Grupo Cibest (NYSE: CIB; BVC: CIBEST) — the financial holding company Bancolombia created through a corporate reorganization in 2025 — estimates that Colombia’s food inflation accelerated to 0.31% month over month in August 2026, lifting the annual rate to 5.7%, as a magnitude-7.4 earthquake, wildfires in Tolima and an intensifying El Niño weather pattern squeezed the country’s perishable food supply. The estimate comes from the group’s Food Prices Monitor, published September 4, 2026, by its Economic, Industry and Market Research Area.

The monitor is built to anticipate Colombia’s official inflation reading before the National Administrative Department of Statistics, or DANE, publishes it. Grupo Cibest’s analytics team blends daily purchasing data from Servinformación, a company that tracks sales activity in neighborhood stores and small grocery outlets, with wholesale price information collected through DANE’s Sistema de Información de Precios y Abastecimiento del Sector Agropecuario (Agricultural Sector Price and Supply Information System), known by its acronym SIPSA. The report is signed by Laura Clavijo, Grupo Cibest’s chief economist and head of research; Arturo Yesid Gonzalez, quantitative and analytics manager; and Sebastian Ospina, data controller.

Perishable food prices rose 0.92% for the month and 9.32% year over year, more than double the pace of processed foods. (Chart: Finance Colombia, based on Grupo Cibest data)

Perishable food prices, the more volatile half of Colombia’s food basket, swung from a 0.83% monthly decline in July to a 0.92% increase in August, pushing their annual rate to 9.32%, Grupo Cibest said in the report. Processed food prices, packaged and industrially prepared goods that are less exposed to weather and harvest cycles, rose a comparatively modest 0.12% for the month, which Grupo Cibest said was two basis points above July’s reading, implying a July increase of roughly 0.10%; the annual rate for processed food stood at 4.57%.

Perishable food prices reversed course within a single month. (Chart: Finance Colombia, based on Grupo Cibest data)

Grupo Cibest attributed the swing in perishables to “a combination of adverse factors,” naming wildfires in the department of Tolima, the advance of El Niño, and damage from the earthquake that struck Valle del Cauca and Armenia, in Quindío department. On August 10, a magnitude-7.4 earthquake centered near San José del Palmar, in Chocó department, struck a wide swath of western Colombia. As of August 24, Colombia’s disaster relief agency, the Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (National Unit for Disaster Risk Management), had confirmed 331 deaths and 240 people still missing, with damage reported across 16 departments and 494 municipalities, including Valle del Cauca, Chocó, Quindío, Risaralda and Caldas, according to newspaper Vanguardia.

At around the same time, a wildfire season in Tolima burned more than 20,000 hectares of vegetation across 13 municipalities during August, according to reporting by El Tiempo. Colombia’s meteorological institute, IDEAM, has confirmed that El Niño arrived roughly three months earlier than initially projected and is on track to reach one of the strongest intensities recorded since 1950 by the fourth quarter of 2026.

Nearly every item in the fruits and vegetables segment got more expensive in August. Potatoes led the group with an 8.5% monthly jump, and prices for vegetables and legumes climbed 7.1%. Oranges were up 6.0%, rounding out the largest gains Grupo Cibest recorded for the category.

Potatoes led monthly gains in the fruits and vegetables segment. (Chart: Finance Colombia, based on Grupo Cibest data)

The picture was less uniform for animal protein. Processed meats climbed 1.15% for the month, the largest gain in that group, while beef added 0.4%. Pork moved the opposite direction, down 0.7%, and poultry slipped 0.3%. Grupo Cibest did not explain what is driving pork and poultry lower while beef and processed meats rise.

Processed meats and beef rose in August while pork and poultry prices fell. (Chart: Finance Colombia, based on Grupo Cibest data)

The estimate marks a sharp reversal from Colombia’s most recent official reading. DANE reported that consumer prices for food and non-alcoholic beverages fell 0.13% in July, a below-average reading in a month when the country’s overall annual inflation rate eased to 6.03% from 6.14% in June. If Grupo Cibest’s August estimate holds once DANE publishes its own figure, food would go from subtracting from monthly inflation to adding to it within a single month.

Colombia’s food consumer price index went from an official monthly decline in July to an estimated increase in August. (Chart: Finance Colombia, based on DANE and Grupo Cibest data)

Other economists are also revising their outlooks upward because of the earthquake. Citing the risk of supply restrictions, higher demand for emergency relief goods, and damage to transportation infrastructure, Banco de Bogotá‘s economic research team projected monthly inflation of 0.2% in August and 0.3% in September, with the annual rate closing 2026 at 6.8%, according to reporting by Semana. Oxford Economics offered a more measured view, noting that the Colombian peso’s appreciation of nearly 15% during 2026 has been helping offset both El Niño and the earthquake’s impact on food costs, and it expects overall inflation to hold near 6% through year-end.

Beef and beef products carry the single heaviest weight of any food category in Colombia’s consumer price index, at 1.9%, followed by poultry meat at 1.2%, milk at 1.0% and rice at 0.9%, according to the weighting Grupo Cibest published alongside its report. That concentration means price swings in cattle and poultry markets carry an outsized effect on the overall food inflation reading compared with lower-weighted items such as coffee or sugar, even when those categories move by a larger percentage.

Beef carries nearly double the CPI weight of the next-largest food category. (Chart: Finance Colombia, based on DANE and Servinformación data prepared by Grupo Cibest)

DANE is expected to publish its official August consumer price index reading in the coming weeks, providing the first confirmation of whether food prices accelerated at the pace Grupo Cibest is projecting. The reading will also feed into deliberations at Banco de la República, Colombia’s central bank, which has been working to bring annual inflation back toward its 3% target from the 6.03% recorded in July.

President Abelardo De La Espriella and dozens of Colombian business leaders launched a reconstruction and development program for Chocó at a business summit in Quibdó on September 7, 2026, one month after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck the department. Companies committed $2 trillion COP toward rebuilding the region, and the national government added a $1 trillion COP infrastructure package, part of 13 measures unveiled at the meeting.

The magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck on August 10, centered near San José del Palmar, in Chocó, killing at least 111 people on its first day, according to Finance Colombia’s coverage of the disaster, which also drew $1.3 billion USD in international pledges in the weeks that followed, Finance Colombia reported at the time. Colombia’s disaster-management agency, UNGRD, put the toll at 331 deaths, 111 people still missing and 36,326 homes completely destroyed as of a September 7 update — the same day as the Chocó summit — according to Semana.

Officials are calling the new initiative Colombia’s own “Plan Marshall,” a reference to the US-funded program that rebuilt Western Europe after World War II. The goal, De La Espriella’s government said, is not simply to repair what the earthquake destroyed, but to use the reconstruction to close Chocó’s longstanding economic gaps and draw new investment to one of the country’s poorest departments.

“I don’t want 100 small, scattered initiatives, each going its own way, with every ministry announcing its own program,” De La Espriella told the assembled executives, according to Valora Analitik. “We are going to do proper planning, set clear priorities, secure the resources we need and, as a government, I am committing to stay on top of execution so that things actually happen.”

Among the projects announced is the Malecón Gastronómico de Quibdó (Quibdó Gastronomic Waterfront), a new promenade along the Atrato River in the departmental capital meant to revive tourism and commerce there. Chocó Governor Nubia Córdoba said financing for the project is guaranteed through contributions from the business sector, according to El Colombiano. A separate $1 trillion COP infrastructure and connectivity package will fund five road projects to improve Chocó’s links to the rest of the country, split evenly between Colombia’s works-for-taxes program and direct private investment, according to Valora Analitik.

