The World's Tallest Shopping Mall?

The 19th Street entrance to the Bacatá's shopping mall.

The BD Bacatá was supposed to be a Bogotá landmark - and it is turning out to be, just not in the way its builders and the city had hoped.

At 67 stories and 217 stories, it is the tallest building in Colombia, the second tallest in South America and the world's first crowd-funded high-rise - and may be close to going broke.

Huawei, one of the mall's tenants.

According to news reports, the builders haven't paid contractors, and investors are asking where their money is. Even the building's name has been seized as an asset, according to one report.

The builders insist that they will finish the building - but it's already years overdue.

Meanwhile, some of the apartments in the shorter northern tower have been occupied, and the ground floor mall is functioning, altho some of the stores have yet to open.

Fashionable bags, coming soon.

Building a mega-project in a run-down section of downtown Bogotá always looked like a challenge. And the project ran into various challenges, including a huge rock at the site, and legal complications stemming from the building's wide variety of tenants: the shopping mall, offices, restaurants, apartments and a luxury hotel.

The Bacatá seen from Plaza Las Nieves,
a run-down district a few blocks away.

The project was perhaps a bad idea for non-economic reasons as well. Its adjoining streets are already congested and chaotic, and the surrounding blocks have little public space and no green space at all.

For the good of Bogotá, and especially downtown, let's hope that the Bacatá limps to completion. The blocks to the project's north are full of apartment blocks and university buildings under construction. It would be a pity to have an unfinished eyesore standing between the university district and the historical center.

If the Bacatá's owners cannot round up the resources to complete their project, hopefully the bank or a big investor (Donald Trump?) will step in a do so.

Until then, call the Bacatá's south tower the world's tallest shopping mall.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Who Said They Can't Coexist?

Who said that Starbucks would drive Juan Valdez out of business? Here in the Centro Internacional, the two cafés operate side-by-side, and both seem to be doing okay. I don't know the prices, but have been told that Starbucks appeals to a higher-income market. These two, however, appeared to have pretty similar clientele: businessy-looking people pecking at laptops or staring at their smartphones.

At least, they're both serving up Colombian beans, even if the farmer likely gets only a drop from each cup.

Coffee, it's worth noting, was a big productivity booster when introduced in Holland centuries ago and replaced beer, which wasn't great for productivity.

According to their websites, there are 106 Juan Valdez cafés in Bogotá and 10 Starbucks.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Who Said They Can't Coexist?

Who said that Starbucks would drive Juan Valdez out of town? Here in the Centro Nacional, the two café's operate side-by-side, and both seem to be doing okay. I don't know the prices, but have been told that Starbucks appeals to a higher-income market. These two, however, appeared to have pretty similar clientele: businessy-looking people pecking at laptops or staring at their smartphones.

At least, they're both serving up Colombian beans, even if the farmer likely gets only a drop from each cup.

Coffee, it's worth noting, was a big productivity booster when introduced in Holland centuries ago. Of course, it gives drinkers a lift. But back then it also replaced beer, whose consumption didn't have the best effects on productivity.

According to their websites, there are 106 Juan Valdez cafés in Bogotá and 10 Starbucks.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

One Last Chance for Terror Victims

During the 1990s, the Nigerian government brutally repressed residents of the Ogoni Niger River Delta who were protesting against the Royal Dutch Shell oil company's efforts to drill for oil in the region.

The details of who did what on whose orders in that far away place and time may now determine whether victims of Colombian paramilitaries receive compensation from the Chiquita banana company in United States courts.

Victims of the Nigerian repression sued Shell, an Anglo-Dutch multinational, in U.S. courts, using a 1789 statue known as the Alien Tort Claims Act. The victims accused Shell of being behind the Nigerian government repression. But a U.S. court ruled that the case did not fall under U.S. jurisdiction because the events had occurred outside of the U.S. and the defendant was also a foreign company.

Relatives cry at the funeral of victims of a 1998 paramilitary
massacre in the oil town of Barranabermeja.

The ruling was important, because it limited the jurisdiction of the Tort Claims Act by creating a
presumption that the statute did not apply extraterritorially.

