Gustavo Petro brought Shakira back into the center of his public remarks on Monday, citing the singer and her song with Bizarrap, Session 53, during a nearly three-hour Council of Ministers session in which he again spoke at length about women’s bodies and freedom.
Wearing a cap, sunglasses, a scarf and a jacket, Petro said Shakira had “sacado la chispa” in him when she sang “las mujeres no lloran, las mujeres facturan,” then followed with a blunt defense of his own view: that “el cuerpo no se vende” because it belongs to life, not the market. He also said, “El clítoris amarrado al cerebro y el pene amarrado al cerebro, la sexualidad juega el cerebro.”
The comments land in the shadow of a dispute that has already reached Colombia’s courts. On 17 September 2025, during a televised Council of Ministers, Petro said that “una mujer libre hace lo que quiera con su clítoris y con su cerebro, y si sabe acompasarlo, será una gran mujer,” a remark that led criminal lawyer Tatiana Echavarría to file a tutela. Echavarría asked that Petro apologize to her and her daughter for what she called a violent speech, and the 66th Court of the Judicial Circuit of Bogotá ordered him to retract his remarks.
Petro later read a rectification in a video shown before a Council of Ministers broadcast in November 2025, saying, “Bajo el cumplimiento de las decisiones judiciales que invitan a la reflexión y a la construcción, rectifico la expresión que utilicé cuando hablé de la felicidad de las mujeres, refiriéndome a una parte específica de su cuerpo y a otra.”
Monday’s intervention suggests the controversy is not fading. Petro has repeatedly referred to women’s intimate body parts in public remarks, drawing anger and criticism that pushed the issue into a court fight. By choosing again to invoke Shakira and repeat the language that has already forced him to retract it once, he made clear that the dispute is now about more than one speech: it is about whether Colombia’s president will stop testing the line between political provocation and a judicial rebuke he has already received.
