Destination: Colombia
Turn Up the Tunes, Break Out Your Phrasebooks
by Elyse Franko | 09.09.09 | 8:44 AM ET
Elyse Franko wonders: Is the United States at the beginning of a linguistic musical revolution?
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Yahoo! BuzzMalcolm Gladwell on Aviation Safety and Security
by Rob Verger | 01.30.09 | 2:00 PM ET
Perhaps the most fascinating section of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers: The Story of Success, is the chapter called “The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes.” Gladwell explores two plane crashes—one Colombian (Avianca Flight 52) and another, South Korean (Korean Air Flight 801)—and how the culture of the pilots perhaps contributed to each disaster. He focuses on how well the pilots communicated with each other and with air traffic control. Poor communication in these examples, he argues, has to do with something called a culture’s Power Distance Index (P.D.I.)—the term and concept come from psychologist Geert Hofstede—which is a measurement of “how much a particular culture values and respects authority,” as Gladwell defines it. Countries with a high P.D.I. generally value being more deferential towards authority, and thus not contradicting a superior (the U.S. and New Zealand both have a low P.D.I.). Gladwell argues that since both Colombia and South Korea rank towards the top of the P.D.I. list, the subordinate members of their cockpit crews were unable or unwilling to speak up as assertively as they should have about safety concerns.
I interviewed Gladwell in early November for an article for The Boston Globe and asked him if he would suggest changing anything in general regarding airline security. “Not really,” he answered, but added that he was more concerned “about the mistakes that pilots make and air traffic controllers make in the course of doing their jobs than I am about the threat posed by terrorists. It’s the classic thing where we demonize and terrify ourselves about the threat from outside and forget about the threat that we pose to ourselves.”
But it’s the connections that Gladwell draws in “Outliers” between culture and plane crashes that have become, not surprisingly, controversial.
Colombia On Film (Again)
by Eva Holland | 12.29.08 | 1:17 PM ET
Sure, 2007’s Love in the Time of Cholera may never have become the big Colombian movie-tourism ticket that we were expecting (the film adaptation of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez classic tanked, critically and at the box office), but Cartagena—the city where “Cholera” was set—isn’t done yet.
There’s a new Cartagena-set movie in the works (called, appropriately enough, Cartagena) that will star Clive Owen as “an undercover agent at the center of the world’s cocaine trade,” as Get The Big Picture blogger Colin Boyd puts it.
Move Over Bookmobile: Make Way for the Biblioburro
by Valerie Conners | 10.22.08 | 10:04 AM ET
The New York Times profiled Luis Soriano, Colombia’s one-man Biblioburro, who—along with his two donkeys, Alfa and Beto—brings books to some of his nation’s most remote and impoverished villages. “This began as a necessity; then it became an obligation; and after that a custom,” Soriano said. “Now it is an institution.”
World Hum Travel Movie Club: ‘The Art of Travel’
by Eli Ellison, Eva Holland | 10.09.08 | 5:53 PM ET
Small-town boy Conner Layne graduates from high school, dumps his fiancée at the altar and leaves for his honeymoon, alone. As he makes his way from Nicaragua to Panama, Colombia and Peru, philosophical realizations about the meaning of travel abound. World Hum Travel Movie Clubbers Eva Holland and Eli Ellison go along for the ride in this new DVD release—but will their minds, like Conner’s, be opened to the real art of travel?
Re-Branding Colombia: ‘The Only Risk is Wanting to Stay’
by Jim Benning | 10.02.08 | 1:37 PM ET
Photo of Cartagena by ho visto nina volare via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
What? That’s the only risk? What about the drugs? The rebels? The risk of catching Shakira fever? I was watching “Larry King Live” the other night when I was suddenly faced with something far more interesting than the babbling pundits: a commercial promoting tourism to Colombia. It began with footage of feet walking along a beach and a gentle voice intoning, “You are at risk when you go to Colombia…at risk of amazement, of marveling, of falling in love…” Then came images of a snorkeler in turquoise water and smiling tourists. The kicker? “Colombia. The only risk is wanting to stay.”
Heading…
Adventures in Colombia: Cocaine! And Hey, ‘The FARC Are Nearby? Cool!’
by Jim Benning | 04.01.08 | 11:35 AM ET
We’ve been writing for some time about the resurgence of tourism in Colombia, thanks largely to a drop in drug-related violence and crime. Even the New York Times jumped on the cheerleading bandwagon. This week, while acknowledging the trend, the Guardian reports on the small but “growing minority” of backpackers and travelers who are more interested in sampling the other Colombia. Namely, the Colombia made infamous by its cocaine trade and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas.
