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This week, Emily Hart speaks to Lucas Marin Llanes - the director of development at the Latin American Drug Studies Network, and a research affiliate at the Andes University’s Center for Security and Drugs Studies (CESED).

There are already some allowances for personal and medicinal use, but last month, Lucas and CESED proposed a whole new framework for legalised commercialisation. 

The first question is of course, why do it? Lucas proposes that regulation (done right) might be a way to take power from Colombia’s armed groups, and to ensure decent working conditions for rural farmers; it could also ensure the quality and content of the cannabis people are consuming – as well as contributing to a realistic public health policy on the issue. 

But is it too soon for Colombia – are the security guarantees in place to avoid retaliation against those who want to join legal markets? Is the market built to ensure social justice outcomes - and inclusion for those who have long been a part of the chain of production? And - crucially - is there the political consensus to drive the policy through?  

And, somewhat paradoxically, is it too late? Has President Gustavo Petro’s government – despite radical work at international bodies – fumbled the project, leaving no time in the remaining year of his mandate to make real change in the country?

So how might it be done? And what are the stakes? We’ll be getting into all of it in today's episode.

And since Emily Hart is hosting the podcast again – the Colombia Briefing will be subscriber only this week – if you want to make sure you never miss an update, you can head to harte.substack.com and sign up to get the news as text and audio every Monday.

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Few figures in Latin American politics polarize opinion like Colombia’s former president, Álvaro Uribe. Right now, Uribe, Colombia’s president from 2002 to 2010, faces charges of bribery, procedural fraud, and bribery in a judicial proceeding. Prosecutors must determine whether he instigated others to manipulate witness testimony in an attempt to mislead the judiciary for his benefit.

So, along with Adriaan Alsema, director of Colombia Reports, we take a deep dive into the "early years" from Uribe's birth in Salgar, Antioquia and up until his campaign to become governor of the department, taking in his education, his role on the Medellin city council, director of Aerocivil, Mayor of Medellin and many family connections. 

Allegations of ties to drug cartels and paramilitaries have dogged him since the early 1980s, when the civil aviation agency he then led was accused of giving air licenses to drug traffickers. Declassified State Department cables from a decade later show U.S. officials were told the up-and-coming politician had ties to cartels.

In future episodes we will look at further details surrounding Colombia's most powerful political force. 

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart. 

La Escombrera, a vast rubble pile overlooking Medellín, is considered to be Colombia’s largest urban mass grave. Its excavation this year has unearthed the remains of people whose families have been searching for them for decades. 

Earlier this month, it was announced that the excavation there is being expanded. Some hope that what is found in that rubble will answer deeper questions - about how the conflict unfolded here in the city, and how the state was complicit in murders and human rights violations committed by paramilitary groups.

This week, Emily Hart, journalist and Colombia Calling host, takes us through an article she wrote on her Substack about La Escombrera, the dynamics and history of Colombia's civil conflict, and about how this war - largely characterised by rural conflict and guerrilla tactics - ended up radically changing the face of Colombia’s cities.

Sign up and subscribe to Emily's Substack: https://harte.substack.com

And don't miss, the Colombia Briefing reported by Emily as well. 

Jennie speaks to Emily Hart and Richard McColl.

In the 1980s, a Colombian neurologist named Francisco Lopera traveled on horseback into the mountains seeking families with symptoms of dementia. For centuries, residents of certain villages near Medellín had suffered memory loss as they reached middle age, going on to die in their fifties. Lopera discovered that a unique genetic mutation was causing their rare hereditary form of early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Over the next forty years of working with the “paisa mutation” kindred, he went on to build a world-class research program in a region beset by violence and poverty.

In "Valley of Forgetting," Jennie Erin Smith brings readers into the clinic, the laboratories, and the Medellín trial center where Lopera’s patients receive an experimental drug to see if Alzheimer’s can be averted. She chronicles the lives of people who care for sick parents, spouses, and siblings, all while struggling to keep their own dreams afloat.

These Colombian families have donated hundreds of their loved ones’ brains to science and subjected themselves to invasive testing to help uncover how Alzheimer’s develops and whether it can be stopped.

