Why Colombia Is the Country the World Keeps Getting Wrong
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For decades, the story told about Colombia from the outside was a narrow one. A country defined by its most difficult decades — the violence, the cartels, the conflict. That story was not untrue. But it was catastrophically incomplete, and the world is only recently beginning to understand what it missed.
Colombia is a country of extraordinary biodiversity. It has more bird species than any other country on earth — over 1,900, which represents roughly 20 percent of all known bird species globally. It has Caribbean coastline and Pacific coastline, the Amazon basin, the Andes mountains and the Llanos grasslands all within its borders. The geography alone is staggering.
But it is the culture that visitors consistently describe as the real revelation. Colombia has one of the warmest and most exuberant social cultures on the continent. The people are known for a quality called "berraquera" — a word that translates approximately as resilience, but carries connotations of joy in the face of difficulty, pride without arrogance, and a refusal to let hard circumstances define your spirit.
The music reflects this. Cumbia, vallenato, salsa Caleña — Colombia's music is essentially a history of the country told through rhythm, and it is relentlessly celebratory. The Barranquilla Carnival, the second largest carnival in the world after Rio, is a five-day festival that has been happening every year for centuries. It is on UNESCO's list. Most people outside Colombia have never heard of it.
The food tells the same story — regional, abundant, unpretentious. The coffee tells it too: Colombia produces some of the finest arabica in the world, and a cup of tinto from a street vendor in Bogotá costs less than a dollar.
Colombia is not finished rewriting how the world sees it. It is, however, very far along.
