‘Colombian cities should stop taking care of the displaced’

This article was published on Colombia Reports.

As long as the Colombian government doesn’t properly address the causes behind the country’s huge internal displacement problem, big cities like Bogota and Medellin should refuse to take care of the victims, says former mayor of the peace community of Apartado and candidate for the Colombian Senate, Gloria Cuartas.

What may seem like a rather bold statement to some, is plain logic for Polo Democatico hopeful Cuartas, who is probably best known as the former mayor of the peace community in the problematic north-west of Colombia, and is among president Alvaro Uribe’s most fierce and outspoken critics.

“Crying about the fate of our displaced farmers and administering public funding to the needs of refugees doesn’t make any sense when there is no open debate on the causes of this human tragedy,” says Cuartas. “The problem is deliberately taken out of the political context. We have supermarkets, foreign aid organizations and media like RCN and Caracol organizing benefits for refugees, but they don’t bother to ask who’s owning their lands now.”

The Justice and Peace process, designed to demobilize paramilitary organization AUC, was also intended to alleviate the pain of refugees and other victims, but Cuartas believes that it completely fails to do so. “The law doesn’t leave room to memorize, it doesn’t guarantee land rights and it has brought to justice only a few of the more than 30,000 cases.” In the current setting, the truth of the perpetrator is more important than the truth of the victim, says the 49-year-old politician. “The truth of the victim has its limits; we often get to know who killed somebody, but we will never know who paid for the assassination.”

According to the leftist senate hopeful, Colombia is not ready for a Justice and Peace law, because there is sufficient evidence that paramilitary structures have been left intact. “Furthermore, the government should recognize there is a conflict, not just soldiers fighting terrorists. Before people start accusing me of siding with the guerrilla, I do believe we have to finish with the FARC,” says Cuartas, who has been linked to the guerrilla more than once by political opponents in the past. “But not by bombarding them. Instead, they should wither in a political negotiation out of the Colombian conflict.”

The prospects of re-opening negotiations with the guerrilla are limited under present conditions, admits Cuartas. “After all, the failure of the peace process was a carefully thought out decision. Of course the FARC is to blame as well, but this war completely fits the U.S.-backed strategy to re-found the country on a neo-liberal basis. While the general public may be unaware of it, Colombia is experiencing an enormous economical rearrangement based on concentration of land and natural resources in the name of development.”

In this “systematic effort,” as the politician and social worker calls it, the government wouldn’t care too much about defeating the FARC or not. “There is a big inequality between the fighting actors anyway, with the relatively low tech guerrilla on one side and the Colombian army supported by US and Israeli technology on the other.” What really matters is what happens when the guerrilla has left a certain region, Cuartas says. “With people displaced because of crop fumigation and turmoil, multinational mining companies move in to exploit coal, gold and emeralds, or agro-industrial corporations take over the land to plant oil palm, like in Uraba.”

Cuartas says she witnessed this strategy first-hand as mayor of Apartado in the north of Antioquia, the department which Alvaro Uribe governed until he became president in 2002. “As governor, Uribe already learned how successful the rifle could be in spreading his neo-liberal economic model. He offered Colombians hope by eliminating, but not solving the conflict. In Apartado alone, it resulted in 1,200 deaths at the hands of the army and paramilitaries. And yes, I do blame Uribe for those atrocities, he is an asesino, a murderer!”

The village of San Jose de Apartado became widely known in the late 1990’s as a peace community trying to liberate itself of any military, paramilitary or guerrilla influence. Recently, and notably because of confessions of ex-FARC-commander “Zamir,” the community has been discredited for alleged links with the guerrilla. An opinion article in the Wall Street Journal and a similar article in a Dutch magazine even led the Netherlands’ Foreign Ministry to question its neutrality, even though international human rights groups kept supporting Apartado.

