Franco believes that governments must increase efforts to preserve indigenous cultures. “The Indians represent a special culture, and resistance to the world,” argues the historian, who has spent three decades researching isolated tribes in Colombia. Martínez says that the Indians have a unique view of the cosmos, stressing “the unity of human beings with nature, the interconnectedness of all things.” It is a philosophy that makes them natural environmentalists, since damage to the forest or to members of one tribe, the Indians believe, can reverberate across society and history with lasting consequences. “They are protecting the jungle by chasing off gold miners and whoever else goes in there,” Franco says. He adds: “We must respect their decision not to be our friends—even to hate us.”
posted by jason's_planet
on Apr 13, 2013 -
21 comments
Peru aside, South American cuisine does not get a lot of attention in the English-speaking world, but there are plenty of recipes out there which allow you to try the specialities from Colombia, Argentina & Chile in the comfort of your own home. Starting with the staple of Colombia and Venezuela and made from cornmeal / hominy, the
arepa forms the basis of breakfast, lunch, dinner and anything in between.
Basic arepa recipe.
[more inside]
posted by jontyjago
on Sep 20, 2012 -
55 comments
Copa América is streamed live on YouTube. Copa América is the oldest international football competition, having been held first in 1916. This is a contest between the 10 South American nations and two invitational teams, this time Costa Rica and Mexico, who both sent young squads (Japan was slated to take part but
withdrew due to the earthquake). The tournament started yesterday with Bolivia unexpectedly managing to
hold Argentina to a draw. Colombia are currently beating a 10-man Costa Rica 1-0. Brazil start their campaign tomorrow, against Venezuela. One of the world's premier football writers, Jonathan Wilson, wrote previews of the three groups,
A,
B and
C. The Independent has more light-hearted
team previews.
posted by Kattullus
on Jul 2, 2011 -
13 comments
Scene and heard: Electro champeta |
Champeta.net |
I came across this dream collection of picós pictures on Africolombia's blog. Picós are these huge, powerful, customized, hand painted, highly fetishized sound systems from the Colombian Carribean Coast (Barranquilla, Cartagena, Palenque de San Basilio...). |
Sound Systems, World Beat, and Diasporan Identity in Cartagena, Colombia [pdf] |
Techno Tribal guarachero | Bonus cool link:
Brazilian Dual Mix Dance Free Step.
[more inside]
posted by nickyskye
on Jun 19, 2011 -
3 comments
"Cumbia is one of the world's great dance grooves. It is made up of merry guitars and accordions, torrid brass, and insistent, deep-toned drums and percussion, pounding out a lopsided, strutting 4/4 rhythm with a kick like nitroglycerine. Cumbia is the result of three colliding cultures that settled in Colombia at different times. Indigenous peoples were followed by the Spanish conquistadors, who added on Moorish influences from the sack of Granada. Finally, African slaves were brought in, and they supplied both the rhythm and the means to bring it forth. From its beginnings as a courtship dance among the slave population, cumbia gradually became the soul of the entire nation."
PRI's The World asks, which do you prefer,
Cumbia old or Cumbia new? For Cumbia old the list is long:
Amaneciendo! ::
Cumbias En Moog "Cumbia De Sal" ::
Cumbia Sampuesana ::
Pedro Laza - Cumbia del Monte ::
Gabriel Romero - La Subienda ::
Cumbia plegaria ::
Soledad - Lucy Gonzalez ::
La Zenaida :: For Cumbia new start here:
Chancha via Circuito and then check out the ZZK Mix Tapes:
Fauna Megamix ::
Tremor ::
King Koya
posted by puny human
on Apr 20, 2011 -
24 comments
He's a philosopher; wore a super hero cape to premote civic values; mooned at students and admits he has Pakinsons disease.
Colombians, tired of corruption and human rights violations, could be about to bring in a radical new leader:
Antanas Mockus, the
green candidate whose
super citizen’s past could help make him president.
One view of
what is at stake.
