Colombia: Besieged By Narcoterrorists or Emerging Hot Destination?

Colombia ranked No. 2 in the Happy Planet Index last year, which seems an impressive finish given the country’s well-known problems. Drug cartels and years of civil war have colored the world’s impression of Colombia, and though those dangers have begun to recede the U.S. State Department has kept its travel warning in place. So how should we characterize Colombia? Daniel Kurtz-Phelan ventured to Bogotá and Medellín for a piece in the March issue of Travel + Leisure, and he writes of a country in transition. “Throughout my visit,” he writes, “everyone from government officials and security experts to shopkeepers and demobilized rebels told me that Colombia is becoming ‘a normal country’—or, if not quite normal, at least one where violence no longer defines daily life but merely infringes on its margins.”

It’s the fruit of an initiative spearheaded by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to make the country more attractive to domestic and international tourists.

Bringing about just such a renaissance has been a core part of President Uribe’s campaign. But he has focused as much on reclaiming rural areas as he has on rescuing urban centers. Securing the Bogotá-Medellín road and the areas around it was one of his first major offensives. In 2002, even before the military had increased its presence in the countryside or a controversial amnesty offer had persuaded paramilitaries in the area to start disarming, Uribe launched a high-profile tourism initiative called Vive Colombia Caravans, an effort to encourage Colombians to venture into the countryside again. On holiday weekends, a convoy of road-trippers would roll down a stretch of highway under the watchful eye of the military—an army of families in station wagons striking a blow for normalcy.

The number of international tourists, Kurtz-Phelan writes, has risen by two-thirds since 2002. But the country knows it still has far to go before it can attract large numbers of travelers. “The kind of image we have is not something you change in a day,” Carlos Alberto Vives Pacheco, the national director of tourism development, tells Kurtz-Phelan. “But when people in the United States see Colombians out in their own country, that the vast majority of the country is safe and clean, they will see that the reality is different.”

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