Gloria Cuartas is still furious about the publications, stating that the articles endangered the lives of those living in and sympathizing with the peace community. “Zamir is a very unreliable source; as a FARC-commander, he has killed twenty members of the peace community and later reached an agreement with the army’s 17th Brigade. This man is simply defending the army, saying that they have never done anything wrong in the community. As the Dutch Embassy apparently has not investigated the other side of the story, I hold them partly accountable for the persecution and moral destruction of the community.”

The reason for the attacks on Apartado’s credibility are very clear to Cuartas. “The community is hindering development of one of the region’s biggest finding places of coal, and we’re not moving away.” Furthermore, she argues, the idea of a peace community without any ties to the guerrilla is considered by the government as a direct threat to its legitimacy. “Which again is a completely logical response of a government seeking to eradicate any leftist opposition, eliminating labor leaders and silencing social movements.”

The international community should be more critical towards Mr. Uribe’s policies, but instead it is his willing accomplice, maintains Cuartas. By granting dissidents asylum, for instance. “Asylum is a gift to authoritarian governments, neutralizing critical voices while strengthening their capacity to negotiate economic treaties. It’s like saying: ‘You will let us invest in Colombia, to explore for coal, oil and minerals, and we will nurture the men and women who might be a danger because they think differently’.”

Three big Colombian hits of the moment

The turn of the year traditionally is a time of  greatest hits in Colombia. Travelling  with friends through the southern departments of Cauca, Nariño and Putumayo in December and January, we heard the same three songs in almost every bus and every street corner, all with there own take on machismo. Jhonny Rivera, Catalina and La numero 10, you made our trip! Luckily, all the excellent video footage can be found on YouTube.

1. Jhonny Rivera (the guy on the picture), ‘El Timido’. About a timid guy who is jealous of his friends because he’s so timid he can’t get a girlfriend. He’s actually a famous Colombian artist who doesn’t have to worry about getting girls : S

2. Thommy with ‘La numero 10′. A guy who has in girlfriends all over the place, who all adore him, but the one he really dies for, because of her ‘lovely body’, is number 10. Sure dude.

3. Son de Patanguejo with ‘Catalina’. I still don’t quite understand what this senile old guy wants to say with these lyrics, but I do know the video of the old guy dancing with some models is disturbing enough to make it worth seeing.

Hiking in Colombia: El Cocuy

The department of Boyaca is home to one of Colombia’s most pristine mountain ranges, the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy. With an elevation of over 5,000 meters and counting more than 25 snow-covered peaks, these solitary mountains are every mountaineer’s wet dream.

From Bogota, it takes a rough twelve hour busride over largely unpaved roads to reach the sleepy colonial town of El Cocuy. Here, or in Güican one hour away, is where most start hiking. Both villages offer modest accomodation, guiding services, equipment rental and transport uphill.

After registering and paying an entrance fee at the national park’s office in El Cocuy we load our backpacks on the roof of a minivan that takes us higher up the mountain, all the way to the farmhouse of Alejandro Herrera. The dirt road stops there. To reach the place where we are to spend the night requires another one and a half hour walking.

Basecamp
Hiking the national park is as hard as you want it to be. The options vary from staying at modest cabañas with food being provided and doing day trips to hardcore six day trekkings, camping out in the wild and carrying all you need in your own backpack. Accompanied by our guide Javier, we decide to set up our basecamp in the Valley of the Lagunillas, at the foot of the majestic Pan de Azúcar (5,120 meters).

Here, at an altitude of almost 4,000 meters, we get used to the altitude while enjoying the luxury of a refuge closeby. We are warmly welcomed by the people of community based ecotourist association ASEGÜICOC that recently started operating the guesthouse. For the following three days, we would warm our bodies with the meals, hot coffee and agua de panela provided.

Tourism to the national park is still relatively underdeveloped, as the area was a battle ground between guerrilla, army and paramilitary groups only a few years ago. With the park now safe to visit, tourists are flocking to Cocuy, but still in small numbers.

Staying warm
Temperatures are dropping fast by the end of the afternoon, as grey rain clouds spill over the top of the mountain ridge into the valley. Returning to the tent later that evening, ice has already covered its surface. It’s going to be a cold night. To stay warm I put on woolen socks and gather all the fleece and thermo-underwear I have lying around.