The ruling dealt a blow to Colombian victims of illegal armed groups who claim that U.S. companies, including Coca Cola, Drummond Coal Co. and Chiquita banana, promoted and financed rights violations and should compensate victims in Colombia.

So far, in part because of the ruling in the Nigerian case, the Colombian plaintiffs have lost. However, the strongest of those cases, against Chiquita banana, is now being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Paramilitary fighters pose for a photographer.

In the Chiquita case, the wrong seems almost undeniable. The company has admitted that between 1997 and 2004 it handed over $1.7 million to outlawed Colombian paramilitary groups, labeled terrorists by the U.S. and Colombian governments. (Previously, it had made payments to leftist guerrillas while they controlled the region around its banana plantations.) Chiquita paid a $25 million fine to the U.S. government, but nothing to the victims in Colombia. Chiquita also proceeded to sell its Colombian plantations. While Chiquita was paying off the paramilitaries, those groups murdered and robbed peasants and drove them off of their lands.

The paramilitaries' victims allege that Chiquita bears responsibility for the crimes committed by the illegal groups it helped finance. Chiquita disagrees. As a Chiquita spokesman told journalists: 'Chiquita has great sympathy for the Colombians who suffered at the hands of these Colombian armed groups, but the responsibility for the violent crimes committed in that country belongs to the perpetrators, not to the innocent people and companies they extorted.'

Chiquita no longer has banana farms in Colombia,
according to this image from its website.

Chiquita argues that it had no choice but to pay off the illegal groups in order to protect its employees from kidnapping and murder. But of course Chiquita did have a choice: to leave Colombia, as it ultimately did. Those suing Chiquita allege that the company paid off the paramilitaries in return for benefits such as repressing union activists.

Not all recent rulings in Alien Tort Act cases have gone against plaintiffs. In one, a district court ruled that Ugandan member of a sexual minority group could sue a U.S. citizen who had allegedly encouraged Ugandan officials to persecute sexual minorities in that nation. But that case may be different because, among other reasons, the defendant is a person, not a corporation. Another key issue may be whether any decisions to support abuses were made in the U.S. or overseas.

The victims' chances in U.S. courts appear slim. But they have few other options for compensation. Since Chiquita sold its Colombian plantations, there are no assets they can sue for here, where the atrocities were committed.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

What El Tiempo Forgot to Mention

'Successful debut for Aval on the New York Stock Exchange.' Aval's owner, it just so happens, also owns El Tiempo.

If you read yesterday's El Tiempo you learned that Grupo Aval, the huge Colombian banking group, made a successful initial offering on Wall Street - altho it didn't make quite as big a splash as did Alibaba.

'Wall Street welcomes
Grupo Aval's Shares.'

But Colombia's leading newspaper neglected to mention that Aval and El Tiempo share the same owner, billionaire Luis Carlos Sarmiento. The news wasn't necessarily distorted - Reuters and Fox business news also described the offering as successful. But you could question the huge spread Sarmiento's newspaper gave his bank. Other Colombian media also reported the offering, but made it their second or third story. 

The website La Silla Vacia also pointed out that El Tiempo has given much less coverage to other stock offerings, including even that of EcoPetrol, Colombia's national oil company, in 2008. La Silla Vacia also observed that El Tiempo gave flattering attention to a highway project in which Sarmientos has interests.

El Tiempo has the right to splash whatever it wants across its pages, and readers have the right to judge the paper's credibility. But in the United States and other nations it's basic journalistic ethics to mention possible conflicts of interest in reporting. Take, for example, the Washington Post's coverage of Amazon Corp. and its owner Jeff Bezos, who bought the newspaper last year.

When Sarmiento, Colombia's richest man with a fortune of $17 billion, purchased El Tiempo in 2012 he probably saw it mostly as a trophy. But when he did so, he promised that the paper's coverage would not be biased by his business interests. Now, the more that he uses it to blow his own horn, the less respect it'll bring him. 

For its part, El Tiempo's smaller but older rival El Espectador has belonged since 1997 to Colombia's second-richest family, the Santo Domingos. A glance at El Espectador's coverage of one of the family's other prominent properties, La Cerveceria Bavaria, finds a lot of flattering coverage, including the information that Colombia's beer consumption is still relatively low. 

