Talking About Colombia

Meet Luz Marina Bustos Castañeda, the first female sub-director of Colombia’s National Police.

Luz Marina Bustos Castañeda, 52, was recently named the first female sub-director of the National Police.

In June 2009, she became the first female general.

She is a lawyer who specialized in administrative rights, penal rights, and forensic science.

She first joined the police force in Santander department in 1980 when she was 20 years old. She was part of the first 14 women who joined the police force when the institution first opened up the possibility for women to have careers in the police force.

She told Semana magazine: “I had thought about the Armed Forces, I dreamed about becoming a pilot, and I also thought of joining the Navy, but a family friend told me that for the first time they were incorporating women as career officers, in the same conditions as men, and that filled me with encouragement.”

She told El Espectador newspaper: “When I joined, I was in good shape because at school I played volleyball and I was an athlete. Some of my colleagues were angry that I would win and I would see that some superiors reprimanded them for having been beaten by a women, and I would protest that.”

Luz Marina is the mother of three grown-up male children. Her husband is a retired police officer. They met in the police force and married in 1984.

From 2006 to 2007, she worked as police attaché in Colombia’s embassy in Panama.