Guerrilla-turned-filmmaker: Colombia's versatile envoy in Beijing

Hindustan Times

30-05-2025

Colombia's ambassador to China first arrived in Beijing six decades ago and trained under Mao Zedong's revolutionary forces, before returning home to join a communist guerrilla group.
Sergio Cabrera then made a name for himself as an acclaimed filmmaker, and now his storied career has brought him back to the Chinese capital where he is spearheading Colombia's landmark rapprochement with the Asian giant.
The 75-year-old envoy was a young teenager when he came to China in 1963, accompanied by his communist parents who entered the country secretly in order to teach Spanish.
His return to Beijing is "stimulating and very exciting", he told AFP, especially with the capital city now full of skyscrapers and modern electric cars on its streets.
"Compared to Bogota, Beijing was a village," Cabrera said in an interview inside the stately Colombian embassy, with shelves lined with books and walls adorned with posters of his films.
"It was a one-storey city. There were no avenues, no cars, people were dressed all the same. It was a poor country. I remember my sister saying to me: 'Why is dad bringing us here?'
"You see this country now and it is a country full of abundance, of possibilities, where there is everything," he said.
"At that time there was nothing."
Those years followed shortly after Mao's ruthless reform to modernise China's agrarian economy, known as the Great Leap Forward, causing enormous shortages and millions of deaths from famine.
The young man knuckled down to learn Mandarin, which he still uses today, and soaked up the revolutionary thinking of the times.
He served as a Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution Mao's violent movement against capitalist and bourgeois influence and worked in agricultural communes and factories.
After training with the People's Liberation Army he returned to the Colombian jungle to join the communist guerrilla movement. But after four years, he told AFP he left the armed struggle feeling "deeply disappointed".
"I realised that there was a tendency of pathologically lying, to invent that we were very powerful and to believe it," he said.
From Colombia he returned to China, where he studied at Peking University before turning to what had always been his dream filmmaking.
Through movies with strong political undertones such as the acclaimed "La estrategia del caracol" , Cabrera found "ways to revolutionise a little" the public's mind on the silver screen.
"Since I can't do it the hard way, or with bullets, I'm going to do it the good way," the director told AFP.
And in contrast to that passion for "creating worlds" in cinema, his job as ambassador for more than two years has involved grappling with real-world issues on behalf of leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
A former guerrilla like himself, Petro has entrusted him with the task of strengthening ties between Colombia historically aligned with the United States and China.
"I can't make a revolution through diplomacy," he admitted. "But I can continue with the idea of transmitting, of somehow improving bilateral relations."
As a result of the diplomatic pivot, Colombia this month signed up to Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative, a project already involving two-thirds of Latin American countries.
"We were like the black sheep of the flock," Cabrera said, branding the step as "very beneficial" for Colombia.
However, the agreement has aroused the unease of US President Donald Trump's administration, which sees Latin America as a crucial player in its struggle with China, and Cabrera admitted the move comes at a "delicate moment" in relations with Washington.
"There have been frictions and we know that President Trump is against any rapprochement with China," he said.
But "the sovereignty of one country cannot depend on the need to be allied with another".
Closer relations have been years in the making. Over the last decade, imports from China doubled to $14.7 billion in 2024.
In the first quarter of 2025, they even surpassed those from the United States, which nevertheless remains the main destination for Colombian products, with almost 30 percent of the total.
As Bogota draws closer to Beijing, Colombian business owners have grown concerned about the impact on the volume of US-bound foreign trade.
But Cabrera urged them to overcome their "fear of the reactions of the United States".
According to Cabrera, the agreement will generate investments in transport or clean energy and will help to open up the Chinese market to products such as beef or coffee, which is becoming increasingly popular in the traditionally tea-drinking country.
The possibilities would be even better with a trade deal with China like those signed by Chile and Peru, he argued, while conceding that "in Colombia, there is not a good climate for a free trade agreement".
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