Of all the hellholes in the world, El Cartucho, in the Colombian capital Bogotá, was perhaps the worst. In the 1980s, the colonial neighbourhood of solid middle-class houses degenerated into the fiefdom of a drugs gang. The streets became the backdrop to a flourishing trade in drugs, people and garbage, crack houses sprang up all over and life wasn’t worth a damn.

Of all the hellholes in the world, El Cartucho, in the Colombian capital Bogotá, was perhaps the worst. In the 1980s, the colonial neighbourhood of solid middle-class houses degenerated into the fiefdom of a drugs gang. The streets became the backdrop to a flourishing trade in drugs, people and garbage, crack houses sprang up all over and life wasn’t worth a damn.