A $5 billion COP seed-capital fund, channeled through iNNpulsa Colombia with contributions from Colombina (BVC: COLOMBINA), Bancolombia, the banking arm of Grupo Cibest (NYSE: CIB; BVC: CIBEST), and Tecnoglass (NASDAQ: TGLS), is intended to benefit roughly 1,000 entrepreneurs affected by the earthquake, with about $5 million COP going to each business, Commerce Minister Gómez Amín said, according to El Colombiano.

The Ministerio de Comercio, Industria y Turismo (Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism), known in Colombia as MinCIT, is leading several of the measures aimed at accelerating the region’s economic recovery. Nuquí and Bahía Solano, two Pacific coast municipalities in the earthquake-affected zone, were selected for a tourism-development push under what officials are calling a “Pueblos Milagro” strategy, backed by Fontur — the Fondo Nacional de Turismo (National Tourism Fund) — and the Fundación Santo Domingo.

Companies including Olímpica, Grupo Nutresa (BVC: NUTRESA) and Colombina pledged to buy directly from Chocó producers, aiming to connect them with larger markets, the government said. Separately, officials said they will promote sales of biche, a traditional Pacific-coast spirit made by Chocó producers, through the Central Mayorista de Antioquia wholesale market in Itagüí, near Medellín.

The package also includes financial-inclusion measures, 100 scholarships for young Chocoanos — 50 of them pledged directly by Grupo Nutresa, according to Valora Analitik — solar-power generation for Pacific communities, a special regime meant to formalize small-scale mining, and a special tax and legal regime the government says is designed to attract private investment to the department. Officials also said they will study the feasibility of an interoceanic canal or a rail corridor linking the Urabá region with a deep-water port on Chocó’s Pacific coast.

De La Espriella framed the plan as a long-term commitment rather than a one-time relief effort.

“Chocó was not born to be poor. We are not simply going to rebuild what was lost — we are going to connect the department, attract investment, generate jobs and open opportunities. Government and business are united so that this time, promises become facts.”

— President Abelardo De La Espriella

Commerce, Industry and Tourism Minister Mauricio Gómez Amín said the government wants the reconstruction to leave a lasting economic footprint: “We have a historic opportunity to turn reconstruction into development. The challenge now is to translate these commitments into investment, jobs, new markets and concrete results for the people of Chocó.”

According to Valora Analitik, the business leaders who met with De La Espriella included Alejandro Santo Domingo of Valorem; brothers Jaime and Gabriel Gilinski of Grupo Gilinski; a representative of the Organización Ardila Lülle; David Vélez, founder of Nubank‘s parent, Nu Holdings (NYSE: NU); Bancolombia chief executive Juan Carlos Mora; Fuad Char of Olímpica; Colombina’s César Caicedo; Tecnoglass’s Christian Daes; and Miguel Cortés Kotal of Grupo Bolívar (BVC: GRUBOLIVAR).

Headline photo:Commerce, Industry and Tourism Minister Mauricio Gómez Amín speaks on the Chocó reconstruction plan.

A Bogotá court has denied a tutela — an expedited constitutional action for the protection of fundamental rights — that Senator Iván Cepeda Castro filed against Colombia’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (Ministerio de Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones, or MinTIC) and the state broadcaster Inravisión over the suspension of local news and opinion programming on the country’s 20 Emisoras de Paz, or Peace Radio Stations.

Bogotá’s 32nd Court for the Execution of Sentences and Security Measures (Juzgado 32 de Ejecución de Penas y Medidas de Seguridad de Bogotá) ruled that Cepeda, along with Holmer Pérez Balmaceda of the Catatumbo Farmers’ Association (Ascamcat) and Clímaco Carmelo Landazuri Preciado of the Corporación Étnica Ambiental del Pacífico Sostenible (Capacs), had not shown a current violation of their rights or irreparable harm attributable to MinTIC or Inravisión. The court found the stations had not been shut down and their frequencies had continued operating.

“Inravisión has not issued any administrative act or directive aimed at suppressing, closing or eliminating the Peace Radio Stations, canceling their frequencies or permanently ending their operation.”

— Bogotá’s 32nd Court for the Execution of Sentences and Security Measures

The dispute traces to August 17, 2026, when Inravisión — the name the public broadcasting system readopted earlier this year after two decades as RTVC — instructed the directors of the 20 stations by WhatsApp message to halt their regular programming, according to reporting by El Armadillo. The order also reached 11 decentralized stations in the Radio Nacional de Colombia network, covering more than 70 frequencies in total. Since then, the affected signals have carried only music from Bogotá in place of locally produced news, culture and community programming. One of the 20, in Ituango, Antioquia, was among the first two Peace Radio Stations to go on air, in 2019, alongside a sister station in Chaparral, Tolima, and is the only one of the network’s stations in Antioquia department, according to Las2orillas.

Cepeda, who lost the presidency to Abelardo de la Espriella in the June 21 runoff, announced on August 21 that he would sue, writing on X that the suspension “disregards that these stations were created under Section 6.5 of the Final Peace Agreement and the duty of state authorities to comply in good faith with what was agreed,” according to El País (Cali). The Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP), the Misión de Observación Electoral and the Asociación Mundial de Radios Comunitarias (AMARC) all publicly rejected the suspension, and separately argued it affected more than 463,000 listeners, mostly in rural, Indigenous, Afro-Colombian and peasant communities.

The Peace Radio Stations were created under the 2016 accord between the Colombian government and the demobilized FARC guerrilla group to produce content on peacebuilding and the accord’s implementation in municipalities hit hardest by the armed conflict; roughly 90 percent of their programming has consisted of locally produced content rather than national feeds, according to Inravisión staff cited by Infobae Colombia. The network had previously been cited as the one commitment of the 2016 accord to reach full implementation.

The suspension followed the August 7 inauguration of de la Espriella and the August 12 appointment of Ángela María Mora as Inravisión’s new manager. On August 16, MinTIC issued a statement declaring the end of what it called “the propaganda apparatus in Colombia’s Public Media System,” announcing an “immediate action plan” with Minister Alexandra Falla to overhaul programming, review contracting and eliminate the news and opinion slots across the system’s radio and television offerings, according to Semana. Mora and Falla said the review covers more than 1,051 contracts worth over $100 billion COP signed in 2026, including roughly $7,255 million COP in advertising, planning and digital-content services under separate scrutiny, according to Las2orillas. Findings are set to go to Colombia’s Inspector General’s Office (Procuraduría General de la Nación) and Comptroller General’s Office (Contraloría General de la República). The former Inravisión manager, Hollman Morris, had faced a Procuraduría disciplinary investigation opened in June over allegations that the outlet was used to favor the previous Petro government’s political agenda. Senator Enrique Gómez, of the Salvación Nacional movement that backed de la Espriella’s campaign, said on August 21 that the stations were “the official megaphones of the FARC for indoctrinating regions” and a “nest of propaganda,” a characterization FLIP rejected, warning that stigmatizing the stations’ journalists could increase their risk of attack, per Las2orillas.

In its ruling, the court also rejected the censorship claim, finding the programming change applied uniformly across all 20 stations without singling out particular content, programs or people, and that the plaintiffs had not specified what information had gone unreported or what concrete impact the centralization had caused. On the stations’ role under the peace accord, the court acknowledged they serve as “an instrument intended for pedagogy and reconciliation in territories affected by the conflict” but found the shutdown did not rise to an actual, current violation of the right to peace, since the infrastructure, frequencies and underlying contracts had all remained in force. The government has described the change as a temporary programming scheme adopted while a review and reorganization of the schedule is carried out, rather than a final decision to end the service.

Although it denied the tutela, the court urged Inravisión — without making it binding — to define and publish a timetable for reactivating the stations’ local news programming. Cepeda has said he will appeal the ruling to a higher court, according to Cablenoticias. Colombia’s Congress has already taken up the underlying dispute: Representative Alejandro Toro, of the opposition Pacto Histórico, filed a control-hearing request, joined by 18 other representatives, to question Falla and Mora over the decision.

