President Juan Manuel Santos faces challenger Oscar Ivan Zuluaga with country split over peace talks with Farc The rightwing opposition candidate Oscar Ivan Zuluaga won most votes in Colombia's presidential election on Sunday but fell well short of a first-round victory and will face president Juan Manuel Santos in a run-off next month. Zuluaga, who has fiercely opposed Santos's peace talks with the...
Tightest election for two decades pits rightwinger Oscar Iván Zuluaga against President Juan Manuel Santos with focus on how to end Farc insurgency Colombians voted for a new president on Sunday in the tightest election for two decades that may determine whether the country continues peace talks with leftist guerrillas or steps up its military offensive to end a 50-year war. The vote has largely become...
Polls show Juan Manuel Santos in dead heat with challenger Oscar Iván Zuluaga, with Farc negotiations a central issue Like most Colombians, Edilberto Chacón would like to see his country at peace. Born eight years after Farc rebels declared war on the state in 1964, Chacón has watched the country's internal conflict unfold throughout his life, witnessing the expansion of the guerrilla...
Facebook users in the EU, Colombia, South Korea, Indonesia, New Zealand and Brazil will all be able to broadcast their status as voters Facebook is rolling out its "I'm a voter" feature worldwide, after the app's success in the Indian elections in early May. More than four million Indian voters clicked the button, registering that they had voted during the country's parliamentary elections,...
Youngsters and one adult killed after fuel exploded on a broken-down bus returning from a church event Thirty-one children and one adult were killed in Colombia on Sunday when fuel exploded on a broken-down bus returning from a church event. The charred bodies of victims were being identified using dental records in Barranquilla, the nearest city to the town of Fundacion where the accident happened,...
If Martin McCauley turns up to his Belfast hearing, he could face extradition to Colombia where he was arrested in 2001 An alleged IRA member has been granted the right to appeal against a terrorist conviction in Northern Ireland. Martin McCauley, arrested in Colombia in 2001 on suspicion of selling bombmaking technology to a Marxist guerilla group, has learned that the Public Prosecution Service (PPS)...
Advisers to incumbent Juan Manuel Santos and main challenger Óscar Iván Zuluaga separately forced to resign Damning accusations of espionage and payoffs from drug lords have tainted Colombia's presidential campaign, with advisers to the top two candidates resigning in separate scandals that could keep already indifferent voters away from the ballot boxes. President Juan Manuel Santos, who will seek...
Once notorious for drug gangs, Colombian city offers lesson in how to create 'liveable cities' in which citizens can flourish and innovate, writes Joseph Stiglitz Last month, a remarkable gathering occurred in Medellín, Colombia. About 22,000 people came together to attend the World Urban Forum and discuss the future of cities. The focus was on creating "cities for life" that is, on...
Four Colombian journalists covering May Day demonstrations in Medellín were attacked by riot police in spite of showing their press cards. Andrea Torres, Sebastian Carvajal, Juan Fernando Rojas and Esteban Vanegas - all from the daily El Colombiano - were assaulted by riot officers to whom they had made a point of showing their press cards. Continue reading... ...
Claims are published in Colombian media that JJ Rendon received US$12m to negotiate surrender of drug lords The chief strategist for Juan Manuel Santos in Colombia's presidential election campaign has resigned amid allegations he took US$12m from some of Colombia's top drug lords in exchange for helping to negotiate their surrender. The allegations against JJ Rendon were published by the Colombian...
Rural workers say Juan Manuel Santos has failed to deliver on reform as armed troops, tanks and riot police sent into streets The Colombian government is deploying tanks, troops and riot police to counter a farmers' strike that aims to choke food supplies before the upcoming presidential election on 25 May. Rural workers are taking to the streets for the second time in less than a year because they...
The intoxicating infusion implicated in the death of a British teenager in Colombia has been touted as a cure for depression and namechecked by celebrities and musicians. So how harmful is it and is it illegal? Last week, the British teenager Henry Miller died after taking part in a shamanic ceremony in Colombia that included sipping the plant-based infusion known as yagé or ayahuasca. The Colombian...
Gap year teenager from Bristol, Henry Miller, suffered allergic reaction after taking part in tribal ritual The body of a British teenager has been found by the road in a Colombian forest, after he took part in a "shaman experience" advertised for tourists. His family have said that Henry Miller, 19, from Kingsdown in Bristol, took part in a local tribal ritual, drinking a herbal concoction...
Novelist Mona Simpson reflects on a legacy that extends far beyond 'magical realism' In one of Gabriel García Márquez's early imperishable stories, a man whose baby has a fever goes out into a rainstorm to throw crabs from the house into the sea; he and his wife think their stench may be causing the baby's illness. On the way back, he discovers an old man in his courtyard. The old...
American novelist Francisco Goldman on how the life and work of the late Nobel-prizewinning author have inspired him I was about 14, at home, sick from school, the day my mother came into my bedroom to read to me, in Spanish, from a novel that she said was one of the saddest novels she'd ever read. The book's title, Cien años de soledad , did sound pretty sad. The novel didn't...
Translator Edith Grossman believes Love in the Time of Cholera is one of the great novels of the 20th century 1 When did you first read Gabriel García Márquez and what were your impressions? I first read García Márquez in graduate school. The novel was Cien años de soledad [ One Hundred Years of Solitude ], and I was overwhelmed. There hasn't been a novel, before...
Reins of Colombia's biggest city change hands for third time in just over a month as court order forces backdown by president Colombia's capital changed hands for a third time in little over a month after President Juan Manuel Santos executed a court order reinstating Bogota's ousted leftist mayor. The surprise ruling by the superior tribunal of Bogota is the latest twist in a legal saga pitting former...
Spanish newspaper publishes chapter from unseen manuscript We'll See Each Other in August, which could be the final work from the late Nobel laureate An extract from an unpublished manuscript by Gabriel García Márquez, in which the late Nobel laureate writes about a married woman having an affair on a tropical island, has been published in a Spanish newspaper. Continue reading... ...
Presidents of Mexico and Colombia lead tributes to author, with paper yellow butterflies launched at Bellas Artes Palace A flurry of paper yellow butterflies rounded off a simple but moving memorial ceremony to celebrate the life and work of Latin American literary giant Gabriel García Márquez who died in his home in Mexico City last Thursday at the age of 87. The ceremony inside the...
In the 1970s, not long after the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude, I taught English at the National Polytechnic of Mexico. My students were the first generation of their families to attend higher education and they were short of heroes in their own country. The Columbian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, a giant on the world stage as well as the greatest writer in Latin America,...