Musical instruments are far more than tools for producing sound: they embody the cultural identity of a territory, carrying spiritual meanings, collective memory, and the deep-rooted expressions that shape a community’s history. Colombia en un Aliento 2026 (Colombia in a Breath 2026) invites audiences on a sonic journey through the country’s wind instruments, encouraging reflection on how human breath and aerophones have shaped identities, spiritual practices, and spaces of encounter from pre-Hispanic times to the present day.
Conceived as a national cultural project, Colombia en un aliento: instrumentos de viento que narran un país (Wind Instruments That Tell the Story of a Nation) brings together ancestral knowledge, popular traditions, and contemporary artistic creation. Through an interdisciplinary approach, the initiative connects past, present, and future via a wide-ranging cultural program structured around four thematic lines.
El soplo como rito de la vida (Breath as a Rite of Life) explores the symbolic and ritual significance of wind instruments among Indigenous and Afro-Colombian cultures, where blowing air through wood is understood as an act of vitality, spirituality, and connection with the natural world. In these traditions, breath is not merely physical – it is a force that sustains life, memory, and the sacred.
El viento del encuentro (The Wind of Encounter) focuses on the social and communal role of wind instruments in fiestas, carnivals, and collective celebrations. From village plazas to major public gatherings, these instruments create shared rhythms, reinforce bonds of belonging, and transform music into a space for encounter and social cohesion.
Alientos universales, músicas locales (Universal Breaths, Local Music) examines historical processes of cultural exchange, mestizaje, and adaptation. It traces how wind instruments introduced from other parts of the world were reinterpreted across Colombia’s diverse regions, giving rise to musical expressions deeply rooted in local landscapes, histories, and identities.
Respirar el future (Breathing the Future) looks toward contemporary creation techniques, from experimentation with digital technologies to new sonic languages. The section reflects on current artistic practices in which tradition and innovation coexist, opening pathways for composition, teaching, and cultural narratives.
Together, these four thematic pillars support spaces for reflection and research, that strengthen Colombia’s sound identity. From making local knowledge visible and fostering cultural innovation, more than a series, Colombia en un Aliento / Colombia in a Breath proposes a collective experience – an invitation to understand wind instruments as symbols of life, resistance, and social cohesion.
As a year-long project by the Cultural Subdirectorate of the Banco de la República – Central Bank – this initiative will continue in 2027 with a new thematic focus on the human voice as a sonic element, expanding its exploration of sound as a carrier of memory and meaning.
The initiative will be officially launched with the public conversation “El soplo y los instrumentos: sonidos que cuentan historias / Breath and Instruments: Sounds That Tell Stories” on Tuesday, February 3 at 5:00 p.m. in the Audiovisual Hall of the Luis Ángel Arango Library (BLAA) in Bogotá.
The event will feature José Pérez de Arce, Chilean musicologist and leading authority on ancestral aerophones; Humberto Galindo, Colombian researcher and director of the Museo Mundo Sonoro; and Luis Fernando Franco, composer and co-founder of Guana Récords with more than four decades dedicated to musical research and creation.
The conversation will also be streamed live on Banrepcultural’s YouTube channel, opening this shared reflection on breath, sound, and identity to audiences in Colombia and internationally.
For more information visit the cultural page of the Central Bank: https://www.banrepcultural.org/noticias/instrumentos-de-viento-en-colombia-en-un-aliento-2026
Beatriz González, one of Latin America’s most influential contemporary artists, whose boldly colored, deliberately unrefined paintings and installations confronted Colombia’s long history of political violence, public mourning and social inequality – while also reshaping the country’s most important public art collection – died on Jan. 9, 2026, at her home in Bogotá. She was 93.
Her death was announced by the Banco de la República, Colombia’s central bank, where for more than four decades she played a decisive role in shaping the institution’s cultural mission and its vast art collections. In a statement, the bank described her as “an essential figure in Colombian art and culture” and “a masterful narrator of memory.”
González was not only a prolific artist but also a historian, curator, educator and critic — a rare figure who helped define how Colombia would see its art, its past and, ultimately, itself. “Artists exist so that memory is not thrown in the trash,” she once said, a line that came to stand as a quiet manifesto for a career devoted to preserving what official histories often erased.
Born in Bucaramanga in 1932, González came of age during La Violencia, the brutal civil conflict that engulfed Colombia between 1948 and 1958. That formative experience would leave an indelible mark on her work. After briefly studying architecture, she enrolled at the University of the Andes in Bogotá, graduating with a degree in fine arts in 1962. She later studied printmaking in Rotterdam and counted among her teachers the influential critic Marta Traba, who helped shape modern art discourse in Latin America.
