A Colombian Acid Attack Survivor Says Carlos Vives Promised Her a Benefit Concert and Never Delivered

María Consuelo Córdoba has spent 26 years living with the consequences of an acid attack carried out by her former partner in the year 2000, an assault that damaged her nose, mouth and chin and set off a cascade of health complications that has required 87 surgeries and left her begging on buses in Bogotá to survive. In a recent interview on the program “Vamos pa’ eso,” Córdoba confirmed that she has decided to withdraw the euthanasia request she had previously been approved for, choosing instead to accept support for two new surgeries that could improve her quality of life, along with assistance to secure her own home. She also used the interview to make a public accusation against Colombian music star Carlos Vives, saying he promised her a benefit concert and never followed through.

Córdoba described meeting Vives after her story became known, saying he embraced her, cried in her presence and invited her to his restaurant Gaira, where he told her he was going to organize a benefit event and charge 600,000 Colombian pesos per ticket, the equivalent of approximately $150 US dollars, to raise money for her. She said she went to Gaira with a friend, where they were served a piece of salmon, an arepa and a guanabana juice, and that the promised event never happened. She added that Vives never gave her so much as 5,000 Colombian pesos, less than $2 US dollars, for the bus fare home after the visit. Carlos Vives has not issued a public response to her account.

A Life Shaped by Violence and Its Aftermath

Córdoba’s story begins in the year 2000 when her former partner attacked her with chemical substances after she refused to return to the relationship. The damage to her face was extensive, and the medical and financial consequences of that damage have defined the decades that followed. With 87 surgeries behind her and ongoing health complications stemming from the original attack, Córdoba has spent years in a cycle of medical interventions that her economic situation has made enormously difficult to navigate. Unable to work in the way the injuries left her, she has relied on begging on Bogotá’s public buses as a means of survival, a reality that has accompanied her throughout a quarter century of fighting to stay alive.

Four years ago, the weight of those accumulated health problems led Córdoba to request euthanasia, which she received approval for through the legal channels that Colombia has established for that process. The decision to withdraw that request reflects a change in her circumstances rather than a change in the severity of her situation, with new surgical options and material support for housing creating a path forward that she had not previously had access to.

The Decision to Keep Living

Córdoba’s withdrawal of her euthanasia request came alongside a commitment from people around her to help fund two additional surgeries that could meaningfully improve her quality of life, as well as assistance toward having a home of her own. The combination of those two things, medical hope and housing stability, appears to have shifted her assessment of what the future could look like in a way that the years of begging on buses and managing the fallout of 87 surgeries had not been able to produce on their own.

Her story sits at the intersection of multiple failures: the failure of the justice system to prevent a man from destroying a woman’s life for refusing to return to him, the failure of a society to provide adequate support for survivors of gender-based violence and the failure of a celebrated public figure, if her account is accurate, to follow through on a promise made to one of the most vulnerable people he had ever met. Córdoba survived an acid attack, spent 26 years managing its consequences largely alone and still found the capacity to go public with her experience in a way that forces the country to look at what happened to her and ask what it intends to do about it.