WorldcrunchThe oldest newspaper in Colombia, El Espectador was founded in 1887. The national daily newspaper has historically taken a firm stance against drug trafficking and in defense of freedom of the press. In 1986, the director of El Espectador was assassinated by gunmen hired by Pablo Escobar. The majority share-holder of the paper is Julio Mario Santo Domingo, a Colombian businessman named by Forbes magazine as one of the wealthiest men in the world in 2011.
CESAR — Without saying a word, which none would have understood anyway, Guneymaku Chaparro, an Arhuaca Mamo or spiritual leader, and Tenzin Priyadarshi, a monk and disciple of the Dalai Lama, took each other’s hands and lightly put their heads together to say good-bye. It was the end of a meeting that the northern Colombia […]
New revelations point to collusion between authorities and a drug cartel that may have led to the killing of 40 Mexican teenagers. Like Colombia a generation ago, a nation faces its deepest evils.
Last month’s optimistic reports of declining poverty rates in Colombia are a world away from reality.
What is at stake in Brazil’s Oct. 5 presidential election? If Dilma Rousseff winds up losing, we could see a return to clientelism and realignment with the U.S.
In Colombia, a recent case of censorship – since reversed – shines a light on the role of art in a society that has all the signs of freedom. And yet….
People and parliament are almost unanimously opposed to mining in one of the country’s exceptional natural reserves. But the nation’s president insists the mining must proceed.
Some gay men have so many sexual partners that straight people find the numbers hard to believe. But it’s less about being gay and more about the nature of male sexual desire.
CUCUTA — It’s 2 p.m., and the borderland between Colombia and Venezuela is sizzling in the afternoon heat. Sweat is the permanent companion of all those crossing the Simón Bolívar bridge linking Venezuela with the Colombian border city of Cúcuta. Mariela* has been sitting for two hours in an endless line of cars, returning from […]
Their economic philosophies may differ, but Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa and Colombia’s arch-conservative former president Alvaro Uribe, share a taste for the perpetuation of power.
The electoral horizon looks unsympathetic for disaffected Brazilian voters after the death of a charismatic presidential aspirant. Will Rousseff win again, despite politics-as-usual fatigue?
A poorly lit city can become a hostile place for residents, so designers have gathered in Bogotá to discuss how lighting can serve pedestrians, the first step toward a new kind of city.
-Analysis- BOGOTA — Venezuela is in crisis — a tremendous one. Food and basic drugs are in short supply. The annual murder rate has reached 79 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in the world and a cold figure that covers a multitude of personal tragedies. Inflation is expected to reach a rate of […]
BOGOTA — How dirty can business get? In Colombia, it can get as dirty as a diaper. An investigation by the country’s Superintendence of Industry and Commerce (SIC) has uncovered a series of illegal, coordinated price hikes in the highly lucrative diaper industry. Trade and industry inspectors started investigating price-fixing practices in late 2013, with […]
Many countries agree that the U.S. politicizes the dollar by punishing nations who don’t abide by U.S. sanctions. With this American approach comes isolation, and the risk of the dollar being replaced as global currency.
BOGOTA — Maria Carolina Rodríguez, who describes herself as an “upper-middle class mother from Bogotá,” was kidnapped by the communist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2001. Her captivity allowed her a rare glimpse at how one group of female guerrillas were treated by their male comrades. Rodríguez kept notes during her captivity, which […]
Justice is twisted in a country where a man is jailed for stealing candy from a store, while gangsters and corrupt politicians are always able to negotiate prison reductions.
BOGOTA — When 31-year-old Grace Kely sic, a transsexual living in Bogotá, applied to become a nurse with the city government last year, the hiring process ground to a sudden halt. It happened when the municipal department she hoped to work for told her they couldn’t hire her without a certificate showing she had completed […]
BOGOTA — Call it the South American version of selling ice to eskimos: Starbucks is opening its first store in Colombia on July 16. The shop marks the start of the American coffee giant’s operations in a country that grows and produces lots of its own brew, and already has a strong, local but international, […]
A sharp critique against the government by an insider shows the ranks of the Bolivarian movement may be set to turn on President Nicolas Maduro. What’s lost without Hugo Chavez.
