Log: Colombia

From within one of Bath's most charming bookshops, I write the second half of my reflection on books read during the first half of 2025, perched on a wooden balcony laden with shelves, tables, books—overlooking even more books, as a well as smatterings of people chatting and enjoying each other's company. A reminder of what the world can be, at its best, even in the moments that feel heavy under the long shadow of violence. I conclude my overview in the company of books currently being read, wanting to be read, and those that inevitably I will never get the chance to read.

Some Surprises

One of the habits I have picked up on my travels is that of allowing chance and generosity to direct my reading list. I have come to learn that, in most places, readers have a tendency to set up little trading nooks of books. From the kaz à livres encountered while hitchhiking along one those steep winding Guadeloupean roads to the small stack of books sitting in the lobby of L'Alliance Française in Ipanema—new books often find me when I least expect it. Books that perhaps I imagined reading someday, others that I might have otherwise never made my way to.

One of this year's most interesting surprises came from the Joigny food market. Tucked into the side of one of the entrances, I noticed a bookshelf, improbable in a visual field peopled with the weekend's fresh produce and other agricultural products: leafy greens, cheeses, winter fruit, fish, honey, saucissons. The bookshelf was nonetheless a popular spot for the townspeople, many of whom paused there on their way in and out with their Saturday shopping. Intrigued, I leafed through all sorts of books, from cookbooks to thrillers, until something caught my eye: an early 20th century edition of Jean de La Fontaine's fables.

I was familiar with La Fontaine; his most well-known takes on classic fables, such as "The Hare and The Tortoise", are staples of French language classes. Which is to say, La Fontaine inhabited a corner of my brain associated clichés and easy moralism. Even so, the beauty of the little old book won over my prejudices, and I am glad it did.

Far from being the morality tales that I imagined them to me, La Fontaine's 17th century retelling of classic fables is riddled with contradiction, humor, rebellion, and more than a touch of existential angst. At times, the "protagonists" of the fable-poems can appear to embody straightforward moral principles, like the "hard-working" ant of the famous "The Grasshopper and The Ant". However, I found the ant to be portrayed as judgemental and almost cruel in its treatment of the grasshopper; an attitude that was explicitly condemned in some of the other fable-poems in the collection. I was left feeling unsure of La Fontaine's stances throughout. In one fable, craftiness is celebrated, in the next it is condemned as dishonest. I like to think that, perhaps, as La Fontaine re-read and re-imaged these classic fables, he was also intrigued by the contradictions that came to light. Perhaps, rather than handing out morals, his work actually highlights the fact that trying to extract straightforward lessons from life is impossible.

The biographical information provided in the book lets me entertain that hypothesis. La Fontaine lived during the reign of Louis XIV, the powerful Sun King, but led a life that feels uncannily modern. Exiled for going against the grain and having what was judged by the monarch to be a "dubious" morality, La Fontaine nonetheless succeeded as a poet and garnered enough support to live from his art. Almost atheistic before his time, but suddenly pious when faced with death, La Fontaine was self-disparaging, funny, lucid, and self-delusional in ways that feel very human. Rather than going around moralizing, I find that La Fontaine crafted beautiful poetry through which he reflected on what it means to live a good life. He also contributed to important discussions about power, art, governance, and education, but I'll stop myself here.

Thus far, there have been two more surprising reads this year. One also came from the Joigny market bookshelf, the play Athalie by Jean Racine. When I picked it up, my only expectation was to read a work by a "classic" French author that I had not read yet. I ended up enjoying a great play that posed some very pertinent questions about power, violence, and freedom (it was "softly" censored during Racine's lifetime, posthumously considered to be one of his greatest works). The second surprise thought-provoking book was a gift of sorts from a good friend, who suggested I read Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by the missionary-turned-linguist Daniel L. Everett.

