The Zona Rosa's English Problem

EAT

Archie's and the Rock'n Jazz Casino. 

La Zona Rosa, Bogotá's high-end nightlife area, is perhaps notorious for its Yankee influences: TGIF, Hard Rock Cafe, McDonald's, Burger King, and on and on. But I looked around and could hardly find a business name - even Colombian brands - that wasn't an English word. Here's a sampling. 

It's something you find far beyond the Zona Rosa. Bogotá, including even poor neighborhoods where hardly anybody knows English, is saturated with English business names. Do people feel that a gringo title will make them more successful? Make them appear more sophisticated? Give customers more confidence in the business?

Perhaps it works for Colombians. But for someone from North America, at least for me, it all seems like cheap imitation yelling out a mentality of insecurity and inadequacy.

Burger King.

Go Cycling, with, for good measure, 'Columbia'.

 

The Fuga Cafe Bike Studio.

Inside the Fuga the books are all in English.

McDonald's and Chuck e Cheese.

Life Fitness.

Parking, and Zara Home.

Seven Seven and Archie's.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Anglolandia for the FARC

The people's army? Or the army against the people?

This pro-FARC graffiti appeared this week on the Universidad Nacional's Bogotá campus, and, strangely, it's in English.

A mural in the Teusaquillo neighborhood
portrays a landmine victim. The FARC
plant landmines to protect themselves
against soldiers, but many civilians are
injured and killed by those mines.

But isn't English the language of the United States, the 'empire'? And isn't Spanish the language of romantic revolutionaries, not to mention of the students and professors of the Nacho?

Was this written by a native English speaker? Maybe, but perhaps maybe not. A native, it seems to me, would have written that 'Simon Trinidad and Sonia are examples of...'

Grammar aside, the statement made me think about the foreigners who support Colombia's largest guerrilla group. Mostly, these seem to be young idealists in comfortable places like Sweden and Denmark, who read the FARC's websites and swallow unquestioningly their language about revolution and social justice. These true believers don't bother with the reality, easily available on human rights organizations' websites, about the guerrillas' innumerable atrocities, including recruiting children, massacring civilians with mortars and car bombs, planting land mines, displacing peasants, murdering indigenous people, and on and on.

Those sorts of outrages would never be tolerated in the comfortable, law-abiding wealthy nations where these fellow travelers live and enjoy good lives. However, by supporting the FARC, they implicitly condone such crimes when they are committed against the poor of Colombia.

A FARC motorcycle bomb killed and injured civilians
in the town of Tumaco in July, 2012.

But there's a saying here: 'If you're under age 30 and not a communist, you don't have a heart; if you're over 30 and still a communist, you don't have a brain.'

Simon Trinidad and Sonia, by the way, are FARC leaders imprisoned in the United States.

The people's army? In 2002, a FARC mortar landed on the roof of a church in the town of Bojayá, Chocó, killing some 120 townspeople who had taken refuge in the church from fighting between guerrillas and paramilitaries.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

What Happened to Authors Bookstore?

'For rent'. The sad scene in the Zona G. 

While pedaling thru the Zona G this afternoon, I passed by Authors bookstore and received a shock. The place is closed and has For Rent signs in the windows.

Authors was a landmark for Bogotá's anglophone and anglophile communities: it sponsored readings, hosted a writers' workshop (which published a book of short stories) and sold lots of books, both new ones and classic. I hope Authors is in the process of relocating, but I couldn't find any sign of it, either at their address or on the Internet. The store's Twitter and Facebook pages cut off back in March, and their website is dark.

And, if they were relocating, why didn't they take the awning with them?

Operating a bookstore is a real challenge nowadays, when fewer people read, and those who do often do so on electronic devices instead of dead trees pulped up and rolled out into pages. (I still prefer the paper books.) I've learned about the difficulty of the books trade at Bogotá Bike Tours, which has a selection of hundreds of used paperbacks in English, German, French and other languages, but few customers for them. Authors' selection was great, but the books were expensive. In Bogotá Bike Tours you can pick up a used paperback for a few thousand pesos; in the book district around Calle 15 and Carrera 9 you can pick up used paperbacks in English for 10,000 pesos and up.

