Columns & Blogs

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.

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. 

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.

The prison population has had its political rights and liberty curtailed legally, but the rest of its rights are illegally violated.

In contrast to the majority of countries that want a treaty that guarantees the right to the free access to information in Latin America, Colombia has done everything in its power to make the instrument simply a declaraton of principles without teeth.

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.

The taking and re-taking of the Palace of Justice was not only were atrocious and painful events; they were also moral and institutional ruptures that generated a vicious cycle of violence, from which we are still not free.

In 1987 the administration of President Barco hired a group of academics from the National University in order to do a study on the causes of violence in Colombia.

"To eat a big chunk of beef is one of the most efficient forms to validate and take advantage of an unjust world," judged recently writer Martín Caparrós in one of the best op-eds I have read in years.

I have never seen such a happy loser.

The entire year what was most discussed in my country was the famous "Balance of Powers Reform." However, its implementation process goes unnoticed, likely because we are a country of short memory.