Headline photo: Illuminated signage on the Inravisión — Sistema de Medios Públicos headquarters in Bogotá.

Bogotá Pitches Investors on Legal Certainty as Mexico Leads the Bloc

Colombia’s government told its Pacific Alliance partners this week that it will send Congress the bloc’s free-trade agreement with Singapore, a step meant to bring Bogotá into line with Chile and Peru, where the pact has been in force since May 2025.

The pledge came at the first meeting of the Alliance’s High-Level Group hosted by Mexico since it took over the bloc’s rotating presidency from Colombia earlier this year. The Grupo de Alto Nivel (High-Level Group, or GAN) — the vice ministers of foreign trade and foreign relations from Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru — met August 20 and 21, 2026, in Mexico City, in a session that photos released by the Alliance place inside Mexico’s Secretaría de Economía (Ministry of Economy).

Colombia’s vice minister of foreign trade, Sandra Carvajal Sáenz, told her counterparts that President Abelardo de la Espriella’s government would submit the Pacific Alliance-Singapore agreement to Congress for the legislative and Constitutional Court review that Colombian treaties require before they can take effect. Singapore, Chile and Peru completed those procedures and put the deal into force on May 3, 2025, three years after it was signed at a Pacific Alliance presidential summit in Colombia; Mexico and Colombia are the two Alliance members that have yet to ratify it.

The High-Level Group’s agenda covered four areas. On regional value chains and regulatory cooperation, the vice ministers looked for ways to integrate production across the four countries and cut the regulatory barriers that keep exporters from adding value before selling into outside markets. On public-private coordination, they discussed concrete steps to link the bloc’s technical working groups with governments and with the private-sector Consejo Empresarial de la Alianza del Pacífico (Pacific Alliance Business Council, or CEAP). On small and medium-sized enterprises, the goal is turning those businesses into a bigger driver of the bloc’s trade and growth. And on trade promotion, the vice ministers discussed how the four countries’ promotion agencies affect trade, investment and tourism, and agreed those agencies need to be a governmental priority. Carvajal told her counterparts Colombia was “fully willing to work hard, constructively and decisively with our Pacific Alliance partners to actively contribute to this integration mechanism having an increasingly tangible impact on our economies and, above all, on generating jobs and opportunities for our citizens.”

The vice ministers’ meeting followed a forum the CEAP held on attracting foreign investment to the bloc’s four economies. Speaking on behalf of Commerce, Industry and Tourism Minister Mauricio Gómez Amín, Carvajal said legal and regulatory stability — along with tools such as free-trade zones and trade-facilitation mechanisms — are priorities for the ministry. Gómez Amín made the same point in an August 10 statement from the ministry announcing his appointment: “Colombia needs clear rules, legal certainty and a government that sees business as an ally, not an adversary,” he said. “We are working to unblock projects and bring domestic and foreign capital into infrastructure, logistics, energy, connectivity, agribusiness, tourism and exportable services.”

Carvajal is one of two vice ministers Gómez Amín swore in on August 14, 2026, alongside Manuel Alejandro Naranjo Giraldo as vice minister of business development, El Heraldo reported. She joined the ministry after 17 years at ProColombia and, most recently, as the Caribbean regional manager for the exporters’ association Analdex. Gómez Amín, a Barranquilla lawyer and former senator, took over the ministry after de la Espriella’s government was sworn in this year, El Tiempo reported.

Mexico assumed the Pacific Alliance’s rotating presidency from Colombia on January 30, 2026, after Colombia closed out its own term with the signing of the Bogotá Act. The bloc, created in 2012 by the presidents of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru to pursue free movement of goods, services, capital and people among its members, is also working through Costa Rica’s bid to join, a process that began when Alliance ministers accepted San José’s candidacy in December 2024, under Chile’s presidency, and has continued through working-group sessions on framework-agreement compliance and trade-protocol negotiations since.

Carvajal used the Mexico City trip to also hold separate bilateral meetings with counterparts from Costa Rica, Mexico, Chile and Peru, the ministry said.

Headline photo: Vice ministers of foreign trade and foreign relations from Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru meet as the Pacific Alliance’s High-Level Group at Mexico’s Secretaría de Economía in Mexico City, August 21, 2026. (Photo courtesy Pacific Alliance)

A recording published by the investigative unit of Noticias Caracol on June 24, 2026, captured Colombia’s then-High Commissioner for Peace Danilo Rueda proposing a children’s game to a representative of the country’s largest criminal organization. “Let’s play frozen,” Rueda is heard telling Luis Armando Pérez Castañeda, alias “Jerónimo” or “Bruno,” the political spokesman for the Clan del Golfo, in a secret meeting held September 2, 2022, in Urabá, Antioquia, three weeks into President Gustavo Petro’s term. Over the next three years, figures from Colombia’s Ministry of Defense cited by Noticias Caracol show, the Clan del Golfo’s ranks grew from 4,061 fighters to 9,915, and its territorial footprint expanded from 145 municipalities to 338.

The recording is now the subject of a preliminary criminal inquiry by the Fiscalía General de la Nación (Attorney General’s Office) and a separate disciplinary inquiry by the Procuraduría General de la Nación (Inspector General’s Office), both opened in June against Rueda, former Defense Minister Iván Velásquez, former National Intelligence Director Jorge Lemus and former Counterintelligence Chief Ricardo Rey Rosanía. Rueda has said the meeting was part of an exploratory phase, not a formal negotiation, and that the freeze-tag comment was a metaphor. The recordings, the numbers and the officials’ own public statements are on record; what follows is drawn from them.

Pérez, whose organization also goes by the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia and answers to top commander Jobanis de Jesús Ávila, alias “Chiquito Malo,” opened the meeting by citing a unilateral ceasefire the Clan del Golfo had declared on August 7, 2022 — Petro’s inauguration day — and asked the government for a reciprocal gesture: the withdrawal of special infiltration units and undercover operations from the group’s territory. “If the organization says there’s been a ceasefire since August 7, then there should also be a gesture from the government, withdrawing the special operations and infiltration units in the area,” Pérez said, according to the recording. “We’re working on that,” Rueda replied.

“There are things that don’t get said outright, because nobody wants to show they’re conceding. Everyone wants to say, ‘I’m strong.’ We know you, we recognize you. Calm down. Look, in another region — what did we achieve? You control up to here. Let’s play frozen. So all three of us stay frozen. Now, if someone decides to move, that’s when the trouble starts.”

— Danilo Rueda, then Colombia’s high commissioner for peace, in a recorded September 2022 meeting with a Clan del Golfo representative

Rueda then went further, according to the recording, offering “two messages: one, a halt to bombardments; two, a decision to clean house in police intelligence.” He tied the bombing halt directly to Velásquez, saying: “We knew there were bombing operations under way. I found out, and we spoke with the minister, and orders were given, for your group and others.” Velásquez’s public position at the time was narrower — that bombing was restricted only where minors might be present. Ministry of Defense data cited by Noticias Caracol shows no aerial bombardments against the Clan del Golfo for roughly two years after the meeting; the first came in late 2024, followed by five more in 2025.

Five days after Petro’s inauguration, on August 12, 2022, the government retired 35 generals and colonels in the largest shake-up of Colombia’s military and police command in recent history. On the recording, Rueda cited that purge to Pérez as evidence of good faith, and went further: three colonels who had been assigned to strategic posts in intelligence, the judicial police directorate and anti-narcotics units — believed to be John Arbey Alzate Duque, Juan Miguel Thiriat Tovar and Zaid Eduardo Pabón Ortega, according to El Colombiano, all tied to the anti-Clan del Golfo operation Agamenón — were removed within about a week of their appointments. “Three were vetoed who had the mission of sabotaging everything,” Rueda said on the recording. “But information came in, and then they criticize the president… because there’s information I can’t share with you.”

