518: "Uribismo Killed Humour"

it's that time of the week again, folks. This is me, your host, Richard McColl, here in Bogota, Colombia. And this is episode 518 of the Columbia Calling podcast. Thank you to our new listeners. You know who you are.

And thank you to those of you who are customary listeners. Had a few emails this week from listeners as well, asking about travel advice. Always flattering to be a point of call, and I'm always happy to answer and give my opinions. This week, we have a special surprise for you. Well, to courtesy of Fiona Records and Maria Linares, we have the use of a recording studio.

So we were in the recording studio for segment three of this episode with our very special guest, Mario Pinzon. And it's very cool to talk to a Colombian who lives overseas in Canada. And he's going to talk to us about how he looks at Colombia from overseas, from his condition of an immigrant out there in Canada. Of course, he was elsewhere beforehand. He was in France.

But, you know, he had to leave under duress. And interestingly, so, he fled with a certain degree of repulsion, I would say, towards Colombia. And now this has changed after so many years. So we talk about this. We talk about identity.

We talk about politics. He's got a very interesting take on the current political situation. We talk about this. It's an open, educated, very polite, flowing conversation, to listen to a Colombian with a background in political science and media thinking about what's going on in Colombia. So I think you will really enjoy this one.

It's good to hear from a Colombian, a Colombian perspective, and indeed a Colombian overseas, with a very informed perspective. So I know you'll enjoy this one. And we'll be over with the news with Emily Hart before going to our studio recording with Mario Pinzon. So don't go away. And thank you for supporting us at patreon.com forward slash Columbia Calling.

The Columbia Calling podcast is sponsored by Latin News, a leading source of political and economic analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean since 1967. Their flagship publication, the Latin American Weekly Report, provides a behind-the-scenes briefing on all the week's key developments throughout the region. Sign up for a 14-day free trial at latinnews.com. We are also sponsored by BNB Colombia Tours, which is a leading tour operator providing a wonderful range of exclusive small group shared tours for those over 50, along with customizable private tours to both popular and off-the-map destinations throughout this beautiful and diverse country. If you're interested in experiencing one of their unforgettable journeys through Colombia, be it a shared tour with like-minded travelers or creating a unique private package of your own, just complete the form on the Columbia Calling website, that's www.columbiacalling.co, or the BNB Colombia Tours website, that's www.bnbcolombia.com.

And they'll be in touch within 24 hours to answer all of your questions and to start the planning of your exclusive Colombian adventure. So, that's bnbcolombia.com and latinnews.com. Thank you for supporting our sponsors.

Another major guerrilla group has also fractured this month. The Ejército de Liberación Nacional, the ELN, has split. The Comuneros del Sur, which operates largely in Nariño, has now been recognized as a separate entity by the Colombian government and is therefore to be subject to a separate set of peace negotiations. In other ELN news, the group have announced that they will once again be kidnapping for ransom, having suspended the practice in February after the high-profile kidnapping of the father of footballer, Luis Diaz. The reason, according to the group, is that the agreed deadline with the government for setting up a fund to provide them alternative funding has expired without results.

Nonetheless, both government and ELN have expressed desire to continue with peace talks. Oti Patiño, the High Commissioner for Peace, however, assured he will suspend ceasefire with any ELN fronts that do begin to kidnap.

And Petro has clarified his motives for calling for the controversial Constituent Assembly, a new body which would have the power to change Colombia's constitution. He says he wants to implement the peace deal with the FARC, adapt the country for the climate crisis, guarantee healthy environments and drinking water, implement judicial and labour reform, and create peace with remaining armed groups. Meanwhile, the creation of the much-discussed Ministry of Equality, spearheaded by Vice President Francia Marquez, has now been struck down by the Supreme Court. The creation of the ministry supposedly skipped a procedural requirement. However, the court postponed implementation of its decision until 2026 in order to give Congress time to reissue a valid law with which to underpin the ministry.

The ministry will therefore be permitted to continue operating. in the meantime. It already has a budget of 1.3 billion pesos, five deputy ministers and hundreds of appointed posts. Meanwhile, financial scandal continues around election funds and the Unit for Risk Management. Two magistrates of the National Electoral Council have called for investigation into the financing of Petro's 2022 presidential campaign, this regarding funds which exceed legal limits, unregistered contributions from two unions, and suspicious chartered flights.

