Colombia Calling - The English Voice in Colombia

An established singer, songwriter, accordionist and big band leader, Gregorio Uribe was born in Bogotá, Colombia and is currently based in New York City. Uribe has made a name for himself in the Latin music scene of both New York City and Boston. Well known for leading the Gregorio Uribe Big Band, a 16-piece orchestra that blends cumbia and other Colombian rhythms with powerful big band arranging, Uribe released "Cumbia Universal" (Zoho Music) featuring 8-time GRAMMY-winner and Latin music icon Rubén Blades in October 2015.

Upon its release the debut album for the big band hit the Billboard charts and received widespread critical acclaim with performances selling out at Jazz at Lincoln Center in NY, Villa Victoria Center for the Arts in Boston and two concerts at the celebrated Teatro Colón in his native Bogotá, Colombia.

He was also named by the government of Colombia as one of the "100 Most Successful Colombians Abroad".

Tune in for an excellent and upbeat episode of the Colombia Calling podcast
www.gregoriouribe.com

Every now and again, it's important to revisit some of the pressing issues in Colombia and on Ep334 of the Colombia Calling podcast, US academic, Shaun Gillooly gives us a blow by blow account of the tragedies taking place on Colombia's pacific coast, most importantly, in the cities of Buenaventura and Tumaco.

Whilst researching for her PhD dissertation, Gillooly takes us though her findings which lead us down a path revealing a century or more of isolation, indifference and despair for the communities of these two cities. Both Buenaventura and Tumaco are port cities, yet the benefits of the international trade are not seen by the population, the cities are both strategic deep water areas and close to coca growing regions. Therefore the illegal armed groups are in a constrant struggle for dominance and given the paucity of work available, many people fall into some rung of these illicit trades.

Gillooly does not, at any moment, glaze over the problems, we hear them all. Tune in for an informative and shocking account of life in the urban areas of Colombia's pacific coast.

Follow Gillooly @shaunagillooly

On Episode 333 it's a great pleasure to have Alex Rocha of the barrio San Francisco in Cartagena with us to talk about the challenges faced by the youth of his neighbourhood and what he has been doing via the Alex Rocha Youth Center.

The Alex Rocha Youth Center's main purpose is to provide a safe place for kids and keep them off the streets by teaching them Art, music, languages, crafts and hopefully skills towards getting jobs.

In San Francisco, a largely afro-colombian and working class neighbourhood, the children don't see the benefits from Cartagena's tourism boom, the colonial city is so far removed from their reality but so close to where they live that it's a contradiction.

Rocha himself has experienced the hard times of addiction and gang membership and from these memories and the desire to help others in similar situations to those he lived through, he has set up the Youth Center.

Tune in to hear an inspiring if at times worrying episode of the Colombia Calling podcast and how you can help.

You don't have to be Scottish or be a history enthusiast to love the tales of adventure and bravery behind the ill-fated attempt by the Scots to colonize the Darien region of Panama. And so it's a great pleasure to welcome John McKendrick QC on the Colombia Calling podcast to speak on this subject and his book about the episode: Darien: A Journey in Search of Empire.

Background: The Company of Scotland and its attempts to establish the colony of Caledonia on the inhospitable isthmus of Panama in the late seventeenth century is one of the most tragic moments of Scottish history. Devised by William Paterson, the stratagem was to create a major trading station between Europe and the East. It could have been a triumph, but inadequate preparation and organization ensured it was a catastrophe - of the 3000 settlers who set sail in 1688 and 1699, only a handful returned, the rest having succumbed to disease, and the enormous financial loss was a key factor in ensuring union with England in 1707. Based on archive research in the UK and Panama, as well as extensive travelling in Darien itself, John McKendrick explores this fascinating and seminal moment in Scottish history and uncovers fascinating new information from New World archives about the role of the English and Spanish, and about the identities of the settlers themselves.