The low temperature is not the only inconvenience. The height also claims its victims, provoking altitude sickness with potentially fatal consecuences. Hiking up to El Alto de Cusiri (4,410 meters), one day of acclimatization proves to be insufficient for one member of our group who usually lives at sealevel; nausea and a severe headache leave him unable to enjoy the moraine lake dotted landscape.

Devil’s Pulpit
The third day of our hiking trip we get up at five in the morning. The snow capped Pan de Azúcar and the Púlpito del Diablo (where, according to local legend, the devil appears on New Year’s Eve) are waiting in the distance, contrasted by a bright blue sky. While the sun pushes away the morning cold, we walk up through flowering fields of Frailejones, stumble over barren rocks and cross crystal clear streams. A few hours later and nearly out of breath, we reach our goal; touching the glistering ‘tropical’ snow of the rapidly receding glacier, which might have disappeared completely by 2030.

For more information see:

http://www.parquesnacionales.gov.co

http://wikitravel.org/en/Cocuy

Five direct buses leave from Bogota daily (About 45,000 COP / 12 hours).

‘Uribe refuses to take responsibility for his failures’

Earlier published on Colombia Reports

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe avoids debate over his policies by disqualifying any opposition or criticism as support for the FARC or anti-patriotic to avoid taking responsibility for his own failures, says Leon Valencia, director of think tank Nuevo Arco Iris.

Following a recently released report by the corporation that stated the government’s ‘Democratic Security’ policy had reached its limit, the FARC was on the rebound and paramilitary violence was on the increase, Uribe reacted immediately, blaming Nuevo Arco Iris of “always trying to disorientate the country.”

The cold reception of the report hardly came as a shock for Nuevo Arco Iris director León Valencia. “This government deliberately disqualifies any opposition to its policies by accusing opponents of being anti-patriotic or backing the guerrilla.” Valencia told Colombi Reports. “It makes me sad, because the report doesn’t have any other aim than to promote debate.”

U.S. ambassador William Brownfield morally supported you by stating that NGO’s like Nuevo Arco Iris are necessary in any democracy. Were you surprised by his words?

“His reaction was more comprehensive. While he clearly continues backing Uribe’s policy, Brownfield does consider that it’s legitimate to criticize, that changes can be made and that there might be flaws, like the recent wave of urban violence and the connection we found there with paramilitarism shows. Judging from the government response, it’s obvious that Uribe and Silva have not even considered to talk about the contents of our report.”

So why are they evading the debate?

“We’re clearly on a collision course with Uribe, because he wants to sell the idea that paramilitarism is a thing of the past. This government wants to hide its responsability; they left the paramilitary structures in place by making bad deals with the demobilized. They made a mistake and refuse to recognize it.”

“The government rather uses the term ‘new emergent criminal bands’ when dealing with drug trafficking and rising levels of violence in the cities. But that’s a euphemism; several of these groups not only control drug trade, they also threaten labor leaders, attack political groups, look for political connections and control territories. They may differ from the paramilitary groups that reigned before, but they are deploying very similar activities.”

What would be your alternative for Uribe’s politics of democratic security?

“Before, Colombian governments were inclined to negotiate with the guerrilla groups. This resulted in some partial peace treaties, but in the end all failed. Uribe took on a different approach. Instead of negotiating with the guerrillas, he resumed waging war on them and started demobilizing talks with the paramilitaries. But as we can conclude now he has also failed; the paramilitary structures are still there and as we show in our report the guerrilla groups are far from defeated and I don’t think they ever will be with military means.”

“We need to think more in terms of reconciliation and design a peace process with the previous failures in mind. Obviously, Uribe is not going to do it, because he won the elections with the promise to defeat the FARC.”

How can we be optimistic about peace negotiations with the guerrilla if we consider the failures of the past?

