Let The Homeless Eat Cake - or Starve!

An anti-social act? Giving food to a
homeless old man in Bogotá.
(Photo: El Banquete del Bronx)

Chalk this one up on the list of brilliant contributions to the public good by our city government:

Food donations to the homeless must meet high hygenic standards - or the hungry don't eat!

According to one police official, the new Police Code sanctions the distribution of food that doesn't have a sanitary registration - whatever that is. Perhaps a five-star restaurant, or at least a Juan Valdez, for the homeless?

The police also claim that distributing food to the homeless can cause fights and even homicides. A strange idea, which only makes one wonder what will happen if these people DON'T get food: Will they simply starve to death silently?

Anyway, what sort of hygenic standards do the homeless people's meals comply with when they DON'T receive handouts from churches and other groups? Take a look:

A homeless man searches thru trash for things to eat or sell. 

Does the food he'll find here have a sanitation registry?

Damnit! This pizza I found is past its sell-by date.

And pity the charitable folks who want to help the homeless - but are afraid of getting punished for doing so!

This is yet another example of government officials' urge to control everything they can, and their lack of empathy for those actually living in the real world.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The New Bronx

It was El Bronx. What will it be in ten years?

A year ago, this was a place of frantic activity: Drug dealing, prostitution, even torture and murder. Today, it's quiet, except for a few laborers demolishing the old buildings.

Plenty of drug addicts are still around. 

This was El Bronx, for years Bogotá's most notorious street, until one year ago Mayor Enrique Peñalosa sent in thousands of police to clear it out. Inside, they found torture chambers, cemeteries and child prostitutes and crack addicts.

The treatment of the people they found there was very irregular: some reportedly were bussed to surrounding towns and simply left there, while I'm told that others were dumped on the edge of the polluted Bogotá River. According to the city government, several hundred entered treatment for drug dependency.

The neighborhood's environment has changed. Fewer drug addicts wander about, and the threatening atmosphere is reduced.

One neighboring storeowner had conflicting feelings about the change. On the positive side, some

The entrance to what was El Bronx.

customers are no longer afraid to come to the area, she said. The homeless and drug addicts didn't bother her personally, she said, 'since they were doing their own thing,' but they did stink.

Many of the drug addicts now spend their days lying on the median strips of neighboring avenues.

The city has ambitious plans for the area, including attracting health care, design industries, higher education and building low-income housing. The neighboring Martires Plaza and the Iglesia del Voto Nacional are being refurbished.

But the city's plans feel like a threat for local businesspeople. The store owner said business owners fear the city will use eminent domain to purchase their properties without giving them a fair price.

The neighboring Iglesia del Voto Nacional is being renovated.

And Los Martires Plaza has also been fixed up.

The city is building apartments and shopping in what was the old Cartucho neighborhood.

Los Martires hardware stores.

 The neighborhood is full of small retail businesses.

And bedwear shops.

Once a wealthy neighborhood, some grand old homes remain.

Homeless drug addicts spend their days on La Plaza España.

A few blocks west, La Plaza España has changed little. Perhaps Bronx residents moved here.

Street art on Plaza España.

An old man sits in front of a closed pasta factory on Plaza España.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Homeless Man and the Monument

On Los Martires Plaza today I noticed these tell-tale clothes on the monument to Colombian patriots executed by the Spaniards during the revolutionary era.



Soon, the clothes' owner appeared: A homeless man who's apparently taken up residence in the monument. Remember that this is an extremely important monument, hallowed ground immortalizing the people who gave their lives to make an independent Colombia possible. But now it's an illegal homeless residence.

 The police and soldiers nearby don't appear to care....

The Iglesia del Voto Nacional, built in gratitude after the end of the Thousand Days War, is being repaired and renovated.

On the plaza today, homeless men listened to an evangelical service and then received lunch. How sincere is their faith?

A homeless drug addict on the plaza.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Homeless Tour Guide

Sergio, a homeless man who frequents La Candelaria, where he's a common sight scavenging stuff from the garbage, also doubles as a tourist guide.

Living on the street and sifting thru garbage provides lots of opportunity for reading, so Sergio stays well informed on current events. And that serves him well as tour guide. For those versed in Colombian politics and its social vocabulary, Sergio's irreverent and pointed commentaries strike home. He talks about the parapolitica scandal, which called into question the legitimacy of the Uribe administration, but has since been forgotten.

