Since its founding, Destination Peace has been traveling around the world searching for a deeper understanding and realistic solutions to peaceful coexistence.

Today we toured Cartagena, Columbia, a city of peaks and valleys of contrasting history. Its “peaks” are found in impressive architecture and fortifications, and its renowned emerald mines and walled city district which has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Cartagena’s “valley” was never more evident than when we visited the Palace of the Inquisition. It was established in 1610 to punish any “crimes” against the Catholic faith. We somberly walked through the jail cells and torture chambers. Our guide explained each sadistic weapon of torture designed to inflict the slowest and most tortuous death possible.

We visited the 17th century Fort of San Felipe de Barajas, the largest and most important example of Spanish military engineering in South America, and the Las Bovedas Artisan Center which originally was a dungeon.

Sandy, our superb professional guide is a professor who teaches the history of Spain at a University in Cartagena.

Destination Peace’s travels have proven to us repeatedly in striking irony that in different generations, often in the same geographic locations, the persecutors in another era switched places with the persecuted and the enslavers became the enslaved.

The prevailing societal influencers either replenished their conquering strength reinforced through terror, hating, and killing or the overpowering forces of universal love obliterated “inquisitions” with the opposite powerful forces of self-sacrifice and acts of true kindness inspired by the selfless religious and political humanitarians. Many of them throughout history, through self-sacrifice, uncommon valor, were tragically assassinated, martyred, killed or died namelessly.