Culture of Colombia
Food and drink
- Coffee: the finca and the tinto — Cherries picked by hand on a mountainside, a Willys jeep down to the village, the best beans exported and the rest drunk at home, and a cup that Colombians call a tinto.
Festivals and celebrations
- Carnaval de Barranquilla — Four days before Lent when a port city stops working: a queen who dances for six hours, a long-nosed marimonda, death chased off by the dancers, and a puppet buried on Tuesday night by widows who laugh and cry.
Identity and society
Music and the arts
- Cumbia and vallenato — Two rhythms from one coast: African drums and a cane flute that became the most travelled music in Latin America, and an accordion that came off a ship and learned to sing the news.
Literature and storytelling
Places and landscapes
History
Read
- Cartagena de Indias — Cartagena de Indias
- El Carnaval de Barranquilla — The Barranquilla Carnival
- El Dorado y los muiscas — El Dorado and the Muisca
- El florero de Llorente — Llorente's vase
- El Nocturno de Silva — Silva's Nocturne
- El valle del Cocora — The Cocora Valley
- El velatorio — The Wake
- En la finca de café — On the coffee farm
- La batalla de Boyacá — The Battle of Boyacá
- La Ciclovía de Bogotá — Bogotá's Ciclovía
- La cumbia y el vallenato — Cumbia and vallenato
- La Gran Colombia — Gran Colombia
- La Guerra de los Mil Días — The Thousand Days' War
- La masacre de las bananeras — The Banana Massacre
- Medellín transformada — Medellín transformed
- Simón Bolívar — Simón Bolívar