Sergio gets laughs by referring to Congress as a Cartucho of gamines of estrato seis. Translated, he's saying that Congress consists of wealthy street children from the notorious, drug- and crime-ridden neighborhood located a few blocks from the presidential palace, which was bulldozed in the early 2000s.

Sergio asks his audience for a few thousand pesos, and gets them. He also hits me up for a few bills, "to pay for my room.

"I'm no longer living in El Bronx," he says proudly.

Maybe not. But he shuffles off downhill in that direction. Maybe he's not living there, just shopping there.

Walking off towards El Bronx.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Protesting the Death of a Homeless Man

'Hug a resident of the street.'

Homeless people marched today to protest the recent murder of Marco Tulio Sevillano, known as ‘Calidoso’, a homeless man who died after being set on fire near the La Javeriana University just north of the Parque Nacional.

Sevillano's killing caused wide indignation and at least one previous protest march, by neighbors of La Javeriana. Sevillano's killers have not been found. Today's protest marchers said that other homeless people had been murdered, but their deaths hadn't been investigated - or even noticed.

'Do you know how someone ends up in the street?'

Also on Ave. Septima today, a group of activists protested the disappearance of Carolina Garzón, a Colombian university student and leftist activist who disappeared about two years ago while in Quito, Ecuador. Despite Garzón's activism, one of the protesters said that they did not know whether she was a victim of political persecution, common criminals or even human trafficking. 

'We are all Carolina.'

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Back Into El Bronx

A drug-addicted man walks in El Bronx, in central Bogotá.

A rare sight in El Bronx - a woman laughs at something. 

When I read in this morning's paper that the police had cleared out El Bronx, the notorious street of drugs, prostitution and stolen goods in central Bogotá, I thot: 'Well, another era's over, wonder where they'll go next.' In 2005, the city had razed El Cartucho, a vice- and crime-saturated neighborhood just a few blocks east, and replaced it with Parque Tercer Milenio.

Denizens of El Bronx. 

Whether out of cowardice or wise prudence, I'd never entered El Bronx, but I had heard lots about it: About the open drug dealing within, the crack dens, the child addicts, the prostitution and the selling of stolen goods; But also about the lives and the economy of what is also neighborhood, including small businesses like barbers and restaurants.

Today's papers reported that they'd cleared out El Bronx, which is also known as La Ele and adjoins Los Martires plaza, displacing thousands of people and cleaning out tons of material. Photos showed that what had been a hive of junk, shacks and human activity was transformed into an empty street which could have been anyplace.

I went down to see it. Instead, I found lines of riot-equipped police keeping people blocks away from El Bronx. "We don't want the people to go back," one told me.

Before the street was reopened, a boy pulls a
cart past a line of police. 

Instead, El Bronx's denizens were sleeping on sidewalks and gathered in a crowd of hundreds in Los Martires Plaza. In the plaza, while I talked to some police officers, human wrecks from El Bronx limped past us. Nobody knew what would happen. Several cops had told me that El Bronx's residents had resettled a few blocks west. "They'll have to go somewhere," I predicted.

Suddenly and without warning, the police line moved aside and, yelling with excitement, the crowd of dirty, ragged, drug-addicted men and women raced to El Bronx's entrance. They limped and hobbled, dragging ragged, dirty clothing, and pushing carts filled with their worldly belongings. I followed.

Beside and across from El Bronx's entrance stood lines of riot police. For once, El Bronx's residents ignored this gringo as he stood among them taking pictures. When I've passed by in the past and tried snapping a few shots of the melee of humanity in the street frantically buying and selling, the drug pushers in the entrance hobble out either offering their products or threatening violent punishment for photo taking. So, with cops all around and the El Bronx's residents distracted by the need for that next hit, I snapped away.

The background (According to news reports): Early Tuesday morning city employees arrived in El Bronx offering medical check-ups and food. Hundreds of Bronx residents got into their vans, and city workers cleared out the remaining people. While the street was unoccupied, the bulldozers entered and leveled everything, including shacks, workshops, small businesses, etc. Many Bronx residents lost the few belongings they had. Afterwards, the street was clean, but its structures were gone.

Police patrol a street in the Los Martires district. 

While El Bronx is off limits, homeless
drug addicts sit on a street-corner. 

I've never been anyplace else like El Bronx, and the mass of depravityand human degeneration reminded me of one of those accounts of human sinks you read about far away and long ago. But here they were, men, women and children completely given up to addiction, who paid for their habits by stealing, trash-picking or any other way.

