Category Archives: Colombia

Crisis at Tres Fronteras: how criminal syndicates threaten Amazon’s future

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At the lawless triple border between Brazil, Colombia and Peru, drug trafficking, illegal logging and gangs jeopardise the ecological and social fabric of the rainforest

The area of the Amazon where Brazil, Colombia, and Peru meet – referred to as Tres Fronteras (triple frontier) – brims with wildlife and natural resources. It is also a hotbed of illicit activity. Criminal groups are clearing the forest to plant coca and erect laboratories to turn the crop into cocaine. In the process of making coca paste, these labs discharge chemical waste – including acetone, gasoline and sulphuric acid – into rivers and soil.

Increasingly, these outfits are branching into illegal logging, gold dredging and fishing, in part because these activities allow them to launder money made from drug trafficking. These activities compound the environmental harm the groups are inflicting.

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Deforestation in Colombia falls to lowest level in 23 years

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Government reports 36% decrease, with most gains in Amazon forest where conservation efforts are focused

Deforestation in Colombia fell sharply in 2023 to its lowest level in 23 years, the country’s environment ministry has said.

The amount of forest loss fell from 1,235 sq km in 2022 to 792 sq km in 2023 – a 36% decrease, official figures revealed.

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Protecting just 1.2% of Earth’s land could save most-threatened species, says study

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Study identifies 16,825 sites around the world where prioritising conservation would prevent extinction of thousands of unique species

Protecting just 1.2% of the Earth’s surface for nature would be enough to prevent the extinction of the world’s most threatened species, according to a new study.

Analysis published in the journal Frontiers in Science has found that the targeted expansion of protected areas on land would be enough to prevent the loss of thousands of the mammals, birds, amphibians and plants that are closest to disappearing.

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Europol smashes Balkan cartel shipping drugs from South America

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Eight tonnes of cocaine seized and 40 people arrested after four-year investigation led by Spain’s Guardia Civil

• How big is Europe’s cocaine problem – and what is the human cost?

Forty people have been arrested and eight tonnes of cocaine have been seized as a result of a four-year international police operation targeting a criminal network that trafficked large quantities of the drug from South America to Europe via west Africa and the Canary Islands.

The long-running investigation – which was led by Spain’s Guardia Civil force and coordinated by Europol’s operational taskforce – discovered that a Balkan cartel was using logistical hubs in west Africa and the Canaries to smuggle cocaine from Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador into EU countries.

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US banana giant ordered to pay $38m to families of Colombian men killed by death squads

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Landmark verdict against Chiquita marks first time major US company held liable for funding human rights abuses abroad

A Florida court has ordered Chiquita Brands International to pay $38m to the families of eight Colombian men murdered by a paramilitary death squad, after the US banana giant was shown to have financed the terrorist organisation from 1997 to 2004.

The landmark ruling late on Monday came after 17 years of legal efforts and is the first time that the fruit multinational has paid out compensation to Colombian victims, opening the way for thousands of others to seek restitution.

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Netflix’s One Hundred Years of Solitude brings fame to Gabriel García Márquez’s Colombian hometown

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Locals hope TV adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude will bring new life to Aracataca, birthplace of author’s magical realism

In sweltering mid-afternoon heat, children splash in the clear water of the canal that threads through town as elderly neighbours look on from rocking chairs on the porches of their sun-washed houses. Butterflies spring from every bush, sometimes fluttering together in kaleidoscopes.

At the foot of Colombia’s Sierra Nevada mountains, about 20 miles from the Caribbean coast, Gabriel García Márquez’s fictional world of Macondo lives on.

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Spanish investigation into Shakira’s alleged tax evasion dropped

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Court says irregularities in Colombian singer’s 2018 tax return did not indicate intent to defraud

A Spanish court has shelved an investigation into an alleged tax fraud by the Colombian pop star Shakira, putting an end to her legal woes in the country where she once lived.

Prosecutors had opened the case in July, alleging she had used a network of companies, some in tax havens, to cheat the tax office out of €6.6m (£5.7m) in 2018.

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Colombian president says government will sever Israel ties over Gaza ‘genocide’

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Gustavo Petro tells May Day rally ‘if Palestine dies, humanity dies’, as Israeli foreign minister accuses president of antisemitism

Colombia’s president has announced that his government will sever diplomatic relations with Israel, in the latest escalation of a furious row between the countries over the war in Gaza.

Addressing a May Day rally in Bogotá on Wednesday, Gustavo Petro again described Israel’s siege of Gaza as “genocide”.

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Designer Nancy Gonzalez sentenced to prison for smuggling crocodile and python handbags

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Celebrity fashion designer, who recruited couriers to transport bags from her native Colombia to US on commercial flights, receives 18-month sentence

A leading fashion designer whose accessories were used by celebrities from Britney Spears to the cast of the Sex and the City TV series has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty in Miami federal court on charges of smuggling crocodile handbags from her native Colombia.

Nancy Gonzalez was arrested in 2022 in Cali, Colombia, and later extradited to the US for running a sprawling multiyear conspiracy that involved recruiting couriers to transport her handbags on commercial flights to high-end showrooms and New York fashion events – all in violation of US wildlife laws.

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Panama’s presidential frontrunner vows to ‘close’ Darién Gap

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In announcement three weeks before election, José Raúl Mulino gave no details of how he would stop migrant flow

Panama’s presidential frontrunner has vowed to “close” the Darién Gap, the swampy jungle straddling the border with Colombia that has become an unavoidable ordeal for many US-bound migrants – but experts criticised the idea as unworkable and potentially dangerous.

Presided over by criminal groups and corrupt officials, the Darién Gap is one of the world’s most dangerous and fast-growing border crossings.