I'll wait with bated breath for El Tiempo to do an exposé on Grupo Aval or one of its banks, or for El Espectador to uncover corruption inside Bavaria.

Latin American journalism, unfortunately, is known for corruption and favoring special interests. The ownership of Colombia's two most important newspapers by its two richest families is a test for whether journalistic ethics can stand up to economic interests, and the results don't look so encouraging.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Who'll Teach Bank of America English?

Nigerian spam? No, a communication from the U.S. second-largest bank. I received this letter (on paper, via the postal service) today from Bank of America. I don't know why they would have closed my account and don't want to (even tho they kept blocking my credit card because of the crime of living in Colombia).

B of A would not be the first company to send me a letter mistakenly, but it's the first one to send one in such garbled English. From the start, it sounds like a text generated by Google Translate - which it probably is.

'Subject: Thanking the company for choosing. 

Dear Mr. 

On behalf of Bank of America has the honor to address you on the occasion to thank you....' and so on.

If this had come by e-mail, I'd have considered it amateurish spam. But it came from one of the world's largest banks, which surely must have a native English speaker somewhere on staff capable of proofreading.

Ever heard of including a subject in your sentence? Or making your objects refer to something? I suspect that with a little bit of time I could reconstruct the original Spanish-language letter which this one was evidently Google-translated from.

Update: I've since learned that someone apparently tried to hack my account, by phoning B of A and trying to pass themselves off as me. And, they also apparently bought more than $2,000 in furniture using my card number. Thanks to B of A I won't have to pay that fraudulent charge, so I'm grateful to the company, irrespective of their English skills.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Bogotá's British Moment

Bogotá's not going to become a British colony, or change its official language to English. But a flurry of events have made this a somewhat British moment for Colombia's capital.

Thanks Avianca. Recently, Avianca started non-stop flights between Bogotá and London. A long haul.

Business is Great. The UK government is marketing the country as a gateway to Europe for Colombian businesses.

The UK set up a website promoting trade between the two countries.

And, not long ago, Britain's education ministry opened an office in Colombia to recruit students for UK universities.

Despite the distance between them, Colombia and Britain's ties go way back. The British sent a British Legion to fight against Spain alongside Simon Bolivar's armies. (There is still a British Cemetery in Bogotá, beside the Central Cemetery.) Later, British recognition of the newly independent states was crucial in their being recognized by other nations.

Colombia and Britain have warm relations today in part because of geopolitical and geographical coincidence. London argues that history and population trump geography in its claims to the Falkland Islands, which are located off of the coast of Argentina, which also claims the islands and calls them the Malvinas. Using somewhat similar historical arguments, Colombia claims the San Andres archipelago, off of the coast of Nicaragua, which has a rival claim to the islands.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Renovation or Expulsion?

Leidy Garzon and Gonzalo Bonilla Fuentes, owners of military supply stores who fear being forced to sell and move out. 

'The center is not for sale! Defend the Center!'
A woman walks past a military supply store. 

For more than 40 years, Gonzalo Bonillo Fuentes has sold military gear in this neighborhood between the Plaza Bolivar, Palacio de Nariño and Carrera Decima. Around the corner, Leidy Garzon's family has manufactured and sold boots for two decades. Now they, along with other military supplies vendors, typographers and pawnshops, are facing eviction by the government, supposedly to make room for ministries. 

"More than 5,000 people work in this neighborhood, and we're going to be thrown into the street!" protests Garzon, who is president of the neighborhood's association, 'The Committee in Defense of the Center'. "They want to finish off the small businesses. How will we survive?"

Military supply store owner Leidy Garzon shows
the letter business owners recieved telling them they
have to sell  their properties. The letter declares that
they have no recourse to oppose the changes. 

The business owners says that the government has offered them only a pittance of their properties' market value. And, if their businesses were relocated, customers would not know how to find them in a new neighborhood. And they doubt that the area would be used for ministries, suspecting instead that the government will bulldoze the buildings, sell to other businesses and make a big profit. 

Locals learned of the government's plans thru a letter in May, which adds a sense of fultility to injury by specifying that 'no legal measures may be taken against this announcement'. If property owners do not sell at the government's prices, they say, they've been told their properties will be expropriated.

