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I live in a historic neighborhood in the center of Bota, the city where I was born.

I'm near the mountains known as Los Cerros Orientales.

They're part of the eastern most Andes Mountain Range, and they border the capital.

The mountains are either lush and green, illuminated by the sun, or barely visible under the thick andy and haze.

They're my guiding compass to the city, at once brutalist and beautiful, moody and awe inspiring.

They're what I most remember from my early childhood here before we moved to the US.

When I moved back to Columbia early last year, the mountains felt like a familiar relative, welcoming me back.

Now.

I start my days on my balcony admiring their grandeur.

Am on my balcony lake.

I am most mornings.

Then I head out to do some grocery shopping at La Place America.

I get giant avocados, artfully selected by expert hands.

I procure bushels of fresh herbs bigger than the size of my head, and drink fresh passion fruit juice hugo marakuja yea.

Then I get to work from the cozy little office nook in my apartment where I touch base with my editor who's in the US.

So you will send it to me by what times I can put it here, you might call it after work.

I try new things like pole dancing, and familiar things like spending time with family.

It's the kind of life no one expected me to be living after spending most of my life in the US, the daughter of first and second generation immigrants, I've chosen to move back to Colombia.

It's a choice that goes against the hegemonic world order, a move from global north to global south.

But I'm not the only one.

Other young Latinas who grew up in the US are choosing to return to the places their parents left, or that they left as little kids.

Some have even called this phenomenon remad creation, a term originating from indigenous land back movements, a restoring of the connection between a people and their motherland.

When I first moved back to Columbia for a short lived pre pandemic adventure, my mom questioned me, why can't you just visit for a while.

Why do you have to live there.

She asked.

I was trying to answer that question myself.

All I knew is that the decision came from an emotional place, from visits spent wandering the streets of Bogota with my cousins, From the kindness of strangers, the familiar rhythm of the accent, the healing power of the Andian sun on a warm afternoon, the wisdom of the mountains.

From an intuition that it's something I had to do, something I needed to do.

Life feels more vibrant here.

I relish the flora, thriving and beautiful all year long.

But like any diaspora kid coming home, I question myself.

I question if I belong here.

When I asked if I'm from here, I say kind of.

I was born here, grew up in the US, and now I'm back.

I catch myself over explaining if I'm being honest, I think I want to prove something to myself, prove that I can come back, that there's a place for me here.

So I'm asking, is Columbia still home?

And if it's not, can I make it home again?

From Fudro Media, It's Latino Usa.

I'm Maria ino Josa Today.

An intimate exploration of home.

What does it really look like to go from diaspora back to the motherland?

One Colombian American looks at what it means to return to Colombia.

Producer Dasha Sanoba is going to pick up the story from here.

I was born in Bogota, Colombia.

This is my dad.

My name is Louis Sandobal.

He's a classical and jazz blutist who turned to music teaching to support our family.

He's giving me his take on the city where we were both born.

Is a very big city, is a cosmopolitan city.

Preschool years were spent here where apparently I was beloved by my teachers.

Super cute, lovely.

Everybody loved you.

You were very Socia.

But I wasn't just cute.

You were stubborn.

Has my stubbornness ever loved anything good?

Of course?

Here you are.

By here, he means in Columbia.

We're on a video call me and Bogota, him and Florida.

I came to the States just because I was in love with your mother.

My mom is Cuban American.

She met my dad while on a trip to Colombia in the early eighties.

They fell in love and moved to Miami, my mom's hometown.

But when they had my sister in the late eighties, they decided to come back to Columbia.

I didn't have the tools too to make a living in the States.

It was an unusual move Colombia.

In nineteen eighty nine, the year that drug cartels were at the height of their power, working with paramilitary groups to a certain control.

Mil Novecentosentin Marca, Lestoria, Columbia.

Luis Carlos Galan, a front runner for president, was assassinated.

A commercial flight from Bota, Ta Cali was bombed, killing one hundred and seven people.

Estationally a those succient mask and this it must be steriosos in Lestoria, LAVIASI in Columbiana.

And car bombing is proliferated, including the bomb that killed over seventy people in a government building in Bogota, Alasia.

It's hard to believe that my parents moved to Columbia that year, of all years, Wow.

How did I do that?

That was kind of irresponsible to take my family to a place that was going through such an ordeal.

At the time, you did not have an awareness of how bad things were before we travel, though once you arrived, did you have an idea?

Of course, we woke up with explode shoes.

I was born a couple of years later, in nineteen ninety one, and spent my early childhood in Chia, a town just north of the city, blissfully unaware of the violence that had surrounded me.

We lived in a small brick house with a backyard that opened out onto a shared neighborhood park.

I would get home from school and run up and down tiny hills covered in Ojose boita black eyed Susans, then climbed the giant eucalyptus tree, but this was short lived.

My parents wanted us to grow up in the US.

After nine years, then we decided they go back.

Tend to go even for.

Us to have more opportunity, my dad explains.

We moved to Coral Springs, Florida, a suburb of fort about an hour north of Miami.

I entered second grade, I started to assimilate.

By the time I turned twelve, I had started a quiet rebellion.