Buy the book! https://a.co/d/giumqZR 

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart: https://harte.substack.com/

What explains selective violence against social and community leaders in the aftermath of war? Why does the killing of community and social leaders continue unabated in Colombia? 

This week on the Colombia Calling podcast, we look at a new academic article entitled: "Delegative peacebuilding: Explaining post-conflict selective violence," written by Dr Sally Sharif and Dr Francy Carranza-Franco which explains so much regarding the on-going conflict in Colombia, the issue of "partial peace, who is doing the killing and why and hear some possible solutions. 

Joining us is Dr Sally Sharif, School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University and Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada and incoming assistant professor of comparative politics at Holy Cross University, Boston. 

Victoria was never meant to come to Colombia, in fact, had things gone according to plan she would be in China right now.

But, fate had a different path in mind for this native of a small town near to the city of Perm in Siberia, Russia.

And so, on this week's Colombia Calling podcast, we hear from a Tatar far from her birthplace near to the Ural Mountains and find out how she ended up in the town of Tabio, 45km north of Bogota.

Our conversation takes in her life as a language teacher (English, German and Russian), her arrival in Colombia, her beginner mistakes upon arriving in Colombia, life hacks that we all need here, her cultural adaptation, family traditions, body positivity in Colombia, love and relationships and her life now.

Tune in to hear from someone who has truly embraced a new life in Colombia in what is an incredibly upbeat and positive episode of the Colombia Calling podcast.

And if you fancy some language classes, check out: @tabiunarusa on Instagram.

There's so much to say about the Latin American Boom in literature, but how can we possibly discuss it at this point in time without mentioning Mario Vargas Llosa and his recent passing.

And so, as a Colombia-focused podcast, we take a look at this era and these personalities in the literary world, such as Colombia's inimitable Gabriel Garcia Marquez but through the prism of Mario Vargas Llosa. With very special guest Juan E. De Castro, professor of literary studies at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School. Author of Writing Revolution in Latin America: From Martí to García Márquez to Bolaño and Bread and Beauty: The Cultural Politics of José Carlos Mariátegui, among other works, we discuss a variety of topics relating to but not restricted to:

1. The Latin American Boom.
2. Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and "that punch."
3. The importance of the Latin American Boom.
4. The end of this literary milestone.
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude - the Netflix version.

 And so much more, including the Colombia Briefing with Emily Hart. 

This week we speak to Camila Gonzalez Rosas, Director and Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Los Andes University in Bogotá and Researcher at the the Centre for Investigations into Microbiology and tropical parasitology and we discuss tropical diseases in Colombia.

Nothing is off the table from chagas, malaria, dengue, leishmaniasis, zika, chikungunya and Covid-19....we cover it all.

What are the possibilities of another Zika outbreak? What are the consequences of the loss of biodiversity and climate change in Colombia? We also talk about zoonotic transmission where an infectious disease is transmitted between species from animals to humans (or from humans to animals)

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart. Subscribe to her Substack here: https://substack.com/@ehart

Please consider supporting us on www.patreon.com/colombiacalling  

Colombian energy giant Ecopetrol has polluted hundreds of sites with oil, including water sources and biodiverse wetlands, the BBC World Service has found.

However, as detailed in a new documentary produced and directed by Owen Pinnell of the BBC: "Exposing the toxic record of Colombia's oil giant | BBC World Service Documentaries,:" there are far more issues involving Colombia's Ecopetrol beyond just pollution the region's water sources such as potential links to paramilitary groups.

As quoted in the documentary: "Matthew Smith, an oil analyst and financial journalist based in Colombia, says he does not believe Ecopetrol managers are involved in threats by armed groups. But he says there is an "immense" overlap between former paramilitary groups and the private security sector. Private security firms often employ former members of paramilitary groups and compete for lucrative contracts to protect oil facilities, he says.
 
Whistleblower and former employee of Ecopetrol, Mr Olarte shared internal Ecopetrol emails (now named "The Iguana Papers") showing that in 2018, the company paid a total of $65m to more than 2,800 private security companies.

"There is always that risk of some sort of contagion between the private security companies, the types of people they employ, and their desire to continually maintain their contract," Mr Smith says. He says this could potentially even include kidnapping or murdering community leaders or environmental defenders in order to "ensure that Ecopetrol's operations proceed smoothly".

