Anastasia Moloney
Anastasia Moloney is a British freelance journalist who's been based in the Colombian capital, Bogota, for the last five years. She is a regular contributor to the Financial Times and a contributing editor for the Washington-based website World Politics Review. She has written widely on politics, education and social affairs from the region. Her work has also appeared in the London Times, the Guardian and the Independent, among other publications. She has lectured on U.S. foreign policy in Latin America at the Javeriana University in Bogota.
Colombia's ex-fighters and victims take first steps towards reconciliation
Sitting at one end of the conference panel was a former veteran guerrilla commander flanked by armed prison guards. At the other end of the panel sat a woman whose husband had been murdered by the guerrillas. In the middle of the two, was a government official acting as chair of the International Conference on Reconciliation, the first forum of its kind held in Colombia last week. These scenes, where victims of Colombia's armed conflict share the same stage as their aggressors in public, would be hard to imagine just a couple of years ago. ...
Displaced families try to shame Colombia into action
Hundreds of Colombia's displaced families are camped out in a makeshift settlement in downtown Bogotá, demanding jobs, subsidies and a permanent place to live. For more than two months, they have taken over a park, a short walk away from parliament, to protest what they say is the government's failure to provide aid they are entitled to. So far, they are surviving on food handouts offered by local university students and by begging. ...
Caught in Colombia's drug war
The scene on the edge of Colombia's northwestern Catru indigenous reserve, home to the country's Embera Indians, appears almost idyllic. Children splash and laugh in the river, while others play football on a sandy bank. Embera women chat leisurely as they wash colourful clothes against the backdrop of lush mountains. But a very different scene unfolds inside the reserve lying in Colombia's western province of Choco, a far-flung jungle region near the Panamanian border. ...
Bogota's displaced youth turn to street arts instead of crime
Just a short walk from Bogota's presidential palace lies the city's most infamous and deprived neighbourhood, known among locals as the Bronx. But its notorious reputation doesn't deter the Legion of Affection (Legion del Afecto), a grassroots arts project made up mainly of young displaced men and women, who are there for an "intervention". Using music, dance and street theatre, the group hopes to recruit new members and bring a glimmer of joy to the Bronx's ignored community. ...
Colombia's Indians risk extinction from conflict, drugs war and multinationals
Colombia's decades-long conflict, U.S.-backed anti-drugs measures and resource-hungry multinational companies are pushing the country's indigenous peoples towards extinction. War alone uproots 20,000 Indians from their ancestral homes each year, the United Nations' refugee agency says. From the Arahuacos of the remote snow-capped mountains of the Sierra Nevada, to the Wayuus - a matriarchal group of goat herders living in the deserts of the Guajira near Venezuela - most of Colombia's 84 indigenous groups have been forced at some time to flee sporadic fighting between government troops and left-wing guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). ...
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