Extradition came up last. Pérez asked for a “lifting of arrest warrants” and “extradition orders” as a condition of trust. “All of that gets done,” Rueda replied. Asked for de-escalation of operations in the group’s territory “so there’s trust,” Rueda said: “Yes… that’s possible.” Nearly four years later, in 2026, the government’s peace office formally asked Attorney General Luz Adriana Camargo to lift arrest warrants against 29 Clan del Golfo members, including Ávila, the group’s top commander, who is wanted for extradition by US courts on drug-trafficking charges. Camargo declined, citing insufficient verification of the group’s compliance with the negotiations and Colombia’s international extradition obligations; the Supreme Court backed her decision, according to El Colombiano.

Gerson Arias, a researcher at the Fundación Ideas para la Paz (Ideas for Peace Foundation), told Noticias Caracol that the Clan del Golfo “expanded and grew stronger in the midst of these initial explorations,” pointing to “a premature ceasefire, the elimination of bombing operations, and the reduced effectiveness of military, police and judicial operations resulting from a weakening of the intelligence capabilities the Colombian state had built up over years.” Juanita Goebertus, the Americas director at Human Rights Watch, drew a similar conclusion from her organization’s own field documentation, saying the combination of an absent security policy and “the perverse or unintended effects” of the total-peace strategy has been linked to armed groups gaining “greater territorial and population control.” By 2025 the Clan del Golfo operated in 23 of Colombia’s 32 departments through four blocs and 25 armed fronts, with trafficking cells reaching Spain, Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela, El Colombiano reported; in Antioquia alone, the departmental government put the group’s growth at 60 percent.

The disclosure drew an immediate legal response. Representative Christian Garcés, of the opposition Centro Democrático party, filed a criminal complaint with the Fiscalía days after the recordings surfaced, naming Rueda, Velásquez and Rey Rosanía on charges including concierto para delinquir (conspiracy to commit crimes), revealing state secrets and misuse of privileged information. “If the government committed military decisions, intelligence operations or institutional benefits to favor the Clan del Golfo, Colombia would be facing the possible use of public power for the benefit of a criminal organization,” Garcés said, according to Infobae. Garcés also asked the House Accusations Committee to examine whether Petro himself knew of or directed any of the concessions. The Fiscalía’s own preliminary inquiry, opened in early July, was assigned to the unit of prosecutors who work before the Supreme Court and folded into other ongoing cases examining government favoritism toward armed groups, according to Semana.

A parallel thread involves the Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia (National Intelligence Directorate, DNI). Video and audio also obtained by Noticias Caracol show Jorge Lemus, then the DNI’s director, and Rey Rosanía, his counterintelligence chief, meeting on August 19, 2025, in Bogotá with Eduard Ferney Rincón, a former trafficker known as “Boyaco Sinaloa” who has said he paid $18 million USD to US authorities to avoid extradition, and a former staffer for the legislative office of Senator María José Pizarro. On the recording, Lemus asked Rincón to lean on congressional contacts to help pass a government bill on armed-group submission to justice, central to the total-peace strategy, and to help establish a direct line to Ávila, whom Lemus said had been avoiding the agency. Lemus has defended the meeting as lawful intelligence work conducted under Colombia’s Intelligence Law and has said the leak of the material endangered intelligence sources and methods.

Rueda, in an interview with Caracol Radio after the recordings surfaced, said the September 2022 meeting was part of a preliminary “exploratory phase,” not a formal negotiation, that only three such meetings took place, all with international witnesses present, and that no ceasefire was ever signed. “In that exploratory phase, there was never any decision by the president of the republic that meant military operations against the group would not continue,” he said. On the officer purge, he said he was never given names: “I was never given the names of police officers who had to be removed from the security forces for abuses or overreach.” Asked about “let’s play frozen,” he called it a metaphor: “To be able to talk, you need a space… but the conversation ends and the game continues. It’s like the cat chasing the mouse.” Velásquez, in a written statement, said his evaluation of senior officers began two weeks before he took office as defense minister and was “a rigorous procedure” based on documented sources, that Rueda “had no participation in or knowledge of that process,” and that bombing suspensions applied only where minors were at risk. “The statements made by Danilo Rueda implicate only him, and he is the one who will have to provide the corresponding explanations,” Velásquez said.

Rueda left the peace commissioner’s post in November 2023; Otty Patiño succeeded him and, with negotiating-team lead Álvaro Jiménez, pursued two rounds of dialogue with the Clan del Golfo in Doha, Qatar — an initial confidence-building agreement in September 2025, followed by a peace agreement signed December 5, 2025, that established temporary concentration zones for the group’s fighters. The first such zone, in Tierralta, Córdoba, was scheduled to receive an initial contingent the day after the audio broke.

Abelardo de la Espriella, who defeated Pacto Histórico Senator Iván Cepeda in the 2026 presidential election, was inaugurated August 7, 2026, in Cali — the first Colombian presidential inauguration held outside Bogotá. “The option of dialogue is completely exhausted,” he declared in his inaugural address, according to Infobae. He announced a security offensive against armed groups, an incoming list of narco-terrorist organizations and Colombia’s entry into the US-backed Escudo de las Américas regional security initiative. Within his first weekend in office, according to Infobae, his government reported operations against Clan del Golfo and dissident FARC fighters in three departments. The Clan del Golfo remains listed by Washington as both a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.

Fiscalía charges reach 55 people as a Miami money trail emerges

Federico Gutiérrez, the mayor of Medellín, used a July 27, 2026, press conference to lay out what he described as a coordinated criminal structure operating inside the administration of his predecessor, former mayor Daniel Quintero Calle, and Quintero’s brother, Miguel Quintero Calle. Gutiérrez told reporters the network reached into nearly every district agency and directed more than $1 trillion COP in public contracting, based on findings the Alcaldía de Medellín (Medellín Mayor’s Office) has compiled since he took office in January 2024.

Prosecutors classify the alleged network as a grupo de delincuencia organizada, or GDO (organized crime group) — a designation Colombian law uses for entrenched, racketeering-style criminal structures. Gutiérrez has given it a public nickname, “Hermanitos Q” (Little Q Brothers), and said the case file, which stood at 501 findings in an earlier accounting, now includes 666 findings after his administration added 165 new files. He said the Fiscalía General de la Nación (Attorney General’s Office) has formally charged 55 people, a number he expects to reach 59, and that the combined prison exposure of the group’s members, based on current charges, exceeds 750 years, according to Infobae Colombia.

Gutiérrez said the network coordinated in part through a WhatsApp group its members called “Los Amiguitos” (The Little Friends), which he said the implicated parties created themselves in 2020 and which prosecutors are using as evidence. He also displayed images he said documented purchases tied to the alleged scheme: an armored Toyota pickup truck Miguel Quintero acquired about two months into the administration, valued at $260 million COP, a swimming pool built at Miguel Quintero’s farm in Copacabana, Antioquia, valued at $160 million COP, and firearms, according to Infobae Colombia. “This wasn’t a government with corruption cases,” Gutiérrez told reporters. “It was corruption governing from different desks. As they say, not even Ali Baba dared so much.”

Quintero governed Medellín from 2020 to 2023. He now serves as Colombia’s national Superintendent of Health, appointed by President Gustavo Petro by decree in April 2026 despite the pending charges, according to El Espectador. The appointment drew public opposition from health-sector groups, including Change.org petitions that together gathered more than 17,000 signatures asking Petro to reconsider, according to Infobae Colombia. Quintero rejected Gutiérrez’s allegations the same day, calling the mayor “ridiculous” in a post on X: “The only government plan Mayor Federico Gutiérrez had was trying to screw me over because I denounced what happened at Hidroituango, where $10 trillion COP is still missing that people are paying for through their utility bills,” he wrote, according to Infobae Colombia. Hidroituango, EPM’s long-delayed and cost-overrun hydroelectric project, predates Quintero’s administration.

