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.
BOGOTA — Maybe money does grow on trees. This week, in the Ciudad del Río sector of Medellín, Colombia’s second largest city, passersby were surprised to see a tree “flowering” with banknotes. Fastened to the tree’s branches (with laundry clips) were real peso bills. Too good to be true? Some people seemed to think so […]
A quirky hostel in Colombia offers guests bucolic surroundings, Indian tents to sleep in and a generously stocked bar.
Indigenous communities in the country’s Caribbean coastal area dug in for more than decade to keep their traditional lands from being trashed.
Venezuelans are sloshing their way across the Táchira River to seek jobs in Colombia, or smuggle food and fuel. Out of sight, but very much in control, are a pair of powerful criminal gangs.
Civil conflict has lasted so long in Colombia that many ordinary people now view gratuitous violence as customary, and in some cases even admirable.
Bitcoin has proved popular in Colombia, especially in small retail operations. But is it being used by criminals?
Barranquilla’s gay events at carnival time have shed social shaming and police harassment to become part of the intangible patrimony of this historic Caribbean city.
Decades ago, thousands of war-weary Colombian made their way to Venezuela in search of better opportunities. Nowadays, the flow of migrants runs in the opposite direction.
BOGOTÁ — A new in-depth study of the well-being of Colombian coffee farmers could help provide the prescription for good health for us all. Understanding the fundamental elements of healthy living could lead to something of a “positive pandemic,” according to researchers of a project that began in 2012 after medical experts gathered in Toronto […]
Like so many people from gang-plagued Central America, Brayan sought safety by leaving home, even if it mean leaving his beloved mother behind.
Calling rulers like Venezuela’s Maduro or Nicaragua’s Ortega democratically elected leaders is to mock the real meaning of elections — and democracy.
Colombian cultural officials have been busy trying to recover an ancient burial treasure displayed in a Madrid museum.
The Afro-Caribbean village of El Paraíso is seeking reparations as it tries to put itself back together after decades of being caught in crossfire of Colombia’s civil war.
We’re drawn to it, tempted to wade in its bittersweet waters. And yet, for the most part, nostalgia just makes us miserable. Some wisdom from Latin America.
Donald Trump has become a convenient scapegoat for problems in countries like Venezuela and Iran, where vast oil reserves leave few excuses for pervasive economic problems.
Delving into the meaning of the decline of Aracataca, the birthplace of Colombian master and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, and setting for One Hundred Years Of Solitude.
Colombia’s best known painter, Fernando Botero, was in France to open a joint exhibition of his works alongside those of Picasso. It is bound to be a reckoning.
Businesses in Colombia have been invited to display gay-friendly signs as a traditionalist society, slowly, grows more tolerant.
A key message at this week’s COP 23 climate conference: the fight against global warming requires protecting the natives who’ve known the rainforests for centuries.
BOGOTÁ — The dragon fruit, or pitaya — that exotic fruit resembling a yellow or red flame and touted for its many health benefits — might just be the great new hope of Colombia’s economy. Though the worldwide market for pitaya has long been growing for several years in such countries as China, the United […]
-OpEd- As the old saying goes, no situation is so bad that it can’t get worse. The cruel irony of Venezuela’s going from bad to worse is how the government of President Nicolás Maduro is incompetent at everything save keeping power. It is a power play designed to spread suffering further every day, while keeping […]
Companies like Tres Montes in Santander are focusing on quality, not just quantity, and improving the lives of small-scale growers in the process.
Health and medicine were constant themes of the famed Colombian novelist. He also spent his life trying to understand how the human brain works, and why the memory breaks down…until he himself was afflicted by Alzheimer’s.
A family in El Salto in western Mexico is fighting local factories in its bid to show how pollution has ‘murdered’ one of the country’s emblematic waterways, the Santiago river.
Plans to build highways through the Amazon rainforest are clear violations of pledges made in Paris to end deforestation by 2020. But the situation on the ground is not a one-way street.
The Marxist leader killed in an ambush in 1967 achieved icon status as a warrior for the revolution. But it’s his proposals about the economy that have lasting value.
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — After more than half-a-century of fighting, Colombia’s FARC guerillas have surrendered their weapons and officially transformed themselves into a formal political party. But still, the U.S. government apparently isn’t satisfied. “The FARC hasn’t followed through on the issue of drugs,” the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, Kevin Whitaker, said matter-of-factly in a recent […]
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — In August 1894, while traveling to Venezuela, the Colombian poet José Asunción Silva spent time in Cartagena de Indias, the colonial port on Colombia“s Caribbean coast. He wrote about his impressions of the city to his mother and sister. He had taken a liking to the locals, who were cheerful and informal, […]
-Essay- BOGOTÁ — I always had mixed feelings about the Netflix series Narcos. The first two seasons were based on the life and times of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, and the show has just released a third season. Initially, I did not want to watch a series depicting what I had watched on the […]
-Essay- BOGOTA — “Despacito,” the title of this summer’s hit song by Luis Fonsi, means “slowly” in Spanish. Listening to it is like drinking an unsavory broth. Slowly. It’s my own silly fault really for being exposed to it, namely by opening a Spotify account and asking my children, aged 9 and 6, to create […]
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — Father Jorge, dear Pope Francis, less than a month remains before your visit to Colombia. Before Sept. 6, you still have time to make your excuses and cancel. Believe me, you really needn’t expose yourself to a trip that wil inevitably be both a failure and a risk. Colombia is irredeemable. We […]
A Bogotá family invented a system to drain rainwater from any rooftop and store it in an ‘Ekowall’ of plastic bottles.
The response of regional states to the Venezuelan regime’s assault on democracy is a lesson in how to humiliate democracies with your petrodollar clout.
A wealth of hidden, unfamiliar fruits could help protect Colombia’s embattled rainforests by luring peasants and settlers away from coca farming.
Colombian novelist William Ospina had advice for Fidel Castro, and now for Nicolas Maduro. Given the discontent with modern capitalism, Latin America must offer a realistic and democratic alternative.
In spite of the thousands of miles and cultural distances between Colombia and Japan, Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece has become a national treasure among Japanese readers and artists.
A project that encourages villagers to protect local river sources is helping revive community life and traditional culture.
Dictators, gangsters and gun-toting guerillas all seem to have a fondness for facial hair — specifically above their upper lips. But why?
-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 […]