González’s early work drew attention for its irreverent treatment of European art history and Colombian popular imagery. Her critical view of “good taste” led her to reject academic refinement in favor of what the art critic Germán Rubiano described as an approach that was consciously unpolished and deliberately opposed to sophistication.
She appropriated masterpieces by Manet, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, flattening their compositions and translating them into the visual language of curtains, furniture and household objects. Armoires, beds, trays and even wallpaper became supports for paintings marked by compressed figures and bold color palettes — a strategy that blurred the boundary between high art and domestic life.
One of her earliest and most discussed works, The Sisga Suicides (1965), reimagined a newspaper photograph of a young couple who drowned themselves in a dam outside Bogotá. Rendered in vivid, almost cheerful colors, the painting exposed the uneasy coexistence of tragedy and banality in Colombian public life — a theme that would recur throughout her career.
By the 1980s, González’s art took on an increasingly overt political tone. Press photographs of presidents, massacres and grieving families became central to her work. She painted them repeatedly, transforming news images into objects of repetition and contemplation, as if to ask how a society becomes accustomed to its own suffering. “It’s been a critique of power that has permeated my work,” she told ArtReview in 2016. “For that very reason, I don’t think of it as ‘political’; it has an ethical commitment.”
Her focus on mourning was particularly stark in works depicting mothers weeping after the 1996 Las Delicias massacre, in which dozens of Colombian soldiers were killed by the FARC guerrilla. These images, stripped of sentimentality, confronted viewers with grief as a collective, inescapable condition. The depth with which González addressed both individual and collective mourning stands among her most significant contributions to contemporary art.
That macabre clarity intensified in the 2000s. In Anonymous Auras (2023), one of her final major works, González installed more than 8,000 printed silhouettes of workers carrying corpses across the wall niches of Bogotá’s Central Cemetery. The figures – anonymous, repetitive and almost ritualistic – transformed the cemetery into a monumental archive of loss, honoring victims whose names were never recorded.
Parallel to her artistic production, González exerted extraordinary influence as a curator and cultural policymaker. Beginning in the 1980s, she became a close collaborator of the Banco de la República’s cultural division, serving as a researcher, curator and longtime member of its advisory committee on visual arts. In that role, she helped guide the formation of a national art collection with a distinctly Colombian focus, while insisting on dialogue with international works of the highest quality.
Few individuals knew the Central Bank’s art collection as intimately as González. Over more than forty years, she worked alongside successive generations of curators, historians and collectors, helping to consolidate one of the most important public art collections in Latin America.
In 2020, she donated her personal archive and library — nearly 100,000 documents — to the Banco de la República to ensure free public access. The archive documents not only her artistic practice but also her work as an educator, curator and historian, and provides an unparalleled record of Colombian art, politics and visual culture.
Her institutional impact reached beyond the Central Bank. At the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO), she founded the influential School of Guides, a pioneering program for museum education that trained figures who would later become leading artists and curators. From 1989 to 2004, she served as chief curator of the Museo Nacional de Colombia, where she reorganized the permanent collection and helped redefine the country’s historical narrative through art.
International recognition came steadily. Her work appeared in Documenta 14, the Berlin Biennale and the landmark exhibition “Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985.” Major retrospectives were held at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the CAPC in Bordeaux. In 2026, the Barbican Centre in London is set to host her first major retrospective in the United Kingdom.
González received numerous honors, including Colombia’s Premio Vida y Obra and honorary doctorates from the University of the Andes and the University of Antioquia. In 2025, the city of Bogotá awarded her the Civil Order of Merit, recognizing her invaluable legacy and profound influence on the nation’s cultural life.
Yet she remained skeptical of accolades. She preferred to speak of discipline, research and responsibility — and of the obligation, as she saw it, to bear witness. From a childhood habit of collecting film-star postcards to a lifetime spent gathering images of state violence, Beatriz González devoted herself to the stubborn preservation of memory and to an unapologetic voice in Colombian contemporary art.
Read the Banco de la República’s tribute (in Spanish) to Beatriz González, written by Claudia Cristancho Camacho of the Cultural Section and Art Collection.
The Medellín Secretariat of Tourism and Entertainment participated in the annual United States Tour Operators Association (USTOA) Conference and Marketplace, held through Friday at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Maryland. The Colombian city’s objective was to market its tourism offerings to US visitors and operators who prioritize sustainable practices and respect for local communities.
The USTOA Annual Conference is considered a significant platform within the US travel industry. The organization, founded in 1972, promotes responsible tourism and the development of experiences that contribute to cultural and environmental preservation. Medellín, operating as an associate member, utilized the event to engage with leading tour operators, international destinations, and specialized suppliers, aiming to secure high-value business agreements and build strategic alliances.
