organizations with benefits under the auspices of his ‘total peace’ plan,” according to the Treasury Department.
Such policies have led to record cultivation of coca and production of cocaine, which the Treasury Department said prompted Trump to declare Colombia a “major drug-transit or major drug-producing country” that has failed to uphold its responsibility to control such activities.
The Treasury also said Petro has allied with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro‘s “narco-terrorist regime” and the Cartel de Los Soles.
The Colombian president’s activities create a significant risk of the international proliferation of illicit drugs, according to the federal agency.
Petro, however, did acknowledge that a disruption in the two countries’ military cooperation could have serious consequences.
Published On 23 Oct 202523 Oct 2025
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Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has indicated that a suspension of aid from the United States would mean little to his country, but that changes to military funding could have an effect.
“What happens if they take away aid? In my opinion, nothing,” Petro told journalists on Thursday, adding that aid funding often moved through US agencies and employed Americans.
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But a cut to military cooperation would matter, he added.
“Now, in military aid, we would have some problems,” Petro said, adding that the loss of US helicopters would have the gravest impact.
US President Donald Trump had threatened over the weekend to raise tariffs on Colombia and said on Wednesday that all funding to the country has been halted.
Colombia was once among the largest recipients of US aid in the Western Hemisphere, but the flow of money was suddenly curtailed this year by the shuttering of USAID, the government’s humanitarian assistance arm. Military cooperation has continued.
The Trump administration has already “decertified” Colombia’s efforts to fight drug trafficking, paving the way for potential further cuts, but some US military personnel remain in Colombia, and the two countries continue to share intelligence.
Petro has objected to the US military’s strikes against vessels in the Caribbean, which have killed dozens of people and inflamed tensions in the region. Many legal experts and human rights activists have also condemned the actions.
Trump has responded by calling Petro an “illegal drug leader” and a “bad guy” – language Petro’s government says is offensive.
Petro has recalled his government’s ambassador from Washington, DC, but he nevertheless met with the US’s charge d’affaires in Bogota late on Sunday.
Although Trump has not announced any additional tariffs on top of the 10-percent rate already assessed on Colombian goods, he said on Wednesday he may take serious action against the country.
Petro said Trump is unlikely to put tariffs on oil and coal exports, which represent 60 percent of Colombia’s exports to the US, while the effect of tariffs on other industries could be mitigated by seeking alternative markets.
An increase in tariffs would flip a long-established US policy stance that free trade can make legitimate exports more attractive than drug trafficking, and analysts say more duties could eventually bolster drug trafficking.
Although his government has struggled to take control of major hubs for rebel and criminal activity, Petro said it has made record seizures of 2,800 metric tonnes of cocaine in three years, partly through increased efforts at Pacific ports where container ships are used for smuggling.
He also repeated an accusation that Trump’s actions are intended to boost the far right in Colombia in next year’s legislative and presidential elections.
Tuesday night, Gustavo Dudamel was back at the Hollywood Bowl. This summer is the 20th anniversary of his U.S. debut — at 24 years old — conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and becoming irrepressibly besotted with the amphitheater.
He walked on stage, now the proud paterfamilias with greying hair and a broad welcoming smile on his face as he surveyed the nearly full house. The weather was fine. The orchestra, as so very few orchestras ever do, looked happy.
For Dudamel, his single homecoming week this Bowl season began Monday evening conducting his beloved Youth Orchestra Los Angeles as part of the annual YOLA National Festival, which brings kids from around the country to the Beckmen YOLA Center in Inglewood. But it is also a bittersweet week. Travel issues (no one will say exactly what, but we can easily guess) have meant the cancellation of his Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela‘s trip to the Bowl next week. Dudamel will also be forced to remain behind with them in Caracas.
After 20 years, Dudamel clearly knows what works at the Bowl, but he also likes to push the envelope as with Tuesday’s savvy blend of Duke Ellington and jazzy Ravel. The soloist was Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, whose recent recording of Ravel’s complete solo piano works along with his two concertos, has been one of the most popular releases celebrating the Ravel year (March 7 was the 150th anniversary of the French composer’s birth).
Ellington and Ravel were certainly aware of each other. When Ravel visited New York in 1928, he heard the 29-year-old Ellington’s band at the Cotton Club, although his attention on the trip was more drawn to Gershwin. Ellington knew and admired Ravel, and Billy Strayhorn, who was responsible for much of Ellington’s music, was strongly drawn to Ravel’s harmony and use of instrumental color.
On his return to Paris, Ravel wrote his two piano concertos, the first for the left hand alone, and jazz influences were strong. Cho played both concertos, which were framed by the symphonic tone poems “Harlem” and “Black, Brown and Beige, which Ellington called tone parallels.