It may have begun as a game, but soccer has become a substitute for so many facets of people’s lives, including politics and war, writes Colombian novelist Jose Luis Garces Gonzalez.
We may be witnessing the demise of the Western idea that climate determines how we think. Could it change the very way we look at the world, and ourselves?
-Editorial- BOGOTA — Some residents of the Colombian capital are indignant at recent police checks on white cars thought to be carrying passengers through Uber, an Internet application that links users with private drivers. Passengers using Uber can pay by credit or debit card beforehand and can be picked up anywhere. Cars are clean and […]
Just before last week’s death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, El Espectador spoke with arguably the only other Latin American author in his league, 2010 Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa.
Even if you don’t judge him South America’s greatest writer, there’s no denying that his life lived with joy and principle is the stuff of modern legend for a country, and continent.
The late Colombian drug lord spent some of his cash on a private zoo, which the Colombian state took over after Escobar was killed. But now, deadly hippopotami have fled the reserve.
BOGOTA — Colombia’s National University is working on recycling used banknotes, by processing them into an absorbent material that cleans water and air of pollutants, El Espectador reports. Some 169 million banknotes in Colombia are replaced every year. And the University’s chemical engineering department found that shredding them creates “activated carbon,” a crystalline substance able […]
Weeks before Marquez’s death at 87, the Bogota daily wrote how the legendary novelist was followed right until the end by the ghosts of his strongest character: his mother.
A former soldier accuses the Colombian Army and aides to former President Álvaro Uribe of ordering the killings of innocent civilians amid a “dirty war” against FARC rebels.
A year after the death of President Hugo Chávez, food and consumer shortages are spreading through Caracas along with protests. Blame over-regulation or capitalistic hoarding?
Though reports say Peru has surpassed Colombia as world’s top source of cocaine, it has not faced the same kind of violence. Is Lima turning a blind eye toward drug trafficking?
The media criticism heaped on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has prevented an objective assessment of the protesters, who may not be quite as democratic as they’re portrayed.
The world was surprised, and very likely pleased, by this past weekend’s capture of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, head of the Sinaloa drug cartel and one of the world’s richest and most powerful drug traffickers. Pleased for good reason, because “Shorty” Guzmán, who was on the run for 13 years after a prison escape, is believed […]
Polls show most Americans want U.S. ties with Cuba normalized, even as the forces still hold strong among those who prefer the status quo. Time may have come for change.
The Chavez-Maduro regime has corrupted democracy and impoverished the nation in a perfect storm of political strong-arming, cheap oil, and public apathy. The time is now to react.
For those in the gay, lesbian and transgender community rejected by their own loved ones, a shelter in the Colombian capital offers comfort, but also practical support to build a new life.
Is shooting dolphins for gastronomic delectation really worse than the way livestock are treated before becoming supermarket steak? A debate reaches from Japan to South America.
-OpEd- BOGOTA – Permit me to be direct and frank, but also practical. What do we see from the outside when we look at Europe? We see a Europe that is languishing, despondent, self-absorbed and self-satisfied, and to some extent both tired and apathetic. I know these are words that are both harsh and ugly, […]
Foreign interests are eyeing Uruguay’s recent legalization of cannabis use in its territory. Will big pharmaceutical firms be allowed to move in on this huge business opportunity?
YOTOCO — “The first thing we did was to look for land, thinking not so much about crop productivity as security…” Efraín Sierra, one of countless farmers forced off his land by Colombia’s long-running civil war, recalls having had to move in the past from the district of Buga when paramilitaries moved in nearby in […]
– Editorial – BOGOTA — Voters in Colombia recently rejected multinational gold mining near Piedras, and now people in Tauramena, near Bogotá, have said no to oil prospecting. The people have spoken, but will the state listen? Specifically, residents in seven rural localities voted against seismic testing as part of the oil firm Ecopetrol’s Odisea […]