When you wanted not to speak Spanish in mostly you were I believe in middle.

School, unlike Miami, Coral Springs didn't feel like an extension of Latin America.

Looking back, I think I started to reject my Spanish because it's what made me different.

I've told you Tennessee and Espanol Espanol, and you had to speak to me in Spanish in order to communicate with me.

Thanks to that, you didn't lose it.

This tactic, in which my dad pretended not to understand me unless I spoke to him in Espanol, was the bane of my existence us.

He called it a campania.

Though I rebelled against language, I never let go of place.

We went back to Columbia every two to three years for summer vacation and in between.

I long for it, for the kinship with my cousins and the grandeur of the mountains.

But with every visit I started to feel more and more out of place, more and more like a.

Gringa guys as in Galacina.

My cousin Pipe remembers this ours started getting stuck on my tongue as I struggled to roll them.

I remember we started bullying you because of that.

It's here that my confusion, or what Pepe might call my identity crisis, really began.

Though they teased me, I adored my cousins.

I still do.

You became really, really close to your cousins.

And I believe because of that is that you are backed in Colombia because you have those bones and they are strong.

That's definitely part of it.

But it's also because I had fomo.

When in my twenties I started meeting backpackers who had traveled all over Columbia, I felt a bit jealous.

I think you were frustrated because people told you, oh, Colombia, you're from Colombia.

That's such a beautiful country.

I was there, over here and over there.

If they could get to know Columbia, well couldn't, I shouldn't.

I You wanted to know by yourself, so you made a decision to do it.

Period.

So, swayed by nostalgia, family bonds, and stubbornness, as my dad might say, I decided to stop resisting.

I let the poll bring me back.

Coming up on Latino USA, Dasha moves back to Colombia.

I remember, I thought she's going to do it, and she's going to prove everyone wrong somehow.

That's after the break, not yes, hey, we're back and Tasha Sandovali is gonna continue with her story of going back to Colombia.

Describe to me, Okay, so there's a picture in your phone of a little girl and a little boy.

Pepe and I are in my apartment in Bogota.

We're looking at an old photo, one of my favorites of us together.

This little boy is like staring at the distance, holding one of his suspenders suspenders.

Next to him is a little girl, very coquetta, with a crown of flowers in her hair and a very pretty dress.

She's like pulling my arm.

It makes me nostalgic about childhood.

I'm about fifteen months older than Pepe.

I'm your little cousin.

I'm your premito.

We've been close since we were really young.

I'm like the brother you didn't have, and you're like this sister I didn't have.

We became siblings because we kind of wanted to.

Today he's a poet and copy editor with a striking bountiful Beard jam He's much adored.

I remember a decisiveness and the fact of wanting to share it with me.

You put yourself in Columbias through me.

Somehow.

He's been my guide as I've visited and come back for longer stance throughout the years.

Until I moved.

Back, everyone in the family was betting that you were not gonna make it.

That's just doing it.

How much time do you give her?

I remember, I thought she's gonna do it, and she's going to prove everyone wrong somehow.

Why do you think I wanted to come back.

To do this to research your like the identity of the Latin American people through your identity crisis.

I felt that you were decided, like, I'm gonna make it.

This is gonna be my purpose.

Pepa and I have always been similar in this way.

We're the storytellers of for a family.

That's why Pipa has been my confidante through this whole return to roots mission.

He's the person I've turned to when I felt weird about living in Colombia while working remotely for US based companies.

But this particular arrangement is making dollars and living in Pisos, right, do you remember me feeling conflicted about sure?

All the time I worry.

About jacking up rents with my US income in one of the most unequal countries in the world.

I want to contribute to life in Bota, not make it harder for people to live here.

So I support independent pole dance and ceramic studios, and I got involved in a diy queer cultural space.

Your actions are your undoing, but your position in life it's a doing of God, the economy, whatever.

I have agency over my actions, he says.

Like what matters is what you're doing right and your intentions in your current life, what you want to do.

Essentially, Pipa is telling me that I didn't choose this to be a dual citizen with a diasporic identity and a curious spirit, but I am choosing to make the most of this duality and to do it as ethically as I can.

This conclusion isn't entirely satisfying, but I think I can make peace with it because I'm finding out who I am when I'm in Columbia.

Building a life here is facilitating my path as a journalist and a writer.

From here, I can pursue meaningful but precarious contract work.

I can do this kind of writing.

I'm also uncovering other possibilities, layers of creative potential, and I think I'm starting to feel more comfortable owning my hybridity.

I feel that part of your essence and part of your transformation has been to accept that you're not going to become a Colombian and stop being a Gringa.

You're just reconciling the fact that you are both in different ways and in different proportions.

Stopping myself when I feel the urge to qualify my existence to others.

You cannot detach yourself from the years of experience that you have lived in the US.

That's always going to be there.

My gringodness comes out most when I get frustrated by cultural differences, like the fact that audita usually means never and the reality that things often don't go as planned in Columbia.

When you plan something, you still have this tendency to, Okay, we need to plan this, and we need to know the time, and we need to know the place, and we need to organize, because that's the greenaway.

Pope says, I've evolved.