Our Times

As it might be apparent from the last section, I cannot help but associate what I read with the challenges we face today—even if it's a poetry book about talking frogs and dogs from the 1700s. It is one of many reasons that I am particularly unreceptive to the assertions that studying literature is "useless".

As a result, I could have honestly featured many of the other books that I have read this year in this section: from Umberto Eco's depiction of socioeconomic inequality in The Name of the Rose to the questions raised by Tanizaki Jun'ichiro with In Praise of Shadows that foreshadow current debates on globalization and representation.

I chose to feature two works here that for different reasons touch on topics that are near and dear, Ce que c'est que l'exil by Victor Hugo and 10.000 horas en La Silla Vacía: Periodismo y poder en un nuevo mundo by Juanita León.

After reading Les Misérables during university, I developed a soft spot for Victor Hugo and his sense for over-blown grandiosity and drama. Hugo's style feels acutely that of another era, but many of his biggest concerns are timeless. The basic premise of Les Misérables, that of the injustice of condemning a man to forced labor for the hunger and misery he was born into, continues to resonate in global demands for greater equity and justice.

With Ce que c'est que l'exil, which roughly translates to The nature of exile, Hugo reveals the price that he had to pay for his activism as well as his opposition to the reign of Napoleon III. While I had been vaguely aware that Hugo had been, at some point, exiled to the islands in the English Channel, I initially processed this fact as historical trivia, without much thought. However, through this book, Hugo acutely transmits what it is like to be condemned to exile, persecution, spying, and harassment for 20 years. Beyond appreciating Hugo the literary legend, I felt that I approached Victor the man.

At the same time that I recognized and lamented the struggles Hugo described, reading Ce que c'est que l'exil ultimately gave me hope that the ideals for justice and peace that can feel hopelessly out of reach today could one day materialize. Among the "radical" ideas that Hugo was persecuted for in his time: his support for universal suffrage and public access to education, his opposition to slavery, domestic abuse, and tyranny. More than describing his own suffering, Hugo highlighted the importance of persistence in the fight for greater justice, and the key role of solidarity, even in moments that can feel so isolating.

There is a lot of talk of our contemporary collective disenchantment, of a vacuum left in the wake postmodernism that needs to be filled. It is a discussion that awakens all my skepticism, as it often leads to claims that as humans we essentially "need" religion. I won't go down this rabbit hole now, but I will recognize the need for a coming together that is constructive and empathetic. In my eyes, Hugo's romanesque writing (even with its flaws) shows a way. I was sad to find that there was no English translation for this text which, like with Carranza's poetry, made me once again entertain ideas of translation and dissemination.

Similarly, my other pick for this section is not available in English, as far as I know. 10.000 horas en La Silla Vacía: Periodismo y poder en un nuevo mundo is a reflection on contemporary journalism in Colombia written by Juanita León, the founder of one of the leading independent news outlets in the country, La Silla Vacía. In her book, León looks back on how it all started and how, despite all the challenges, La Silla has persisted as an independent outlet. This necessarily involves an overview of Colombia's recent economic and political history. Not only did I fill in some gaps in the understanding of our recent history, but León focuses a lot on identifying and describing the mechanics of power. Colombian society is incredibly conservative and hierarchical; Colombians have some of the worst prospects for social mobility in the Americas. From the outside, we all vaguely perceive the structures that keep power in place and concentrate it, but León allows the reader to peer within these machinations.

At the same time, León candidly reveals that to keep La Silla Vacía afloat she has to make use of all those social markers and contacts that are the key to getting anything done in Colombia. León must operate within the very system her outlet critiques, which generates tensions and difficult ethical dilemmas. I find her transparency around the logistic issues of keeping a media outlet running so important when thinking about how to create alternatives, as she did when she decided to launch an alternative to the big legacy media.

At a moment that violence is rising again in Colombia, in which it feels like the country is stuck in a hamster wheel of death, León's book provides precious understanding. This light that journalism, testimony, and research, all offer is vital to warding off the informational darkness that violence requires to thrive. One of the Colombian journalists that I admire the most, Javier Darío Restrepo, spoke widely about this during his lifetime. I reflected a bit on his writing last year while in Cyprus.