The Área Metropolitana and Itagüí’s fire department

The most legally advanced case centers on six contracts signed between 2020 and 2023 between the Área Metropolitana del Valle de Aburrá (Metropolitan Area of the Aburrá Valley, AMVA) and the volunteer fire department of Itagüí, a Medellín-area municipality, worth $17,645 million COP, according to Infobae Colombia. Prosecutors allege the money, meant to fund emergency and pandemic response, was instead diverted through inflated invoices. Juan Alberto Cardona Henao, the fire department’s former accountant, has already been convicted and sentenced to 19 months in prison; he is cooperating with prosecutors under a plea agreement. Miguel Quintero, his business associate Sebastián Ortega, former AMVA official Álvaro Villada and Vanesa Álvarez Restrepo face a hearing where prosecutors intend to formally charge them with embezzlement and undue interest in contracting — exposure of up to 22 years and six months. That hearing has been postponed three times: originally set for August 3, pushed to August 25 and then to August 31 at the request of Villada’s defense, and voided a third time on August 31 itself, after the presiding judge agreed with Quintero Calle’s defense that the case had been improperly transferred to her courtroom following the original judge’s medical leave. It is now scheduled for September 10, according to Infobae Colombia.

Afinia and EPM’s Caribbean coast utility

Gutiérrez also renewed a long-running allegation, first raised by his administration in 2024, that the general manager’s post at Afinia — a Caribbean-coast electricity distributor in which EPM (Medellín’s public utility) holds a stake — was effectively sold during Quintero’s term for between $5 million and $8 million USD, in a deal allegedly brokered at a restaurant in Medellín and finalized in meetings in Cartagena and Barranquilla. Gutiérrez said the buyers installed Javier Lastra Fuscaldo as general manager in August 2021 with the help of Emilio Tapia, a contractor already convicted in Bogotá’s unrelated “carrusel de la contratación” (contracting carousel) case. Lastra has denied the allegations since they first surfaced. “Nobody made conditions on my appointment at Afinia, and my management was carried out based on good practices,” he told El Colombiano in 2024, adding that he had not been formally notified of any complaint against him. Gutiérrez said Afinia has lost $1.5 trillion COP a year since; separately, EPM’s own board told El Colombiano in 2024 that Afinia was losing $80 billion to $90 billion COP a month and needed at least $1.5 trillion COP in fresh investment that year.

Metroparques, the Aguas water park, and Inder

Prosecutors have filed a formal accusation against four people over maintenance contracts for the Parque de las Aguas water park, administered through Metroparques, worth close to $22 billion COP: Álvaro Villada, Jorge Enrique Liévano (Metroparques’ former general manager), Viviana del Valle Velázquez (the entity’s former purchasing chief) and contractor Juan Alexander Pino Jaramillo, who together face up to 33 years in prison, while three additional contractors face up to 16 years. Prosecutors allege contracting companies tied to Pino — Comercializadora J. Pino SAS, Soluciones SAS and Estructuras Zafiro SAS — received more than $4.5 billion COP, and that cost overruns on chlorine, floodlights and biosafety supplies alone caused more than $2.79 billion COP in damage. Authorities have already applied asset forfeiture to a car and a motorcycle tied to the case.

A separate, related matter involves a 2020 contract awarded to Sian Eventos y Logística SAS, led by Mauricio Jaramillo Botero, to supply sports equipment for youth recreation programs run by Inder (Medellín’s sports and recreation institute) through Metroparques. Gutiérrez said the contract ran up $3,705 million COP in cost overruns on balls, medals, uniforms and trophies, stretched from a planned two-and-a-half months to 26 months, and that roughly $200 billion COP in Inder funding was separately redirected to Metroparques through similar inter-agency contracts. Jaramillo faces up to 16 years in prison; Diana Paola Toro (Inder’s director), Liévano and María Eugenia Domínguez (another former Metroparques general manager) face up to 33 years.

Buen Comienzo, the early-childhood program

Gutiérrez said prosecutors have charged three people over an early-childhood nutrition and education contract awarded in October 2020 to Corporación Colombia Avanza, after Quintero appointed Vivian Cecilia Puerta Guerra to run the Buen Comienzo program. According to the accusation Gutiérrez cited, the contract exceeded the corporation’s demonstrated operating capacity by 2,816%, producing patrimonial damage of roughly $1,423 million COP — money Gutiérrez said could have fed more than 3,300 additional children for a month. Colombia’s Procuraduría General de la Nación (Inspector General’s Office) has already barred former education secretary Marta Alexandra Agudelo from holding public office for eight years; she and Henry Paulison Gómez Montoya, Colombia Avanza’s general manager, face up to 33 years and 16 years respectively in the criminal case. Gutiérrez said four children ages 0 to 5 died of acute malnutrition in Medellín in 2023, the last full year of Quintero’s term, and that no similar deaths have occurred since.

The Jardín Botánico and a witness’s murder

A 2020 contract to maintain the city’s parks and green spaces, previously handled by the nonprofit Jardín Botánico de Medellín, was instead awarded through a private process to Reforestadora El Líbano SAS for $5,250 million COP, according to Gutiérrez. The Procuraduría has already disqualified former infrastructure secretary Natalia Urrego Arias and Liévano from public office for nine years over the contract; Luz Eliana Henao Rodríguez, El Líbano’s legal representative, faces up to nine years in the separate criminal case. Gutiérrez also renewed a request to the Fiscalía and national police for protective measures for witnesses in the broader investigation, citing the March 14, 2024, killing of Asdrúbal Vélez Orozco, a businessman linked to El Líbano and the husband of Henao. Gutiérrez said other witnesses and their families are currently being threatened and pressured.

Aguas Vivas and the international money trail

The Aguas Vivas case, the one that directly names Quintero, is separate from the broader “Hermanitos Q” file but factors into Gutiérrez’s overall tally: 13 people, including Quintero, face embezzlement and abuse-of-authority allegations tied to $42 billion COP in alleged patrimonial damage and more than 4,000 pieces of evidence. Gutiérrez has also pointed to an alleged international money trail: a Medellín businessman’s Miami-based gold-trading company reported revenue of roughly $112 billion COP over the last three years of Quintero’s administration, then reported no income after Gutiérrez took office in 2024, according to Telemedellín.

US Ambassador to Colombia Hugo Guevara visited Gutiérrez’s office in Medellín on August 21 for talks focused on combating child sexual exploitation, during which Gutiérrez also raised the corruption findings, according to Telemedellín. Gutiérrez then traveled to the United States, meeting Homeland Security Investigations personnel in Phoenix on the same child-exploitation cooperation before flying to Miami, where he met for more than two hours on August 31 with the FBI‘s International Anti-Corruption Unit. He handed over a file the mayor’s office says contains roughly 13,000 pieces of documentary evidence, four plea-agreement cooperators and imputation proceedings against 55 former officials, according to El Espectador. Quintero dismissed the trip on X, telling Gutiérrez to “stop being a clown” and adding that if he had “a single ill-gotten peso” in the US, “the United States wouldn’t need your theatrics to find it,” according to Infobae Colombia.

Gutiérrez said several other officials facing charges in the broader case have gone on to hold national-government posts under Petro, including Fabio Andrés García (Medellín’s former secretary general, now in a leadership role at the Superintendencia Nacional de Salud), Sergio Andrés López (Medellín’s former planning director, now an advisor at the Ministerio de Salud (Health Ministry)), Natalia Andrea Jiménez (a former subsecretary of contracting execution, now a contractor at the Cancillería (Foreign Ministry)), César Augusto Chavarría (Metroparques’ former logistics chief, now at the DIAN tax authority) and Rubén Darío López (the infrastructure secretariat’s former technical director, now a contractor at Aerocivil, Colombia’s civil aviation authority).

