On Sunday, incumbent Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos won re-election. Santos defeated his run-off opponent, fellow conservative Oscar Ivan Zuluaga 51% to 45%.1 His victory was a comeback in nature, after emerging from the first round 500,000 votes behind Zuluaga. Yet on June 15th, Santos won by almost one million votes.2
With the death of Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez on April 17, 2014 the world has lost one of its most beloved authors. Fortunately, his works live on in countless libraries, bookstores, cinemas, internet pages, and the minds and hearts of millions.
The last report of the Americas Barometer Insight Series, authored by Ana Maria Montoya, focuses on Colombians' perception of the conversion of the FARC into a political party.
In 2010, as part of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Law of 2009, the Colombian government announced the ambitious goal to bring internet access to half a million Colombians.1 Since the program’s implementation in 2011, the advances in internet access are astounding making Colombia the online government leader in Latin America.2 They plan to eventually provide each citizen with their own piece of “digital real estate;” including an email account, access to their digital medical records and major financial transactions.3 The overarching ob
Twenty-two years in a maximum-security prison was deemed sufficient punishment for the favored hitman of former drug kingpin of Colombia, Pablo Escobar, on Tuesday, August 26, 2014. John Jairo Velásquez, also known by his nickname, “Popeye,” was released early from a prison located 100 miles north of Bogotá, Colombia, a place where he had confessed to atrocities far more numerous than the one murder for which he had spent his time serving.
On September 22nd and 23rd, the United Nations held its first annual International Conference on Indigenous Villages. Indigenous representatives from around the world gathered in New York City to discuss indigenous rights in order to bring equality to a group of people that have been oppressed and discriminated against since colonization. The indigenous population of the world totals 370 million people, which constitutes 5% of the total world population and they represent about one third of people living in poverty.1
The peace negotiations currently underway in Colombia between the Juan Manuel Santos government and the guerilla group known as theFARC are setting the conditions for the eventual electoral participation of FARC excombatants,including the opportunity for them to run for office. This Insights reportexamines the attitudes of Colombians towards the FARC’s formal participation in thecountry’s political system.
For the past two years, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, has been in negotiation with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, otherwise known as FARC.
After nearly two years of peace negotiations between FARC and the Colombian government, the FARC have done something they have never done before. In all the 50 years that FARC has been terrorizing Colombia, they have never once sequestered a government or military official, but on November 16th, 2014, a leading general in the Colombian military was captured while traversing a remote river in an indigenous region of the Colombian rainforest.
