Is Colombia safe?
Safety is the most common question on travel sites for Colombia. People exchange information about carrying phones, using taxis, riding the metro, traveling on this country road, or vacationing on that Caribbean beach. Men discuss how to avoid getting poisoned by a woman while on a date. Some, in doing so, reveal their misogyny, engendering responses from Colombians who paraphrase Donald Trump: ‘These countries do not send us their best….’ Less frequently, people discuss water, air, diseases, the rights of women, LGBTQ people, and racism. Rarely (ever?) does anyone ask, is Colombia safe from US aggression? While this question is especially relevant today as the US bombs neighboring Venezuela. However, given US history with this country, it should always be added to any discussion of safety, especially by people from the United States visiting Colombia.
Is Colombia safe from the United States?
We were in Colombia on the 97th anniversary of the Banana Massacre, when the US and Colombian governments worked hand in hand to massacre striking banana laborers working for the U.S. company United Fruit (today Chiquita). The strikers demanded livable wages, a day of rest, eight-hour days, and an end to company towns, which reduced independent workers to serfs. Rather than recognizing the right of workers to organize and obtain dignified working conditions, the Colombian army, with the aid of the US ambassador, fired on the strikers, killing an untold number of workers. Estimates for the number of workers murdered on December 5-6 1928, range from 49 to 3000. The US ambassador to Colombia, Jefferson Caffery, sent a dispatch to Washington: “I have the honor to report…that the total number of strikers killed by the Colombian military exceeded one thousand.” Caffery’s words remind me of Trump boasting that the goal of his administration’s bombings of Pacific and Caribbean waters was to kill as many as possible.
At the time of the Banana Massacre, and throughout most of the years since, Colombia had an administration friendly to US corporate interests. Today, however, Colombia has an administration that is not cooperative with US corporations or hegemonic desires in the region. Today, we saw what the Trump administration is willing to do to leaders it does not like. Whether or not Trump makes good on his promise to take out Gustavo Petro next, the invasion of Venezuela will create a disabling refugee crisis for Colombia and Brazil, both of whom have administrations unfriendly to Trump.
This morning, January 3, 2026, after bombing Caracas, killing untold people in the city, Trump said the Western Hemisphere is now safer and more secure. We all have a right to be safe and secure. It is an important question to ask while travelling. We just need to broaden the question beyond our own personal safety to include how we and the country we come from impact the security and safety of the places we visit. And always, we should be committed to telling what is untold.
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This is a shorter version of a longer essay to come on safety in Colombia.
This essay about a visit to Colombia in the winter of 2025/2026 is part of a series. In October 2023, my spouse, David, and I sold our house in Minneapolis, MN. USA. Since then, we have been traveling the world. I write a blog about each place, with a historian’s eye and an internationalist lens, wondering how memory can liberate the present.