Welcome to the president's inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boy's Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S.

Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is brewing troubles in

Colombia. With me to discuss rising political violence in Colombia,

Latin America's third most populous country,

and its consequences for the Andean region and beyond,

is Roxanna Vigil.

Roxanna is an international affairs fellow in National Security at the Council. Her research

focuses on post-conflict reconciliation using Colombian's Commission for Truth, coexistence, and

non-repetition as a case study. Before joining the Council, Roxanna served as a senior sanctions

policy advisor at the U.S. Department of the

Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. Before that, she served as a director for ending affairs

at the National Security Council, where she handled foreign policy and national security issues

for Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.

At the Treasury, she also led the U.S. delegation to the Financial Action Task Force of Latin America.

Roxanna, thank you for coming on in the President's inbox.

Thank you, Jim.

In recent weeks, I had been reading a lot, Roxana, about growing political violence in Colombia. That's why I want to have you on and have a chat and get a sense about the direction the country is headed as it goes into next may's presidential

election i'll note that in june a columbian senator was holding a rally in bogota he was shot in the head

he regrettably succumbed to his wounds in

August. And just a few weeks ago, rebels shot down a police helicopter, detonated a car bomb,

killing, I think, at least 19 people. Can you give me a sense of what's happening on the ground in

Columbia today? Yes, you're right, Jim.

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