And so, journalists Emily Hart and Richard McColl of the Colombia Calling podcast, have the fantastic opportunity to discuss what it meant to film this documentary, meet the courageous people who were and are willing to speak out about some of the crimes being committed in the region of Barrancabermeja, Santander and how the whole area is being affected by this.

BBC Article: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crewlj11jljo

Tune in and see the documentary here: https://youtu.be/Grp3YRhSf2o

This is a truly incredible episode of the Colombia Calling podcast, please be sure to share, like and spread the word. And as always, tune in to the Colombia Briefing, reported by Emily Hart. 

In today’s episode, Emily Hart speaks to archaeologist Daniella Betancourt: the woman decoding the enigma of Colombia’s mummies.

Mummification is a practice which has been carried out all over the world, from Chile to China – from the ancient Egyptian pharaohs to Vladimir Lenin and Evita Perón, and - though chronically understudied - right here in Colombia too.

These preserved remains are, Daniella tells us, a perfect time capsule: bodies frozen in time, they give us all sorts of clues about the ways people lived, and their beliefs about life and death.

With the National University of Colombia, Daniella has been studying a collection of 36 mummies found in various institutions, trying to work out who they were, who mummified them, when - and why.

Because until now, there has been so little study of this practice in Colombia, there’s still an awful lot find out, not least because these mummies were created by indigenous communities whose histories and customs were interrupted and erased by the Spanish colonisation of the country: many of Colombia’s mummies were destroyed and even burnt.

But there is evidence that indigenous groups in Colombia kept practicing ritual mummification long after the arrival of the Spanish – perhaps a high-stakes act of cultural resistance, a spiritual imperative, or an attempt to create talismans of power – at this point, we can only guess – what the study has revealed, however, is that mummification was practiced much more widely than was previously thought – by more groups and in more regions of Colombia.

Though in the historical chronicles of the Spanish invasion and early colonial period, there are some descriptions of mummies, most of the contextual information has been lost – in fact we don’t even know where most of these mummies came from or how they were found, as their burial sites were desecrated by tomb raiders and looters who took anything of value and sometimes even displaced the remains themselves. However, the new study by Daniella and the team has shed new light on these Mummies, able to reach amazing conclusions about diet, geography, and even health from state-of-the-art scientific methods.

However, as Daniella will tell us, some of the results actually pose more questions than they answer – we’ll be talking in particular about a mummified two-year-old girl, who surprised Daniella even after years of studying her, and whose strange condition continues to confound researchers. We’ll also be discussing the ethics of studying human remains, and of displaying them in museums.

The headlines for this week are also reported by Emily Hart.

Barry Max Wills, author of: "Better than Cocaine: Learning to Grow Coffee, and Live in Colombia," and Richard McColl of: "The Mompos Project: A Tale of Love, Hotels and Madness in Colombia," join editor Dan Cross on this week's Colombia Calling podcast.

In a conversation that takes in the topics of culture and identity, immigrants to Colombia, writing about their adopted homeland, their books and the editing process, the triumvirate chats about the recent launch party and conversation event at Bookworm bookshop in Bogota.

 Enjoy this fun conversation!

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart, check out her substack: https://substack.com/@ehart

And buy the books please:
The Mompos Project: https://a.co/d/49iOsiz 
Better than Cocaine: https://a.co/d/7gAtzyR 

On this week's Colombia Calling podcast, we speak to James Bargent, an investigative journalist for Insight Crime about his work putting together the new podcast: "the Shadow of El Dorado."

Along with his colleague Mat Charles, the resulting podcast is a multi-year project which takes the listener into the world of organized crime and how the Gaitanista (Clan del Golfo or AGC) criminal organisation controls the mining economy and its subsidiary interests in the town of Segovia, Antioquia.

Their search for Colombia’s blood gold takes us to Segovia and the illegal mines at the very beginning of the global supply chain.

But what they find there is a strange mirror world, where conventional narratives fall apart, and the names and labels they try to apply do not make sense.

 Tune in to the podcast: https://insightcrime.org/audio-from-the-ground-up/the-shadow-of-el-dorado-p…

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart. 

President Petro's Disastrous Televised Cabinet Meeting or The Petro Presidency Meltdown.

