Friday, September 25, 2026

Latest News

A Landscape of Loss: Forty Years After Armero

By Richard Emblin -

Forty years after the catastrophe that erased Armero from the map, the landscape where the town once stood has taken on the quiet, uncanny stillness of an eroded manuscript. Vegetation has woven itself into the skeletal remains of walls and foundations, reclaiming what the earth so violently seized on the night of November 13, 1985. […]

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Palace of Justice: Forty Years, Four Peace Processes, and No Peace

By Luis Guillermo Plata -

I remember perfectly the morning of November 6, 1985. I was 18 years old, a high school conscript serving in the Presidential Guard Battalion. Chaos reigned. Commanders shouted orders as we deployed in trucks and on foot – not only toward Plaza de Bolívar, but to different corners of Bogotá. No one knew where the […]

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Colombia Marks 40 Years Since Palace of Justice Siege by M-19

By Richard Emblin -

Forty years after one of the darkest chapters in Colombia’s modern history, the country is commemorating the 1985 Palace of Justice siege amid fierce controversy over President Gustavo Petro’s attempts to reinterpret and elevate the legacy of the M-19 — the guerrilla to which he once belonged and which unleashed one of the bloodiest attacks […]

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US Hits Seventh Narco-Boat Off Colombia, Blurring Lines Between Ally and Adversary

By The City Paper Staff -

The United States carried out its seventh missile strike on a suspected narco-trafficking vessel in the Eastern Pacific near Colombia on Tuesday, the latest in a rapidly expanding maritime campaign that has killed at least 67 people and is drawing Colombia into the same operational battlefield long reserved for President Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela. In a […]

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EU Leaders Ditch Santa Marta Summit With U.S. Sanctions on Petro

By Richard Emblin -

The upcoming EU-CELAC summit in Santa Marta, billed as Colombia’s most ambitious diplomatic event in over a decade, is now being reshaped by a cascade of cancellations from European leaders following U.S. sanctions against President Gustavo Petro. What was expected to unite more than 60 heads of state from Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean […]

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Bogotá Opens First International Violin Competition With Latin American Celebration

By The City Paper Staff -

Bogotá is preparing for a milestone in its cultural calendar as it inaugurates the first edition of the Bogotá International Violin Competition on October 30, an ambitious event that aims to position the Colombian capital on the global map of classical music. Organized by the Mayor’s Office through the Secretariat of Culture, Recreation and Sport, […]

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City of Whispering Walls: Inside Bogotá’s Most Haunted Homes

By Richard Emblin -

In Bogotá, the past is never fully at rest. It lingers in courtyards and stairwells, in shuttered colonial mansions and dimly lit gardens, whispering through cracked adobe walls. Nowhere is this spectral presence more palpable than in the city’s oldest quarters, where the cobblestones have absorbed centuries of triumphs, tragedies, and the uncanny footprints of […]

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Did Venezuela’s ex-spymaster Hugo Carvajal Spark OFAC Sanctions Against Petro?

By The City Paper Staff -

The U.S. Treasury’s unprecedented decision to sanction Colombian President Gustavo Petro and his inner circle has sparked speculation that recent testimony by Venezuela’s former spy chief, Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal, may have cemented the move. Carvajal, once a powerful general in Hugo Chávez’s intelligence services, pleaded guilty in June 2025 to drug trafficking and narco-terrorism […]

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U.S. Treasury Puts Colombia’s Petro and Close Circle on ‘Clinton List’

By The City Paper Staff -

The U.S. Government moved aggressively against Colombian President Gustavo Petro and his inner circle on Friday, imposing sanctions that target his financial and political support network as relations between Washington and Bogotá struck a new low. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), also known as the Clinton List, designated Petro, First Lady […]

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U.S. Senate Warns of Hezbollah Expansion in Colombia and Venezuela

By The City Paper Staff -

Hezbollah’s growing foothold in Latin America has found its epicenter in Venezuela and along the porous 2,000-km long Colombia-Venezuela border, where U.S. lawmakers and former counterterrorism officials warn the militant group has built financial and logistical networks with the support of the Maduro regime and illegal armed groups. “Venezuela is a willing safe haven for […]

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U.S. Destroys Drug Boat in the Pacific as Trump Expands Anti-Narco Offensive

By The City Paper Staff -

The United States said it destroyed a vessel carrying narcotics in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, killing two people it described as “narco-terrorists,” in what marks the first U.S. military strike away from Caribbean waters under President Donald Trump’s expanding campaign against drug trafficking groups. “Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the Department […]

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Colombia Court Overturns Uribe Conviction, Declares Ex-President Innocent

By Richard Emblin -

Colombia’s Superior Tribunal of Bogotá has overturned the conviction of former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez, declaring him innocent of bribery and witness tampering in one of the country’s most divisive political trials in decades. The ruling by the tribunal’s Criminal Chamber revoked an earlier judgment by Bogotá’s 44th Circuit Court, which in August sentenced Uribe […]

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Colombian Politicians React to Trump’s Tariff Threat and Aid Suspension

By Richard Emblin -

U.S President Donald Trump triggered a political firestorm in Colombia after announcing on his social media platform – Truth Social – the immediate suspension of all financial aid and imposition of punitive tariffs on Colombian exports. The decision came after he branded President Gustavo Petro an “illegal drug leader.” Trump’s extraordinary statements mark one of […]

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Trump Calls Colombia’s Petro an “Illegal Drug Leader,” Halts U.S. Aid

By The City Paper Staff -

In an extraordinary escalation that threatens to end decades of strategic partnership, U.S. President Donald J. Trump on Sunday labeled Colombian President Gustavo Petro an “illegal drug leader” and announced the immediate suspension of U.S. financial aid to Colombia. Speaking from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and posting on his Truth Social platform, Trump accused […]

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