I don't know of any English-only bookstores left in Bogotá, but stores like Lerner and the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Cultural Center, both in La Candelaria, do have English-language sections.

Authors bookstore back in its heyday. (Foto: Canadianhayes.com)

A feast of books is gone. (Foto; Vive.in)

The writers group at Authors has hopefully found a new home.

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

Can an English-Language Paper Survive?

It's not easy starting a newspaper these days, especially when it's a real one - printed on dead trees.

As a veteran of several newspapers - several of them sadly deceased - I'm a real believer in the printed word, as well as the role newspapers play in uncovering graft, telling truth to power, bringing new perspectives on old topics. Other media, such as video, just can't do the job with the same agility and detail.

But, as everybody knows, the traditional newspaper industry is in crisis, mostly due to the Internet, which places limitless information at our fingertips, instantly. Several big papers in the U.S. have folded, others slashed their staff (including stringers like myself). It's not so much because people are reading less, but because the advertising, which is historically the media's main income, has shifted to the Internet. At the same time, the Internet has filled with parasitical publications (read: Huffington Post), which take information generated by others, rework it and republish it as their own.

So, it's admirable to see someone launch The Bogotá Post, a new newspaper that's actually printed on paper.

I've got to hand it to this group. The Post contains real news and real stories by real writers. They evidently interviewed an Irish deputy minister visiting Colombia about Colombia's peace process. (He's optimistic, altho the two countries' conflicts have fundamental differences. And, was the IRA as corrupted as are Colombia's guerrillas by drug trafficking and human rights violations?) Jenny Boyle (it'd be nice to know who she is and how long she's lived in Bogotá and how she commutes) writes an opinion column criticizing the women-only cars in TransMilenio, which for her represent the city's resignation to an ugly element of human nature - men's sexual predation. (Unfortunately, human nature - and particularly male nature - is often ugly, and Bogotá can't easily change that.) The inaugural edition also includes a nice opinion piece by Briton Oli Pritchard about the wonders of bicycling in Bogotá. I'm afraid that Pritchard forgot to mention Bogotá's aggressive drivers and clouds of pollution, but it's still nice to see urban cycling praised - especially in an article that's not surrounded by auto ads.

Then there are some somewhat dated news articles about Gustavo Petro and a few predictable features about Usaquen and the monuments of San Agustin. (I couldn't tell whether the Post is meant to be a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly publication.)

What the Post's inaugural issue conspicuously lacks is much advertising - its only income, since the paper is free. Hopefully, that will come in future editions. But it'll be a challenge in the Internet age.

Sadly, my journalistic career is a trail of deceased and agonizing publications. I started out journalistically with the Florida Flambeau, a spirited, independent daily paper covering Tallahassee, Florida's universities. We published exposés and hard news, as well as sports. But the Flambeau died - beaten by a more commercial paper catering to the sororities and fraternities, according to this Wikipedia article. Several years and newpaper jobs later, I worked for the Bolivian Times, a weekly published in La Paz, Bolivia. The BT struggled along with a colorful and hard-working, but sometimes incompetent and occassionally drugged-out staff, an owner often more interested in flattering his elite friends than doing serious reporting, and Bolivia's dysfunctional economy. Nevertheless, we managed to do some interesting reporting. The BT finally died - perhaps deservedly - after many of us were stiffed of our salaries.

Recent years have not been easy for English language publications across Latin America, as English-language papers have folded not only in Bolivia, but also in Caracas and Mexico City, where the surviving Mexico City News saw its staff slashed a few years ago. Besides the Internet, such newspapers have also fallen victim to changing hiring policies. Foreign companies used to bring down foreign staff, but now tend to hire locals.

The Bogotá Post joins the Colombian capital's only other English-language print publication, The City Paper. I'm not sure how The City Paper, a monthly, has managed to survive the tough times for newspapers despite little advertising. I've enjoyed The City Paper's talented, sometimes magazine-quality photographs and features (detracted, unfortunately, by irregular editing). Both are in competition with the Internet-only, Medellin-based Colombia Reports, which publishes interesting articles, many of which however are recycled from the Spanish-language press.

Good luck to the Post. A new voice is always important. Let's hope this one lasts. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours