Colombian President De la Espriella has removed works from the National Museum described as promoting communism, bringing his opposition to that ideology into the management of a national cultural institution.

The conservative president, an ally of Trump, said last week that he wanted to stop cultural institutions from being taken over by what he called “atheist social communism”. His stated concern extends beyond the museum to cultural institutions more broadly.

His stated aim puts the museum intervention in a broader political context. The account links the removals to claims that the works promote communism, but does not independently establish their content.

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The supplied material does not identify the works, give their number or explain the process used to select them. It also provides no response from museum officials or artists, and no details of further action. Those gaps limit any assessment of the intervention’s scope or its consequences for the collection.

Further reporting would be needed to establish which works were removed and how the decision was carried out.