An investigation has also been requested into Ecopetrol chief executive Ricardo Roa, who served as Petro's campaign manager. A formal decision on whether investigations will be opened is pending.

And Colombia's Supreme Court has ordered the Interior Minister to testify in a corruption investigation regarding suspicious purchase of water tanks for the Department of La Guajira by the National Unit of Disaster Risk Management. The investigation is looking into possible bribery and illicit enrichment. And even after severing all diplomatic ties with Israel, Petro's public spats continue with the country's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who tweeted this week that Israel will not be lectured by an anti-Semitic supporter of Hamas. This came in response to Petro's demand the International Criminal Court issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu.

Meanwhile, protesters in Israel have been comparing their Prime Minister to Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar. In an anti-government protest of tens of thousands this week, numerous demonstrators were seen carrying combined images of the two men, labelled Bibi Escobar, calling for Netanyahu's resignation as Israeli forces intensify their offensive in the southern city of Rafa, as well as in the northern Gaza Strip. Other posters on the protest compared Netanyahu to Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Those were your top stories for this week. Thanks for listening.

And if you value these updates or want them direct to your email or WhatsApp as audio and text every Monday, you can subscribe to The Columbia Briefing. Just sign up to my substack at substack.com forward slash at e-h-a-r-t or you can sign up on the Columbia Calling Patreon site. That's all from me. Have a great week.

Thank you to Fiona Records, Maria Linares, for this space. Very cool indeed. But yes, we are here. And my special guest is Mario Pinzon. He's a Colombian expat in Canada.

He comes with a background in media and political science. And we're basically going to just let this record and talk about everything. Leaving Colombia for abroad, overseas, watching Colombia from overseas, you know, the eyes of someone who's been abroad, what is going on, and so on. How he feels his Colombian roots. Is he losing them?

Anyway, Mario, welcome on the Columbia Calling podcast.

. Not to go into politics yet, but that was the era of being a student activist was very dangerous. So, I had to leave. It was not really a choice.

I freaked out. I was like, I need to do something. I need to fight this. So, I chose arts and music and graffiti and theater to try to do something kind of different. So, I exposed myself a little bit too much.

And one day, I just got a call.

And to this day, I think that the only reason I wasn't directly targeted was because I was from a private university. Because back in those days, that was the time before Twitter, before social networks, that you would listen to people saying that, oh, there was a student activist killed in the Calca University. There was a student activist killed in Valley University. And nobody said nothing. My difference was that I was from a middle-high class family.

And so, they gave me the choice. And three months later, I was in France.

No, you better shut up. But that in Colombia is... Yeah, that's a sign. That's a sign. You better...

This is when I started with the hotel, with the first one, and renovating it. It was just a call that went, we're investigating your son-in-law. What? Yeah.

Because Mompos was.

. I mean, it's still today a bit of the Wild West. But at the time, it was like, yeah, I was an only foreigner. I was creating transparency on the town, which was run by the Anglo-Senegalese people. The Anglo-Senegalese people.

Yeah, the Anglo-Senegalese were there. And so, they had come round when I wasn't there to try and charge extortion fees on the house. And they would say, well, you know, what does the gringo own? And my very, very intelligent manager went, well, he owns the beds and the fans and the fridge. So, what percentage do you want to charge?

Anyway, so that went down. Anyway, that's too much about me.

You do something bad, I'll take a photograph of you. So, do something good. So, I always feel that, you know, we can rezar y pecar about Colombia. We can pray and sin at the same time. I promote Colombia incessantly.

And I love Colombia. And I've lived here for 18 years, you know, full time. I have a family, businesses, everything else. I'm thoroughly invested here. But it's not without its problems.

and I mean, Bogota, has always been kind of rebellious. We had Gustavo Petro, obviously the now president. It's a huge step to have a former guerrilla, you know, going into politics, like the second most powerful position in the country, and Bogota's mayor, and then obviously over time into the presidency. But also then, Claudio Lopez, openly gay as well in a conservative country, you know, like conservative thought, I would say. Right.

But Bogota's rebel, but, you know.