Medellín is seeking to encourage conscious and family-oriented tourism, and discourage those with more lascivious motives.
According to a statement from the Secretariat, the city’s delegation secured 10 business-to-business (B2B) meetings with US operators focused on expanding their travel portfolios into emerging Latin American markets. Medellín also contributed to the conference’s academic section, presenting its tourism assets. The city’s presentation emphasized its focus on the entertainment and social tourism segments, positioning itself for travelers seeking cultural and leisure activities with a defined responsible approach.
The Medellín Mayor’s Office, through its tourism agency and the Greater Medellín Convention & Visitors Bureau, highlighted several elements intended to appeal to international operators. These assets include the city’s calendar of international events, its gastronomic and musical offerings, and its active nightlife. Furthermore, city officials pointed to the modern hotel infrastructure, venues suitable for large-scale events, increased flight connectivity, and the range of cultural programs as factors allowing international operators to design programs that meet traveler expectations.
The city’s participation in the conference represents a push to cultivate long-term partnerships with operators who are committed to what the local administration defines as a more conscious form of travel, aligning with shifting industry trends.
The Latin American culinary sector convened in Antigua, Guatemala, for the 13th edition of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants 2025, an event sponsored by S.Pellegrino & Acqua Panna (SIX: NESN, OTC: NSRGY). The ceremony, held at Santo Domingo del Cerro, highlighted establishments from 21 cities across the region, with Bogotá’s El Chato securing the No. 1 position.
Led by Chef Álvaro Clavijo, El Chato ascended from the No. 3 spot in 2024 to be named “The Best Restaurant in Latin America” and “The Best Restaurant in Colombia.” The contemporary bistro is noted for its engagement with local producers and its interpretation of Colombian ingredients. Clavijo founded the restaurant with the objective of positioning Colombian gastronomy globally by utilizing regional products.
“We are truly delighted to celebrate El Chato as The Best Restaurant in Latin America 2025,” stated Craig Hawtin-Butcher, Managing Director for 50 Best. “This achievement reflects the energy, talent and authenticity that make Latin American gastronomy unique in the world.”
Beyond the top spot, Colombian restaurants maintained a significant presence on the list. Celele in Cartagena, known for its research into Caribbean biodiversity, ranked No. 5. In Bogotá, Chef Leonor Espinosa’s Leo placed at No. 23.
Several new entries and recognitions for Colombia were announced. Afluente, located in Bogotá, debuted on the list at No. 34. Humo Negro, also in the capital, appeared at No. 41. Manuel, a restaurant in Barranquilla, was ranked No. 46.
Specific accolades were awarded to Colombian venues. Oda, a Bogotá-based restaurant situated within the G Lounge, received the Sustainable Restaurant Award. The establishment focuses on ingredients sourced from urban gardens and local producers.
Buenos Aires led the city rankings with eight restaurants in the top 50, followed by Lima with seven and Santiago with five. Kjolle (No. 2) in Lima was named “The Best Restaurant in Peru,” while Don Julio (No. 3) in Buenos Aires took the title of “The Best Restaurant in Argentina.”
Other notable awards included:
Highest New Entry: Casa Las Cujas (No. 14) in Santiago.
Highest Climber: Cosme (No. 9) in Lima, sponsored by Lee Kum Kee.
Icon Award: Rodolfo Guzmán of Boragó (No. 6) in Santiago.
Best Pastry Chef: Bianca Mirabili of Evvai (No. 20), sponsored by República del Cacao.
Chefs’ Choice Award: Alejandro Chamorro of Nuema (No. 10), sponsored by Estrella Damm (BME: DAMM).
Best Sommelier: Maximiliano Pérez, sponsored by Vik.
Best Female Chef: Tássia Magalhães.
The voting process is audited by professional services consultancy Deloitte, utilizing a panel of 300 regional experts including journalists, food critics, and chefs to determine the rankings.
The event was hosted in partnership with the Guatemalan Institute of Tourism (INGUAT), which aims to position Guatemala as a competitive destination. Other partners included American Express (NYSE: AXP), Buchanan’s (LSE: DGE, NYSE: DEO), and Ron Zacapa (LSE: DGE, NYSE: DEO).
Above photo: El Chato in Bogotá takes the No.1 spot in Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants 2025, sponsored by S.Pellegrino & Acqua Panna (PRNewsfoto/50 Best)
The US Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has authorized the entry of Colombian shell eggs destined for industrial processing, according to an announcement made by Diana Marcela Morales Rojas, Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism (MinCIT). This decision expands the export capacity for Colombia’s poultry sector by allowing the product to enter the US market without requiring additional import permits or sanitary certificates from the Colombian Government.