The neighborhood is run-down, with sagging balconies and walls missing patches of paint. (Business owners complain thatthey aren't allowed to repair their properties because of historic landmark designations.) 

The threat to their livelihoods seems to have generated a new political and class consciousness among the business owners, who are mostly people of modest means. They brand the government's plans 'communism' and 'Chavism', like anti-business policies imposed by the government of Venezuela. And they're full of resentment against hight government officials, who earn generous salaries and benefits, such as free transport. 

In fact, it doesn't seem clear to me why the government would want to relocate ministries here. several already located just blocks away, where they function well (or poorly) enough, depending on your point of view. 

And central Bogotá abounds with empty lots and vacant buildings which badly need occupation, including the grand, old and vacant Cundinamarca government building on Jimenez Ave. just below La Septima. 

Government officials, particularly city leaders, have said they want to reinject life into the city center. Government districts, which become ghost towns after 6 p.m., are not the answer to that. 

And, how likely is it that the locals will be forced out only to see the renovation plans stall? That's happened to at least two nearby projects.

A map showing the blocks to be 'renovated.'

Gonzalo Bonilla Fuentes in his shop. He's been here for 25 years and in the neighorhood for 46, and says the government's offered to pay him only a fraction of his property's value.

This parking lot and adjoining vacant building might make a good spot for a ministry. 

Pawnshops on Carrera 10 would also have to sell. 

A 60-year-old printing machine, still at work in a neighborhood typography shop.

Activists post signs declaring 'The center is not for sale.'

A sexy soldier. The military supply stores sell to military high schools, security firms and the occasional soldier or police officer. 

'Wake up! Respond! This neighborhood is worth gold!'

Peeling paint. With grand old buildings, the neighborhood has seen better days. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Like Sons Like Father: The Uribe Polemic Continues

During his presidency, Alvaro Uribe generated either hate or adherence: For some, he was Colombia's savior, for others a warmongering ally of right-wing death squads. And, since he left office, Uribe has continued generating polemic as leader of the opposition to his succesor Juan Manuel Santos.

So, perhaps it's not surprising that Uribe's sons Tomás y Jerónimo Uribe Moreno are generating their own controversies.

At first glance, it's hard to understand why. The young men operate some admirable businesses: Artesanias de Colombia, which markets traditional handicrafts, and EcoEficiencia, which recycles and disposes of hazardous wastes, as well as providing other environmental services. They've also been involved in real estate and the family ranch.

Still, suspicions of favoritism have never gone away. During their father's eight years in power, some of those businesses grew tremendously.

But entrepeneurship deserves its rewards. So perhaps it's just the young men's style - or the reputation inherited from their hard-driving father - or political resentment - that's generated conflict.

Still, questions keep coming up. There were the links to a pyramid scheme. And when Bogotá was reorganizing its waste disposal system a few years ago, the traditional recyclers - poor people who pick thru the garbage on the sidewalk for whatever they can use or sell - charged the Uribe brothers with trying to monopolize the city's recycling industry and eliminate the independent recyclers' way of life.

The Uribes backed off of that recycling plan, altho they continue in the industry.

In 2009 the brothers were accused of receiving favors after a property they purchased outside of Bogotá was rezoned as a free trade area. Soon after that, someone created a Facebook group named 'I commit myself to kill Jerónimo Alberto Uribe, son of Alvaro Uribe.' The group's profile page said they wanted to show the Uribes the 'horror of war.' A young arts student turned out to be behind the Facebook group. He was absolved of any crime.

The brothers were back in the news this April after investigative journalists revealed that they had opened a bank account in a the British Virgin Islands, considered a tax paradise. The Uribes responded that a business partner had decided to open the account there in order to sell handicrafts and that the business had failed.

And last week El Tiempo published a long report about allegations that the brothers had engaged in tax fraud. In today's paper, the Uribes reject the charges and claim that their clients lied.

Throughout the young Uribes' business career has run the suspicion that they have benefited from their name and father's influence. In December 2010, ex-Pres. Uribe and journalist Daniel Coronell clashed on Twitter after Coronell reported that Tomás Uribe had met with a Brazilian construction company seeking contracts in Colombia. Coronell said that, however innocent Tomás Uribe might be, such a meeting didn't look good. The ex-president responded furiously and Coronell asked him to "Explain the fortune of your children."