There has been no shortage of Ravel concerto performance of late — or ever — but Ellington is another matter. Although the pianist, composer and band leader was very much on the radar of the classical world — “Harlem” was originally intended for Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony; Leopold Stokowski attended the Carnegie Hall premiere of “Black, Brown and Beige,” as did Eleanor Roosevelt, Marian Anderson and Frank Sinatra — Ellington never played the crossover game. The NBC “Harlem” never panned out and became a big-band score. Ever practical, Ellington, who composed mostly in wee hours after gigs, always wrote for the occasion and the players. He tended to leave orchestration to others, more concerned with highlighting the fabulous improvising soloists in his band.
The scores, moreover, were gatherings, developments and riffs on various existing songs. “Harlem” is an acoustical enrapturement of the legendary Harlem Renaissance and one of the great symphonic portraits of a place in the repertory. “Black, Brown and Beige” is an ambitious acoustical unfolding of the American Black narrative, from African work songs to spiritual exaltation with “Come Sunday” (sung by Mahalia Jackson at the premiere) to aspects of Black life, in war and peace, up to the Harlem Renaissance.
Both works are best known today, if nonetheless seldom heard, in the conventional but effective orchestrations by Maurice Peress and are what Dudamel relies on. The version of “Black, Brown and Beige” reduces it from 45 to 18 too-short minutes.
The primary reason for these scores’ neglect is that orchestras can’t swing. The exception is the L.A. Phil. With Dudamel’s surprising success of taking the L.A. Phil to Coachella, there now seems nothing it can’t do.
The time has come to commission more experimental and more timely arrangements. But even these Peress arrangements, blasted through the Bowl‘s sound system and with the orchestra bolstered by a jazz saxophone section, jazz drummer and other jazz-inclined players, caught the essence of one of America’s greatest composers.
Ravel fared less well. The left-hand concerto has dark mysteries hard to transmit over so many acres and video close-ups of two-armed pianists trying to keep the right hand out of the way can be disconcerting. This summer, in fact, unmusical jumpy video is at all times disconcerting.
Ravel’s jazzier, sunnier G-Major concerto is a winner everywhere. But for all Cho’s acclaim in Ravel, he played with sturdy authority. Four years ago, joining Dudamel at an L.A. Phil gala in Walt Disney Concert Hall, Cho brought refined freshness to Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto. In Ravel at the Bowl, amplification strongly accentuated his polished technique, gleaming tone and meticulous rhythms, leaving it up to Dudamel and a joyous, eager orchestra to exult in the Ravel that Ellington helped make swing.
When looking at a majestic residence like the 1908 Gamble House — a Craftsman crown jewel of Pasadena — its easy to romanticize the lives of its owners. Luxury and wealth radiate from its graceful, low-slung eaves, sloping lawns and wide porches. But the idea of class is baked into its architecture, with a series of rooms built to be occupied by the domestic servants who toiled day and night to keep the house running for its privileged inhabitants, the heirs to the Proctor & Gamble fortune.
Through Aug. 17, those rooms are open for tours with the addition of a compelling art installation by Karen Schwenkmeyer and Lisa Mann titled “Dirty Laundry,” which examines the heartache, disappointments and perseverance of domestic laborers in the early 20th century by printing their words on tea towels and sheets hung in the Gamble House’s drying yard, and stitching them into a pillowcase in one of the small staff bedrooms.
“What I mind is the awful loneliness,” reads the pillowcase on austere wooden twin bed. “Many times, many nights I went to bed and cried myself sick.”
A sculpture constructed of Ivory soap, mops and scrub brushes takes up residence in the staff bathroom. The soap, one of Procter & Gamble’s bestselling products, was marketed as 99.44% pure, and the sculpture is a meditation on “who is pure and who is not,” explained Mann during an opening reception for the installation, adding that she and Schwenkmeyer approached the lavatory as “a place of resistance and empowerment.”
The goal of the installation, say Schwenkmeyer and Mann, was to bring to light the “emotional and psychological toll of being on-call every day of the week.”
A tea towel blowing in the warm Southern California air puts it more plainly: “I hope someday will come when I don’t have to work so hard … I do hate to get up in the morning. I am so tired.”
Artists Karen Schwenkmeyer and Lisa Mann stand with their installation “Dirty Laundry” at the Gamble House in Pasadena.
(Paul Takizawa)
Domestic staff in many of the country’s most rarefied households was made up of immigrants who came to America looking for a better life only to find themselves stuck in the same classist , low-wage systems they had fled in the first place, the artists explan.
“Servants in the United States ‘were haunted by a confused and imperfect phantom of equality,’ which promised perfect parity at one moment but then suddenly shouted a reminder that some people are more equal than others,” reads a bedsheet quoting from a book about Americans and their servants by Daniel E. Sutherland, which greets visitors upon entrance to the yard.
