Pain for Orlando
One day, a rumor arrives at your door: 50 people have been killed in a gay club in Orlando and your first reaction is disbelief. When you can see with your own eyes that which seems a horror story, you ask yourself questions full of sorrow.
Read MoreRestitution, Cabal, and Kafka
Neither the land restitution jurisdiction, nor the complaintants who Cabal calls “lazy criminals that don’t like to work,” nor much less the vulnerable rural workers that occupy the requested pieces of land.
Read MoreHunger and Obesity: Two Faces of Inequality
Hunger and obesity are avoidable in today’s world. They are the result of political decisions that States have made regarding the production, commercialization, and distribution of food.
Ali and Pelé
Sports fans like myself who grew up in the 70s were all fans of the sports kings of that time: Pelé and Muhammad Ali.
Read MoreThe Summit of Social Mobilization
“Let’s go people damnit, the people don’t give up damnit” was sung for more than ten days during the Rural Workers and Ethnic Communities Summit.
Read MorePaying to Disobey
The Council of Bogotá recently approved a bill that would allow citizens to avoid the alternate-day travel system for the sum of approximately four million pesos per year. In short, the measure allows people to buy an exception so that they do not have to obey.
Read MoreTaking Protests Seriously
The poor debate about the current rural worker and ethnic communities strike shows that we still do not take social movements seriously. The blindspot is not only Santos’– “such strike does not exist,” he said during the marches in 2013– it extends to the media, the state, and the academy.
Read MoreInvisible and Vulnerable Migrants
To read this post in English click here.
Hundreds of migrants travel invisibly through Latin America toward the United States and confront regressive migration policies in our continent.
IACHR: Crisis and Opportunity
The Inter-American Commision on Human Rights (IACHR) has been fundamental in the struggle for democracy in Latin America. In many cases it has been the only institution to which victims of violations could turn to when they found no response in their own countries, like the families of those that were forcefully disappeared by the Argentine and Chilean dictatorships, or the victims of political persecution in Venezuela, or the censored journalists in Ecuador. And IACHR has also played an essential role in crucial moments, like the resistance of Peruvians against Fujimori’s dictatorship or the investigation about the missing Mexican students of Ayotzinapa.
Read MoreCaptured Academy
A few weeks ago the Human Sciences School of the National University paid homage to a group of profesors for their academic accomplishments. Among them was the sociologist Miguel Ángel Beltrán, who, as public opinion knows, was removed by the General Solicitor’s Office, accused of collaborating with the FARC, and later convicted on appeal by the Superior Court of Bogotá.
Read MoreWas the Health Reform the Victim of a Stampede?
In his Treaty on Probability (1920) and the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1937) John Maynard Keynes made a fundamental distinction between the notion of “risk” and “uncertainty.”
Read MoreThe National University is Really in Crisis
The fact that more than half of the buildings of the main public university in Colombia are at high risk of vulnerability and four percent of them are in imminent risk of collapse generates indignation.
Read MoreInjustices and Wars
Injustices cause wars but wars, in turn, also cause injustices. In Colombia, for example, injustice derives from the high inequality in agrarian land ownership, which was used by the guerrillas as a justification for their armed uprising.
Read MoreThe Government’s Legal Arguments in the Palace of Justice Case Re-victimizes the Victims
The government’s legal defense in the Palace of Justice case took an important turn toward decency when the lawyer Nieto Loaiza was taken off the case.
Read MoreThinking of the Issue of Drugs Alongside the Peace Process
Now that the different peaces and post-conflict scenarios in Colombia are being discussed, it is crucial to include the problem of illicit drug prosecutions in the debate. From what perspectives should we approach this problem so that we don’t make the same mistakes of the past?
Read MoreSecond Attempt at Judicial Reform: What is Essential?
After the last failure, we are still waiting for a proposal that will allow us to overcome the three main problems in the judicial system. A key issue is to reform the Superior Council of the Judiciary, which has brought so much discredit to the judicial branch.
Read MoreThe Inspector General´s Ecological Bullying
Piedras, Tolima. In this remote rice region of the country, it is clear that the Inspector General’s crusade against the rights of the citizens is more ambitious and ubiquitous than what it appears from Bogotá.
Read MoreThe Ways of Democracy
Once again, the Constitutional Court announced a decision that shook up the political power in Colombia and it positioned itself, again, as the arbitrator of political positions on a highly controversial issue that is fundamental to Colombian institutions.
Read MoreA Surgical Judicial Reform?
The recent scandals about corruption in the Judicial branch are serious and they add to other deficiencies of the judicial system, like it’s slowness in certain areas. Some, therefore, propose a total reformation of the judicial system, as if it had collapsed.
Read MoreThe Legal System has More than Just Defects
Criticism of the legal system has resumed with force. Many are well-founded, since the judicial system suffers from a series of problems such as slowness, lack of access and transparency, and corruption.
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