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.
BOGOTÁ — For Latin America, the U.S. presidential elections have become a big-screen spectacle that affects the tone and register of local politics, in a region that combines democratic aspirations with an enduring admiration for its northern neighbor. The televised debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy generations ago began a process that has […]
Some 6,000 people gathered in Bogota for artist Spencer Tunik’s latest outdoor photo shoot. The clothes-free event was a stunning splash of hope for a country torn for so long.
A recent drug raid in a south-central Bogotá neighborhood that shares its name with the New York borough uncovers a veritable den of vice, violence and unfettered gang rule.
A handful of producers are trying to boost the quality of coffee in Colombia, and improve rural lives in the process. They’d also like local consumers to be a bit more discerning.
The legacy of our time will not be our literary or architectural monuments, but all the plastic trash we leave to poison the seas and choke our future. Fortunately, change is in the air.
Bogotá’s Central Military Hospital has seen the worst of decades of civil war in Colombia — from severed limbs to longstanding traumas, Amid prospects of peace with the FARC guerrillas, its work begins a slight, and welcome decline.
BOGOTA — During the difficult months of the rainy season, when daily downpours put a damper on hunting and fishing, the Tatuyo indigenous people of Vaupés, in Colombia’s Amazonian region, spend entire days in the jungle collecting fruit. The purpose of the forest harvest? To make yapurá. A black paste with a pungent odor that […]
Are there clues to Donald Trump’s rise in the celluloid figure of Citizen Kane? It may be that the Orson Welles classic also points to the limits of the billionaire candidate.
Saving rainwater and increasing green spaces are two small steps shown to help fight the ravages of climate change in cities.
-Analysis- BOGOTÁ — Lynching, as it is practiced in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America, represents a kind of fast-track “people’s justice” fueled by anger over persistent crime and contempt for the pace and integrity of the police and judiciary. It’s not a new phenomenon, and a wave of lynchings was registered in Argentina a […]
BOGOTÁ — Colombians can add pollution caused by millions of cigarette butts to an already varied list of environmental calamities that include deforestation, forest fires and the pesticides and mercury dumped into their rivers. It’s the huge number of discarded cigarette butts that add gravity to what might seem an insignificant problem. In Bogotá alone, […]
Keiko Fujimori has overcome, at least paritally, her imprisoned father’s past to become the frontrunner to be Peru’s next president. But the runoff will measure fears of a return to the authoritarian right?
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — Years ago, toward the end of Lula da Silva“s first term (2003-2007) as president of Brazil, I remember reading a perplexing article. It was about Lula’s son, Lulinha, who had apparently become a multi-millionaire in the span of just a few years. It is always possible, if highly improbable, that someone could […]
With help from agencies and the government, locals from Monte de María in northern Colombia are breathing new life into the land stripped by abuse and violence.
Plan Colombia was never the aid program touted by leaders in Washington and Bogota. But it proved to be excellent business for arms dealers and other shady characters.
A new surge in deforestation can be traced to an unauthorized road connecting La Macarena to San Jose del Guaviare. What is the origin? What will be done?
Complaining out loud (and on social media) about the high prices at exclusive restaurants is the epitome of upper class lack of self-awareness. A VIP case study in Bogota.
Health authorities in Cúcuta, northeastern Colombia, are struggling to stop the spread of mosquito-borne infections like zika. And the blame game has begun.
BOGOTA — Bogotá”s new mayor, the technocratic Enrique Peñalosa, wants to remove some of the Colombian capital’s abundant graffiti — those deemed to be “non-artistic.” But the move is being perceived by some as a reversal of the socially oriented policies of his predecessor, leftist Gustavo Petro, who essentially considered all such street art socially […]
Deforestation is one of the primary causes of global warming, and much of it has happened across vast areas of the Amazon rain forest. Will pledges at the climate change conference in Paris really count?
No doubt the rebels cherish their history of armed struggle against the Colombian state, but if they’re serious about entering politics, an image makeover is very much in order.
It took a dozen years for Juan Camilo Niño Vargas to document and create a glossary for a little-known, and unwritten, tongue being threatened with extinction. Now it has a chance to live on.
Medellín officials tout the city’s transformation, diversions and high-tech investments. They’re less keen to talk about criminal gangs that operate with impunity reminiscent of the drug cartel days in the 1980s.
Bewildering technology and savage capitalism fuels desperation and hatred against the West. War was declared a long time ago, and the underdeveloped world are the primary victims.
Long after the days of Pablo Escobar and cocaine cartels, Colombia has regained the crown as world’s No. 1 producer of coca. It gives further urgency that FARC-government peace talks succeed.
BOGOTÁ — In a kind of eerie, Darwinian evolution, abandoned pets in parts of Colombia have become feral beasts and predators that are proving more fearsome than wild animals. Once again, wildlife is proving defenseless in the face of yet another man-made threat, produced in this case by former owners of an unwanted dog or […]
Gustavo Petro, the former Marxist guerrilla who became Bogotá’s mayor for the poor, has left the Colombian capital a wreck. But he’s on the way in favor of a newly elected leader voters hope will put the city back on track.
Tourism feeds a construction and real estate boom in the historical town of Cartagena de Indias. But the shadows of this former slave port hide a huge gap between rich and poor.
Pursuit of free trade may be at an all-time high as Washington seals the TPP deal and Beijing pursues its New Silk Road. Here’s how it all looks from Bogota.
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — The Colombian Health Ministry wants to tax sugary drinks. The Supreme Court is ordering parliament to regulate labeling on food products so consumers know which ones contain genetically modified ingredients. A nationwide debate has begun on the poor quality of school meals, as the regional head of the World Food Programme tells […]
If and when Colombia’s FARC guerrillas stop fighting and peace comes to Colombia, the socio-economic benefits will be multiple and unstoppable. There is only one choice.
Latin American governments have shown scant interest in restricting cars and improving public transport. But some citizens in smoggy Bogotá have chosen a different path.
Honest judges and popular protest combined to topple a president, setting a bold precedent in an age when news travels fast.
Ordinary citizens, the media and politicians make so much noise about ideology and petty politics, but quietly carry on in the face of massive mining pollution.
Colombia’s former conservative president and Venezuela’s socialist leader fight in public, but they love the same, bombastic style of politics. And both countries suffer for it.
Despite huge amounts of food still being wasted every day in the world, initiatives in various countries demonstrate growing public awareness about this modern-day abomination.
-Editorial- BOGOTÁ — Colombia’s more than half-century old civil war has been, if nothing else, an environmental calamity. Besides causing tens of thousands of deaths and forcing millions from their homes, the protracted fighting between state forces, left-wing guerrilla forces and right-wing gangs has led to massive amounts of crude oil being poured into the country’s rivers, streams and wetlands. Data released by the oil industry suggests that over the past 30 years, some 4 million barrels of crude have been dumped in Colombia. That’s 10 times the amount the infamous Exxon Valdez tanker released off the coast of Alaska […]
After Colombian Energy Giant Mansarovar announced plans for oil exploration around one of Colombia’s natural reserves, local farmers asked Pope Francis to intervene.
Arguments for blocking the car service Uber are based exclusively on the fact that it brings unwelcome competition to cab drivers, and not at all on the welfare of drivers and passengers.
Concepcion is the first place in Colombia where the vast majority of transactions involve electronic banking via mobile phones, staying well ahead of even northern Europe.