Thinking of these words and imagining the lives of the many men, women and children who devoted their lives to caring for wealthy people is a potent way to walk through the beautiful rooms inside the Gamble House. We may not call domestic laborers servants anymore, but the way we choose to treat those who tend to our many needs — to see them and respect them, or not — speaks volumes of who we are as a society.
I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, rethinking all my assumptions about a bar of soap. Here’s this weeks art news.
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The Broadway cast of the musical comedy “Some Like it Hot” in 2022. The national tour is now playing at the Hollywood Pantages.
(Courtesy of Marc J. Franklin)
Some Like It Hot This musical adaptation of Billy Wilder’s 1959 film comedy about two musicians who go on the run disguised as women after witnessing a mob hit in prohibition-era Chicago brings a contemporary sensibility to the 1930s shenanigans. The Broadway production won four Tony Awards in 2023. Through Aug. 17. Hollywood Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. broadwayinhollywood.com
Keith Carradine and Shelly Duvall in Robert Altman’s “Nashville.”
(Paramount Pictures)
Robert Altman’s America: A Centennial Review UCLA Film and Television Archive celebrates the late filmmaker’s 100th birthday with a 13-film series that kicks off with 1976’s “Nashville,” which melds politics with country music and features a large ensemble including Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Ronee Blakley, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Shelley Duvall, Barbara Harris, Lily Tomlin and dozens more. 7:30 p.m. Friday; series continues through Sept. 26. Billy Wilder Theater, UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. cinema.ucla.edu
Musician Adrian Quesada performs a free concert, co-hosted by De Los, on Saturday.
(James Carbone/For De Los)
Adrian Quesada De Los, The Times’ platform for all things Latinidad, co-hosts a free concert by the Grammy-winning musician and Oscar-nominated songwriter. Best known for his work in the bands Grupo Fantasma and Black Pumas, Quesada’s latest album, “Boleros Psicodélicos II,” is “a 12-track sonic field trip through Quesada’s Latin American influences — and a testament to teamwork,” wrote Carlos De Loera in a recent De Los profile. 6 p.m. Saturday. Grand Performances, 350 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. grandperformances.org
The Actors’ Gang’s performance of “Roswell That Ends Well.”
(Bob Turton Photography)
Roswell That Ends Well The Actors’ Gang turns the Bard on his ear in this year’s Shakespeare in the Park production, an adaptation of “All’s Well That Ends Well” where outer space meets the Wild West in the form of a determined cowgirl with big dreams and a four-armed alien king. 11 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays, through Aug. 24. Admission is free, reservations highly suggested. Media Park, 9070 W. Venice Blvd., Culver City. theactorsgang.com
Chow Yun-Fat in John Woo’s “A Better Tomorrow.”
(Shout! Studios)
Hong Kong Cinema Classics The American Cinematheque and Beyond Fest, in partnership with Shout! Studios and GKIDS, present a retrospective of seminal films, many of which are rarely screened. Genre master John Woo will appear with his films “Hard Boiled” (7 p.m. Saturday), a triple feature of the “A Better Tomorrow” trilogy (11 a.m. Sunday) and “The Killer” (7 p.m. Sunday). The monthlong series also includes films by stalwart action directors Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam and Ching Siu-tung. 7 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m. Sunday; 7 p.m. Sunday. Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd. americancinematheque.com
Karl Benjamin, #13, 1970. Oil on canvas, 68” x 68”
(Gerard Vuilleumier)
Complications in Color A new exhibition marks the 100th birthday of Claremont artist Karl Benjamin (1925-2012), a painter and leader in the 1950s hard-edge abstraction painting movement. In his review of the 2007 survey of the painter’s work, Times art critic Christopher Knight wrote, “Benjamin emerges as a colorist of great wit and inventiveness.” The current exhibition also features the work of fellow abstractionists Florence Arnold, June Harwood, Rachel Lachowicz and Terry O’Shea. Noon-4 p.m. Thursdays and Saturdays; noon-7 p.m. Fridays; 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sundays, through Nov. 16. Claremont Lewis Museum of Art, 200 W. First St., Claremont. clmoa.org
Gustavo Dudamel is back at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday and Thursday.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Gustavo Dudamel returns The maestro is back at the Bowl next week and makes the most of it. On Tuesday, he conducts the L.A. Phil as Ravel meets Ellington with a little help from star Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho. Two nights later, Dudamel’s back leading the orchestra in works by Korngold (Featuring violinist Vilde Frang) and Mahler. Dudamel completes this brief concert run Aug. 8-9, conducting John Williams’ crowd-favorite “Jurassic Park” score over a live screening of the summer blockbuster. Ellington and Ravel. 8 p.m. Tuesday; Mahler and Korgold, 8 p.m. Thursday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com
Culture news
Wallis Annenberg, who died Monday at 86, photographed in 2022.
(Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)
Philanthropist Wallis Annenberg — whose name became synonymous with arts and culture in Los Angeles — died earlier this week of complications from lung cancer at the age of 86. The wealthy patron was memorialized in tributes for her commitment to making art accessible to people from all walks of life, as well as for her friendship and love of animals. Annenberg was the daughter of publishing magnate Walter Annenberg, who made his fortune, in part, by selling TV Guide, among other publications, to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. For the last 16 years of her life, Wallis served as chairwoman of the board, president and chief executive of her family’s Annenberg Foundation.
Only July 23, Congressman Bob Onder introduced the Make Entertainment Great Again Act, which proposed that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts be renamed the Donald J. Trump Center for Performing Arts. NPR reported that the bill is likely a long shot.
The SoCal Scene
Adam Lambert performs during a rehearsal of “Jesus Christ Superstar” on July 26 at the Hollywood United Methodist Church in Los Angeles.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
“Jesus Christ Superstar,” starring Cynthia Erivo as Jesus and Adam Lambert as Judas , opens tonight at the Hollywood Bowl for a sold-out, three-night run. I spent last Saturday at a rehearsal dishing with Josh Gad on the sidelines while watching Lambert strut his stuff and tearing up over Phillipa Soo’s performance of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.” Read my behind-the-scenes story of how the musical came together and why the casting is so important in this era of political turmoil and change. (Gad, who was to play King Herod, had to drop out of the show Wednesday, after contracting COVID.)
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The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a variety of special programs and events. In August, the museum is holding a Saturday afternoon film series titled, “Cinematic Touchstones 1975,” which features four movies that made a lasting impact on the culture 50 years ago. The stellar lineup consists of “Mahogany,” “Escape to Witch Mountain,” “Grey Gardens” and “Barry Lyndon.” Admission to the theater is free with general admission to the museum. For schedule and additional details, click here.
The Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center opened in May in the tiny Santa Barbara County town on 3.5 acres of land planted with native blooms, trees, grasses and shrubs. Times staff writer Jeanette Marantos paid a recent visit and reported back on the high-tech interactive displays that bring the past to life and highlight the continuing importance of the tribe and its lasting impact on the area.
The nonprofit organization Tierra Del Sol, which champions professional development through arts education for people with disabilities, will stage its inaugural fashion show in West Hollywood on Sept. 27. The show will showcase hand-crafted designs from eight developmentally disabled artists working out of the organization’s Sunland and Upland studios. After the runway show, the creations will remain at Tierra del Sol’s Gallery, located at 7414 Santa Monica Blvd., for a six-week exhibition, ending Nov. 1.
— Jessica Gelt
And last but not least
There is nothing as soul-soothing as a hot bowl of pho — and that’s pho sure! The Times Food section has created a list of 11 great spots to eat your fill.
The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s departing music director Gustavo Dudamel will return to the Hollywood Bowl next week.
Dudamel, the face of the classical music world in L.A. since his 2009 debut as music director, is in his penultimate season here before departing to lead the New York Philharmonic. Given recent federal travel bans on Venezuelans, he was forced to cancel local dates with his Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra in August, and he only had one week planned for conducting during the Bowl’s summer season this year.
The season’s opening night at the Bowl was “a relatively somber occasion, which, despite the lovely atmosphere, fit the mood of the times,” as Times critic Mark Swed said.
So this one-week return with an exceptionally diverse bill will be a welcome occasion to see him in the twilight of his tenure in L.A.
On Aug. 5, Dudamel (with pianist Seong-Jin Cho) will lead a program pulled from jazz giant Duke Ellington and French composer Maurice Ravel, including Ellington’s “Harlem” and “Black, Brown and Beige” and Ravel’s Piano Concert for the Left Hand and Piano Concert in G. The pairing will show how American jazz and the Harlem renaissance influenced and expanded possibilities for Ravel and European music of the era.
He’ll follow that up on Aug. 7 with Mahler’s bombastic Symphony No. 1 “Titan,” with Vilde Frang playing Erich Korngold’s violin concerto (a fitting spotlight on a golden-era Hollywood score legend). On Aug. 8-9, Dudamel will conduct John Williams’ crowd-favorite “Jurassic Park” score over a live screening of the summer blockbuster.
Dudamel recently debuted with the L.A. Phil at Coachella, a long-awaited crossover event where the orchestra collaborated with pop stars including Dave Grohl, Zedd, Laufey and LL Cool J. For Los Angeles music fans who want to see Dudamel in the Bowl before he departs after next year’s season, these are some of the best chances to do so in 2025.