“Firstly, the guerrilla has received so many blows over the last years that they have lost the belief in winning the war. Secondly, they must have seen elsewhere in Latin America that the left can also take power in a democratic way through elections, including ex-guerrillas like recently in Uruguay and Salvador. Besides, it won’t be easy to further increase military spending. Colombia has almost doubled its defense budget over the last years and with 425,000 soldiers our army equals Brazil’s in size. We’ve reached a limit here.”

Would it be possible to win the presidential elections with a peace agenda?

“The oppositional candidates have a lot of fear discussing the security issue and to push forward alternatives. Take the publication of our report last week. As a small NGO we tried to stir up the debate about Uribe’s democratic security, but the opposition in congress hasn’t said a word about it. It’s a disgrace!”

Because criticizing the president on this matter equals political suicide?

“I would rather say there’s a lack of brave politicians, capable of working on a coherent alternative discourse to Uribe. It might be a long-term struggle to find support for it, but you have to start somewhere. The opposition against the ‘war on terrorism’-doctrine of former US president George W. Bush also didn’t materialize immediately.”

Some think peace can also be obtained under a third presidency of Uribe.

“I don’t believe so. A third term would be downright fatal for Colombia. It would not only further diminish the chances for peace, it would also inflict more damage on the democratic institutions and place us on the same level with Chavez. Colombia has already received severe blows to its democratic culture under Uribe. He has turned back the clock on issues like abortion, gay rights and the depenalization of personal use of small amounts of drugs. Finally we’ve made a step backwards in the fight against corruption and the fight against terrorism has badly impacted the human rights situation.”

Hiking around Bogota: Paramo de Sumapaz

The territory of the Bogota Capital District may bear the environmental impacts of Colombia’s biggest metropolis, it also harbors a unique, yet not very well-known nature reserve. (Published earlier on Colombia Reports)

Situated in Bogota’s largest and mainly rural locality and less than three hours driving south from the city centre, you’ll reach a landscape hardly found anywhere else on the globe. Sumapaz national park is home to one of the world’s few Paramo climates, that only exist in Colombia, Ecuador and to a lesser extent Peru, Venezuela and Costa Rica. The Paramo of Sumapaz is the biggest, and according to our guide Juan-Carlos, also the most beautiful one.

As we leave the city behind in Usme, the road starts curling itself around the mountains, soon changing the urban sprawl for tree spiked slopes and green meadows dotted with grazing cows. As the bus climbs higher and the temperature drops, the asphalt makes way for a bumpy dirt road. Due to the harsh climate, farming is risky business at these altitudes, as chances are likely that the night frost will destroy the crops.

Frailejones
Gradually, potatoes and carrots make room for typical Paramo vegetation such as the Frailejon, a tough family of desert-like plants that can reach an age of well over one hundred years. Only plants that can adapt themselves to the cold, windy weather and survive the acid soil here. Bad news for the trees, but their inability to root in the higher Paramo provides us with astonishing views on the surrounding mountains, that reach more than 4,000 metres up into the sky.

Water
Besides being a natural park, the Sumapaz Paramo constitutes a very important part of Bogota’s water reserves. A thick layer of humus functions as a sponge that slowly releases its moisture to lower lying slopes. Unfortunately agriculture has already wiped out much of the lower lying Paramo, thereby posing a direct threat to the water supply of millions of people. Farming has also affected the habitats of the eagle, spectacled bear and puma, among others. Climate change constitutes another threat, as come scientists think 75 percent of the Paramo-climates will disappear due to global warming.

High up the area still seems unspoiled. Fields of flowering Frailejones stretch as far as the eye can see, while black lagoons and jaw dropping abysses provide for the necessary variation. As rays of sunlight prick through the clouds and magically paint the landscape a bright yellow, we forget about the fierce wind that has been battering our faces all day.

More information

Ezel verkracht bij overval

Voor de jeugdige overvallers die donderdagochtend Nederlandse tijd in het Colombiaanse Cartagena een circus beroofden was de gebruikelijke buit blijkbaar niet bevredigend. Ze vergrepen zich tijdens de overval aan een vrouwtjesezel, het enige aanwezige circusdier.

*Artikel eerder gepubliceerd op http://www.depers.nl/opmerkelijk/339971/Ezel-verkracht-bij-overval.html

De bende maakte bij de diefstal onder meer kassa-opbrengsten, circusattributen, make-up en geluidsapparatuur buit. De acrobaten moesten ook een deel van hun kleding afstaan. ‘Eigenlijk hebben ze alleen de tent laten staan,’ verzucht circusleider Janer Olascuaga in een lokale krant.

Tot grote verontwaardiging van de medewerkers verkrachtten de jongens na de roof om beurten ezelin Paola, die een prominente rol speelt in de voorstellingen van het kindercircus.

Seks met ezels is in sommige delen van Colombia overigens niet ongewoon. Het is een publiek geheim in het Zuid-Amerikaanse land dat veel jongens uit dorpen aan de Caribische kust hun eerste seksuele ervaringen opdoen met ezels. Vorig jaar openden twee broers uit het stadje Sincelejo zelfs een ezelinnenbordeel waar ze naar eigen zeggen goede zaken mee doen.

De lokale politiecommandant heeft toegezegd alles in het werk te stellen om de verantwoordelijke jeugdbende op te rollen. Circus ‘El Triunfo’ hoopt ondertussen op materiële steun van de Colombianen om de voorstellingen door te kunnen laten gaan en de kinderen weer aan het lachen te krijgen. Paola maakt het naar verluidt goed.

ELN website runs comfortably on Dutch server

* This article was published on Colombia Reports. A Dutch version of this article was published on Webwereld.

Despite being regarded a terrorist organization by the European Union, the website of Colombia’s second largest guerrilla group ELN runs comfortably on a server in the capital of the Netherlands, Amsterdam. The internet provider is a leftist Spanish non-profit organization.

Due to a series of human rights violations, the National Liberation Army (ELN) has been considered a terrorist organization by Brussels since 2004, as is the case with the internationally more known FARC.

Groups on the European terrorism black list are automatically banned in the Netherlands and are not allowed to deploy any activities there. Bank balances can be frozen and activities such as membership recruitment can be penalized with one year of imprisonment.

The facilitation of websites of organizations on the European list of terrorist organizations is also prohibited, according to the Dutch Prosecution General’s Office. The degree of offense depends on the contents of the site, says a spokesman. Therefore, he could not yet tell if action is going to be taken against the ELN site.

Possible complicating factor is that the ELN site is hosted by Spanish provider Nodo50 that has its servers in the Netherlands. According to the European directive on electronic commerce an ISP is obligated to act when they are hosting an illegal site, but not when they merely transmit information from servers that are not their own.

XS4ALL, the Dutch company facilitating the hosting of the website, does not check if any of their clients appear on a terrorist list. “That is not only impossible but also undesirable, because it would mean that we as internet provider decide what’s allowed on the internet,” said spokesman Niels Huijbregts. “We are not liable in any way, but if the judiciary informs us that a site on one of our servers is prohibited, we will take it offline immediately.”

Because XS4all is not physically hosting the website on its own servers, but only allowing the server to be stationed in the company’s datacenter, the company could block the IP-address of the website, but this would take all nodo50 websites offline. According to XS4all, this would even be illegal. “A possible notice-and-takedown request would have to take place in Spain. We can’t do anything about that,” the spokesman said.

The ELN uses its Spanish-language website mainly to lay out its alternative political views. President Alvaro Uribe is heavily criticized, as is the US for its military involvement in Colombia. The site furthermore offers messages from the war front, a video of a training camp in the forests of Colombia and a possibility to get in touch with the guerrillas.

Over the years, the Marxist rebels have kidnapped thousands of people for ransom and still hold over two hundred hostages. Moreover, the ELN is held responsible for civilian casualties due to the use of landmines and attacks on Colombian infrastructure. The guerrilla group was founded in 1964 and now has between 3500 to 5000 fighters, less than half of the FARC. Since the arrival of the Uribe government in 2002 the Colombian rebel groups are on the defensive.

Bogota off the beaten track

Psychologist and politician Hernando Gómez takes tourists to places in Bogota where you generally are happy to stay far away from. His tours offer you a peek in the life of the city’s lowest classes. Article published on Colombia Passport.

After half an hour walking through the Santa Fe neighborhood in the center of Bogota it occurs to me that a man on a motorbike has been following us all along. When we cross the street he suddenly disappears. “He reached the boundaries of his territory,” explains Hernando Gómez (55), our guide this evening.

“Neighborhoods here are divided between different gangs, who all have their own armed ‘campaneros’ guarding the streets.” He points to the yellow taxis cruising down an empty street for the umpteenth time. “Obviously they are not here to score a ride, they are paid to serve as vigilantes.”

It’s the hidden side of Bogota street life which you are unable to see with an untrained eye. Before we entered this tricky ‘barrio’ Gómez had to ask one of our group of twenty to take off his baseball cap. It might have led to costly misunderstandings with Santa Fe’s gang members, who communicate using their baseball caps in a silent sign language only they seem to understand. And if the city’s homeless are suddenly sleeping elsewhere, Gómez knows there is ‘social cleansing’ taking place and it’s better not to enter a certain neighborhood.

Gómez, a psychologist who acquired some fame as candidate-mayor for Polo Democrático Alternativo in 2007, over the years already has shown thousands of people the harsh reality of the Colombian capital’s ‘barrios marginales’, in day- and nighttime. ‘The hiker of the city’, as he’s popularly known, is a man with a mission. Strongly sympathizing with the underprivileged, Gómez wants to show what’s life like on the dark side of Bogota. “About half of the Bogotanos live in poor neighborhoods, one million of them not even earning a dollar a day. Of the other half many either hardly know about their living conditions or simply turn a deaf ear on the problem,” says Gómez. “As wealthier Colombians we live next to a waterfall, but we generally don’t hear the noise of it anymore,” he adds metaphorically.

To make sure people do see and hear, Gómez takes students, foreigners and blue collar workers alike to the districts where the displaced live, where the gangs reign, or where sex-workers are being exploited. During the four to five hour walks it appears that every street corner has a story to tell. Funny stories. Sad stories. Horrifying ones as well, like the one he kicks off with when we’re strolling along Cementerio Central. Stopping in front of a row of ordinary-looking houses, Gómez informs us of their macabre past. “In the eighties this place served as an illegal funeral parlor. The bodies of victims of social cleansing practices mysteriously disappeared, until it came out that they were solved in acid.” It was also the time when car accidents would be used to get rid of dead bodies, explains Gómez, “by putting them between the victims of the crash.”

One of the continuing sad stories of Santa Fe is prostitution. Brothels, love motels and well-known clubs like La Piscina and El Castillo line up along the streets. Shadowy figures are monitoring the scene from dark corners of the street, while big-breasted women with heavy make-up sell their bodies on the pavements. Some of them are moved in packs between Bogota, Pereira, Cartagena and Medellin, never longer in one place than three months to prevent them getting rooted. Their cedulas taken from them, they are fairly limited in their movements.

While he is talking two young girls with way too short skirts for the cold rainy night are passing by. Street hookers looking for customers. They perform their services for prices as low as 3,000 pesos, Gómez knows. Santa Fe was declared ‘zona de tolerancia’ by the city government in 2002, which means that prostitution is tolerated here. It also means that the neighborhood has deteriorated badly and fallen into the hands of (former) paramilitary bands. As the Santa Fe barrio borders on the financial district and is on the nomination to be redeveloped in the nearby future, ground prices are high and attract a lot of foreign investment. Gómez points out the empty apartment blocks surrounding us. “Families are forced to leave their homes. If not for the bad security situation, it’s because they get threatened by the criminal syndicates to sell their properties for submarket prices.”

The bad parts of any city present themselves as an ‘erotic attraction’ to him, Gómez jokes. And yet another story follows. Once having to wait ten hours for a connecting flight in the Peruvian capital of Lima, he couldn’t resist the temptation of going uphill, ignoring the warnings of gang violence. Hardly after entering the barrio, he indeed got a gun pointed at him. “I said, you can have my twenty dollars or we can have some beers together.” Gómez ended up feasting with his attackers and almost missed his flight back to Colombia because they wouldn’t let him go.

His astonishing diplomatic skills also paid off in Ciudad Bolivar, in the poorer southern part of Colombia’s capital. There he was threatened with a knife while showing around Swedish embassy personnel. But to the surprise of the Swedes who already had taken their wallets out to hand over their money, the thief and Gómez ended up hugging each other. This evening in Santa Fe he also repeatedly demonstrates he gets along very well with the people on the streets. “I love them a lot,” he says with a broad grin on his face, after a chat with a homeless young man selling self-made art.

But even streetwise Gómez doesn’t get away with everything. Walking with a group of fifty people a few years ago, he ran into some armed thugs who robbed them of all their possessions. Seeing the terror on our faces, he immediately starts to play it down. “One armed robbery is not bad, considering the fact that I organized hundreds of excursions through several rough parts of the city.”
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Note: The walking tours by Hernando Gómez cannot be booked and are not always officially announced. He likes to ‘keep things informal’. Besides Santa Fe he regularly visits La Favorita, La Perseverancia, Las Cruces and various places in Ciudad Bolivar.

Personas de la calle

Graffiti in Bogotá, referring to last year's Operación Jaque, in which Ingrid Betancourt was liberated

This week I’m indulging myself in Bogotá’s street life. Monday evening I went for a walk through the Santa Fe-barrio, one of the city’s red light districts and a very tricky neighbourhood controlled by paramilitary bands. To be sure, I didn’t go alone, but with a group of twenty and our guide Hernando Gómez, a former leftist candidate to be mayor of Bogotá (more elaborate story to follow).

Yesterday I strolled the streets of La Candelaria and further uphill with 28 year old Dylan and his dog Tiger (which he pronounces in spanglish as ‘teagur’). This former soldier is one of the city’s more than twenty five thousand ‘recicladores’, people who sort out garbage on the street for anything worthy of selling. Dylan is specialized in wood. He rings my doorbell every once in a while with a huge supply of fuel for my chimney, for which he will charge between 5 en 7 thousand Colombian Pesos (around 2 euro’s). It’s a tough job, but he seems to be happy. Due to his social skills and his 6-year career as a recycler he has a lot of friends in the neighbourhood.

In the evening I hooked up with the Aguadepanelitas-project. Since one year, people from the local Couchsurfing-community hit the streets every wednesday to hand out bread and aguapanela to the countless homeless people. Although the reason to be out there obviously is not to feel better about ourselves, it’s rewarding to see how thankful these ‘personas de la calle’ are. Not only because of the food and drinks, also because for once they’re not ignored. Downright heartbreaking is the image of two indigenous women with four small children sitting on the pavement in the busy Calle 19. Judged from their still relatively unspoiled dresses they probably only recently arrived in the city, to join the tens of thousands of internally displaced people that had to flee from the Colombian conflict zones.

Friday I’m planning to join another walk organized by Hernando Gómez. This time the excursion will lead us through Santa Inés (‘El Cartucho’), until it’s eviction considered Bogotá’s most dangerous barrio.

Bogotá veilig?

Bogotá is statistisch gezien een relatief veilige stad, de slechte buurten op de berghellingen in het zuiden en uiterste noorden daargelaten. Ik ben daar nog niet geweest, maar wil er wel een keer heen, onder begeleiding, zonder geld en dingen van waarde.*

Zo nu en dan bereiken je berichten uit die armere wijken. Gisteren kreeg de situatie aldaar een gezicht. Een neefje van een vriendin, zeventien jaar oud, is op straat doodgeschoten. Erg treurig, al onderhoudt ze weinig contact met dat deel van de familie. De laatste keer dat ze haar nu overleden neefje de hand schudde was een jaar geleden, uitgerekend op de begrafenis van zijn oudere broer. Toen was hij al aan de drugs. Twee andere broers waren al eerder omgekomen door drugsgerelateerd geweld, dus heel verrassend is zijn lot niet te noemen. De begrafenis zal ongetwijfeld net als de vorige naar Mexicaans gebruik worden opgeluisterd door mariachi’s. Krijsende vrouwen en roepen om wraak zullen het drama compleet maken.

Filmmakers zouden een hoop ‘plezier’ kunnen beleven aan het Colombiaanse ‘tokkie-gezin‘ waar de jongen uit voortkwam. De aan de drank geraakte vader, een overtuigd ‘Uribista’ (aanhanger van de rechtse president Uribe en alleen al daarom niet geliefd bij de rest van de familie), verwekte maar liefst twintig kinderen bij verschillende vrouwen en liet ze stuk voor stuk aan hun lot over. Alleen de vrouwen uit het gezin weten zich aan de malaise te onttrekken door hard werken en het opzetten van eigen bedrijfjes. De oudste zoon is succesvol als advocaat. Het is afwachten wat er met de jongste telgen uit het gezin zal gebeuren. Ze zijn nu nog tussen de acht en twaalf jaar oud, terroriseren ze over enkele jaren ook hun buurt?

Personas de la calle
Ook in het oude centrum waar ik woon leven veel mensen op straat. Voor de meeste ‘personas de la calle‘ hoef je je geen zorgen te maken. Ze bedelen, laten je verder doorgaans met rust en zijn in tegenstelling tot de junks in Amsterdam wél blij met een stuk brood. Met de ‘recicladores’ is het bovendien goed zaken doen. Dylan en William brengen me wekelijks een zak hout voor de open haard en als ik het geld niet gepast heb gaan ze gerust een biljet voor je wisselen.

Helaas is er ook een ander slag mensen op straat te vinden, dus je moet wel goed op je hoede blijven. Ik ben al twee keer in aanraking gekomen met een drugsverslaafde ‘loco‘ die me erg agressief benadert. De eerste keer dat ik hem weigerde iets te geven bleef hij me achtervolgen en kreeg ik als afscheidscadeau een klodder spuug op mijn wang (misschien voor de zekerheid nog maar even een tbc-test doen?). De tweede keer dreigde hij me te vermoorden en in stukken te hakken. Misschien heeft hij bij de paramilitairen gezeten? Als ik hem in het donker tegenkom zet ik het wel op een lopen. Ik vertrouw er maar op dat ik harder kan rennen dan hij met zijn door drugs uitgeteerde lichaam.

Er doen ook verhalen de ronde dat er naast de gebruikelijke zakkenrollerij de laatste tijd meer gewapende berovingen plaatsvinden in de wijk waar ik in woon. Statistisch is het niet na te gaan, maar ik ken twee zeer recente gevallen uit mijn directe omgeving. Zo kreeg Julio, waar ik twee keer mee op stap ben geweest, drie weken geleden een pistool in zijn zij gedrukt. Hard ‘auxilio‘ roepen bleek genoeg om de dader te laten vluchten. Ik denk dat ik in zo’n geval maar beter niet de held uit ga hangen. Gewoon ‘tranquilo’ zeggen en netjes die peso’s overhandigen. Ik zorg er door dit soort verhalen wel voor dat ik zo min mogelijk geld bij me heb. En die bankpas laat ik voortaan ook maar thuis als ik hem niet nodig heb.

Andrea ontsnapte deze week aan een beroving door drie mannen hier bij mij in de straat. Die probeerden haar te omsingelen, waarop ze resoluut de op de hoek gelegen bakkerij in vluchtte. De uiterst sympathieke eigenaar – die laatst nog op ons verzoek overschakelde naar Nederland-IJsland – haalde resoluut een pistool (!) achter de toonbank vandaan en rende de straat op. De mannen waren al weggerend.

* Disclaimer: Ondergetekende acht zich niet verantwoordelijk voor het veroorzaken van overmatige bezorgdheid bij familie en vrienden. Lees vooral de laatste twee alinea’s niet als je rustig wilt slapen.