It has been a while since we took a step back and looked at the news in Colombia and so, journalist Manuel Rueda joins us this week to provide a timely overview of what is going on and what may have been missed by the international press.

Rueda is a journalist held in high regard and reports for the international media on issues in Colombia and around the region. You can find his updates and reports in AP News, DW news, the Christian Science Monitor, TRT World and many other outlets. Chances are that if you follow the news in Colombia, you will have read pieces by or seen Rueda at some point.

This week we discuss the tragic increase in Covid-19 cases in Colombia, the government response, the extended quarantine, security in Bogotá and the plight of the long-suffering Venezuelan migrants trying to make their way back to their home country.

Tune in for an excellent overviews from Colombia

Jennie Erin Smith is a freelance science writer from upstate New York based in Medellín, Colombia, where she is working on a book about families with Alzheimer’s disease. She is the author of “Stolen World” (2011) and we are very lucky to have her on this episode of the Colombia Calling podcast to share with us a little about her investigations and the book she is currently writing.

So we delve into the information on offer and Smith debunks some of the myths about the "Paisa mutation," and what this means for local considerations on place, people, race and society. Why rural Antioquia, if here where else and on.

Tune in to a fascinating episode about new discoveries in this field here in Colombia.

It's a great pleasure to have Julianne Pachico back on the Colombia Calling podcast and discussing her latests novel, the Anthill. She last graced the show way back in August 2017 on Ep199 and was speaking about her first book, the Lucky Ones. The Anthill is a fresh and fascinating insight into the Medellin of today and how it contrasts with the city in which the protagonist Carolina grew up in.

I don't want to give too much away, and I enjoyed the book immensely for its warts and all take on some realities in Colombia, class, society, violence and beyond, but you'll have to read it. Below is some of the high praise which Pachico has been receiving.

A visceral, hallucinatory ride by an author who has been called "blunt, fresh, and unsentimental" (The New York Times Book Review) and "remarkably inventive" (The Atlantic), The Anthill is a ghost story unlike any other, a meditation on healing--for both a person and a country--in the wake of horror.

Check out: juliannepachico.com

The pandemic struck and some people panic shopped for toilet paper, our guest on the @ColombiaCalling podcast, Emma Louise Jay of www.conqueredbycolombia.com bucked this trend and went and bought dozens of blood sausages. Tune in to hear her anecdotes and reflections on 80 days of almost total isolation during this extended quarantine in the countryside with precious few neighbours.

Our guest has been on the Colombia Calling podcast on several previous occasions and is always immensely popular with the listeners due to her articulate and self-deprecating look at life in Colombia's sticks. Hear her tales of the stone deaf neighbour, taking out her machete in anger and how she's dealing with the aloneness...not loneliness.

Enjoy!

We’re trapped. We have been confined along with our dreams, goals and illusions. With the global emergency caused by COVID-19, we have hit rock bottom and the travel and tourism industry is never going to be the same.

This is why we are talking to Rainbow Nelson of "This is Cartagena," (www.ticartagena.com) for his insights on the situation as seen from Colombia's capital of tourism.

The good thing about hitting rock bottom is that there’s only one place to go from here. The only thing we have left now is to make a great staircase in which one by one, we can get back to somewhere considered safe ground. Many people have already understood it that way. There are good people out there who have begun to replace fear and resignation with hope. Where others feel only fear, these people are being driven by their imagination, finding creativity where others see only crisis.

Tune in!

In our final episode of this three-part series with journalist Nadja Drost on crossing the Darien Gap, we bring the conversation back to the article Drost wrote for California Sunday magazine in April 2020. We discuss her experiences on the trail, the physical toll the journey took on her and delve into the extreme nature of thrill seekers in search of their next off-limits adventures such as in the Darien.

NADJA DROST is a Canadian journalist and documentary filmmaker. Currently based in New York, she lived in Bogotá, Colombia, for a decade and continues to report on Latin America for the PBS NewsHour and other outlets.