By Ana María Hanssen

ARGENTINA: These days in Argentina, the news headlines involve the government and the farmers. Since March, all we hear and read about is the taxes that Cristina Kirchner's government wants to keep applying to the crops and meat producers and their determination to not accept her impositions.

Protests here, protests there, people shouting on the streets that the president is crazy. Well, I got a little tired of all the madness, so I decided to go to a mental institution to see what the mentally ill are thinking.

Every Saturday at the Borda Psychiatric Hospital, the patients sit in the backyard and wait for what they call "the best moment of the week". They are here to participate in "La Colifata", a grass-roots radio station that has been on air for almost 2 decades.

Alfredo Olivera, a psychologist, founded La Colifata with the purpose of developing a different type of therapy that would allow the so-called "Crazies" to be in touch with the outside world. The radio show has different sections and all the interns are allowed to participate and give their opinions about various topics, such us the political situation or the rising cost of food.

By Rocío Arango Giraldo

COLOMBIA: When I was a child, my grandmother used to say to me that “the most important thing is to tell the truth.” Now, that I’m an adult and a citizen (voter), I observe with uneasiness how, in the world, the truth is an object that the powerful people use for their own interests.

For example, we have had to listen about the “parapolítica” — a political scandal that linked Colombian Senator supporters of President Alvaro Uribe with “paramilitares,” a terrorist group.

After some months in jail, the Senators were released from jail. Many of them have had to renounce their Senate seats because of prosecution by the Attorney General and judged by the Supreme Court.

If they got out of jail, it is because the accusations against them, that they had abandoned the weapons for which they were put in jail, were determined not to be true. The situation was used by the people who oppose the government and to attack President Uribe, although the popularity of the President is higher than 80% and his supporters doubt the objectivity of the Supreme Court.

I am not interested in taking a position in either favor or against the ruling. I want to reflect on the truth but I don’t want to debate “What is the truth?” The Greek philosophers approached this question perfectly and its from their example that I want to invite us to think — “Which truth is our truth?”