I mean, it's not about me.

There's definitely a change. First of all, we can speak now. You know, I'm open about being leftist, you know, but in Colombia there was a big stigma. I mean, a bad stigma. You couldn't talk about this openly unless you were like in the national university or in, you know, very small circles of intellectuals or rebel people.

Now, you know, because my background has put me in a lot of places, like I was a student activist, but I also work in the French parliament. I am a businessman thanks to my family businesses. So I've been able to go to very different circles and now I can speak openly. Now you can go to, let's say, fancy restaurants and be like, listen, I kind of disagree with the traditional right wing perspective that has always been hegemonical. It's been so rigid that hasn't allowed anybody to show a different perspective.

Now you can do that. Now you can kind of try to divert these kinds of debates, even though you still find a lot of hostility. And I wonder if they don't respect me, gringos can be even... Because, you know, we've spoken quite a bit out of the microphones and we are like, like minded. How do people react to your not very traditional way of seeing Colombian politics?

But I'm very careful about who I talk to, about politics.

So I am careful.

I sometimes tweet him, like, come on, give some punch, give some sense of humor. But we from the left, we cannot still openly speak our minds. But if we're careful enough, yes, we can start speaking in some scenarios. For example, something that didn't happen before. And I'm going to talk a little bit about showbiz.

Back, when the Uribismo was reigning, nobody in the showbiz could speak their minds. Today, you see actors, singers, well, footballers are out of the equation, but they can speak their minds. Because before, either they could get death threats easily or worse, or just go unemployed. Because not to go there, like all Colombian media, are very right wing. So now we can see that we can start carefully speaking in some scenarios.

And that is definitely a sign of maturity, as you said. Because after 200 years of total immaturity and hypocrisy.

It should have been. But the thing is that Uribismo, in between all the things they killed, they killed humor. They killed political humor. And it's something we don't take seriously enough. And, I mean, if Jaime Garzón was alive, he would have so much material, man.

Like the absurdity, the idiocy of what politicians say. I'm not going to say only right-wing politicians, but also center and left-wing politicians say in a daily basis. We could have like 3,000 Ricky Gervais.

And we need that. We need to start laughing about the absurdity of Colombia. But that big hypocrisy that covers all of our culture just doesn't allow it. We need to start laughing. We need to start pointing out the absurdity of the lies.

For example, just now we were talking about the peace referendum. How we absolutely forgot about it. How the campaign of lies was uncovered. And it still keeps happening to this day. The recent marches against the petro-government was, I don't know, 60-70% fueled by lies and manipulation.

We just keep forgetting it.

We're getting towards this point. Because I can see ourselves moving towards it. You have a background in media. It's hard for me to look at the mainstream media here. I do look at the front page of El Tiempo.

And I do look at the front page of El Espectador. And, of course, on Twitter feeds, the news pops up from Caracol and RTN. I will not click on anything by Semana Magazine. Because it is all clickbait. It really is.

Previously, for example, Semana Magazine was a decent investigative magazine. But we're looking at 15 years ago. And then definitely not since the Galinsky family took over. But it's hard to find, let's say, mainstream outlets that give a balanced view.

I have to confess.

I went far from academia since 2012.

. Something like that. When I decided that my family businesses pay the bills better. But something I really liked, because that was my main subject of my bachelor thesis. Was how Uribismo was built back in the 2010s.

Were you back then?

. And then I came to live in 2007.. Okay.

Like the metanarratives. The metanarratives is like the frame over which all the news are created. Back in 2010,, the Colombian population thought that we were living in the second happiest country in the world. While we had 7 million internal refugees. And we had massacres on a daily basis.

And we had the falsos positivos. And we had the largest corruption scandals. But the media keep pushing that Colombia es pasión. El único riesgo es que te quieras quedar.

They got their licenses because of the role they played in the Proceso 8000.

They played a big role on pushing that.

So one member, the campaign director of the Samper presidential campaign, he got some illegal money from Moni Cartel. And then, during Samper presidency, it blew up.

Is the very same corrupted people as before? And coincidentally, because this was on the radio, and this has to be very magnified by this radio host. Like, this is the worst scandal. This is the first time a presidential candidate is going. Oh, he said that, yeah.

