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JUST THE FACTS |
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| Is Colombia Safe? | |||||
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by Amy LoftsgordonEver since I saw the Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas film “Romancing the Stone,” I wanted to go to Colombia. While I was aware that the US State Department warns against traveling in Colombia due to the ongoing guerrilla violence, kidnappings and just plain ol’ crime, its lure was irresistible to me. While aboard my flight from Caracas to Bogota, I read a bit about the country toward which I was heading. Based on Colombian government statistics, Colombia's per capita murder rate is 55 murders per 100,000 inhabitants—this is almost nine times higher than that of the United States. |
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Seventy-five percent of the reported murders were the result of street crime and common criminals, while the remaining 25% were attributed to guerrilla activity and narcoterrorists. In total, the number of people who die violently per year in Colombia has historically hovered around 30,000—though this number has dropped recently. Consequently, Colombia frequently tops the lists of the world’s most dangerous countries. Still, murder is not the only concern one should have when traveling in Colombia. Ransom kidnappings occur more often in Colombia than in any other country in the world—around 3,000 per year—and it seems that no one is immune.
Recently, the news reported that a 14-year-old girl was brutally murdered after her father and kidnappers failed to agree on a ransom price. In Colorado, I have a neighbor from Colombia whose cousin was kidnapped. When her uncle went to deliver the ransom, the guerrillas took the money and kept her uncle as well, without releasing the cousin. |
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