Other Interesting 2025 Reads

To conclude, some final books that prompted me to reflect on literary form and genre. From Sontag's essay in the form of a list to Shambroom's ekphrastic history-essay, these works serve as a reminder to imagine more.

• Duchamp's Last Day by Donald Shambroom
• L'exil et le royaume by Albert Camus
• L'homme qui plantait des arbres by Jean Giono
• Notes on 'Camp' by Susan Sontag

- Andrea

For most of my (relatively brief) adult life, I took a bit of pride in being the Colombian who did not drink coffee. The association between coffee and Colombia is almost as tight as that of spicy peppers and India or potato and Eastern Europe. And yet none of these quintessential crops are "native". The potato and the peppers are technically "ours", they are native to the Americas. Meanwhile, coffee is traced to the Arabic Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. I cannot deny, however, that the "tinto" (a watery black coffee) is as near and dear to Colombians as tomatoes are to Italians. Nor can I deny that my childhood memories of lazy Saturday mornings are steeped in the aroma and flavor of a very milky café con leche. Almost everyone in my immediate family grew up drinking coffee (even if in very low doses).

Still, beyond the nostalgia for the childhood café con leche accompanied by a cheesy arepa and huevos pericos, I did not understand the general public's devotion to coffee. That it was necessary to drink coffee to get through a day was really off-putting to me; I did not want to depend on a drink to live my life. And then, when I first encountered all the different contraptions for "fancy" coffee brewing as a student in Chile, I was dismissive out of ignorance.

Coffee continued to be like a distant cousin seen only at family gatherings until the day I moved to Sweden. From the Arabian peninsula to South America to Scandinavia—the coffee plant has journeyed far. However, sitting in a cozy café in Stockholm with a warm kanelbulle on a dark cold evening, the prospect of a brygkaffe didn't seem all that bad. I could then understand why the Finnish and the Swedish were the top coffee consumers in the world.

Having coffee in Sweden is how I discovered the very first reason why I did not "get" coffee. The coffee we drink in Colombia, and much of Latin America, is incredibly watered down. Not only is our coffee flavorless because of this, but it is also intolerable to drink any stronger because of how burnt the widely commercialized coffee grounds are. In Colombia, we have long been left with bottom barrel coffee, and families have done the best to make it last on a tight budget.

But, it has not always been that way. Arguably, the status quo of Colombian coffee is a relatively new state of affairs.

After discovering that drinking coffee could truly be pleasurable in Stockholm, I was much more open to reencountering coffee in my own hometown. In Bogotá, Marc and I hopped from café to bookstore to café to art gallery, and gradually we discovered what a pour-over was, what a V-60 was, what a Gesha was. At one of the coffee shops in the historic Candelaria neighborhood, the owner shared his own coffee journey with us as he brewed our cups. After growing up in one of the most troubled neighborhoods of Bogotá, he only got his very first taste of excellent Colombian coffee while abroad in South Korea. Shocked, he became convinced that all Colombians should be able to taste and enjoy what was being massively exported away as a luxury. After training as a barista, he brought café de especialidad to his neighborhood, first, before opening up a second shop in Candelaria.

So, what was Colombian coffee like before all the good beans were exported away? The answer lay much closer to me than I imagined. Wanting to share the delicious coffee with my family of avid coffee-drinkers, I invited them to a drip coffee demonstration at Xue Café. I was excited to see their reaction, but instead of the shock of novelty, it was the warm surprise of an unexpected reencounter that animated their conversation. They insisted: this was the way my great-grandfather brewed coffee. No, not with a ceramic V-60 nor with specialized water pourers and electronic scales. He fashioned his own type of "pour-overs", using cloth filters, a kettle over a fire, and the beans he had grown, picked, dried, and roasted himself. My family had not tasted a coffee like the one they were having in this specialty coffee shop since those days back on the farm.