And I'm like, you know, and I get a lot of this from people, let's say, you know, obviously, who are in opposition politically. And they go, oh, you know, Colombia is so bad. Colombia is so this. And I'm like, when has it ever been like smooth sailing? I mean, do you remember when things like El Salao?

Or do you remember like Mitú? Or do you remember other things? It's not as if, you know, I find, I think, when we move on to this, people absolutely hate Gustavo Petro. And I've been trying to put my finger on the reasons why. Yes, he's petulant.

Yes, he's a really poor man manager. We knew this from the, you know, from the mayoral race. I had two weeks of work there.

But I was like, why do they hate him so much? Is it the guerrilla background?

So, for example, back in the 2000s, that everything was happiness and perfection under Uribe's very bloody regime. And now when somebody is trying to change something, it's so pessimistic. I've even started to see like Uribistas or Centristas being fed up. Like, it's too much pessimism. Like media's pessimism is being so overwhelming that is actually pushing people away from political debate.

So, we cannot have a decent and tolerant discussion when the media are just pushing panic and pessimism and exaggerations. And all these objectives on how this is the worst week of the government. And so, yeah, we could also make an entire podcast on Petro's defects. Sure. But I don't think he's as bad as media has made us believe.

And even you, I think you have a strong criteria on when media lie or not. We are sensitive. After we have a wave of news saying that Petro is a terrible people manager. It's like, okay, come on, let's see the good points. There are good points.

There are good points.

But he's come to the table. You know, you have to look at both sides of that. And so, that for me is huge to look at these things.

The constitution says that the task of a government is to look for peace. Undeniably. It's the only thing. But Colombia may be the only country that said no to peace. So, people here, yeah, I understand, because my family was also a victim of the conflict.

Every family in Colombia. Every family in Colombia, directly or indirectly. But, you know, if you see the mothers of the false positives.

They're all about forgiveness, man. They don't want any more war. Those who want war are those who live here in the city. Far from the war. And, yeah, well, I'm not going to say like there are no victims that don't want war.

But we should be applauding, from a very tolerant point of view, that somebody is trying to make peace. And I'm going to go to the other extreme.

When Petro won, and I will include myself there. I thought he, several times he said he wanted, he didn't want to be like a Robespierre kind of figure. But me, like somewhere in between, and don't take this literally. I wanted to see Uribe in a nozzle somewhere, you know. Like, yeah, like my passions are there.

So, I was, okay, let's forget about the nozzle. But, you know, prosecution, like direct hunting of corruption. But Petro just sat down there and said like, no, I want to talk to these people. This is democracy. And a lot of like people who voted for Petro, we had a knot in our throats.

And be like, no, like you shouldn't be speaking to these guys. Like we want real change from the beginning. But, you know, then you have to take two steps back and be like, okay. If we want, like a tolerant society, yes, we have to talk to even Uribistas. After all the shit they have done.

And it's a fraud. we have to swallow, as we say here. So, yeah, like, at some points I've seen Petro's decisions as misfortunate decisions. But, yeah, I mean, he has a point. He has a point.

He's not perfect. I don't want to go there.

She was like, how is this possible, man? How can this be so abject, so far-fetched? Like, are you making this up?

It's kind of like a thing we say every day, like somebody lied in their curriculum saying that they had a PhD. I think it was Penaloza. Penaloza.

Nobody resigns.

Corruption is just culturally assimilated and absurd. I was having this conversation with one of my staff members. He's one of the executives. And he was saying, no, it's that public management is just inefficient, like naturally inefficient. And I was like, why?

And he's like, because of corruption. And I was like, okay, I'm going to ask you a bigger question. Are all Colombians corrupted? He was like, oh, no, no, no, no. That's a different question.

He's like, okay, so what is the problem? Is public management or is public servants that have gotten there? So we live on these superficial truths, but we keep avoiding the deeper debates. We don't want to talk about what really is culturally accepted and culturally approved. And after 40 years of drug dealing, what has come natural to us.

For example, I remember back in the 80s, do you know the word levantados? Which is like the new rich.

They share the same cocktails. They share the same values. And that is something that we are not speaking about. We're not talking about how deeply rooted this narco culture got in the whole society. And I'm going to put the blame on RCN and Caracol, which to this day keep glorifying the mafia shows and the novellas all around, and drug dealing and all this stuff.

And it's amazing. how, for example, have you spoken to some Colombian saying like Pablo Escobar? Let's be neutral. He was a fascinating figure.

Like they get offended.

But they adore Uribe.

Here we can't.

The humorist that was actually a testaferro? Money laundering. He was money laundering for the narcos. And now, like, humorists in Colombia, are right wing.

Right wing has no sense of humor unless it's racism, classism, and bigotry and machismo. You know, that's their humor. And we really need to, like, get that back. And, you know, if I'm going to say something that I've been thinking nowadays, and because I get to speak to rich people, poor people, investors, foreigners like you, we need to speak out our minds. Something that we hadn't been able to do in this country before.

And you can see that in Congress, here, in the Senate. And you can see it up in the U.S. and we see it in the U.K. and stuff. It's a shouting match where there's no one listening to what one another is saying.

I've long said that the narco culture permeates society here. If only – I mean, we don't need to talk about Medellin, really. Just talk about the former Colombian ambassador to Uruguay, San Clemente.

but hasn't been like the traditional upper class who are involved in, let's say, the money laundering, which you don't get extradited for. And so they don't get their hands dirty on the drug themselves. They go through the financial side, the economic side. But San Clemente got his hands dirty. And I think that's very interesting to see that way.

You see, the levantados are probably more involved in the actual sort of, let's say, day-to-day running. But they've come up through this different society. And I found that issue of – because you don't get an ambassadorial ship unless you are high and mighty and stuff. I found it so interesting, that whole case. And, of course, he's – I don't know what he's doing now.

He's probably here on his finca still.

And then there is – her guy next to her is like, yeah, but we cannot talk about that. And these are, like, you know, mainstream journalists. But so, you know, for as much as I hate – and maybe I need to like open my heart here a little bit. For as much as I despise Uribismo and what Uribe did, Uribe is also a fascinating figure. Yes.

He might have built the biggest organized crime structure on Earth's history. I mean people should be studying it. How is it possible that entire country – because it was not only the political institutions. It was the whole cultural assemblance of the country, you know, from TV shows to journalism, to music. Because there is very narco-y music.

To women, beauty standards. Oh, yeah. The whole society was shaped by this narco-culture. We should be talking openly about that instead of trying to bury it. Like, oh, let's forget about the Medellin Cartel.

It's like, no, let's talk about how the Medellin Cartel actually took over the country. And how do actually they run political parties to this day. You know, we should be talking about that. We should be mincing it down if we really want to get rid of this. Because that's why, today, it's easier to hate somebody who talks about change and peace than, to, you know, reject the intolerant and very bigoted opinions of a very rich elite.

Families. Do you feel more Colombia? I mean, did you – when you left, when you left under different circumstances, but did you idealize the countries that you were going to go to? France or Canada? Do you think everything's going to be perfect?

And all these countries are going to run like perfect. And then you get there and you see how dysfunctional these societies can be.

My cases particularly were France and Canada.

And it was a very gradual process to discover – actually, no, well, to deconstruct that idealism of these countries, but also to deconstruct my repulsion for Colombia. And to start seeing that Colombia actually has a lot of good stuff. I mean, it wasn't like 10 years ago, when I was already like an expat. I hadn't completely understood how much I value being Colombian. There are so many things that recently started making me feel proud, you know?

Like. there are cool things, and there are also structural things that work better here. For example, I don't know if you know, in Canada, doctor communication like the X-ray communication to the doctor is via fax.

And my wife and I were like totally astonished by this. Here in Colombia, I don't want to go into like. we have the best health system in the world. But it's way more functional than Canada's. at least.

France is better. But Canada's health system is really crap.

For example, something that I used to take for granted is the talent, the natural talent Colombians have for partying, man. It is the one thing that has kept us sane after all this freaking conflict. And once we go abroad, people actually like it. It's like, hey, there is a Colombian. He must be funny.

Even though I'm the lamest Colombian. I'm a terrible sounded answer.

There are, you know, there are resilience. We're very resilient. We're very hardworking. We tend to see the positive side of life. I don't want to romanticize poverty here.

