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As Russia and China push their way to the top of the power heap, and the United States balks at playing global police force, expect fundamental changes to accepted norms governing international affairs.
Like other intellectuals of his time, the celebrated Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez admired Cuba’s Fidel Castro. What’s just been revealed, however, is also, as one text reveals, the Sandinista rebels who have stifled Nicaraguan democracy in past years.
Although Betancourt is best known for surviving six years as a hostage of the Colombian terror group FARC, and is considered a centrist politician, her unlikely new campaign for president will be centered on gender issues.
With a personal history of suffering and a humane discourse, the liberal Ingrid Betancourt’s return to Colombian politics, even if not a presidential candidate next year, may prompt voters to shun the extremes.
Can the countries the United States have invited to an exclusive summit on democracy safeguard and spread a system that is inherently flawed and fragile?
Colombia’s police chiefs must be dismally ignorant if they think it was “instructive” to expose young cadets bereft of historical education to Nazi symbols.
A dramatic, cinematic-like bid to rob a gold depot in the iconic Colombian city associated with Colombia’s most violent drug cartels is just the latest sign that the city is back to its its old system of crime and no punishment.
The capture of Colombia’s most wanted drug trafficker shows that in spite of the cartels’ resilience, the state can and will fight crime at the highest levels, writes top Bogotá daily El Espectador.
Vaccination was supposed to free us from the pandemic’s frightening grip. Things would go back to normal, with parties and hugs and everything else. But now with the Delta variant, and the vaccines less than full-proof, COVID is again dominating our collective psyche.
Colombia, not the United States, has been the chief victim of drug trafficking and failed anti-narcotics policies. It has a right, if not a duty, to seek other ways of curbing a chain of actions that have corrupted its society.
European soccer is inspiring and professional, in sharp contrast with the national histrionics and ‘amateurish’ mediocrity of South American football.
The Hass avocado, fast becoming one of Colombia’s big export earners, is threatening local ecosystems and causing water shortages.
The region, from the U.S. to Latin America, has the diplomatic, economic and legal leverage to end the brazen abuses of Nicaragua’s aspiring dictator-for-life.
More than 20 people have been killed since demonstrations erupted against a government plan to raise taxes. Dozens more are missing, and yet some insist still on blaming the protestors.
The Colombian man was located in Brazil, and has spoken by phone to his 95-year-old mother, but still not seen her.
Underage or not, guerillas who continue taking up arms against the state are ‘war machines,’ the Colombian defense minister recently stated. But what if they were forcibly recruited?
Thieves in Bogotá have been displaying impressive gymnastic prowess by forming human ladders to break into homes. Security footage from one incident shows a seamless, efficient thieving chain as a television is passed out the window to an accomplice below. This circus-style robbery took place in the district of Usaquén. The understandably stunned homeowner, Daniela […]
While the pandemic has restricted people’s movement, climate change will increasingly do the opposite as populations move from the worst to less affected zones.
In many ways we’ve moved beyond outdated parenting models of the past. But the modern parent too often produces ‘little tyrants’ who wind up as dysfunctional adults.
Even with his blood pouring out, Jorge Eduardo Yaso exhibited serious sang-froid. The Colombian policeman had intervened to break up a brawl earlier this month in San Cristóbal, just south of Bogotá, when his lower right arm and his right hand was severed with a machete. In spite of the “stress’ of the situation, Yaso […]
Once part of the cocaine kingpin’s private zoo, the animals are now an invasive species impacting the local environment. But few in Colombia have the heart to kill them off.
History, as it takes place on the local level, is more than just a precious heritage. It also reflects the multiple visions that our societies need to remain healthy and vibrant.
This new year may be one of greater justice and better social conditions, but only if people fight for them.
There are more and more elected leaders these days willing to ride roughshod over the rules of democracy. But that hardly means the system’s doomed.
Bill Gates is among those predicting that the shift toward remote work will last beyond the COVID-19 crisis. But what if, to compensate, people start making more of an effort to mix and mingle?
Like former presidents Álvaro Uribe and Evo Morales in South America, Donald Trump may keep infecting public life, even after he exits the White House.
The coronavirus crisis has been stressful and tedious. But it’s also a reminder that we can’t have everything we want, when we want it. And that, in many ways, is a good thing.
Rural communities that have lost leaders to targeted killings have taken to protecting themselves, and without the use of firearms.
Even in its more profitable heyday, the ad-driven media model had its fundamental flaws.
The pandemic has delivered yet another blow to the increasingly irrelevant, UN-led multilateral system that was created after World War II.
The leftist strongman’s latest prison releases of political opponents has nothing to do with being magnanimous.
The ‘feminist free marketeer’ is an oxymoron, when the free market is a bastion of the socioeconomic inequalities feminism opposes.
The powers that be responded to the pandemic with an array of life-altering directives that, to an astonishing degree, people quietly accept. So what happens next?
Contagion fears and extreme attachment to the internet are reinforcing that most traditional of moral injunctions
The Amazon jungle provides benefits that extend well beyond the river basin itself. It stands to reason, therefore, that countries like Colombia be paid to protect it.
Latin America can do a lot more to right history’s wrongs than topple the bronze effigies of its conquest-era villains.
The long lockdown period has only added to the frustrations people feel about their country’s unresolved class disparities, crass politics and history of violence.
What if, instead of pretending to care about the welfare of the elderly, we just wrote them off completely? A dose of satire about public attitudes toward seniors in the era of COVID-19.
Latin American media have joined the chorus that has condemned institutional racism in the United States, but rarely denounce discrimination and violence targeting non-white groups in their own countries.
Alcohol can be problematic. But it’s also a simple source of pleasure, and in moderation, may be just what the doctor ordered — until a vaccine is available instead.