And this is the first time we are really deciding over matters of national interest and not matters of fear. Issues such as health, education, international affairs. These are the central points of this election.
posted by adamvasco
on May 28, 2010 -
8 comments
Colombia Confronts Drug Lord’s Legacy: Hippos "In what ecologists describe as possibly the continent’s most ambitious effort to assemble a collection of species foreign to South America, Escobar imported animals like zebras, giraffes, kangaroos, rhinoceroses and, of course, hippopotamuses. Some of the animals died or were transferred to zoos around the time Mr. Escobar was killed. But the hippos largely stayed put, flourishing in the artificial lakes dug at Mr. Escobar’s behest."
posted by dhruva
on Sep 11, 2009 -
86 comments
In his autobiography, published in 2007, Blur bassist Alex James admitted to blowing a million pounds on champagne and cocaine. This confession led to an invitation from Colombia's President Uribe to visit the country and see the damage being caused by the drug trade. He went, and the
BBC filmed it (
one,
two,
three).
posted by jontyjago
on Jun 14, 2009 -
64 comments
In 1985, less than a week after the Palace of Justice
siege in Bogota left 11 members of the Supreme Court dead, the
ice-clad Nevada del Ruiz volcano erupted, wiping out the Colombian town of
Armero in a huge wave of
mud and water. Most links contain disturbing and NSFW images.
[more inside]
posted by jontyjago
on Mar 12, 2009 -
8 comments
Colombia's
FARC rebels hold over 3000 current hostages, including soldiers,
lawmakers,
presidential candidates,
Americans,
Canadians,
Japanese, a
Turk, 291 children (including one born in captivity who is the
youngest hostage in the world), and a disillusioned
Dutch convert whose diary was recently discovered. Family members of the kidnapped can send messages to their loved ones on a
popular radio show. More about Colombian kidnappings in Silvana Paternostro's captivating memoir
My Colombian War.
posted by mert
on Nov 26, 2007 -
8 comments
IDP Voices is a site that lets people who are refugess within their
own countries
tell their life stories – in their own words. "The narratives in these pages are valuable complements to the official information on conflicts which governments and international organisations offer. These stories deal with the real lives of real people. The narrators share their personal experiences, their sensations, hopes and dreams, and the impact for them of being forced from their homes. The first IDP Voices oral testimonies project took place in
Colombia. IDP Voices from further countries will be added as the projects progress." The life stories are in English and Spanish and can either be read or listened to. You can
download the whole book of life stories here.
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 8, 2007 -
7 comments
The Octopus in the Cathedral of Salt is an investigative essay by
Phillip Robertson with pictures by photojournalist
Carlos Villalon on the link between the Chiquita banana company and Colombian paramilitary organization
AUC. Excerpt:
We were drinking Aguilas and the night was winding down and I was half-listening to the conversation. Everyone else had gone downstairs. Carlos turned to me and said, “Is there anything you want to ask him before he goes home?” “I want to know if he heard anything about a shipment of guns that arrived at the Chiquita docks.” Years had passed, but it was worth a shot. “Sure,” Lorenzo said, “I was there. I supervised the unloading of the rifles.” [more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Sep 25, 2007 -
8 comments
Burundanga (NSFW, video). Arguably the worlds most sinister drug. Under its influence you remain lucid and articulate yet absolutely compliant to any suggestion. When your 'trip' is over, you have no recollection of what has transpired.
The "Devil's Breath" is an admixture of
Scopolamine, a chemical that was experimented with, for its interrogative properties, by both the C.I.A. and Josef Mengele. For at least the past two decades, Burundanga has been a major component of Colombia's
criminal element.
posted by thanatogenous
on Aug 27, 2007 -
46 comments
Latin
America
Turning
Left?
From the top
:
Lula da Silva*,
Lopez Obrador,
Nestor Kirchner,
Hugo Chavez*,
Alvaro Uribe,
Michelle Bachelet*,
Ollanta Humala,
Alfredo Palacio,
Oscar Berger,
Leonel Fernandez,
Oscar Arias,
Tony Saca,
Tabare Vazquez,
Martín Torrijos,
Evo Morales*
Manuel Zelaya,
Nicanor Duarte,
Daniel Ortega,
Rene Preval*.
posted by airguitar
on Apr 13, 2006 -
30 comments
Venezuela bad, Colombia good Founded in the 1980s by landowners and powerful drug dealers, the paramilitaries carried out numerous massacres in villages they considered sympathetic to the rebels and were blacklisted by the U.S. State Department as terrorists. In recent years, however, the militias put their rebel-fighting efforts on hold to smuggle narcotics, extort businesses and engage in other illegal activities.
