Daniel Noboa designates nearly two dozen gangs as terrorist groups after wave of violence across country
Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, said on Wednesday that his country was “at war” with drug gangs who are holding more than 130 prison staff hostage and who briefly captured a TV station live on air, in a wave of violence that has left city streets deserted.
At least 10 people have been killed, including police officers, in the attacks.
Continue reading...Jungle between Colombia and Panama marks the start of the dangerous trek north from South America to the United States
A record 520,000 people crossed the treacherous jungle between Colombia and Panama known as the Darién Gap in 2023, more than double the number reported the year before, according to new figures from the government of Panama.
The people who made the journey that marks the start of the dangerous trek north from South America to the United States last year were mostly from Venezuela, Ecuador, Haiti and China, according to the numbers from Panama’s migration agency.
Continue reading...In social media posts, the singer thanked the sculptor Yino Márquez and his students for their ‘enormous artistic talent’
Shakira has been transformed into a 21.3ft (6.5 meters) bronze statue in her home town of Barranquilla, Colombia, where according to legend she began her trademark hip-shaking dance moves on the table in a Lebanese restaurant at the age of four.
The Hips Don’t Lie singer shared photos and video of the statue, which captures her making her trademark hip swivel, on her Instagram account. She captioned one post: “Estoy muy emocionada por este homenaje a la mujer Colombiana y a las Barranquilleras dentro y fuera de mi tierra!” (I am very excited for this tribute to the Colombian woman and the Barranquilleras inside and outside my land!)
Continue reading...But critics say the raising of the San José, sunk in battle with British ships in 1708, might damage the country’s cultural heritage
The Colombian government has announced that it will attempt to raise objects from the 1708 shipwreck of the galleon San José, which is believed to contain a cargo worth billions of dollars.
The 300-year-old wreck, often called the “holy grail of shipwrecks”, has been controversial, because it is both an archaeological and economic treasure.
Continue reading...Migration through the treacherous Darién gap is slowing as less restrictive air routes open up between South and Central America
Two children from the west African country of Guinea who were abandoned in Bogotá’s airport have been taken into government custody after spending several days on their own in the international departures terminal.
Colombia’s national immigration department said the children, aged 10 and 13, had been travelling with separate groups and were left in the airport by their relatives earlier this month for reasons that have not been clarified.
Continue reading...Guerrilla leader turned president says, faced with having to reduce their carbon consumption, upper classes fear ‘the barbarians are coming’
Middle-class fears of losing a high standard of living because of green policies is driving the rise of the far right across the world, the president of Colombia has warned.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian at the Cop28 UN climate summit, Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftwing president, said the world had to find carbon-free ways of being prosperous, and that his country’s rich biodiversity would be the basis of its wealth after phasing out fossil fuels.
Continue reading...Re-examination finds what were taken to be veins of leaves are actually bone growth patterns
Two small, oval fossils thought to be prehistoric plants are actually the remains of baby marine turtles, researchers have revealed.
The fossils, found in rocks dating to between 132 and 113 million years ago, were discovered in Colombia in the middle of the 20th century by Padre Gustavo Huerta, a priest with a penchant for fossil plants.
Continue reading...Colombian president Gustavo Petro wants treaty to lay out plan to end era of coal, oil and gas
Colombia has formally joined an alliance of nations calling for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty to prevent the “omnicide of planet Earth”, the country’s president announced at Cop28.
At the climate summit in Dubai, Gustavo Petro has said his country would join a group of nations calling for a new body to manage a global transition away from the primary driver of global heating, akin to previous treaties to reduce nuclear weapon arsenals and landmines.
Cop28: Can fossil fuel companies transition to clean energy?
On Tuesday 5 December, 8pm-9.15pm GMT, join Damian Carrington, Christiana Figueres, Tessa Khan and Mike Coffin for a livestreamed discussion on whether fossil fuel companies can transition to clean energy. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live
As record numbers make the perilous journey between Colombia and Panama, Médecins Sans Frontières is treating far more survivors of sexual violence, including children
Armed bandits are exploiting the record number of people crossing the Darién Gap – a 100km stretch of jungle connecting Colombia and Panama – to kidnap and rape desperate migrants, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The organisation said it treated 397 survivors of sexual violence this year – many of them children – once they safely reached Panama. There have been reports of “group rapes in tents set up for that purpose in the mountainous rainforest and swampland”.
Continue reading...Luis Manuel Díaz has described how he spent 12 days trekking through mountains with almost no sleep
The father of Liverpool footballer Luis Díaz has spoken publicly of how he endured almost two weeks of arduous treks and sleepless nights while held captive by armed guerrillas on the Colombian-Venezuelan border.
Luis Manuel Díaz, 58, said: “It was a lot of horseback riding, really hard, a lot of mountains, a lot of rain, too many insects.” A weak Díaz, who was helped to and from a chair by his family, told journalists in his home town of Barrancas in Colombia: “I couldn’t sleep peacefully, it was very difficult, almost 12 days without sleep.”