And you have become more comfortable with the idea that you can't do anything about it, like just.

Learn to let it go, and that I'll continue to evolve.

The more time you spend on a place, the more you become a local.

At the end of the day, he said, us living in the US wouldn't necessarily be in service to myself or to Columbia.

Well, O, the choices just stay there in the US.

It's just as harmful.

The US is a crumbling empire.

So in this fraught political moment in the US, I'm leaning on my Colombian side.

But the political situation here in Colombia is also volatile.

The country came to peace accords in twenty sixteen, ending decades of armed conflict, but implementation has been slow and violence continues.

They're still gorilla groups like the eln fighting for control of land and trafficking routes.

January twenty twenty five was one of the most violent episodes since the signing of the accords.

Violence between two armed groups has consumed the Katatumbo region near the border with Venezuela.

At least eighty dead and it estimated thirty thousand displaced from their homes and the twenty twenty six presidential elections are on the horizon.

One presidential hopeful and conservative set Migue Luriue, was shot at a campaign event in June.

He died after months in critical condition.

The authorities have arrested the fourteen year old hired gunmen.

They haven't identified a mastermind behind the assassination.

Many Colombians are worried that this signals are returned to the rampant political violence of the past.

We'll be right back.

Hey, we're back.

These are complicated times all over the world, But for now, I'm staying here connecting with family.

Yes, late this March, I went to help one of my uncles pack up his apartment before a big.

Moves that issful.

While my drummer uncle jammed away, we went through stack after stack of stuff, including some family heirlooms that had been packed away since my grandparents' deaths in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one.

I came away that day with my late I would eat that Gudman's fine china, the white gold and pink tea and coffee sets she had held on to through the years, her greatest treasures.

Now that dishware adorns the shelves in my dining room.

I imagine my grandmother hosting her friends for afternoon onases, a Colombian tradition of drinks and snacks.

She serves her over sweetened tintico in tiny pink and gold espresso cups.

I'm reminded that my grandmother would be thrilled to see me here, independent, steadfast, stubborn, living among her treasures and in her country.

Claiming those tiny espresso cups from those storage boxes is another way in which I'm finding myself back in Colombia, grounding myself even as I continue to doubt myself.

You doubt yourself, but I have learned that that's okay, because you always end up doing what you need and what you want and beyond.

I'm not sure I see this pattern as clearly as my dad does, but he must have a point.

He's preparing his own return to Columbia.

Last time MAKE went to Santa Martin and Tobogota, I realized that I am a lot more friendly with people.

I talk a lot more with people on the street, and I feel at home.

After so many years in Florida.

He hopes to find a spot near the ocean on the Colombian Caribbean coast.

From the very beginning, the dream was the sea with mountains, because of the beauty of the sea and the evening, the dark sky and the stars and the waves, the sound of the ocean.

The sand, I don't know is appealing to me.

A place that brings the family together, a place that makes Columbia home for all of us.

And that's what I would like.

Like I would like to place where where my family would like to go together, and you and your sister and all our family and extended family.

Yes, being together and cheerin.

I want the same, But I don't want to wait until retirement, so I'm starting now.

Maybe being able to come back to the place my dad left is a historical justice.

Maybe it's a particular brand of neocolonialism from north to south.

But maybe hopefully it's much simpler than that.

Maybe it's just human a desire to return to the first place I experienced on this planet.

Being here among the trees in the mountains reminds me of something I heard from Spanish writer Cristina Juliana Auril at a book festival.

Here, as we.

Take everything with us wherever we golus it's delusional to think that we can detach from our layers, our fragments preus.

I think that when we leave, we leave with everything, we take our roots with us.

I bring with me all of my layers, my second but now dominant tongue, my emotional baggage, my millennial sense of doom.

But I also bring a renewed sense of adventure, curiosity, and joy.

As I write this, the cold gray day has transformed, and losros the mountains have revealed themselves in full relief against a clear blue sky.

They're my roots, my sense of place, and my sense of self, centering me within the only home I'll ever really have that any of us will ever really have ourselves.

Jus them cheeky the getty.

Is the best I want to get those these thinking majas me no one lascistana windows, the long one, the usportes pata sene concreto gasconde secret.

Are we about lab time.

I see it?

When I gotto has we gathered by Sally boolp you know it's a long little Spallo smack.

Over.

This episode was produced by Dasha Sandoval, who was edited by Maria Garcia.

It was mixed by Gabriel Abayez.

Back checking for this episode by Rosanna Aguire.

Original song Gamino de Nubez by Manuela Ocampo.

Fernando Echavari is our managing editor.

The Latino USA team also includes Julia Caruso, Jessica Ellis Renandoleanos Junior, Stefane Lebau, Andrea Lopez, Gruzsado, Luis Luna, Ni mar Marquez, Julieta Martinelli, Monicamorals Garcia, JJ Carubin and Nancy Trujillo, Penilee Ramirez, Maria Garcia and I are co executive producers and I'm your host Maria Ino Jossa.

Latino USA is part of Iheart's Mike Ultura podcast network.

Executive producers at iHeart are Leoco Mez and Arlene Santana.

Join us again on our next episode.

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