By SAMUEL KILSZTAJN*
Anyone who thinks that Colombia is simply the country of wars and drug trafficking. The determination of the Colombian people and the bloodshed are just one of the facets that makes Bogotá the capital of Latin America
The argument between Gustavo Petro and Donald Trump over the deportation of illegal immigrants occupied the international media in January 2025. According to the narrative of the subservient and biased mainstream press, the Colombian president was willful in not accepting the disembarkation of the deportees and defying the US president, only to later back down, given the threats of US sanctions and the balance of power between the two countries.
But, in concrete terms, Gustavo Petro did not refuse to receive the deported Colombians; he refused to receive them in degrading conditions. The statesman Gustavo Petro exposed and denounced Donald Trump’s brutality internationally, resisted and prevented the disembarkation of the handcuffed deportees, who finally landed in Colombian territory in dignified conditions. The Colombian president’s boldness imposed a limit on American barbarity and established a principle for possible new deportations of illegal immigrants.
For many, Colombia is simply the land of drug trafficking; and the guide Lonely planet warns tourists that the country's history is one of wars and bloodshed. In brief retrospect, European aliens invaded the region in the 16th century, subjugated its inhabitants, took possession of its riches and, not satisfied, destroyed its culture and civilization.
Colombia became independent after Napoleon's invasion of Spain. The country fought its Thousand Days' War between 1899 and 1902, with the conservatives winning. In order to make the construction of the canal between the Atlantic and the Pacific possible, the United States, in 1903, promoted the independence of Colombia. Department of Panama, which until then was part of Colombia. In 1928, the country was the scene of the Banana Tree Massacre of United Fruit Company, perpetrated and covered up by the Colombian government, researched and denounced by politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.
The favorite candidate for president, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, was assassinated on April 9, 1948. The people, enraged, set fire to and destroyed Bogotá, in an insurrection known as bogotazo, which constitutes a milestone in the history of Colombia. Between 1948 and 1953 Colombia went through the years known as The Violencia, with the unbridled killing of politicians. Given the extreme authoritarianism and violence of the conservative government, the military coup of 1953 was celebrated by the left, who thought that the military in power would be more lenient than the conservatives.
From the 1960s onwards, the FARC guerrillas were organized – Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, ELN – National Liberation Army, M-19 – April 19th Movement etc.; and paramilitary groups formed by the army and landowners, AUC – AUnited Autodefensas de Colombia.
Cocaine production and trafficking, which increased in the 1980s, were managed by the Medellín Cartel, led by Robin Hood Pablo Escobar, and other drug cartels, as well as by revolutionary organizations (FARC and ELN) and paramilitary organizations (AUC), making the boundaries between politics and cocaine somewhat controversial. The Americans, for their own comfort, find it natural and more convenient to operate and interfere in Colombian territory than to curb the trade and consumption of cocaine within their own borders. We could also add that the spread of coca in the West is probably a Chinese plague, in revenge for the Opium Wars of the mid-XNUMXth century, which forced the opening of ports to international trade and spread the consumption of the drug, which ended up destabilizing the Chinese Empire.
In 1984 an agreement was signed between the government and the guerrillas for a political solution to the armed conflict. However, the National Army broke the agreement in an offensive that led to the seizure of the Palace of Justice by the M-19 in 1985. The government's disastrous reaction, with a war tank entering the Palace, constitutes another milestone in the history of Colombia.
The Colombian government and the guerrillas signed a peace agreement in 2016, but serial assassinations of local leaders followed. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the national strike of April 28, 2021 was repressed with such violence that rapper René Pérez, known as Residente, declared that “if a people goes out to demonstrate in the middle of a pandemic, it is because their government is more dangerous than the virus.” Young people, organized in First Lines, faced the police and the army to protect the protesters. The excessive repression, which included urban paramilitary groups, led to the left, unexpectedly, winning the elections in 2022, which constitutes another milestone in Colombia's history.
The capital of Latin America
However, anyone who thinks that Colombia is simply a country of wars and drug trafficking is mistaken. The determination of the Colombian people and the bloodshed are just some of the facets that make Bogotá the capital of Latin America. It may not be the economic capital (and who cares about economics?), but it is certainly its cultural and political capital. Bogotá is far from the radar of Brazilians. But to see for yourself, just visit the collection of the National Museum of Colombia in Bogotá, founded in 1823 by Simón Bolivar, which brings together more than 20 pieces of art, archaeology, ethnography and history of Colombia.
The Gold Museum, in turn, in addition to thousands of stone, ceramic and textile artifacts, preserves a collection of 34 gold pieces from the Muiscas, Quimbaya, Tayrona, Tumaco, Zenú, and other native peoples. The sophistication of the goldsmithing work from the pre-Columbian period that managed to escape being transformed into gold bars sent by eager colonizers to Europe bears witness to the crime perpetrated against Amerindian cultures.
Also noteworthy are the Botero, Santa Clara (sacred art), Miguel Urritia (visual arts), Bogotá (municipal), Casa del Florero (independence), Mambo (modern art), Quinta de Bolívar (residence), Cloister of San Agustín (National University of Colombia), all located in La Candelaria, the historic center of Bogotá.
Universities, bookstores and second-hand bookshops cover the capital of Colombians, heavily armed with pens, to the point that Gabriel García Márquez, with his magical realism, is one of the few Latin Americans to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (Colombia, by the way, is much more magical than the One hundred years of loneliness). Music, dance, theater and film performances fill crowded auditoriums and the city streets. Festivals feature plays in indigenous languages. Musical groups seek Colombian cultural roots in indigenous melodies and in the voices of birds, rivers, jungle and other territories. In musical performances, the audience does not use the seats, they remain standing the whole time, dancing to the sound of the band.
People take over the city's central streets, which look more like an open-air flea market. To ensure that none of our miners can find fault, there is an abundance of different varieties of tapioca and cheese breads (pan de queso, pan de yuca, pan de bono, almojábana etc.), among others Snacks made from corn (corn cake) and wheat (cheese sticks etc.) fill the city's sidewalks.
Fresh cheese, milk sweets and guava paste are also typical. Phisalis (cape gooseberry) grows like wild grass in Bogotá and a profusion of fruits unknown in Brazil are sold on the streets and in markets. Speaking of fruits, in Cartagena, an army of saleswomen with African turbans, on their way to their points of sale, carry baskets of fruit on their heads – the look that Hollywood directors chose to adorn, yes, our Latin American-Portuguese-Bahian Carmen Miranda.
The three historical milestones mentioned here (1948, 1985 and 2022), curiously, are 37 years apart. Gustavo Petro won the presidential elections in 2022, by a small margin of votes. To give you an idea of the determination of the Colombian people, in January 2025, while Gustavo Petro was facing Donald Trump, conservative congressmen and threats to his person and family, members of a commission of peasants from Catatumbo in Norte de Santander (displaced by the FARC and ELN groups who did not hand over their weapons) were camped in the Bolivar Plaza to demand the return of their homes, lands and plantations.
Two hundred meters ahead, in the lobby of the National Center for the Arts Delia Zapata Olivella, young people allocated to social services for peace (an alternative to compulsory military service, one of Gustavo Petro's first initiatives as president), met with government representatives, shouting for their overdue remuneration.
We hope that voters, who want Petro's Government more than what the political articulation allows, do not forget the brutality of the conservative government in response to the 2021 demonstrations.
* Samuel Kilsztajn is a full professor of political economy at PUC-SP. Author, among other books, of 1968 Dreams and Nightmares .
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