WorldcrunchStay updated with comprehensive news on Colombia from Worldcrunch. Discover insights on Colombian politics, economic strategies, societal issues, and cultural landmarks with translations from top international sources. Highlights include Bogotá, Colombian history, and cultural events.
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — Feminism is an acidic drink, strong, seething and so concentrated that it should be sipped at a pace suitable for each person’s palate. There is no key or magic recipe that makes you a feminist and nobody has the absolute truth on how to most effectively pursue the cause. What is certain, […]
-Essay- BOGOTÁ — A theology teacher I knew used to tell me, a mocking grin on his lips, “you’re the last communist left,” to which I would reply, smiling, “and you’re the last evangelist.” In today’s upside-down world of thieving politicians and self-righteous saints, corrupt and holy men, such concepts as communism have lost their […]
Colombia may have massive shale oil and gas reserves that could cover the decline in its crude output, but environmentalists are raising alarms.
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ –– For some time now, Latin America has not figured on the U.S. State Department’s agenda. If the continent did appear, it was at the bottom of the government’s list. This indifference has only grown starker since Donald J. Trump moved into the White House. This state of affairs is neither good nor […]
A Colombian NGO is hoping football could turn former communist guerrillas into peaceful citizens — and maybe even sporting stars.
When El Espectador’s Aldo Civico spots a former henchman of the Medellin drug cartel in a restaurant, enjoying a meal and the well wishes of patrons, he wonders if something has gone terrible wrong with society at large.
As the Rainbow Warrior III traverses the Strait of Magellan, its crew shows what it means to defend the natural world on a daily basis.
A deadly flash flood and landslide in southern Colombia is a brutal reminder that people can’t take the environment for granted.
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — There is a curious new twist to a longstanding political phenomenon, and we see it popping up around the world. Provocation and outrageous behavior is switching sides. Crossing the line has been a part of culture since poets like Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, with their disheveled hair and shabby clothes, used […]
Rural physician Julián Ramírez recounts the spectacle of desperate survivors streaming into a hospital in Mocoa, devastated by the deadly mudslide on April 1.
We have already been revealed, both our leaders and ourselves, by writers of the past.
Murderous paramilitary organizations that formed in the 1980s were supposedly dismantled. Elements, however, continue to live on through what the government now calls Organized Armed Groups, or GAO.
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ – We often confuse a phenomenon with its causes. We’re in the 21st century but we still believe that the problems we face are due to political personalities, whether it’s Donald Trump in the U.S., the combative former president Álvaro Uribe here in Colombia or Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela and so many others […]
Repatriating people like Ismael Arciniegas, a Colombian executed in China for drug smuggling, could create a perverse incentive.
Beyond the Filippino leader’s inciting vigilante killings of drug dealers, Colombian leaders who have long battled the narcotics trade might study his other ideas.
Bolivian president Evo Morales has been criticized for his supposed ‘cult of personality.’ But he is no Donald Trump.
Irrational anger is turning ordinary individuals into system wreckers when they are seduced and provoked by demagogues.
-Analysis- BOGOTÁ — A majority of gay and lesbian students in Colombia feel unsafe in school and almost a quarter of them miss classes because they fear getting bullied, a survey by two non-profits found. Sixty-seven percent of LGBT secondary schoolchildren feel unsafe at school, according to the poll by advocacy groups Colombia Diversa and […]
BOGOTA — Freeze! The Mannequin Challenge, the latest internet craze where groups of people make a video of themselves frozen in time, has an unlikely new participant: the Colombian rebel army FARC. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which has spent much of the past half-century waging a bloody insurgency and holding hostages for […]
-Analysis- In his half-century as leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro oversaw grand changes on the island. In the wake of his death, new changes may — or may not — be on their way under the helm of the late leader’s brother, President Raul Castro. Nowhere is the future more uncertain on the island nation […]
People should not dismiss the meaning of a spate of shocking electoral results, for the world may be entering a period of democratic decline.
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — The Democratic Center, a right-wing political party led by Colombia’s former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez, was vehemently opposed to the peace deal with the country’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The accord to end nearly a half-century of conflict, which was ultimately rejected in the surprise […]
For famed Colombian artist Doris Salcedo, sewing a vast sheet with the names of victims of the country’s civil conflict is a sprawling but humble attempt at some form of salvation.
Momentous national referendums in Colombia and Britain have shown how dangerous it can be to put complicated decisions in the hands of a fickle populous.
The great paradox of our time is that we’ve never had access to so much information, and yet have never been so badly informed.
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — Colombians have now had their say, voting Sunday to reject the peace deal signed between the government of President Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), intended to end more than 50 years of fighting in the country. The No vote triumphed against all odds it seems, against […]
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — On Sunday, Colombians will decide whether to ratify a peace deal that makes the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, lay down their arms. But if that happens, what will the future of FARC look like? Will it become a socialist party like the one that has driven Venezuela into an […]
Decades of war between FARC guerrillas and the government seem to have made aggression a widespread social trait in Colombia that’s reflected in cases of domestic violence, bullying at school and a tendency to talk tough. The peace deal could help
More and more coffee growers are going organic in Colombia. A boost for the environment, the trend is also improving lives, as producers in the coastal Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta can attest.
Decades of civil war have ravaged Colombia’s environment and undermined opportunities at oil exploration. Now with peace looming, big and small firms alike are ready to pursue the government’s “sustainable” energy plan.
-Analysis- BOGOTÁ — Decades of civil conflict and the formation of the communist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) could be attributed in part to the struggle for land in this Latin American nation. That’s why land was one of the most important issues in FARC’s peace negotiations with the government. A historic deal was […]
BOGOTÁ — Suicide used to be rare among the native communities of Vaupés, a region in eastern Colombia with the largest proportion of indigenous residents. That’s not the case anymore. Decades of hostility between the region’s native inhabitants and outsiders has had devastating results. El Espectador sent me to investigate this increase in suicides, now […]
Negotiators working to end Colombia’s decades-long civil war are seeing women as a critical component of lasting social and political peace.
From China to Colombia, the use of sexual favors and vulnerability to blackmail is key to widespread corruption of public officials.
Politicians are hiding behind complacent language instead of facing the challenges that their constituents are fired up about.
A meeting with shamans in Colombia allows El Espectador’s Pablo Correa to experience an “indescribable” ritual.
From a republic struggling to rid itself from overbearing U.S. influence, then its own political shenanigans, Panama has come of age as a sovereign state.
For Chile’s former president, Ricardo Lagos, peace between Bogota and leftist FARC guerrillas could signal a new path well beyond the borders of Colombia — though a post-Brexit Europe may be hard to reach.
-Essay- BOGOTÁ — Colombia’s Caribbean coastal cities have people with less depression, bipolar mood swings, schizophrenia and other mental health conditions than elsewhere in the country, according to a recent national mental health poll. Is that surprising? A few days after I arrived in the Caribbean, I was invited to a barbecue in one of […]
Tests in a region in Colombia with widespread, recurring and inherited Alzheimer’s may help researchers understand why the disease occurs and has thwarted treatments for so long.