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. 

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