But we like our jobs. We tend to see the silver lining. We tend to see the positive sides.

We don't complain like even a tenth of what a French person can complain. You know, those things make life easier in Colombia. Even though we have so much difficulty here, we tend to see life in a very positive manner. And that is something that I started valuing once I was in France around like very complaining French people or very depressed Canadian people.

So, yeah, my image about Colombia has changed. And now, every time I come back, and maybe this gets a little bit mixed with being 41 already, like I'm looking back from my roots. And now I'm realizing how fun it is to be a Colombian, even though it's very complicated. But it's fascinating. I think this is one of the most fascinating countries.

For example, in Canada, you know, I've met more Peruvians and Argentinians and Equatorians up in Canada than ever here in Latin America. And we compare countries and they look up at us like, you're fun, you're passionate, you're like hot-blooded. Like Colombians are, we are kind of a different breed.

And it was after these conversations, I was like, oh my God, like, it's actually cool to be a Colombian. And, you know, now I see why so many gringos and foreigners come here and they're like, you know, this is a great country.

From very little. No, from birth.

And I walk the streets, remember things. But if I go for a month, by about week two and a half, I want to return to Colombia. My kids are all happy and stuff, and we're over that. But by the last week, they're already ready as well. They're tired.

They want to go back to Colombia. So there is something, you know, I think you're obviously detailing it and articulating it much better. And I am not Colombian, but there's like...

They don't want to see no more white-skinned, blonde people. How do you notice the change? Because, for example, what's happening in Medellin is pretty weird.

I'm not talking about passport bros, Bitcoin miners. I'm not talking about these people because I don't really understand what they do. Apart from going to the gym. But yeah, I mean, it does happen. Of course, it does.

Okay. So he's kind of accepted, because his dad was a notable Mompocino and stuff. And I'm trying to think if there are any other foreigners. No. And also, I've been there such a long time.

And I'm married into a large Mompocino family. So I get that escudo, that shield. Where you get it from, on occasion, our guests in the hotel who look around, they're amazed. They compliment and they say, why couldn't a Colombian do this? And you're like, because the Colombian didn't believe in it.

That is the issue, isn't it? The Colombian didn't believe that this was going to get to a point where we could build a tourism industry, where we could build this and invest our money rather than take it overseas.

To a point that was uncomfortable.

On a level I would wish we weren't. Obviously, it's changing. Okay, there's a huge increase in foreigners in Colombia. We're nowhere near Peru, Ecuador or so on. But because there were so few, aside from embassy workers and multinational companies, let's say, in the 80s and 90s, this rapid increase that we've had in the last 10, 15 years has been –.

Anyway, Mario, we are running out of time. I think we could keep going for hours and keep talking and make a series. But I think what we'll do is we'll get you on the line from Montreal in the future. When something of note happens in Colombia, we're like, let's get this from a Colombian's perspective, from overseas. I think –.

I know you found this interesting. It's great to talk openly about the issues in Colombia and to hear it from a Colombian, not just from me, for example. So this has been episode 518 of the Colombia Calling podcast. Thank you to Mario Pinzon for his time and, well, of course, unselfish knowledge and dialogue. And thank you to Fiona Records for this space to use a recording studio, the first ever time in 518 episodes.

Their flagship publication, the Latin American Weekly Report, provides a behind-the-scenes briefing on all the week's key developments throughout the region. Sign up for a 14-day free trial at latinnews.com. We are also sponsored by BNB Colombia Tours, which is a leading tour operator providing a wonderful range of exclusive small group shared tours for those over 50, along with customizable private tours to both popular and off-the-map destinations throughout this beautiful and diverse country. If you're interested in experiencing one of their unforgettable journeys through Colombia, be it a shared tour with like-minded travelers or creating a unique private package of your own, just complete the form on the Colombia Calling website, that's www.colombiacalling.co, or the BNB Colombia Tours website, that's www.bnbcolombia.com, and they'll be in touch within 24 hours to answer all of your questions and to start the planning of your exclusive Colombian adventure. So, that's bnbcolombia.com and latinnews.com.

Thank you for supporting our sponsors.

To get to the beach, talk to the moon. Talk to the beach, you have no chance.