From the author of El Narco, Ioan Grillo presents us with a searing investigation into the enormous black market for firearms, essential to cartels and gangs in the drug trade and contributing to the epidemic of mass shootings.

The gun control debate is revived with every mass shooting. But far more people die from gun deaths on the street corners of inner city America and across the border as Mexico’s powerful cartels battle to control the drug trade. Guns and drugs aren’t often connected in our heated discussions of gun control-but they should be.

In Ioan Grillo’s groundbreaking new work of investigative journalism, he shows us this connection by following the market for guns in the Americas and how it has made the continent the most murderous on earth.

On the Colombia Calling podcast, we discuss the arms trade, the drugs trade, the so-called war on drugs and how this all affects Colombia. Grillo is one of the foremost experts on these topics as he is based in Mexico and appears in the world's press reporting on said issues. Check out his website: https://www.ioangrillo.com

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart. Sign up for her Substack: https://substack.com/@ehart

On the Colombia Calling podcast this week, we welcome back both Ervin Liz and Simon Winograd and discuss Native Root, their coffee-growing company based in rural Colombia.

Check out the page: www.nativerootcoffee.com

Colombia, the land of coffee...but which coffee should you choose? My advice - completely uncalled for and unwarranted - is to do a little bit of research and source a coffee where the money returns to the growers, with no middle-men and enables social change.

This is where Native Root comes in. I have had the pleasure of hosting both Ervin Liz and Simon Winograd of Native Root on the Colombia Calling podcast on various previous occasions. What I love about Native Root is that it is a family-run outfit, based in Tierradentro, Cauca and between 12 and 30 per cent of all proceeds return to the community.

This is an important detail, as Cauca is one of the most complex and conflicted departments in Colombia at the moment. There are warring criminal groups, splinter guerrilla groups, dissident groups and others, all vying for control of this strategic region for the transhipment and production of illicit drugs, people trafficking, arms trafficking, extortion and more. Who suffers, the regular people on the ground, the indigenous communities, the farmers, the smallholders and people just trying to make ends meet.

We discuss this and more as we enjoy an engaging conversation about the world of coffee, the coffee market and Colombian politics and conflict.

Check out: NATIVE ROOT

Online purchases can be made WITHIN COLOMBIA directly on their website, for orders overseas, contact them via Email or WhatsApp as they ship everywhere.

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart.
https://substack.com/@ehart

On the Colombia Calling podcast this week we discuss Pablo Escobar's influence on Colombian football in the early 1990's with David Arrowamith, author of a new book:

"Narcoball: Love, Death and Football in Escobar's Colombia."

In a far-reaching conversation David and I discuss Pablo Escobar, his role in politics, the reality of Colombia in the 1990's, Colombian football in general and much more.

If you like the true crime genre and have a smattering of interest in football, then this one's for you!


Buy the book: https://a.co/d/0hZPJRF0

Support the podcast: www.patreon.com/colombiacalling

Sign up to Emily Hart's Substack: https://substack.com/@ehart

Where is Matavén, you may well ask? So, this week on the Colombia Calling podcast, we discuss an award-winning community tourism project with people of the Piaroa indigenous community and the Colombian Project. Joining us on the podcast is Camilo Ortega, product manager of the Colombian Project.

The Matavén Jungle is the fourth largest Indigenous Reservation in Colombia, with an extension of 1,849,613 hectares and located in the north-eastern area of the department of Vichada, between the Vichada rivers to the north, Orinoco to the east, Guaviare to the south and the Chupave canal to the west.

Today it constitutes one of the last refuges of the transition forest between the Colombian Amazon and Orinoquía region. This territory has a great diversity of landscapes and different habitats such as floodplains, large stone hills of the Guyanese shield, or open savannah areas in the middle of its jungles. Its name is due to the Matavén river, which crosses this extensive region in a west-east direction.

Approximately 10,500 indigenous people live in the Matavén Jungle, distributed among the Sikuani, Piapoco, Piaroa, Pinave, Curripaco, and Cubeo tribes. This characteristic of multiculturalism that exists in the reservation makes this region a space of great importance for the conservation of the existing natural and cultural heritage.

https://www.colombianproject.com

www.patreon.com/colombiacalling

We are incredibly fortunate to speak to Jenny Pearce, Research Professor at the Latin America and Caribbean Centre (LACC) at LSE about her current research which focuses particularly on the role of Elites and Violence in Latin America.

She worked with young researchers in Colombia, led by Juan David Velasco (Lecturer, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana), on elites and the Peace Accord.

