Last month’s optimistic reports of declining poverty rates in Colombia are a world away from reality.
Tag: colombia
It was just a month ago that public anger exploded in Colombia after reports of horses drawing tourist carriages being worked to death in the coastal city of Cartagena de Indias. Now, another bout of equine outrage is trending on social media sites after a picture surfaced of a dead horse left in a garbage […]
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….
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.
Colombia’s Caribbean coast used to be filled with slaves, but today in Cartagena de Indias, it’s a plethora of tourists who come to visit this World Heritage Site in horse-drawn cabs. It’s all so pretty — except for the part where the horses are overworked, and sometimes worked to death. Apparently it’s not uncommon for […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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Feeding Time At The Zoo: Ice Cream Edition
It’s hot in Colombia, and severe drought conditions are affecting most of the country. Though forest fires have sadly killed thousands of wild animals, those at the zoo in the southern city of Cali are getting some pampering and a little help cooling off. Staff there have decided to mix the animals’ food with ice, […]
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.
When you think of a wild cat (i.e. a lion, tiger or panther) you often assume they live on rolling plains, or wild jungles. A few hundred meters outside of Bogotá is not the first place that comes to mind. The woolly margay — an Ocelot-like creature described as the American continent’s smallest feline — […]
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, […]
Anthropomorphic containers, ancient ceramic bowls, mysterious instruments, jewelry and delicate painting tools belonging to the native Colombian cultures that collapsed in the 16th century, before the onslaught of Spanish invaders. These were some of almost 700 items Spanish police confiscated from traffickers, which authorities in Madrid formally handed over to Colombia’s ambassador this week, a […]
BOGOTA — Blame it on Rio. Colombia officials arrested one of the country’s most sought-after leftist rebels after noticing an enormous satellite dish he had installed on his jungle hideout so he could watch the World Cup, Spanish news agency EFE and Colombian media reported. No civil war was going to deprive the 15-year veteran […]
As Colombia prepares to elect a president, voters must choose between a candidate willing to make painful concessions with FARC guerrillas and a hawk keen on the status quo.
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Soccer, The New Opiate Of The Masses
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?
BOGOTA – Even if the buses in the Colombian capital ran on time, you’d never know. A Bogotá city councilman recently confirmed that hundreds of clocks on its metro-bus network platforms were no longer working. Turns out, most stopped working at least five years ago – and counting! Councilman Hosman Martínez complained that 406 electronic […]
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Remember Pablo Escobar’s Hippos?
Remember the story of Pablo Escobar’s hippos running wild in Colombia a few weeks ago? Although the late King of Cocaine’s half-wild hippos may be damaging farms and the environment in this southern region, it seems some locals are growing fond of them. Officials have warned people living near the Hacienda Nápoles park to avoid […]
-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 […]
A 19-year-old has died from machete injuries in north-central Colombia, after trying to stop a drunken man who appeared set to decapitate a dog with the same machete. The alleged killer has been arrested. The attack occurred Saturday night when Miguel Ángel Palacio Montoya and his brother approached a man taunting a dog with his […]
Photographs that have caught our eye and captured events.
It may be a new weapon to strike fear in store clerks around the world: a grocer in Colombia has died days after two individuals injected him with an unknown poison outside his store, in the district of Facatativá west of Bogotá. The Colombian daily El Espectador reported this past weekend that authorities had not […]
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.
PRO-RUSSIAN PROTESTERS REFUSE GENEVA DEAL Pro-Russian protesters in Eastern Ukraine have rejected the deal reached yesterday in Geneva, refusing to leave the official buildings they have been occupying over the past week in more than 10 cities, the BBC reports. Alexander Gnezdilov, a spokesman for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said that they would only […]
Adios Gabo! From Bogota to Warsaw and beyond, the passing of the great Colombian writer is marked with Page One features.
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Pablo Escobar’s Hippos Are Running Wild
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.
For reals.
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Dolphins Stabbed To Death In Colombia
ATLANTICO — Authorities in this northern Colombia beach community were investigating the suspicious deaths of two dolphins, whose corpses were washed ashore and appeared to have been stabbed repeatedly, Bogota daily El Espectador reports. The mammals’ remains were found in the district of Playa Mendoza in the Atlántico department. They may have been killed after […]
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 […]
BARRANQUILLA — A four-year-old boy died this week in the northern Colombian city of Barranquilla after he was run over by a taxi, which was being driven by a 12-year-old. The victim had been in intensive care for several days before being pronounced dead on April 5, Colombia’s El Espectador reports, citing local newspapers. The […]
The news in numbers from archeological finds to big babies to bad basketball.
Ten people have been arrested for suspected animal trafficking after 1,500 tortoises and 80 caimans were discovered on a boat in northern Colombia. The animals are both on the South American country’s endangered wildlife list. Police stopped the boat on a river in the Mahates region, which is full of lakes and swamps, and is […]
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Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Beyond Solitude
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.
Producers from Rwanda, Burundi and Ethiopia have visited the Colombian estates of producers to discover the social, environmental and aesthetic benefits of growing shade coffee.
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.
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.