On this week's Colombia Calling podcast, we speak to James Bargent, an investigative journalist for Insight Crime about his work putting together the new podcast: "the Shadow of El Dorado."

Along with his colleague Mat Charles, the resulting podcast is a multi-year project which takes the listener into the world of organized crime and how the Gaitanista (Clan del Golfo or AGC) criminal organisation controls the mining economy and its subsidiary interests in the town of Segovia, Antioquia.

Their search for Colombia’s blood gold takes us to Segovia and the illegal mines at the very beginning of the global supply chain.

But what they find there is a strange mirror world, where conventional narratives fall apart, and the names and labels they try to apply do not make sense.

Tune in to the podcast: https://insightcrime.org/audio-from-the-ground-up/the-shadow-of-el-dorado-p…

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart.

Climate change has been a constant feature of Planet Earth: at points in history, the planet has been both much cooler and much warmer than it is today - if we know which plants occupied an ecosystem the last time the Earth was a certain temperature or had a certain level of CO2 in the atmosphere, we can predict what our ecosystems will look like in the conditions that we will soon be living in.

Using tiny fossilised clues, Carlos and Camila are doing exactly this.

The climate change we are currently living through is unprecedented in speed – and water and rain cycles are a major concern for humanity’s continued existence on the planet, so one focus of this work is the Amazon rainforest – both Colombia’s slice of it and further afield.

President Petro's Disastrous Televised Cabinet Meeting or The Petro Presidency Meltdown.

Pause for breath if you can, but we've been experiencing a barrage of negative headlines surrounding Colombia's President Petro.

This began with, at first, the online fracas with President Trump over the treatment of Colombian illegal migrants being returned to their homeland to, most recently, a total car crash of a televised cabinet meeting.

Did you watch it? If not, the best bits have been put together here by El Pais for your viewing entertainment: COLOMBIA | Los momentos memorables del consejo de ministros de Petro | EL PAÍS

Anyway, on this episode of the Colombia Calling podcast, we chat to Adriaan Alsema, director of Colombia Reports, about whether we can call this the "Petro Presidency Meltdown," and what we can expect from the Colombian premier for the remaining year and a bit of his tenure.

We look at the cornerstone policy plans of Petro's administration and discuss if whether any will get through Congress before his time is up. What has happened to Total Peace (Paz Total), the Health, Pension and Labour reforms...is the Petro project doomed to failure? And, where does the political chameleon and survivor Armando Benedetti fit into all this?

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart.

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This week on the Colombia Calling podcast, we speak to Lorena Estupiñán-Pedraza, a professor of international relations and political science from Boyaca, but resident in the southern city of Cali.

In a far-ranging conversation, we discuss Lorena's PhD studies public policy implementation in Boyaca, local problems with global impacts and all about what it means to be from Boyaca and to understand the Boyacense idiosyncrasy and culture.

Tune in to this, the Colombia Briefing with Emily Hart and subscribe to the podcast.

A new documentary, in the making, seeks to document the sacred nature of an ancient medicine. We're all familiar with vivid tales of projectile vomiting and the complete loss of bodily functions during an ayuahuasca ceremony but who, amongst us, has really explored the benefits of a ritual?

This documentary seeks to educate us, through a carefully curated journey from the lands of the Taitas (shamans) in Putumayo, the process of creating the ayahuasca (also known as Yage), to the preparation of the ceremony, the ritual itself and then a reflection of the ceremony and its outcomes.

The documentary maker: Sam Lipman-Stern is an Emmy Nominated Filmmaker with a passion for the visual arts that dates to his early days as a graffiti artist. In August 2023, HBO released Telemarketers, a 3-part limited documentary series created, executive produced and co-directed by Lipman-Stern. Time Magazine called it, "One of the Most Exciting Docuseries in Recent Years!"

Sam Believ founded LaWayra retreat together with his wife Estefania in 2021. LaWayra was born as a passion project from the desire to drink medicine from our home and share medicine with some friends and slowly grew to become one of the best Ayahuasca retreats in the world. At the retreat they provide a world class Ayahuasca experience and stays for affordable prices.

Check out: https://ayahuascaincolombia.com/

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart
View her Substack: https://harte.substack.com/

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Jonathan Swift, "Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it.”

… never truer than in 2025

This week on the Colombia Calling podcast Emily Hart and Richard McColl tackle the issue of disinformation and fact-checking in Colombia and fortunately, we don't have to take on this task alone but are joined by two experts in the field. Laura Sarabia Rangel is the Editor of El Detector de Mentiras at La Silla Vacia and Jose Felipe Sarmiento joins us from ColombiaCheck and we get to pick their brains about the need for fact-checking, disinformation in Colombia and how one undertakes the process of finding the truth.

There have been so many circumstances where people and politicians have been saying things that are simply untrue, in Colombia specifically, about the health reform, the stigmatisation of indigenous communities or the denialism of the False Positives, to name a few.

So, we get to hear how Laura and Jose Felipe work, put some rumours and untruths to bed and discuss what readers and consumers can do to make sure they’re consuming high quality media.

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart.

Sometimes, it's just fun to have an agreeable conversation, and this is why I enjoyed chatting to Vivek Jayaraman.

Vivek was born in Tamil, India and in the way life takes its unusual routes has ended up living in northern Bogota and with a love of mountains - he's from the plains - and a firm desire to know and understand the regions of Cundinamarca and Boyacá, Colombia.

In his words: "Thus was born Project Boyacá and Project Cundinamarca. The idea being that I visit all the 123 and 116 municipalities atleast once.

"People associate this part of the world with drugs, violence and the remote jungles. My attempt is to try and change this perception, taking into account that Colombia is my wife's home country.

"I got fascinanted by small towns having grown up in similar places back in India. It was equally impressive to see names of the towns that can trace their origins to the indigenous culture of Muisca that dominated this region - Guachetá, Guachetá, Machetá for example - Chetá refers to farmlands. The indigenous origin is not too appreciated here I also wanted to create awareness of these.

"My wife is from Guachetá, Cundinamarca which is believed the town of the Son of Sun - Goranchacha, which she did not know before I met her.

"Eventually I want to have a repository of these travels in a website with photographs, Instagram being an easy way. I have made 100 posts each year 2022 onwards. I was this close to create a calendar last year with photos from specific regions, then it was too expensive and too late. This being, the idea of India through the eyes of India."

What a wonderful story, you'll agree.

The Colombia Briefing is reported by Emily Hart.

In order to understand the issue of the cocaine trade in Colombia, we need to look at three factors:

1. Drugs Policy as a Geopolitical tool.
2. Markets: A Political Economic issue.
3. Narratives: the Myth of the Narco.

On the Colombia Calling podcast this week we speak to Estefanía Ciro Rodríguez, expert on drug politics, the cocaine economy and the Colombian armed conflict. We discuss la Escombrera in Medellin, Pablo Escobar, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Arms trafficking by the Sinaloa cartel and the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación to Colombia, genetically modified coca, cocaine seizures, the price of cocaine, and why Colombia as a nation needs to look in the mirror. Check out: https://alaorilladelrio.com

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

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