Strange how the White House decides which countries are "friends" and which are not. What exactly are the criteria?
posted by nofundy
on Feb 28, 2006 -
21 comments
Were these guys birdwatchers, or IRA members training FARC guerillas in improvised explosive techniques? Suddenly, mysteriously back on Irish soil, the "Colombia 3" - James Monaghan, Niall Connolly and Martin McCauley - have caused a shitstorm for Bertie Ahern and his ministers; especially in the wake of the newly announced IRA disarmament.
posted by punkbitch
on Aug 11, 2005 -
17 comments
Martin Amis visits Colombia. Life in the hellholes of Cali:
To say this of human beings is to say both the best and the worst. They can get used to anything. And I got used to it too. You find yourself thinking: if I had to live in El Distrito, I wouldn't stay at Kevin's but at Ana Milena's, where they have cable TV and that nice serving hatch from the kitchen to the living room... Similarly, I now found myself thinking: you know, this crippled murderer isn't nearly as interesting as the crippled murderer I interviewed the day before yesterday.
One of the scariest things I've read recently. (Via
Arts & Letters Daily.)
posted by languagehat
on Feb 7, 2005 -
19 comments
Popular De Lujo: A portrait of a city (Bogota, Colombia) through its folk art and street graphics. "Some sections of this site are not translated in order to keep the original and true sense of local idiomatic expressions which have no precise equivalent in other languages. However, you will realize that the graphic language is so rich in shapes and colours, that it speaks for itself."
posted by vacapinta
on May 31, 2004 -
10 comments
A viilage to reinvent the world : Gaviotas "In 1965 Paulo Lugari was flying over the impoverished Llanos Orientales, the “eastern plains” that border Venezuela. The soil of the Llanos is tough and acidic, some of the worst in Colombia. Lugari mused that if people could live here they could live anywhere.....The following year Lugari and a group of scientists, artists, agronomists and engineers took the 15-hour journey along a tortuous route from Bogota to the Llanos Orientales to settle.""...they would need to be very resourceful. So they invented wind turbines that convert mild breezes into energy, super-efficient pumps that tap previously inaccessible sources of water [powered by a child's playground seesaw!], and solar kettles that sterilize drinking water using the furious heat of the tropical sun....They even invented a rain forest!" (from
"Gaviotas - A village to reinvent the World", by Tim Weisman) Amidst the strife of war torn Columbia,
Gaviotas persists and even flourishes.
" "When we import solutions from the US or Europe," said Lugari, founder of Gaviotas, "we also import their problems."....
Over the years Gaviotas technicians have installed thousands of the windmills across Colombia....Since Gaviotas refuses to patent inventions, preferring to share them freely, the design has been copied from Central America to Chile."
Gaviotas is
real, yes, but it is also a
state of mind - as if Ben Franklin, Frank Lloyd Wright, Leonardo Da Vinci - all of the great
those giants who reinvisioned the possible - were reincarnated : as a small Columbian village on a once-desolate plain.
"Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez has called Paolo Lugari the "inventor of the world." "
posted by troutfishing
on Apr 16, 2004 -
12 comments
Talking Heads Avoid revealing and discussing issues that may be controversial. Especially so when the stories run counter to the government's "talking points." Yet another reason not to trust mainstream media for relevant and accurate news. Who can we trust to report honestly and without putting personal/corporate considerations first?
posted by nofundy
on Dec 4, 2002 -
25 comments
Tech secrets of Cocaine, Inc. - a look at the IT infrastructures of Colombian drug cartels. "I spent this morning working on the budget," the head of DEA intelligence, Steve Casteel, said recently. "Do you think they have to worry about that? If they want it, they buy it."
posted by edlundart
on Jul 17, 2002 -
24 comments
No men: A night without street crime and domestic abuse! Goodness knows it's about time, but with Australians, Blacks, and Koreans about it's - unfortunately - only a matter of time. Thank you.
posted by holloway
on Mar 11, 2001 -
28 comments
We are the world. No matter what you think of this expansion into Ecuador to stamp out the drug trade in Columbia, you have to love the great economic ramifications for locals as they open facilities and raise prices for their wealthy neighbors from the north. No mention, alas, of the prostitutes who usually move close to military facilities.
posted by Postroad
on Jan 25, 2001 -
5 comments