Where the cases stand

Two threads of the investigation are moving on parallel, and separately contested, tracks. In the Aguas Vivas case, Judge 22 of the Medellín Criminal Circuit Court nullified the formal charges against Quintero and 12 co-defendants on July 14, 2026, ruling that prosecutors had not specified clearly enough how each defendant participated in the alleged scheme. The Fiscalía and the Alcaldía de Medellín, recognized in the case as a victim, are asking that same judge to reverse herself before the matter can move to the Tribunal Superior de Medellín (Medellín Superior Court) for a final ruling. Hearings on August 6 and August 20 each ran long before prosecutors and the city’s legal representative — who cited more than 4,000 pieces of evidence and 50 witness statements — could finish arguing that the nullity was wrongly decided; the defense is now set to respond at a hearing scheduled for September 14, 2026, after which the judge will rule, according to El Colombiano and Telemedellín. The nullity is a procedural setback for prosecutors, not an acquittal or a dismissal, and the case remains open.

In the AMVA-Itagüí firefighters case, Gutiérrez said the repeated delays have gone beyond ordinary scheduling friction. After the August 25 postponement, he called it “indignante” (outrageous) and asked prosecutors to seek the defendants’ arrest rather than wait out further delays, according to Infobae Colombia. After the August 31 hearing was voided over the reassignment dispute, Gutiérrez wrote on X: “There have been three postponements. They have dragged this process out so much that we have gone to the courts to investigate what is happening — this is no longer normal.” He added that his administration, recognized as a victim in the case, would join prosecutors in asking the court to order pretrial detention for the defendants when the hearing resumes on September 10, according to Infobae Colombia.

Foreign Visitors Retreat as the Peso Hits 2019 Highs

Cartagena’s hotel occupancy fell to 65.04% in July 2026, the lowest reading for the month in three years, according to the monthly report from Cotelco’s Cartagena and Bolívar chapter, based on its Sistema de Información Hotelero (Hotel Information System, SIH). The decline came as Colombia’s historically strong peso made the city measurably more expensive for the foreign travelers who make up most of its hotel guests, according to national economists and industry groups. The July figure is down from 69.08% in July 2025 and 68.63% in July 2024, reversing last year’s gain and marking the weakest July in the three-year comparison the chapter tracks.

Revenue per available room, the metric hoteliers watch most closely because it combines both occupancy and rate, told a starker story than occupancy alone. Cartagena’s July RevPAR fell to $349,429 COP, down 11.5% from July 2025’s $394,713 COP and below the July 2024 level of $357,995 COP as well, making it the lowest of the three years measured. Average daily rates held up better, easing to $537,271 COP from a July 2025 peak of $571,376 COP but still running 3% above July 2024’s $521,601 COP.

The occupancy decline traces almost entirely to foreign visitors. Cartagena’s hotels hosted 42,786 international guests in July 2026, down 10.8% from 47,950 in July 2025 and 11% from 48,097 in July 2024. Domestic guest arrivals moved the opposite direction, rising 5.5% to 29,811 from 28,262 a year earlier. The shift pulled foreign travelers’ share of Cartagena’s hotel guest mix down to 59% in 2026 from 62.91% in 2025, the lowest share the chapter has recorded in its three-year comparison.

The currency move behind that shift has been unusually large. The Colombian peso strengthened to its firmest levels against the dollar since April 2019 during July 2026, according to Banco de la República (Colombia’s central bank), whose Tasa Representativa del Mercado (Representative Market Rate, TRM) tracks the peso’s value against the dollar. Alejandro Rojas, senior economist at Banco de Bogotá (BVC: BOGOTA), put the year-over-year revaluation at roughly 20%, which combined with local service-sector inflation running near 10% — driven in part by this year’s minimum-wage increase — to raise the effective cost of a Colombia trip for a foreign visitor by close to 30%, he said in an interview with Bloomberg Línea. Rojas said national hotel revenue, tracked by the Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística (National Administrative Department of Statistics, DANE) through its Encuesta Mensual de Alojamiento (Monthly Lodging Survey), fell 3.6% year over year in December 2025 and deteriorated further to a 6.9% decline by May 2026. Nationally, nonresident visitor arrivals fell 1.6% between January and May 2026 compared with the same period of 2025, according to Anato, Colombia’s national association of travel and tourism agencies, cited by La República.

“The peso’s strength against the dollar is having a direct effect on the dynamics of tourism,” Anato president Paula Cortés Calle told Bloomberg Línea. “While it favors Colombians’ travel abroad, it also takes away Colombia’s competitiveness as a destination for international travelers compared to other countries in the region.” Cortés Calle added that Colombia still has a strong tourism offering and good air connectivity, and that the challenge is strengthening international promotion and competitiveness to convert those strengths into growth in inbound tourism.

“The peso’s strength against the dollar is having a direct effect on the dynamics of tourism.”

— Paula Cortés Calle, president, Anato

Not every analyst treats the currency as decisive on its own. Juan David Ballén, director of economic and market research at Aval Asset Management, told Bloomberg Línea that the dollar has weakened globally this year and that the peso has appreciated by more than the global average, but that currency movements alone are unlikely to redirect Colombia’s tourism trend unless the appreciation proves large and sustained. Improving security conditions and a strengthening tourism offering, he said, could offset some of the relative cost increase.

Cartagena’s year-to-date numbers show the deterioration is broader than a single month. Accumulated occupancy from January through July 2026 fell to 63.08%, down from 70.19% over the same period in 2025 and, notably, below the 67.97% recorded in 2024 — the first time in the three-year series that year-to-date occupancy has fallen under the 2024 baseline. Accumulated RevPAR fell for a second consecutive year, to $379,436 COP from $402,337 COP in 2025 and $432,821 COP in 2024, even as accumulated average daily rates recovered somewhat to $601,540 COP from $573,176 COP in 2025.

The decline was not evenly spread across the city. Centro Histórico y Getsemaní, Cartagena’s walled colonial core, absorbed the steepest drop, with July occupancy sliding to 46.45% from 56.73% in 2025 and 57.88% in 2024. The Islas zone fell to 59.61% from 68.50%. The high-rise Moderna district and the Norte zone held up better, slipping only modestly to 72.26% and 67.22%, respectively. Pie de la Popa y Manga was the lone zone to improve, rising to 69.66% from 65.41% in 2025.

Regionally, Cotelco’s Cartagena and Bolívar chapter posted 50.79% occupancy in June 2026, the most recent month for which chapter-to-chapter comparisons were available, placing it third among four Caribbean and insular chapters — behind Magdalena’s 58.55% and San Andrés y Providencia’s 54.03%, and ahead of only Atlántico’s 49.83%. Nationally, Cartagena and Bolívar ranked second among the five chapters Cotelco compared, trailing only Bogotá’s 53.47% and ahead of Atlántico, Antioquia’s 48.43% and Valle del Cauca’s 46.90%.

The Cartagena and Bolívar chapter is led by board president Edilson Posada Bermúdez, general manager of the Hotel Almirante Cartagena.

Headline photo: Cartagena Colombia – photo credit Loren Moss

Central bank’s surprise hold reinforces Colombia’s currency rally

The Colombian peso strengthened 7.5% against the US dollar in July, closing the month at 3,158.44 COP per dollar, a decline of 257 COP from June, according to a report published August 4 by Bancolombia‘s Economic, Industry & Market Research Area. The Medellín-based bank is the flagship banking subsidiary of Grupo Cibest (NYSE: CIB; BVC: PFCIBEST), the group’s holding company, which took on its current name in a 2025 corporate reorganization that renamed the former Bancolombia S.A. parent entity while the banking business itself continued operating under the Bancolombia name. A global sell-off in the US dollar, rising oil prices, optimism over Colombia’s incoming government and heavy dollar sales by local market participants combined to push the exchange rate below the level suggested by its underlying fundamentals, the report said.