Continue reading...The Latin American country is one of the first in the world to introduce a health tax targeting ultra-processed foods
A new law in Colombia making it one of the first countries in the world to explicitly tax ultra-processed food has been hailed by campaigners and health experts who say it could set an example for other countries.
After years of campaigning, the “junk food law” came into force this month and a levy will be introduced gradually. An additional tax on affected foods will begin at 10% immediately, rising to 15% next year and reaching 20% in 2025.
Continue reading...The rebel group holding Luis Díaz’s father claims military action in the local area is not only delaying the release of their hostage but putting him at risk. Díaz’s parents were kidnapped more than a week ago – his mother was freed quickly – and despite pledges from the National Liberation Army of Colombia (ELN) to expedite the return of Díaz Sr, it is taking longer than expected.
“On November 2, we informed the country of the decision to release Mr Luis Manuel Díaz, father of the player Luis Díaz,” said a statement, signed by the unit leader, Commander Jose Manuel Martinez Quiroz.
Continue reading...Bolivia’s leftwing government cuts diplomatic ties with Israel, alleging crimes and human rights abuses in Gaza, as Chile and Colombia recall ambassadors
A number of South American countries have registered diplomatic protests against Israel, in response to its latest conflict with Hamas, with Bolivia’s leftwing government cutting ties entirely and attributing its decision to alleged war crimes and human rights abuses being committed in the Gaza Strip.
The decision by Bolivia was announced at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon by María Nela Prada, a minister in President Luis Arce’s administration. “We demand an end to the attacks on the Gaza Strip which have so far claimed thousands of civilian lives and caused the forced displacement of Palestinians,” the minister told reporters in her country’s de facto capital, La Paz.
Continue reading...Retired army officer Germán Alejandro Rivera García, 45, is second of 11 suspects detained and charged in Miami
A retired Colombian army officer has been sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 2021 assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse, which caused unprecedented turmoil in the Caribbean nation.
Germán Alejandro Rivera García, 45, is the second of 11 suspects detained and charged in Miami to be sentenced in what US prosecutors have described as a conspiracy hatched in both Haiti and Florida to hire mercenaries to kidnap or kill Moïse, who was slain at his private home near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on 7 July 2021.
Continue reading...Secrecy and lax oversight mean illegal loggers and miners in Amazon can park billions in real estate and other assets
Secrecy and lax oversight have made the US a hiding place for dirty money accrued by environmental criminals in the Amazon rainforest, a report says.
Illegal loggers and miners are parking sums ranging from millions to billions of dollars in US real estate and other assets, says the report, which calls on Congress and the White House to close loopholes in financial regulations that it says are contributing to the destruction of the world’s biggest tropical forest.
Continue reading...Lula and other Latin American leftwingers hail Sergio Massa’s first-placed finish, with election now headed to November runoff
Leading Latin American leftists have celebrated the thwarting of Javier Milei’s attempt to claim a first-round victory in Argentina’s presidential election after the far-right populist was beaten by his centrist rival Sergio Massa.
Milei, an oddball economist who has called climate change a “socialist lie” and the pope “a lefty son of a bitch”, had hoped an explosion of anti-establishment rage would catapult him into the presidency on Sunday as 27 million Argentinians turned out to vote amid the country’s worst economic crisis in decades.
Continue reading...Colombia’s president likens Israel’s actions to Nazis as Israel accuses Gustavo Petro of putting Jewish lives in danger
The Israel-Hamas war has sparked a ferocious diplomatic spat between Israel and Colombia, with Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, likening Israel’s actions to those of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis and Israel accusing Petro of putting Jewish lives in danger and encouraging “the horrific acts of Hamas terrorists” with his “hostile and antisemitic statements”.
The row began one day after Hamas’s unprecedented 7 October attacks when Petro used his official X account to denounce what he called “neo-Nazi” efforts to destroy the Palestinian people, freedom and culture.
Continue reading...The six Colombians had been arrested on the day Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead in August
Six men suspected of involvement in the August murder of Ecuador’s anti-corruption presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio have been killed in prison, the prisons agency has said, barely a week before a crucial run-off election.
The killings took place on Friday in a penitentiary in Guayaquil, the South American country’s largest city, the attorney general’s office announced earlier.
Continue reading...Children risking lives to migrate across Latin America and Caribbean, with aid groups warning they cannot cope
Record numbers of children are migrating across Latin America and the Caribbean with more than 60,000 children risking life and limb to cross the treacherous Darién Gap jungle pass this year, according to a new Unicef report.
Sounding the alarm over the rising number of youngsters on the move, the UN’s children’s agency said at least 92 migrant children had died or gone missing last year – more than any other year since 2014.
Continue reading...In August, 50,000 people fleeing northward were met with long lines for medical attention, a lack of water and sleeping spaces
Medical non-governmental organizations (NGOs) attending to injured and sick migrants crossing the Darién Gap are increasingly unable to manage the record number of people taking the perilous journey, according to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the United Nation high commissioner for human rights.
In August 50,000 people took the week-long trek through the dense jungle connecting Colombia and Panama, outstretching the capacity of MSF’s staff at medical treatment posts on the Panamanian border.
Continue reading...