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Colombians told to shower with a partner as drought hits capital water supplies

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Bogotá brings in water rationing with El Niño weather phenomenon meaning city could run out in under two months

Couples in Bogotá are being asked to shower together as water supplies are rationed in the Colombian capital.

Major neighbourhoods were cut off from the water grid on Thursday to preserve dangerously low water levels at reservoirs that have been starved of rain by the weather phenomenon known as El Niño.

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Colombian Amazon deforestation surges as armed groups tighten grip

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Country had previously turned the tide on deforestation but armed rebels have revoked ban

Deforestation in the Colombian Amazon is surging and could be at a historic peak as armed groups use the rainforest as a bargaining chip in peace negotiations with the government.

Preliminary data shows that deforestation in the region was 40% higher in the first three months of this year than in 2023 as armed groups tightened their control over the rainforest, said Susana Muhamad, the country’s environment minister.

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Colombia ex-president Uribe to face trial for witness tampering and fraud

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Álvaro Uribe, one of country’s most powerful figures, denies working with paramilitary death squads against leftist rebels

Colombia’s ex-president Álvaro Uribe will face trial for witness tampering and fraud, prosecutors have announced, once again casting the spotlight on allegations that the former leader partnered with paramilitary death squads in his war against leftist rebels.

Uribe has long been accused of committing a litany of crimes at the peak of Colombia’s six decades of brutal conflict, but has never been brought to trial, and remains one of the country’s most powerful political figures.

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Global rainforest loss continues at rate of 10 football pitches a minute

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Despite major progress in Brazil and Colombia, deforestation led by farming still cleared an area nearly equal to Switzerland

The destruction of the world’s most pristine rainforests continued at a relentless rate in 2023, despite dramatic falls in forest loss in the Brazilian and Colombian Amazon, new figures show.

An area nearly the size of Switzerland was cleared from previously undisturbed rainforests last year, totalling 37,000 sq km (14,200 sq miles), according to figures compiled by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland. This is a rate of 10 football pitches a minute, often driven by more land being brought under agricultural cultivation around the world.

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Bolivian Indigenous groups assert claim to treasure of ‘holy grail of shipwrecks’

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Descendants of miners who dug up gold, silver and emeralds worth billions call on Colombia to halt plan to lift cargo

Indigenous communities in Bolivia have objected to Colombia’s plans to recover the remains of an 18th-century galleon believed to be carrying gold, silver and emeralds worth billions, calling on Spain and Unesco to step in and halt the project.

Colombia hopes to begin recovering artefacts from the wreck of the San José in the coming months but the Caranga, Chicha and Killaka peoples in Bolivia propose that the galleon and its contents should be considered “common and shared patrimony”.

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Bernie Moreno says he fled socialism in Colombia for the US in 1971. What does history say?

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The Republican challenger to Democrat Sherrod Brown for US Senate in Ohio has made dubious claims in his campaign

Bernie Moreno, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Ohio who expected to mount a stern challenge to Sherrod Brown, the incumbent leftwing Democrat, says his family fled socialism when they came to the US from Colombia in 1971, when he was four years old.

Though such statements formed a central part of Moreno’s campaign message on his way to securing the Republican nomination with support from Donald Trump, they do not withstand historical scrutiny.

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Brazil and Colombia voice concern as Venezuela bans opposition candidate

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South American neighbours respond to blocking of Corina Yoris, who was favoured to beat strongman Nicolás Maduro in elections

A chorus of Latin American nations, including Brazil and Colombia, have voiced concern over the deteriorating political situation in Venezuela after the opposition politician best-positioned to challenge its strongman leader, Nicolás Maduro, in July’s presidential election was prevented from registering for the vote.

Corina Yoris, an 80-year-old philosopher, was little-known outside academic circles until last Friday, when she was catapulted on to the frontline of Venezuela’s long-running political crisis by being named as the substitute for María Corina Machado, a prominent opposition figure who had been banned from running in the election.

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Over 3,000 stranded as boat captain arrests halt Darién Gap migration

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Attempt to stop movement through perilous rainforest leaves people stuck in two remote Caribbean towns

Migration towards the US through a perilous but increasingly well-trodden rainforest border crossing has ground to a halt after the Colombian navy arrested two boat captains for trafficking migrants.

But the attempt to stop movement through the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama has left more than 3,000 people stranded in two remote Caribbean towns, where officials fear the bottleneck could cause a public health emergency.

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People displaced by climate crisis to testify in first-of-its-kind hearing in US

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Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will hear how climate is driving forced migration across the Americas

Communities under imminent threat from rising sea level, floods and other extreme weather will testify in Washington on Thursday, as the region’s foremost human rights body holds a first-of-its-kind hearing on how climate catastrophe is driving forced migration across the Americas.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) will hear from people on the frontline of the climate emergency in Mexico, Honduras, the Bahamas and Colombia, as part of a special hearing sought by human rights groups in Latin America, the US and the Caribbean.

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Warlord behind 1,500 murders returns to Colombia after 12-year sentence in US

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Salvatore Mancuso was taken into police custody and is expected to cooperate with investigation into war crimes in 1990s and 2000s

A Colombian warlord found responsible for more than 1,500 murders and cases of forced disappearance has been returned to his native country after serving a drug-trafficking sentence in the United States and being denied several requests to be sent to Italy, where he also has citizenship.

Salvatore Mancuso arrived in Bogotá’s El Dorado airport on a charter flight that also carried dozens of Colombians who had been deported from the US after illegally crossing the southern border. Mancuso was quickly taken into police custody, wearing a green helmet and a bulletproof vest.

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