SPORTS: Copa America: Colombia Selection
Everyone wears the shirt. The woman on the moto coming by, the man selling avocados: there are no exceptions. Uniform is suspended for the day, so are lessons and work,…
Articles by Matt Appleby
COLOMBIA: Fashion: Neiva Exposition 2016
As the models lift their bags, as the stagehand adjusts a zipper, the lights flare and the group files onstage. They’re normal people chatting, then for forty seconds they’re mannequins,…
HEALTH: Street Theatre, Public Health
It starts in November with the juggler. He does his routine at the lights on Fourth Street, knocking round the windows for a tip. Soon he’s replaced by the man…
Anger at Peace in Colombia
The headline reads “Peace comes to Colombia!” and puts everyone in a bad mood. The shops are shuttered and the speakers shut up. High-school students haven’t even the energy to…
Knowing your Parce: Colombian Spanish
You have to know who your parce is. The bus driver when he swerves, he’s not your parce. Your landlord isn’t your parce either. Your roommate can be your parce,…
Turkeys and the Supernatural: Witchcraft in Colombia
In the pauses between salsa, an advert plays for the Sisterhood. This is the bus to work, the radio is propped by the piston that works the doors. The passengers…
The Zika Pandemic: Report from Southern Colombia
Rhesus Monkey 766 is about to become a celebrity in the worst of places: a medical journal. Her fever, the pinkeye she’s gotten, the stiffness in her movement, are the…
Urban Wildlife in Colombia
In the trees round uni, everyone knows, are iguanas, bold enough for staring matches, spined and metre-long. Just as common are the parakeets, scarlet fronted or orange cheeked, and a…
Politics and Paint in Colombia’s Universities
A killer whale held up by balloons. Dictators hanging out. A poem by Baudelaire, one by Vallejo, and a couple that must have been written by students, because there…
The Darien Scheme and Irn Bru
There’s a very different Latin America bubbling somewhere, where the Spanish is replaced by an Edinburgh brogue, where the vineyards are forgotten and a pub built in their place,…
Bickering over a Continent: Vespucci and Columbus
Christopher Columbus, with his peaked hat and his squint, is ordering beef. He counts the money stiffly, in part to show he’s being overcharged, but hiding in his joints is…
INTERNATIONAL: Speaking Aztec in England
Chocolate and avocado start in the same mouth. Coyote’s there too, and tomato, and a salamander from Mexico City. Leaning on a tonsil is a man with a spear. Mescaline…
The Conquest of the Americas (in 16500 BC)
Four thousand years previous to you clicking on this article, the woolly mammoth goes extinct. Writing gets invented like a thousand years before. The New Stone Age ends twelve millennia…
CULTURE: Male Psychology and Reggaeton
In the dancehall, renting a booth, Reggaeton is sitting with its arm around a model. It cracks jewelled knuckles. It flexes, and splits its sleeves. As the bass jumps in…
Chaste Susanna: Colombia’s Greatest Poet
Chaste Susanna was a notable man and not just because of his shipwreck, not even for being the face on the 5000 peso bill, but for being Colombia’s best…
Disease in Colonial America
Coughs and Sneezes, Portugueses I think I know my history. The Spanish showed up in America, had a look around, then, like War of the Worlds, all of the baddies…
Hoatzin: A hero
No-one talks about hoatzins, it’s properly unfair. I promise they’re great, and if you don’t think so by the end of this article, well, there’s not much I can do…
The World Cup: Falling Over, Rolling Around
You watch the England match? Was great, we lost. And there were these screaming fans, and outside the civilians screaming too, and dry ice for the footballers, and canisters of…
Playground Games in Latin America
“I’m not playing anymore. I said no tig-backs and you tug me back. When does lunch finish? I’m bored.” University is ending, right, which is a bit like when a…
Punching Your PhD: Literary Feuds in Latin America
There’s nothing better than writing, you get to be horrible. Not to glorify nasty people, but here are the three best feuds in Latin American lit. Think of it like…
The Amazon: Sponsoring an Acre
The Amazon: Sponsoring an Acre “No,” she said. “I won’t allow it.” We were coming down the river and the motor was failing. A heron fished in the roots to…
Environment: Introduced Species
There was that crocodile in the Mersey. The Essex Lion, too. Those parrots you get in London, I’ve heard about them - and you just wait til UKIP sees those…
Mexico: Trotsky
It’s September 1936 and Oslo is sleeping. In the border-towns, a group of men gather in the cold. They cradle bricks, carry batons, and the pavement by Konrad Knudsen’s home…
Pre-Columbian America: Religion and Sacrifice
Whether you’re the victim or the high priest, it’s a dirty business, this. Gather round the screenlight campfire and I’ll tell you all about it. Let’s open with the Incas…
Brazil: Falling out with football
There’s rich, there’s chemistry-teacher-turned-drug-dealer rich, and just below that, there’s sports star rich. The national team’s great hope, twenty-two year old Neymar Júnior, earns 7,000,000 euros a year, which…