Latest News

A Landscape of Loss: Forty Years After Armero

By Richard Emblin - November 11, 2025

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. […]

China’s Ruifeng Lin Wins Bogotá’s First International Violin Competition

By The City Paper Staff - November 8, 2025

Bogotá brought its inaugural International Violin Competition to a rousing close on Saturday night, capping a week of performances that reshaped the city’s classical music landscape and signaled the arrival of a new cultural tradition. The grand finale, held at the Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo, unfolded as both a celebration of virtuosity and […]

Colombia’s Nevado del Ruiz and Global Rise of Volcano Tourism

By The City Paper Staff - November 7, 2025

Volcanoes are very visible when traveling through most of central Colombia and even though some remain dormant, hikers can climb up to the crater of the active Nevado del Ruíz

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

By Richard Emblin - November 6, 2025

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 […]

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

By The City Paper Staff - November 5, 2025

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 […]

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

By Richard Emblin - November 4, 2025

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 […]

Bogotá Opens First International Violin Competition With Latin American Celebration

By The City Paper Staff - October 30, 2025

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, […]

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

By The City Paper Staff - October 24, 2025

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 […]

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

By The City Paper Staff - October 23, 2025

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 […]

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

By The City Paper Staff - October 22, 2025

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 […]

Colombia Court Overturns Uribe Conviction, Declares Ex-President Innocent

By Richard Emblin - October 21, 2025

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 […]

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

By Richard Emblin - October 20, 2025

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 […]

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

By The City Paper Staff - October 19, 2025

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 […]

Venezuelan Activists Attacked in Bogotá During Targeted Shooting

By The City Paper Staff - October 14, 2025

Two Venezuelan human rights activists living in exile in Colombia were wounded in a targeted shooting on Monday afternoon in northern Bogotá, an attack that has renewed fears over the safety of political dissidents in the country. The assault took place just days after Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the 2025 Nobel […]

Nobel Prize: Machado “keeps the flame of democracy burning”

By Richard Emblin - October 10, 2025

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced on Friday, recognizing her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela” and her “struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” Machado, 58, is the first Venezuelan to receive […]

White House Wants Petro to Retract Claims Of “Colombian Deaths” in Narco Strike

By Richard Emblin - October 9, 2025

The White House said it would “welcome” a public retraction from Colombian President Gustavo Petro after he accused the U.S. military of killing Colombian citizens during a recent naval strike in the Caribbean, calling his remarks “baseless and reprehensible.” The clash underscores a widening diplomatic rift that now extends to international waters, deepening already strained […]