A cop approached me. "Where are you from." "The United States," I told him, "but I live here."

...and sleep on a sidewalk. 

"And you're on bazuco?" he asked. That's the cheap and dirty form of cocaine which most street people are addicted to. He couldn't think of any other reason a person would come down here.

"No, just taking pictures," I said.

Another cop, who was also photographing, told me that El Bronx would not be the same. "They can come here and do their drugs, he said, but they can't rebuild their shacks. Instead, there'll be a half-dozen rehabilitation centers for them. Little by little, we'll reform them"

and wait...

Hopefully that'll happen, altho it seems to me that most Bronx residents are beyond recovery. The administration of Mayor Gustavo Petro, a leftist who has tried to treat drug use as a health and social problem instead of a crime, has tried setting up treatment clinics near El Bronx and other addicts' havens, but they haven't received much acceptance. In any case, other cops predicted that El Bronx wouldn't change.

A pedicab passes a handsome older building in
Los Martires, once a wealthy neighborhood. 

I entered only a few yards into the street, and then only with cops around. Several Bronx informed me that I'd soon lose my camera, so I retreated nearer the police line.

A middle-aged couple limped out. Despite being  drug-worn, they still looked friendly and warmhearted. They were Yudy and Cesar, and they'd frequented El Bronx since its beginning about seven years ago and said it was imported to have a drug 'tolerance area.'

"There are terrible things here, but also beautiful ones," they told me.

"What's a beautiful thing about El Bronx?" I asked.

For one thing, they said, bazuco addicts like themselves could feel a self respect in El Bronx, where everybody was accepted. "One doesn't feel denigrated."

And El Bronx is a place of life and death.

"Children are born and grow up in El Bronx," they told me, altho many of them are addicts from childhood.

"And you can buy anthing here, even brand-name clothing, for cheaper than you can outside."

A homeless man on Los Martires Plaza, where hundreds of Bronx residents waited. 

I pointed out that most of these items were undoubtedly stolen. But Cesar and Yudy didn't see much wrong with that.

"A fool who gets robbed deserves it." 

On Los Martires Plaza, Bronx residents wait
for the street of vice to be reopened. 

"And the terrible things?" I asked, altho I'd read many accounts. 

"The executions," they said, using the word ajusticiamientos, which suggests that the killers are doing justice. "They execute people for stealing, out here on the plaza."

I observed that killing someone for stealing seemed harsh. But they considered it justified.

"If one person steals, then others follow him," they pointed out. While much of what's bought and sold in El Bronx is stolen, those who control the street know that theft here will scare away customers. 

Yudy and Cesar, long-time Bronx visitors, say the street has postive aspects. 

The city had provided a medical van,
but it got few visitors. 

Then, the couple described a kind of torture performed on miscreants inside El Bronx. As best I could understand it, the offender was made to sit in a bucket of water, and then an electrical cable was dropped into the water. 

"Some survive, some don't," they said. 

The couple also knew El Cartucho, El Bronx's predecessor, and they say El Cartucho was much worse. 

The plaza's neglected monument to the nation's martyrs. 

As for Judy and Cesar, they work helping out in a nearby skid-row hotel. They'd like to get off of bazuco, and feel they are "80% of the way there."

That makes them exceptional in El Bronx, where most residents are beyond repair. Their employment has given them hope.

Storekeepers watch the action b
y Martires Plaza. 

"It helps to have responsibility," they told me. 

El Bronx sounds like a horrific place, altho also a sadly human one. Perhaps the city will clean it out, out of embarrasment of having this vice den so close to the city center and the historically important Plaza de los Martires. But then El Bronx's residents, who will always exist, will just move someplace else. 

On Los Martires Plaza young men pass the time waiting by pretending to fight. 

Race into hell: After the police opened their line, Bronx residents run back into the street. 

Racing back into El Bronx - and toward that next drug fix. 

Running back into the Bronx, some pull hand carts. 

This man stood at El Bronx's entrance, like a master of ceremonies. 

'Christ Loves You.'

The master of ceremonies gets photographed.

A man dressed in a burlap bag. 

A man pushes a snack cart into El Bronx. Things are returning to normal. 

The police search those heading toward El Bronx. 

The street's weathered buildings. The people here are poor, but satellite TV is essential. 

Afterward, Los Martires Plaza is covered with litter. 

The little-used medical van's windows reflect the plaza. 

Related Post: Battle in El Bronx

Free Drugs for Addicts?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours