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A
Personal Visit to Colombia - A Land of Contrasts and Beauty
(January 10, 2004)
In late November and early
December, 2003 we spent two weeks in Colombia, mostly in the capital
city of Bogotá. In the following paragraphs and pages we have
documented our trip. We have two pieces of advice. (1) Be careful.
(2) Ignore everything you see in the movies and in the
mainstream media.
WARNING:
It is our duty to inform you of the dangers involved in traveling
to Colombia. Your decision to travel to Colombia should be made
with a full awareness of the risks. There is also great danger in
traveling to the Holy Land, yet thousands take that perilous
journey every week by balancing the risk with the rewards. Only
you can make that decision. Please visit the
US
State Department web site and read their information but take
it with a grain of salt and then read below*.
Daily
Life in Bogotá
We
will begin our journey by confessing that we are biased. We have
family in Colombia and most of them have lived there all their
lives. They go about their daily activities at work, school and
play with little regard for the real or imagined dangers that might frighten or
terrify most Canadians and Americans. I must admit that in my
first visit to Bogotá, I was intimidated by the awareness of just
where I was. I stayed in a superb (but very inexpensive)
hotel suite for 10 days. The first night, I barred the door and
stayed awake most of the night waiting for wild-eyed guerillas to come crashing in
my door to kidnap or kill me...the "gringo". Now I realize how silly
I was. It's laughable. I should have been more concerned when I
lived in LA.
On my second visit, we stayed with a family member for
15 days and I often watched out the apartment window on the 11th
floor or strolled in the park out front and watched small kids at
play at dusk or after dark, or a group of young men playing a
noon-time game of soccer. I watched lovers on park benches
oblivious to everyone and everything around them and an old couple
sitting in the afternoon sun feeding the pigeons. I was amused by
three policemen across the street. Two washed and polished their
shiny new pickup truck daily while the third played with, what
seemed to be their mascot...a young terrier pup. In fact,
passersby, stopped often to pet and play with their friendly
pooch. People strolled, window shopping or people-watching, others
rushed to catch one of the thousands of racing busses. Teenaged
boys gathered and checked out the girls on their way home from the
near-by college. One might guess you were in Anytown, USA....but
it's Bogota, Colombia. Whether it's Bogota, Baghdad or Boston
people everywhere strive for normalcy and find it in whatever way
they can. This is South America. There is a love of life that is
hard to find anywhere else. To borrow a French expression...they
have a "joie de vivre" that even the French would be
hard-pressed to demonstrate.
Is everyone happy in Colombia? Not
at all. Nov 1, 2004 -
According to a recent study of 112 countries by the University
of Rotterdam and reported in the magazine Cambio, Colombians are the happiest people in the world.) There
is abject poverty and it can be found mainly on the
south side of Bogotá and throughout rural Colombia. There is a
wide gap between the "haves" and "have-nots".
If money doesn't buy happiness then it follows that poverty
doesn't necessarily breed misery and unhappiness. You will find
the poor to also possess that inherent love of life. We hope that
the positive changes taking place in Bogotá and other cities will
also occur in the countryside and may narrow the gap between rich
and poor. It may also remove the symbolic banner that the leftist
rebels and their equally violent nemesis, the Paramilitary carry in a faux support of the poor of Colombia. The drug
trade has been the main source of revenue for both sides.
Thanks to the basic rule of supply and demand, drug users in the
rest of the world bear a great deal of responsibility through
their financial investment which supports the violence in
Colombia.
*In spite of the US State
Department's dire travel advisories, (emanating from high-crime Washington
DC), Bogota, Colombia is a safer city than Washington. Its
homicide rate plummeted from 72 deaths per 100,000 residents in
1994 to 28 deaths in 2002. Washington's rate in 2002 was 62 per
100,000.
Who are the people?
Most Colombians are Mestizos, with
mixed Spanish and Native American ancestry. The country was a
colony of Spain from 1499 to the early 1800s. Early on, Native
Americans blended quickly into Colombia's Spanish culture. Today,
96 percent of the population speaks Spanish.
Colombians take pride in being a
creative, warm and optimistic people. Families are close-knit and
extended families often live in close proximity.
Although literacy is relatively high
in Colombia, most especially in rural areas, the country's culture centers largely around oral
communication.
Colombia's history has been marked by
political and social unrest. The country won independence from
Spain after a revolution in 1810. It experienced civil war and
lost control of Panama at the beginning of the 20th century. The
FARC Marxist guerillas continue to wreak havoc on the country with
terrorist attacks on the people and infrastructure. The
Paramilitary, originally formed to counter the FARC, have also
committed atrocities. In the past year, Colombia has seen some
improvements. The kidnapping rate has decreased and the economy
has grown significantly with the value of the Colombian peso
increasing daily over the past several months.
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