During the month, the USDCOP exchange rate fluctuated between 3,086 COP and 3,432 COP. Persistent dollar sales by local participants pushed the Relative Strength Index, a technical momentum gauge, into oversold territory — a reading below 30 — for 19 of July’s trading sessions, with the index ranging between 20.2 and 31.8 over the month.

At the end of July, the Banco de la República (Bank of the Republic, Colombia’s central bank) voted by majority to hold its benchmark interest rate at 12.00%, defying market expectations of a hike of 50 to 75 basis points. The board also launched a program to gradually accumulate up to $4 billion USD in international reserves, the report said. “The persistent appreciation of the Colombian peso provided the majority of Board members with room to pause the policy rate cycle,” Bancolombia’s analysts wrote, even as Colombia’s headline inflation accelerated to 6.14% in June.

The peso’s rally tracked a broader retreat in the US dollar. The DXY index, a benchmark that tracks the currency against a basket of major peers, fell 1.5% in July, allowing most G10 and regional currencies to strengthen against the dollar; the Chilean peso was the only major currency in Bancolombia’s peer comparison to weaken instead. The dollar posted its steepest losses during the final week of July, a decline the report tied to a ceasefire in the Middle East, weaker-than-expected US GDP growth, and the Federal Reserve‘s decision to hold its benchmark rate in a range of 3.50% to 3.75%. The European Central Bank held its own rate at 2.25%, and the Bank of Japan kept its policy rate at 1.0%, its highest level since 1995, amid market expectations that Japanese authorities could intervene to support the yen. Bancolombia’s analysts noted that the US Treasury Department had reportedly told certain financial institutions it could also conduct foreign exchange operations to support the Japanese currency.

Brent crude oil prices climbed 23.5% in July to close at $90.09 USD per barrel, while West Texas Intermediate crude rose 21.8% to $84.67 USD, the report said. Tensions in the Middle East drove much of the increase: Trump declared the ceasefire with Iran over on July 8, and after Houthi militants struck two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea on July 23, he threatened a major US military response against Iran and the Houthi movement. Crude prices gave back part of their gains in the final week of the month after the United States suspended airstrikes on Iran and negotiations toward a peace agreement resumed.

Locally, the appreciation was driven mainly by domestic flows rather than foreign investors, according to the report. Colombia’s corporate sector posted net dollar sales of roughly $500 million USD during July, and institutional investors supplied additional dollars in the final weeks of the month. Offshore investors, who had been net sellers of about $500 million USD in the spot and next-day markets in June, shifted to a net-buying position in July. Bancolombia attributed continued interest in Colombia’s carry trade — in which investors borrow in a low-yielding currency to invest in a higher-yielding one — to the policy rate hiking cycle that began in January 2026 and to elevated yields on Colombia’s peso-denominated government bonds, known as TES.

Bancolombia expects the exchange rate to trade between 3,150 COP and 3,350 COP in August, saying some of the local factors behind July’s rally are likely to correct. The bank flagged the central bank’s new reserve-accumulation program as a risk that could push the peso weaker, since additional dollar purchases by the Banco de la República would increase demand for foreign currency. Bancolombia expects markets to keep a favorable bias toward Colombia’s incoming government, though how the new administration handles fiscal consolidation will be crucial to sustaining that view; the report said the incoming administration could introduce a new tax reform proposal and undertake a broad reassessment of the fiscal accounts. Risks tied to carry trade positioning still point toward further peso strength, Bancolombia said, but the central bank’s decision to leave rates unchanged in July could help trigger an upward correction in the exchange rate — meaning a weaker peso — in the weeks ahead.

Above image: The headquarters of the Banco de la República, Colombia’s central bank, in downtown Bogotá. (Photo: Banco de la República handout)

Now that things have calmed and relief fatigue has set in — with the influencers (much more on them at a later date) back to modeling useless lifestyle products — I am putting together, in no particular order, a few personal experiences that followed the August 10, 2026, event.

The Corosito area of Pereira was typical of many parts of the city: numerous piles of rubble where houses or apartments used to stand, and even more buildings with yellow tape around them — earmarked as unfit for habitation and listed for future demolition.

The local square had been converted into a makeshift, unofficial refugee camp, complete with medical assistance from overseas and local foundations. Angel was my local contact there. He himself was living under plastic after his own home, not 200 meters distant, disappeared in the earthquake, and he hobbled around on a knee injured during the disaster.

As I joined him distributing breakfast (coffee and cookies) around the local neighborhood, we came across an enormous pile of rubble with many people scrambling over the shattered concrete. Also perched atop the rubble were two pieces of heavy machinery, scraping away at the bricks and twisted metal. Who were these men working so dangerously in the holes the diggers created?

Police had been positioned across much of Pereira to prevent the looting of collapsed buildings, but that wasn’t the case here.

It turned out that this had recently been a six-story plastic bag factory equipped with five machines worth $20,000 USD each. Now unrecognizable, the machines were being dragged out one by one, worth only their scrap value.

The subject of insurance was raised; however, the answer was right in front of me. Young men were taking the risk of burrowing under the rubble, within inches of the huge digger buckets, simply to drag out the crushed machinery and as many plastic bags as they could find. This had been going on for hours and would continue long after I had handed over the coffee and cookies.

This is a barrio that will live long in the memory, and I look forward to taking up Angel’s invitation to return in a better moment. They are beautiful, disenfranchised people who represent the very best of Colombia.

“They are beautiful, disenfranchised people who represent the very best of Colombia.”

— Rupert Stebbings

All photographs below were taken by Rupert Stebbings in Pereira.

Headline photo: An excavator clears rubble as volunteers search the wreckage of the collapsed plastic bag factory in Pereira. (Photo: Rupert Stebbings / Finance Colombia)

Tokyo mission seeks to revive a 2012 trade pact and car assembly

Colombia’s new government is trying to restart negotiations on an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Japan that formally opened in December 2012 and never reached signature, and it is pairing the trade push with a direct appeal to Japanese automakers to build vehicles in the country again. President Abelardo de la Espriella used a televised address on Sunday, August 30, 2026, to present the results of a mission to Tokyo by Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism Mauricio Gómez Amín, which produced a joint commitment with Japan to put technical teams back to work on the pact and opened talks with Toyota Motor Corporation (TYO: 7203; NYSE: TM), Mazda Motor Corporation (TYO: 7261) and Toshiba Corporation.

“After nearly 15 years of paralyzed negotiations, in the first 15 days of my government we managed to take significant steps to unblock the economic partnership agreement between Colombia and Japan,” de la Espriella said, according to El Tiempo. He added: “We want to open markets for our products, incorporate technology and generate new opportunities for our countryside and our industry. We are also working so that Japan looks at Colombia again as an investment destination.”

The Ministerio de Comercio, Industria y Turismo (MinCIT, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism) summarized the message in a statement issued August 31, 2026: “Colombia is once again making its way in the world: we are seeking markets for our products, investment to generate jobs, technology to transform our economy, and strong allies to accompany us in the reconstruction.”

“Japan is looking at Colombia again, and we are ready to capitalize on that confidence,” Gómez Amín said in the ministry’s August 25 statement on the first day of meetings.

What happened in Tokyo

Gómez Amín’s mission ran from August 22 to August 27, according to Infobae Colombia. On Tuesday, August 25, the minister met State Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Toshiro Ino of Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). In its readout of the meeting, METI said the two exchanged views on potential areas for bilateral cooperation, including trade and investment, and agreed to continue deepening their cooperation; Ino also expressed condolences to the victims of the August 10 earthquake. MinCIT said the meeting advanced an agenda to reactivate and conclude the EPA, which Gómez Amín described in a message on X quoted by Semana as “a modern agreement that opens doors for our agroindustry, investment and technology transfer.”