The authorization by APHIS follows technical and commercial discussions between US and Colombian regulatory bodies. Minister Morales Rojas stated that the outcome enables the poultry industry to expand its presence in international markets and integrate into higher-standard value chains.
The regulatory modification is the result of collaboration between the Government of Colombia, the Instituto Colombiano Agropecuario (ICA), the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, the Embassy of Colombia in the United States, and the Federación Nacional de Avicultores (Fenavi), the trade association representing the poultry sector.
Six US facilities have been designated to receive the Colombian shell eggs for processing. These plants are situated in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Arkansas, and Georgia. The direct entry authorization for industrial use simplifies the logistics and required sanitary compliance for the export of the product.
Above photo: Colombia’s Minister of Commerce, Industry and Trade, Diana Marcela Morales (courtesy MinCIT)
Why such a massive U.S. military deployment off the coast of Venezuela, supposedly to combat the “Cartel of the Suns” and stop drug trafficking from Venezuela to the United States? After more than four months, the results amount to little more than a handful of small vessels destroyed – an extremely modest impact given the scale of the force deployed.
The reality is that the volume of drug trafficking transiting through Venezuela to the United States is relatively small. Venezuela is not a producer of cocaine, much less of fentanyl, most of which enters the United States via Mexico. If the real interest is not to halt drug trafficking, what then is the motivation for placing the Fourth Fleet on a war footing in the Caribbean Sea? Logic might lead one to think the U.S. interest is oil, since Venezuela holds the largest reserves in the world—but that is not it either. Today the United States is the world’s leading oil producer, at 13.4 million barrels per day, and it has proven reserves sufficient for approximately ten years, assuming no new discoveries and no improvements in recovery or technological advances—an impossible assumption.
So what, then, is the underlying issue if it is neither drugs, nor oil, nor other minerals in which Venezuela might have potential and that would be attractive to the United States?
The answer lies in a little-publicized document formally released by the White House on December 4, titled National Security Strategy 2025. While the document introduces substantial changes in relations with Europe and traditional adversaries, the most striking element is the new emphasis placed on Latin America. Of the document’s “roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history”, five sections are devoted exclusively to our region, positioning Latin America as a fundamental component of U.S. security – a very significant shift from earlier versions, which historically prioritized the Middle East or Asia. There is a new strategy, or if you will, a “New Monroe Doctrine,” a continuation of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, reaffirming U.S. preeminence in the region.
“After years of neglect, the United States will once again apply and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to reestablish U.S. preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere,” states the 29-page document.
Key elements of this new doctrine include: countering external influence by requiring Latin American governments to dismantle foreign military installations and divest strategic assets in exchange for aid or alliances; stopping illegal migration, including naval patrols in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, selective border deployments, and the use of incentives for governments to curb migratory flows; combating narco-terrorists and cartels; and sealing economic and political commitments with aligned governments in a win-win framework that would include procurement preferences and greater cooperation, among other measures, with a view to turning Latin America into a stable market for U.S. exports and a buffer against global rivals.
In recent years, China has achieved significant penetration in Latin America through its diplomacy and long-term strategy (the Belt and Road Initiative, or New Silk Road). For nearly all countries in the region, China has become the leading trading partner, displacing the United States; it is also an investor in major infrastructure projects and a lender of funds (in Venezuela’s case, a very large lender that negotiated debt repayment in oil at very low prices). In addition, China has become a major supplier of weapons and information technology.
In this context, what Washington appears to be seeking is indeed a regime change in Venezuela to counter the influence of China and Russia, but without openly announcing it in order to avoid a direct diplomatic confrontation. Trump has segmented the region into friendly regimes (Argentina, El Salvador, Ecuador, Honduras, and Guatemala), enemy regimes (Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua), and regimes in limbo (Colombia and Brazil).
For Venezuela, regime change appears imminent, which would profoundly benefit Colombia, because, as Miguel Uribe Turbay said before he was assassinated, “as long as there is no freedom in Venezuela, there will be no peace in Colombia.” On the other hand, a change of government in Colombia is also approaching, and the country will have to decide which of these groups it wants to belong to—whether it repairs its relations with its traditional partner and ally, or definitively joins the group of pariah states in the region. Let us hope it is the former.
About the author: Luis Guillermo Plata served as Minister of Trade, Industry of Commerce during the government of President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, and in 2021, appointed by President Iván Duque, Ambassador of Colombia to Spain.
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