By Edward Davey of Acción Social

Somewhat unusually, Juan Manuel Santos began his first day as Colombian president last year with the elders of the millenarian indigenous tribes that live on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the snow-capped Andean mountain range that runs down to the country’s Caribbean coast.

That same afternoon, having flown to Bogotá, President Santos told the nation in his inaugural presidential address of the moment of “transcendental significance” he had experienced that morning. Continue reading »

By Alejandro Gaviria of the University of the Andes

Colombia has long been an atypical country, at least in Latin American terms. During the second half of the 20th century, it never experienced an economic meltdown or a rash of populist policies, let alone hyperinflation or the coup d’etats that almost defined the rest of the region. Colombia rode the usual business cycles that any commodity-producing country endures. But, in general, it was an oasis of economic quietude in a cauldron of volatility. Colombia’s gradualism was the exception that proved the instability of the Latin American rule. Continue reading »