It had only taken two or three generations for most Colombians to lose access to good quality coffee. Only now the tide is beginning to slowly turn, but good coffee remains unaffordable to many and often perceived as "fancy" and, ironically, as "foreign" and "strange".

Last year, Marc and I attempted to brew our own pour-over or drip coffee for the first time. When we left Colombia for Cyprus, we brought some coffee grounds with us, as a way of bringing along a little piece of home and its aromas. We began our experimentation with some grounds from a local Limassol roaster, wanting to save the coffee from Colombia for when we got the processes just right. We did not know then that coffee brewing would become a multi-month journey. Nor did we expect that we would end up hand-grinding our own beans.

There are plenty of issues with how the world drinks coffee, the environmental and socioeconomic impact of it all, especially when it is Nestle or another unscrupulous company that commercializes the coffee (and many "fancy" specialty shops and roasters are not at all exempt from this). But, I have also seen many small shops, roasters, and artisans fighting to make coffee fairer for everyone. It is not just about putting a nice story or name to a coffee bag. They display prominently how much coffee farmers are paid and lay bare what their profit margins are. Under these conditions that foster transparency and solidarity, when I walk into a coffee shop and see the names of the farms, the places, and the people who work hard to make coffee possible, it makes me feel a little closer to home.

- Andrea

Today is our first full day back in Bogotá and this is my first log entry for Comma Directory. Today, I want to reflect a bit on how I got here, both literally and metaphorically.

We had a rough trip back from Sasaima, Cundinamarca. Two buses with aggressive drivers, getting dropped off in an unfamiliar part of the city, and then a taxi driver who fell asleep at the stop light (wishing him safety and rest). These are the realities of traveling and living in Colombia, and even more so for most Colombians living day to day, struggling to survive.

For years, my family undertook this pilgrimage from Bogotá to Sasaima, and under much rougher conditions than we did. And despite of it all, visiting my great-grandparents’ farm was one of the familiy's happiest moments of the year, for as long as it lasted.

I had never been to Sasaima before, by the time I was born the voyages had ceased, my great-grandfather had already passed away.

Being able to finally go to a place that meant so much to everyone and that I have heard about since childhood was very special. Eating almojabanas at the town square, going to the plaza (market) for lunch, hiking through the surrounding mountains, eating fresh mandarinas on the trail, and meeting kind people who love their town and are proud of the land—it was a wonderful parenthesis, a welcomed contrast from the grittiness of Bogotá.

But even with all its pollution, the crime, the poverty, and the painful memories embedded into these mountains, coming back to Bogotá is coming back home. This month, I’ll leave Bogotá again and I am not sure exactly when I’ll be back—like so many of the other times I've departed, but it never stops being painful. I am excited about what is to come, it is beyond my wildest dreams, life that is. It has been that way during the past ten years. Full of new beginnings, new opportunities, but those beginnings always come paired with goodbyes and (hopefully) see you laters. A "see you later" is always an act of faith, and I am by nature faithless.

I see logging as more than a recollection of important events or thoughts, but as a way to digest and accept that duality, so integral to life. Whether one travels or not, we are all constantly starting and ending. Moments, books, trips, meals, tasks, conversations.

Before Comma Directory I have been logging in journals, the analog way. However, I rarely keep my journals around and I almost never have wanted to re-read my entries. Too self-conscious of my own writing, unfettered and unedited. However, recently I have made the effort to keep and complete the same journal, and also keep two additional analog logs on books and films. These logs are from the Rey Naranjo Editorial House, which is part of Bogotá’s very vibrant artistic scene. Their design is quite nice, they are compact and portable, and there’s a bit of humor and character infused into them. I’ve also managed to keep an agenda for the first time, which I bought at the beginning of the year in Oaxaca, that has also served as a nice writing space. More on writing next time.

- Andrea