Colombia, Moderation and Excess
Is Colombia the country of moderation and the right balance or the country of extremes and excesses?
Read MoreFacing Terrorism
I find three social attitudes to be particularly unpleasant: intolerance towards those that think differently, indifference towards social injustice, and the call to war to solve problems stemming from nationalism or religion. That’s why I identitfy with three philosophical traditions: liberalism, social democracy, and pacifism.
Read MoreThe Faith of the Coal-Mining Country
They say that the expression in Spanish “to have the faith of a coal miner”— a blind faith, devoid of a grip on reality— comes from a famous anecdote from fifteenth-century Spain, which involved a coal miner.
The Santos Administration in Favor of Civil Liberties
This November will be remembered as a liberal month.
Read MoreNot for Sale
And it meant that the “Not for Sale” signs pointed to something more than the constant potential for theft. They also pointed to the structural problem of land distribution and access to property in the country.
Read MoreThe Cigarras
The peace process treats gendered violence in a differentiated manner because it has been invisibilized like no other offense.
Read MoreThe Solicitor General and the Palace
I welcome the Solicitor General’s press release in memory of the judges and members of the armed forces that lost their lives in the taking and re-taking of Palace of Justice. The problem is that this attitude contrasts with his silence and insensibility towards the victims of these events: the disappeared and their families.
Read MoreThe Global Village
In 1962 the Canadian sociologist Marshal McLuhan spoke of “the global village” to suggest that, thanks to advances in communications technology, the world had become smaller and more managable.
Read MoreGoodbye, Micolta Soldier
The controversy surrounding the Micolta solider and his removal from the T.V. show Sábados Felices shows that there is progress in the debate and action against racism in the country.
Read MoreMonsignor Castro: To Build Bridges or Walls?
The Catholic Church has played an important role in the search for peace in Colombia. However, the bishops’ extremism against equal adoption sends a contradictory message to society.
Read MoreOn crisis and spells
Con los análisis de fin de año Y los propósitos de 2013 se reitera desde varios medios la crisis de las grandes potencias. Los periódicos de otras latitudes alegan que los europeos quieren olvidar 2012 y prepararse para enfrentar la realidad del año que comienzan. Anuncian el tijeretazo a las cuentas públicas portuguesas, el arreglito…
Read MoreHirshman, conflict and democracy
Francisco Gutiérrez y Posada Carbó are right in their last colums when they highlight the notable work of Albert Hisrschman, the heterodox economist who recently passed away and that knew Colombia very well.
Read MoreThe new colombian nationalism
One of the things I’ve always loved from Colombia is the low intensity of its nationalism. In other countries, such as Argentina and Mèxico, the nationalism goes so deep that it is visible in any cultural manifestation and it has been constantly used as an instrument of political mobilization, with high components of dogmatism and not fes cases of persecution of dissidence, often called “stateless”. In Colombia, instead, the belonging to the nation has nat traditionally generated such an acute feeling.
Read MoreRojas Operative
It is already hard to watch Operación E. in Spain. Only a few theaters are still showing, late at night, the movie based in the story of José Crisanto, the peasant who took care of the son of Clara Rojas, born in the middle of her kidnapp in the jungle, for even months.
Read MoreThe right to laziness
That’s how the french socialist Paul Lafargue called an ironic and provocative essay published in 1880, in wich he opposes te fervor for work that both the right and left wings demonstrated in his time.
Read MoreModerated military and radical cattle dealers?
Years ago, Guillermo O’Donnel and Phillippe Schmitter wrote an interesting book on democratic transitions. The argument is that transitions are moments of great uncertainty, in wich the decisions of political actors are definitive.
Read MoreOn the mysteries of life
The recent decision of the ICHR on fertilization in vitro in Costa Rica will give many to say in Colombia.
Read MoreRafael Nieto and the Santo Domingo case
La rabia de Rafael Nieto Loaiza contra la reciente decisión de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH), que condenó a Colombia por un bombardeo de la Fuerza Área Colombiana (FAC) en donde murieron 17 personas, es comprensible. Al fin y al cabo, Nieto representó a Colombia ante la CIDH y no sólo perdió el…
Read MoreCouches for sale
Once again in Colombia we are repeating the attitude of the person who’s told that his wife is cheating on him with his best friend in the couch of the living room and, to face this, he sells the couch.
Read MoreDeaf’s dialogue
The debate on the miner locomotive seams like a dialogue of deaf. But not because some (the Government and the oil and miner companies) ignore the others (critics that ask the rails for the locomotive), but because these and the others are equally indiferente to the evidence of the unsustainability of a country, a planent, riding such a train.
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