Pause for breath if you can, but we've been experiencing a barrage of negative headlines surrounding Colombia's President Petro.

This began with, at first, the online fracas with President Trump over the treatment of Colombian illegal migrants being returned to their homeland to, most recently, a total car crash of a televised cabinet meeting.

Did you watch it? If not, the best bits have been put together here by El Pais for your viewing entertainment: COLOMBIA | Los momentos memorables del consejo de ministros de Petro | EL PAÍS

Anyway, on this episode of the Colombia Calling podcast, we chat to Adriaan Alsema, director of Colombia Reports, about whether we can call this the "Petro Presidency Meltdown," and what we can expect from the Colombian premier for the remaining year and a bit of his tenure.

We look at the cornerstone policy plans of Petro's administration and discuss if whether any will get through Congress before his time is up. What has happened to Total Peace (Paz Total), the Health, Pension and Labour reforms...is the Petro project doomed to failure? And, where does the political chameleon and survivor Armando Benedetti fit into all this?

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart. 

Tune in and subscribe!

This week on the Colombia Calling podcast, we speak to Lorena Estupiñán-Pedraza, a professor of international relations and political science from Boyaca, but resident in the southern city of Cali.

In a far-ranging conversation, we discuss Lorena's PhD studies public policy implementation in Boyaca, local problems with global impacts and all about what it means to be from Boyaca and to understand the Boyacense idiosyncrasy and culture.

Tune in to this, the Colombia Briefing with Emily Hart and subscribe to the podcast.

A new documentary, in the making, seeks to document the sacred nature of an ancient medicine. We're all familiar with vivid tales of projectile vomiting and the complete loss of bodily functions during an ayuahuasca ceremony but who, amongst us, has really explored the benefits of a ritual?

This documentary seeks to educate us, through a carefully curated journey from the lands of the Taitas (shamans) in Putumayo, the process of creating the ayahuasca (also known as Yage), to the preparation of the ceremony, the ritual itself and then a reflection of the ceremony and its outcomes.

The documentary maker: Sam Lipman-Stern is an Emmy Nominated Filmmaker with a passion for the visual arts that dates to his early days as a graffiti artist. In August 2023, HBO released Telemarketers, a 3-part limited documentary series created, executive produced and co-directed by Lipman-Stern. Time Magazine called it, "One of the Most Exciting Docuseries in Recent Years!"

Sam Believ founded LaWayra retreat together with his wife Estefania in 2021. LaWayra was born as a passion project from the desire to drink medicine from our home and share medicine with some friends and slowly grew to become one of the best Ayahuasca retreats in the world. At the retreat they provide a world class Ayahuasca experience and stays for affordable prices.

Check out: https://ayahuascaincolombia.com/

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart
View her Substack: https://harte.substack.com/

And please consider supporting the Colombia Calling podcast: https://patreon.com/colombiacalling

Jonathan Swift, "Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it.”

… never truer than in 2025

This week on the Colombia Calling podcast Emily Hart and Richard McColl tackle the issue of disinformation and fact-checking in Colombia and fortunately, we don't have to take on this task alone but are joined by two experts in the field. Laura Sarabia Rangel is the Editor of El Detector de Mentiras at La Silla Vacia and Jose Felipe Sarmiento joins us from ColombiaCheck and we get to pick their brains about the need for fact-checking, disinformation in Colombia and how one undertakes the process of finding the truth. 

There have been so many circumstances where people and politicians have been saying things that are simply untrue, in Colombia specifically, about the health reform, the stigmatisation of indigenous communities or the denialism of the False Positives, to name a few. 

So, we get to hear how Laura and Jose Felipe work, put some rumours and untruths to bed and discuss what readers and consumers can do to make sure they’re consuming high quality media. 

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart. 

Sometimes, it's just fun to have an agreeable conversation, and this is why I enjoyed chatting to Vivek Jayaraman.

Vivek was born in Tamil, India and in the way life takes its unusual routes has ended up living in northern Bogota and with a love of mountains - he's from the plains - and a firm desire to know and understand the regions of Cundinamarca and Boyacá, Colombia.

In his words: "Thus was born Project Boyacá and Project Cundinamarca. The idea being that I visit all the 123 and 116 municipalities atleast once.

