News and Politics

“Only 20.7 percent of American adults can speak a foreign language — compared with 66 percent of all European adults who know more than one language” (Zietlow, 2017). This statistic is often justified by the American explanation that for Europeans, due to the close proximity of different countries, learning a foreign language is easy because it is as though each state in the United States spoke a different language. As if for some reason close neighbors that speak a different language make it more common for Europeans to learn a second or even third language.

For more than half a century, Colombians have been caught in the midst of violence between “La Violencia”, guerilla groups, and drug lords. After one conflict ended, another began, and when there seemed to be a lull in the violence and a chance for peace, a presidential candidate would be assassinated, or a guerilla bomb would leave the country’s infrastructure devastated. In 2016, the Colombian Peace Deal between then-president Juan Manuel Santos and the (write out the acronym) FARC guerilla group seemed to be the first real sign that Colombia was emerging from its decades of violence.