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Editor's Note: This story originally ran in December 2017. Since then, daughter Sayuri added some new fun to the family's holiday mascotThe original tale…

Hear two songs that demonstrate the traditional and modern sounds emanating from the region.

David Dye speaks with Catalina Maria Johnson, from the Chicago-based program Beat Latino, about the marimba sounds of Colombia's Pacific coast.

The drug war was in full swing in the '80s, and cocaine was practically everywhere. But use of the drug has fallen by almost half since 2006, and production is also down significantly. How did the U.S. kick the habit? Experts say cocaine has lost its luster — oh and policy may have made a difference, too.

The Colombian city was the world's murder capital in the 1990s, but it managed to turn its fortunes around. Homicides were cut by 80 percent and made big gains on a number of fronts. But the city still faces many challenges in a region plagued by violence.

Women have made significant gains across Latin America. But sexual violence against women remains a pervasive problem. As part of NPR's series on violence in Latin America, we're looking at the problem in Colombia, where decades of war made women extremely vulnerable.

Colombia's FARC rebels are engaged in peace talks with the government, but the group is also stepping up recruitment of child soldiers. Thousands of children may have become rebels in recent years, and efforts are underway to rehabilitate some of them.

The cocaine market in the Americas is changing among both producers and consumers. The old model was Colombian cocaine going to the U.S. Now, it's increasingly common for Bolivian cocaine to be headed to Brazil.

At its height, American tennis consistently fielded the world's top male players. Now that American dominance is gone, so too are many of the top U.S. men's tournaments. They're moving overseas, snapped up by groups offering more lucrative payouts in a sport enjoying huge global appeal.

Raised as Christians, they say their ancestors were Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain more than 500 years ago; they now practice Orthodox Judaism. Similar cases have turned up in other countries in recent years.