Mauricio García Villegas has a PhD in Politics and is a lecturer at the National University of Colombia, at the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Legal Studies and at the University of Grenoble. He is also a researcher in the field of justice and a columnist for El Espectador. The author of several books, his latest publication is El país de las emociones tristes (2021). This extended essay, based on the ideas of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, tries to explain how in a country like Colombia, so many good ideas, so many national projects have failed, giving rise to a history of conflicts, corruption and injustice. In conversation with Juan Diego Mejía, Mauricio García Villegas addresses the cultural connections among religion, politics and the emotional.