From Colombia

This is the translation of an article that I wrote in Octuber, 2010. It is about my point of view on the habit of Spanish speakers to call people and things from the United States 'americanos' (American), when a correct name exists: estadounidenses (something like Unitedstaters). Last week I attended the presentation of the Unitedstater Studies Institute (Instituto de Estudios Estadounidenses) in Bogota, Colombia, attracted by the posibility of getting to know something else about the United States, county which I like since my childhood and in which I have had the chance of living briefly somewhen. What attracted my attention the most was the name of the institute itself. Its name is  Unitedstater Studies Institute and not American like some others which exist in some Spanish-speaking countries. And I believe that  Unitedstater is the correct name for the people born and nationalized in the United States. Not American because that name belong to all the inhabitants o...

El Dorado is a legend place sought unsuccessfully by Spaniard and English explorers for centuries. Many of them died in the attempt. It was suposed to be a place with gold-paved streets with huge reserves of the precious metal, located somewhere in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela and Brazil. DreamWorks produced an animated movie about El Dorado (The Road to El Dorado) but it was located erroneously in Mexico. There are several version of the legend in different places but the most accepted is the one in Colombia where in a lagoon nearby Bogota (39 miles) the chief of Muisca indians used to be covered in gold dust on a rift, in a rite in which he and other indians paid tributo to the Mother Earth by throwing gold and emerald pieces into the lagoon.   After many years of wanting to go to get to know the Muisca sacred lagoon, and despite the close it is to my hometown, yesterday I went with my family and got surprised of the much I learned about my ancestors. The first s...

After the release of six more hostages kidnapped by FARC, the fate of the ones who remain captive is uncertain due to the Colombian government states that it will not release guerrilla members in exchange. They are a group of 16 people, formed by military, police and civil hostages. For FARC the hostages are either military or political prisoners, the same as the guerrilla members who are detained in the country's prisons. Along these lines, the revolutionary force expects to exchange its prisoners with the ones from the government. In the other hand, for the Colombian government the idea is not valid. That is why   the releases by FARC have been unilateral. Regardless of that, the ones who are in the middle of the storm and who get mostly affected by all this are the hostages themselves, the same as, in my opinion, the soldiers, policemen and "private" guerrillas who are the ones who face the enemy and risk their freedom and lives....

'Colombia, the only risk is wanting to stay' is tha name of a campain designed to promote this country as a tourist destination for the rest of the world. It metions 'risk' refering to the security matter, that is one of the first that come up when Colombia is the topic. The question is: could a country be safe when it is known as one of the most violent in the world, faces one of the longer armed conflict in the western hemisphere and whose crime and kidnapping rates increase and the higest rate of death is killing? Beleive it or not, the answer is yes. And I tell you why: Although the left-winged Revolucionary Armed Forces of Colombia FARC has been fighting governments for more than four dacades, its atacking power lowered in the last eight years thanks to the former president Alvaro Uribe's Democatic Security policy. The new government, whose president is Juan Manuel Santos, in two months in the power has hit FARC hardly. Even though FARC is still alive, it is re...

Mono jojoy, aka Jorge Briceño, whose real name was Victor Julio Suarez, the FARC's military chief pulled down by the Colombia Armed Forces, was the second top leader of the left-winged guerrilla but the one who led its military operations. He was nicknamed Mono Jojoy after a species of worm from the Amazon, called mojojoy, which is very skilled at scaping. In Spanish mono means 'monkey', in Spain 'pretty' and in Colombia 'blond'. Mono Jojoy joined FARC in 1975 and soon he beceme a cuadrilla (a sort of brigade) leader because of his ideals, radical stances and methods which got him several arrest warrants for rebellion, kidnapping, narcotraffick, extortion, terrorism and murder among others. He was implicated in the bombing of Club El Nogal in Bogota in 2003 that killed 36 people and injures more than 100, he was accused for participating in the kidnapping of Ingrid Betancour and the assessination of the journalist Diana Turbay, he was charged for recruting c...

General Mendieta is a Colombia National Police commissioned officer who was recently rescued from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia FARC after eleven years of kidnapping. He was took prisoner in 1998 in the city of Mitu, in the Colombian Amazon, when he was practicing as the commander of city police bureau, in the rank of litenuant colonel. During his captivity he was promoted by the Colombian Government to the the ranks of colonel, Brigade General and Major General. Mendieta was rescued with three more Armed Forces of Colombia members by Colombia Army through 'The Chameleon Operation'. Until that day General Mendieta was the police and military force kidnapped the with the highest rank in the world. Two facts involves me with this. The first one is that I produced a journalism report on it as a prelude of General Mendieta's rescue. It was by the way of his last promotion which was particular due to the general's obvious absence. Then, I attended the ceremony ...