Two days later, on Thursday, August 27, Gómez Amín met for more than 40 minutes with Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, Semana reported. According to the readout published by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and cited by Semana, Motegi opened the meeting with condolences for the earthquake and said he welcomed a visit so soon after the new administration took office as a sign that it gives importance to relations with Japan. Gómez Amín thanked Japan for its support after the earthquake and expressed his firm desire to reactivate the EPA negotiations. On that basis, the two ministers confirmed they would instruct technical officials in both countries to continue discussions diligently with a view to resuming negotiations.

MinCIT said in a communiqué reported by El Espectador that the meeting “made it possible to take a new step in the bilateral relationship and establish a concrete route for the technical teams of both countries to continue the conversations on the EPA.”

The Motegi meeting also covered Colombia’s participation in GREEN×EXPO 2027, the international horticultural exposition that opens in Yokohama in March 2027. Motegi thanked Gómez Amín for the formal letter confirming that Colombia will take part, according to an EFE dispatch published by El Tiempo.

In another message on X quoted by Infobae Colombia, Gómez Amín wrote: “On the instruction of President Abelardo de la Espriella, we have taken on the responsibility of unblocking a trade relationship that for nearly 15 years was not able to advance as Colombia needed.”

A negotiation that predates three presidents

The “15 years” cited by the president and the minister refers to a process that formally began almost 14 years ago, during the administration of Juan Manuel Santos. EPA negotiations between Colombia and Japan began in December 2012, according to Colombia’s embassy in Tokyo, which states that the proposed agreement has 18 chapters, covering areas including cooperation, intellectual property, government procurement, trade facilitation and improvement of the business environment; that 16 of those chapters have been concluded and agreed; and that the chapters on rules of origin and market access remain pending. The talks were suspended in 2021, El Tiempo reported in September 2025, and Infobae Colombia reported that the two pending chapters have been outstanding since the government of Iván Duque.

The de la Espriella government is also not the first to announce a restart. On September 4, 2025, then-President Gustavo Petro asked then-Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, at a meeting in Tokyo, to speed up the signing of the EPA, calling it a “fundamental necessity,” according to an EFE dispatch published by Portafolio. Petro and then-Commerce Minister Diana Marcela Morales led a meeting in Osaka during Expo 2025 to reaffirm both countries’ will to reactivate the negotiations, and Morales held meetings with Japanese companies and with METI Parliamentary Vice-Minister Akiyoshi Kato, El Tiempo reported at the time. No agreement was signed.

Japanese foreign direct investment in Colombia totaled $766.9 million USD between 2000 and 2024, making Japan the third-largest Asian investor in the country after China and India, with more than 45 Japanese companies operating locally, according to figures reported by Infobae Colombia. Colombia’s non-mining, non-energy exports to Japan reached $293.4 million USD in 2024, including green coffee, fresh flowers, coffee derivatives and agroindustrial goods. Over the narrower 2010 to 2021 period, the Colombian embassy in Tokyo puts cumulative Japanese investment flows at $562.7 million USD, or 32.9% of all Asia-Pacific investment Colombia received, ahead of China at 21.2% and Australia at 14.6%, and describes Japan as the largest Asia-Pacific source of foreign investment in the country.

The automotive pitch

Also on August 25, Gómez Amín met Hiroshi Nanbu, president of Business Planning & Operation at Toyota Motor Corporation, and invited Toyota to expand its presence in Colombia through hybrid and electric vehicle assembly, charging infrastructure, and development of local suppliers, MinCIT said. Semana identified Automotores Toyota Colombia President Hiroshi Yonenaga as also attending. The minister also met executives of Mazda and Toshiba, with the discussions covering manufacturing, digital infrastructure, supplier development and technological innovation, El Tiempo reported; MinCIT’s August 31 statement listed manufacturing, electric mobility, energy, digital infrastructure, innovation and technology as the sectors explored.

“We are working, for example, so that Mazda can once again assemble vehicles in Colombia and so that Toyota evaluates our country as a destination for projects related to electric vehicles,” de la Espriella said in the address. He added, in a line El Tiempo reported was a reference to the incentives planned to attract that investment: “Here we are going to give them every guarantee.”

The Toyota meeting revisited a relationship of more than five decades, according to MinCIT. The first Toyota vehicles were registered in Colombia in October 1959, and the company formalized a local distributor in 1967, according to El Carro Colombiano. Sofasa, the assembler of Renault (Euronext Paris: RNO) vehicles in Envigado, Antioquia, signed a letter of intent with Toyota in 1989; assembly of Land Cruisers began there in March 1992, Hilux pickups followed the next year, and local assembly continued for 17 years until Toyota exited its shareholding in Sofasa in December 2008.

Mazda assembled vehicles in Colombia for three decades through the Compañía Colombiana Automotriz (CCA) at a plant in Bogotá. The last vehicle left the line on April 30, 2014, and the closure eliminated about 500 jobs, according to Infobae Colombia, which reported that the decision responded to falling exports to neighboring markets and lower import costs. Mazda now imports all of its vehicles for the Colombian market from Japan and México.

The pitch comes as vehicle sales grow. Colombia registered 213,377 new vehicles between January and August 2026, a 42.1% increase over the same period of 2025, with Toyota third in the market at 18,946 registrations, according to figures from the Asociación Nacional de Empresarios de Colombia (ANDI, the National Business Association of Colombia) and Federación Nacional de Comerciantes (Fenalco, the National Federation of Merchants) cited by El Tiempo. Cumulative registrations of new electric vehicles reached 29,347 through July 2026, a 231.2% increase over the same period a year earlier, according to ANDI and Fenalco figures reported by El Tiempo.

Headline image: A slide titled “Toyota Strategy in Colombia” is shown during Minister Mauricio Gómez Amín’s meeting with Toyota Motor Corporation representatives in Tokyo on August 25, 2026. The slide states that Toyota is expanding its electrified lineup in Colombia to a 61% xEV ratio in 2027. (Photo courtesy MinCIT)

A dissenting view

José Clopatofsky, director of Motor magazine, published by Casa Editorial El Tiempo, called the assembly proposal “improbable” in an analysis published by El Tiempo on August 31, citing the structural conditions of local demand and tax advantages that benefit other countries.

“It is quite unlikely that this will happen, because Colombia’s market is too small to support an additional plant, made worse by the fact that we have free trade agreements with a great many countries,” Clopatofsky said. “That is, except for Japan, India and China, they have to pay taxes on combustion vehicles; all the electric vehicles in the world pay no taxes to come to Colombia.”

Clopatofsky also pointed to the earlier closures of the Chevrolet and Mazda plants in Colombia, which El Tiempo reported were shut down years ago for lack of profitability, and said that because practically all brands face no tax burden on cars sold in Colombia, importing is favored over local production.

Earthquake assistance

The Tokyo mission began less than two weeks after the magnitude 7.4 earthquake of August 10, which struck Chocó department and caused heavy damage across western Colombia, as Finance Colombia reported. De la Espriella said Japan had expressed solidarity with affected families and its willingness to contribute humanitarian aid, and Gómez Amín wrote that the Japanese government’s support “will translate into aid and contributions for the families affected by the earthquake.” The statements from MinCIT did not specify an amount.

“I am deeply grateful to the Japanese people and government,” de la Espriella said.

The reconstruction burden is one of several pressures facing the administration, which took office August 7. Finance Colombia’s earlier analysis examined the security situation, the earthquake response and the government’s position in Congress.

None of the statements issued by either government reports a signed agreement, a specific investment commitment from Toyota or Mazda, or a date for a formal resumption of EPA negotiating rounds.

Above image: A slide titled “Toyota Strategy in Colombia” is shown during Minister Mauricio Gómez Amín’s meeting with Toyota Motor Corporation representatives in Tokyo on August 25, 2026. The slide states that Toyota is expanding its electrified lineup in Colombia to a 61% xEV ratio in 2027. (Photo courtesy MinCIT)