Drunken Bullfighting in Colombia: Don’t Try This at Home
by Joanna Kakissis | 01.30.08 | 12:28 PM ET
What happens to the untrained and often inebriated matadors involved in corraleja, Colombia’s amateur form of bullfighting, when they take on pissed-off bulls? New York Times writer Simon Romero likened their wounds to those in a Hieronymus Bosch painting: “intestines peeking out of a belly, bone protruding from a fractured shin, blood spurting from a gash in the buttocks.” Yeouch.
Related on World Hum:
* Is Colombia the New New Zealand?
R.I.P. 64 Journalists
by Jim Benning | 12.18.07 | 4:00 PM ET
That’s the number of journalists killed around the globe this year—the most in over a decade. Not surprisingly, Iraq claimed more lives than any other country, 31, nearly all of them Iraqi. “Somalia was ranked the second deadliest country with seven journalists deaths in 2007,” Reuters reports. “Sri Lanka and Pakistan each recorded five journalists deaths, and Afghanistan and Eritrea each had two deaths.” One positive note: For the first time in more than a decade, there wasn’t a single reporter murdered in Colombia. Could it be further evidence of this?
Requiem for a Little Red Ship
by Abbie Kozolchyk | 12.05.07 | 11:33 AM ET
Abbie Kozolchyk never understood why anyone referred to ships as though they were women. Then, long before it sank in Antarctica, she met the Explorer.
Colombia’s Tayrona Park: From Drug Battlefield to Tourist Paradise?
by Joanna Kakissis | 11.13.07 | 1:39 PM ET
Not long ago, Colombia’s Tayrona National Park was the bloody haunt of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as well as right-wing paramilitary organizations, which battled over turf for the cocaine trade. But since Colombian President Álvaro Uribe began a military crackdown on death squads and drove the FARC out to the southern jungles, the park has apparently been reborn. According to Joshua Hammer’s New York Times story, in fact, Tayrona is now being touted by Colombian authoritites as a tourist paradise that’s “among the most biologically diverse of any coastal zone in the Americas.”
Is Colombia the New New Zealand?
by Eva Holland | 10.16.07 | 2:11 PM ET
We’ve been tracking Colombia’s rise from narcotics netherworld to “hipster tropical destination du jour” for some time now, and it looks like an upcoming potential blockbuster movie could help complete the transition. “Love in the Time of Cholera,” based on the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, hits North American theaters in November. Last week Jaunted predicted an accompanying movie-tourism explosion. Amandak writes: “If you haven’t read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s fantastic book Love in the Time of Cholera you should, now. It’s about to become for Colombia what Lord of the Rings was for New Zealand: a major tourism generator. The nice part is that Garcia Marquez really did set his book in Colombia, whereas the whole Lord of the Rings thing was kind of a scam, really.”
Notes From a Month in Colombia
by Jim Benning | 08.31.07 | 12:46 PM ET
World Hum contributor Emily Maloney writes about a visit to Colombia’s Lost City, not to mention a cocaine paste factory, in The Smart Set this week. She even takes a gander at the jacket drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was wearing when he was shot. Good times.
Related on World Hum:
* Drexel University Launches ‘The Smart Set’
Medellín, Colombia Gets Thumbs Up From Gray Lady
by Michael Yessis | 08.15.07 | 11:24 AM ET
In the ongoing debate over whether its safe to travel to Colombia, the New York Times has weighed in with a yes, at least for the city of Medellín. “[I]n the last decade, this city of two million, with its beautiful colonial architecture and year-round spring-like weather, has awakened from its drug nightmare,” writes Grace Bastidas. “Mr. [Pablo] Escobar and his minions are gone and the cocaine trade has been largely dispersed. Bullet-riddled neighborhoods are coming to life with art museums and well-designed parks. And the constant rumble of construction—new shopping malls, flashy casinos and luxury hotels—can be heard throughout the city.”
UNESCO Adds Three Sites to Danger List, Names Next World Book Capital
by Michael Yessis | 07.10.07 | 11:14 AM ET
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has had a busy few weeks. Not only was it busy issuing a press release claiming no affiliation with the new seven wonders, during meetings in Christchurch, New Zealand, the group added the Galapagos and their surrounding marine reserve; Samarra, Iraq; and Senegal’s Niokolo-Koba National Park to its list of endangered World Heritage sites. Two more sites—the Royal Palaces of Abomey, Benin and Kathmandu Valley, Nepal—were removed from the Danger List.
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