Thru it all, president and now ex-president Uribe has given no ground in defense of his sons' honor. In 2008, he affirmed "my sons aren't corrupt. They aren't influence traffickers before the state...My sons have chosen to be men of work, honest and serious."

The family also argues that the younger Uribes have no contracts with the state.

It's probably inevitable that the ambitous sons of such a powerful, polarizing figure as ex-Pres. Uribe will attract controversy.

But it's also true that the sons of a president should walk very carefully, and, at a minimum, they've failed at that.
By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

120 Years of the Pasaje Rivas

Audelino Gutiérrez, whose sold in Pasaje Rivas for 60 years, and his son Fernando. 

The historic Pasaje Rivas, repository of lots of Colombianismo, celebrated its 120th anniversary this week.

Luz Marina has had her stand at the Pasaje's
south entrance for 17 years. 

Today, Bogotá is full of 'centro comerciales,' many of them lacking any character or personality. But all of them owe a historical debt to the Pasaje Rivas, the pioneer in their industry.

The Pasaje Rivas, together with two adjoining pasajes added later, forms an 'L', connecting the chaotic and polluted Carrera Decima to the pedestrian-only Calle 10, on the edge of La Candelaria. Its 17 independent businesses, in dark, narrow corridors, sell a mixture of touristy and practical things, including souvenirs, handicrafts, clothing, house decorations and furniture.

And, of course, it has lots of great people, and the sort of human attention you won't find in one of those prefab glass-and-stainless steel malls.

The pasaje's crowded interior. 

When Pasaje Rivas opened in 1893 the area was on the edge of Bogotá. Over the century since, it's seen huge changes, including the growth of the city's largest popular market, La Concepción, on its western side, and the market's later elimination to make way for widening Carrera Decima.

Pasaje Rivas was one of the few institutions in central Bogotá to survive unscathed the disastrous 1948 Bogotazo riots.

In the mid-1900s, the Santa Ines neighborhood to the market's southwest evolved into the notorious El Cartucho district, known for robbery, prostitution and drug sales and use. After FARC guerrillas launched bombs from El Cartucho at the presidential palace during Pres. Alvaro Uribe's 2002 inauguration, the city bulldozed El Cartucho and replaced it with the existing Tercer Milenio Park.

Audelino Gutiérrez displays some ruanas. 

Directly west of el Pasaje Rivas, San Victorino has grown into one of the largest popular market areas in South America. Meanwhile, to the market's east, the La Candelaria neighborhood sank almost to the level of a slum and is now reviving.

Pasaje Rivas, with its colorful mixture of offerings, seems to have changed much less.

Audelino's son Fernando, 40, says that despite all of the changes around it, the Pasaje Rivas has held its place.

"What we sell here is unique," he said.

Audelino Gutiérrez, aged 80, has sold furniture, fabrics, hammocks, traditional kitchen equipment and furniture in Pasaje Rivas for 60 years. The market's survival has always been a struggle to survive, he says - but it has survived.

"Here, we survive on basic sales," he said. "But we survive."

He showed me a guillotine for cutting panela, a bandeja for preparing patacones and dishes for

The view from the second floor. 

serving beans and seafood. He also pulled out traditional hats used in rural Colombia, including the famous Vueltiao (these are made in Colombia, not China) and another named the sombrero Uribista after ex-Pres. Uribe, whose family owns ranches.

Gutiérrez also showed me ruanas, simple wool ponchose which have come to symbolize the Colombian of modest means - just the sort of local people who shop in the Pasaje Rivas.

Audelino Gutiérrez offers hats. 

A plaque placed by the city this week. 

One of the pasaje's larger stores. 

The Pasaje Rivas's south entrance, on Calle Diez. 

The Pasaje's western entrance, on Carrera Decima. 

Cane baskets for sale. 

...and fake fruits. 

Views of the chaotic, noisy and polluted Carrera Decima, which should improve when TransMilenio finally starts operating here. 

Audelino demonstrates a guillotine for cutting panela. 

and a patacones-maker.

Windows of the pasaje's deteriorting second floor. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours