Source: Common Dreams
by Mario Alfonso Murillo
“The empty spaces inside Colombia’s National Museum in Bogotá offer a dramatic, if not painful introduction to its new, right-wing government. Several dozen objects related to the peace process with the M-19 rebel group; the historic 1991 Constitution; and mementos of social movements, LGBTQ rights, and other artifacts of the country’s complex history have disappeared from public view. Those objects included a Carlos Pizarro campaign poster, an armband from the political movement that emerged from the M-19’s demobilization, and the student ballot associated with the constituent process that produced the 1991 Constitution. These histories record how Colombians previously excluded from national power fought to enter public life in a country governed for generations by a white, economically powerful, and politically exclusionary elite. Critics say removing them from the public view diminishes the evidence of that decades-long struggle. Museum anthropologist Andrés Góngora described it in El País as ‘a mutilated museum’.” (10/29/26)