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Hello and welcome to the London Review of Books podcast. My name is Thomas Jones. This week I'm speaking with Forrest Hilton, who teaches political science at the National University of Colombia

in Medellin and is currently a visiting professor at the Federal University of

Bayer in Salvador, Brazil. His books include Evil Hour in Colombia, and he's written a series

of pieces over the last year and more for the Al-B blog on the political situation in Colombia, Bolivia,

and Brazil. Most recently, this week, on the continuing plight of his friend Victor Pena, who founded the Zeno

Indigenous Council in Medellin and is being persecuted by right-wing paramunitary groups.

But today we're mostly going to be talking about Brazil. Hello, Forrest, and thank you very much

for joining me. Nice to be here. Thanks for the invitation. I suppose, let me just start. How does Salvador compare to Medellin quite a change?

It is dramatically different to the extent that so much of normal life apparently in Salvador continues,

with the exception, of course, of Carnival, around which the

regional economy is structured in part. But other than that, it's very difficult to kind of

perceive the degree of distress that is actually underway in Brazil and concentrated in particular regions, of course,

but it all seems very distant from kind of life on the ground in Salvador, which is at the same

time clearly a greater struggle for the majority than it would be in normal time. So it's very

strange in that regard. Colombia is much more stark in almost every respect

...