"People associate this part of the world with drugs, violence and the remote jungles. My attempt is to try and change this perception, taking into account that Colombia is my wife's home country.

"I got fascinanted by small towns having grown up in similar places back in India. It was equally impressive to see names of the towns that can trace their origins to the indigenous culture of Muisca that dominated this region - Guachetá, Guachetá, Machetá for example - Chetá refers to farmlands. The indigenous origin is not too appreciated here I also wanted to create awareness of these.

"My wife is from Guachetá, Cundinamarca which is believed the town of the Son of Sun - Goranchacha, which she did not know before I met her.

"Eventually I want to have a repository of these travels in a website with photographs, Instagram being an easy way. I have made 100 posts each year 2022 onwards. I was this close to create a calendar last year with photos from specific regions, then it was too expensive and too late. This being, the idea of India through the eyes of India."

What a wonderful story, you'll agree.

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart.

In order to understand the issue of the cocaine trade in Colombia, we need to look at three factors:

1. Drugs Policy as a Geopolitical tool.
2. Markets: A Political Economic issue.
3. Narratives: the Myth of the Narco.

On the Colombia Calling podcast this week we speak to Estefanía Ciro Rodríguez, expert on drug politics, the cocaine economy and the Colombian armed conflict. We discuss la Escombrera in Medellin, Pablo Escobar, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Arms trafficking by the Sinaloa cartel and the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación to Colombia, genetically modified coca, cocaine seizures, the price of cocaine, and why Colombia as a nation needs to look in the mirror. Check out: https://alaorilladelrio.com

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart. Support her on Substack: https://substack.com/@ehart

and

Support us on: https://www.patreon.com/c/colombiacalling 

Brendan Corrigan has had multiple jobs in his time in Colombia (dating back to 2011), and his most constant has been that of a contributing writer of acerbic observations for the El Tiempo national newspaper, with an office job in marketing thrown in for good measure and some forays into the acting world by way of a telenovela (soap opera) appearance here and there.

However, there's been an ever present itch and it has been his desire to get out into the wilds of Colombia to see and experience some of the ground covered by "the forefather of human rights," Irishman Roger Casement.

Aside: Who was Roger Casement? Roger Casement was commissioned to undertake a report on the reported abuse of workers in the rubber industry in the Putumayo basin in Peru. The report was published as a parliamentary paper (1911) and had considerable impact, gaining Casement international recognition as a humanitarian, his contribution being acknowledged with a knighthood.

Anyhow, Brendan being an Irishman in Colombia has felt the strong urge to pursue some of the history surrounding his countryman and this led him to travel to La Chorrera in the department of Amazonas in Colombia where Casement had worked. We hear his tales from the road in Bogota, San José del Guaviare and la Chorrera.

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart. 

As there are now a growing number of people considering moving to Colombia, and where better than the country's enticing Coffee Region, we decided to focus on this topic for this week.

Known for its natural beauty and landscapes, lush countryside, friendly and hard-working people...it's an easy sell. But what happens when you are ready to take the next step beyond internet research and start the actual process of moving your life to the cities of Manizales, Pereira or Armenia or a pueblito nearby? This is where Erin Donaldson comes in!

 A long-time immigrant to the Eje Cafetero and now resident in Manizales, Erin knows the whole area like the back of her hand and can furnish anyone with all the information necessary:...taxes - no problem, healthcare - easy days, travel and transport - piece of cake. She'll help you make that transition from expat to immigrant.

Enjoy this engaging conversation and check out her website: https://coffeeaxistravel.com and there find links to all of her other social media platforms including her YouTube channel.

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart. 

Have you heard of "destination duping," "rosy retrospection," "JOMO," or "trailblazer hotels?" Well, with Colombia of course in mind given that this is the Colombia Calling podcast, we leap into 2025 with an upbeat episode discussing travel trends for this year. We mull over each of the aforementioned phrases with Bruce Mclean, travel expert and owner of BNBColombia Tours.

Hear us talk about how Colombia may just return to being an "emerging tourism" destination again and stepping beyond this to establish itself as a global player...there's still a way to go, but it can happen and things are looking good for both 2025 and 2026.

 Oh and "JOMO," means "Joy of Missing Out!" Can you travel this way?
 Check out: https://bnbcolombia.com