Together they designed a database to better define and differentiate elites in Colombia and the families behind them. Learn about the power wielded by a few families and how their far-reaching influence defines Colombia's wealth and politics.

The research is funded by the Instituto Colombo-Alemán para la Paz (CAPAZ). Read the original report here:

https://www.lse.ac.uk/lacc/assets/documents/PEARCE-VELASCO-ELITES-Y-PODER-EN-COLOMBIA-1991-2022.pdf

The Colombia Briefing is reported by journalist Emily Hart: https://harte.substack.com

and please consider supporting the Colombia Calling podcast: https://www.patreon.com/colombiacalling

The aim of "Colombia at a Crossroads" is designed not only to focus on Colombia’s politics and history, but also to celebrate her culture and society and this is the reason it’s divided into several parts and includes contributed essays by experts in their fields.

This is not a guide book, nor a travelogue and nor is it a list of dry facts, but it has a heartbeat as the author has been located in Colombia for almost two decades.

Writing this has been a multi-year challenge and the hope is to create something which is more of a summary of Colombia, something with a pulse.

In keeping with the idea that this book has a “heartbeat”, there are chapters and essays contributed by: Adriaan Alsema, Nicolas Forsans, Andrei Gomez Suarez and Peter Watson amongst others. There are also collections including forgotten histories in Colombia, curiosities, further anecdotes and some articles which have been published in the mainstream press as well, all of which add to the colour and depth of the book.

The publication of this book has been delayed due to the election of Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president and "the Last South American Guerrilla", it makes sense to begin with an overview of his first year and a half in power 2022-2024.

A word of advice to the reader is warranted as well. It’s a herculean task to separate Colombia and Colombians from the conflict and this makes writing a book of this nature a dangerous venture. One must remember and be very aware that the violence has spread through every level of Colombian society and in every corner of the country is of course not without its consequences.


Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Colombia-Crossroads-Historical-Social-Biography/dp/B0D3681YKG/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2KW73AWMCF36Y&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Oqkbz2vU-PEZFkC6yphpZFgV8BTm3Sodyi2IC9jJ-RnGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.y1QoKOQKQZfeQEUEaEyZFqi2ezVjLsdwkAk31RJVCKI&dib_tag=se&keywords=colombia+at+a+crossroads&qid=1718056872&sprefix=colombia+at+a+%2Caps%2C259&sr=8-1

This week on the Colombia Calling podcast we enjoy a frank and flowing conversation with author Linda Moore about her latest novel, "Five Days in Bogotá."

We talk about the book, her time in Bogotá and Colombia, what inspired the book and the charming anecdote of when she met the famed Colombian writer, Gabriel García Márquez.

Hear how Linda Moore, a "recovering gallery owner" came to write this novel and her thoughts on Colombia, Bogotá and literature.

https://lindamooreauthor.com/bio/

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart: https://substack.com/@ehart

and please support us at: www.patreon.com/colombiacalling

On Episode 520 of the Colombia Calling podcast, we revisit episode 396 and once again get to discuss the disease of leishmaniasis in the context of the Colombian armed conflict and post conflict period with post doctoral fellow Lina Beatriz Pinto-Garcia.

Pinto Garcia's ethnographic monograph explores how the Colombian armed conflict and a vector-borne disease called cutaneous leishmaniasis are inextricably connected and mutually constitutive.

The stigmatization of the illness as “the guerrilla disease” or the "subversive disease," is reinforced by the state’s restriction on access to antileishmanial medicines, a measure that is commonly interpreted as a warfare strategy to affect insurgent groups.

Situated at the intersection between STS (Science and Technology Studies) and critical medical anthropology, her work draws on multi-sited field research conducted during the peace implementation period after the agreement reached by the Colombian government and FARC, the oldest and largest guerrilla organization in Latin America.

It engages not only with the stigmatization of leishmaniasis patients as guerrilla members and the exclusionary access to antileishmanial drugs but also with other closely related aspects that constitute the war-shaped experience of leishmaniasis in Colombia.

This work illuminates how leishmaniasis has been socially, discursively, and materially constructed as a disease of the war, and how the armed conflict is entangled with the realm of public health, medicine, and especially pharmaceutical drugs.

The problems associated with coca cultivation and leishmaniasis cannot be dissociated from cross-border events such as forced disappearance and the massive migration of Venezuelans who arrive in Colombia looking for survival alternatives, including coca production.

Tune in and hear about the Diseased Landscapes project.
https://www.insis.ox.ac.uk/diseased-landscapes

Please consider supporting us www.patreon.com/colombiacalling