The N.N.s

During a bike tour this week, on the National University campus we came upon this art installation portraying a tragic and haunting chapter in Colombia's armed conflict. The artist told us that the figures, laid out to suggest a river's current, represent the corpses of murder victims which washed up along the shores of the Cauca and Magdalena rivers 'during the 1980s.'

However, from what I know, these corpses continue floating down the rivers and washing up on shore today, albeit in much smaller numbers.

In some Magdalena River towns these unidentified corpses, labeled N.N.s (ningun nombre/no name) have woven a culture of faith and belief around themselves. The people of these small towns retrieve the bodies, bury them and care for their graves, sometimes renaming them. In some cases, the idea is to give the drowned new lives. In others, the rescuers believe that by caring for the dead, the dead will repay the favor by caring for their caretakers.

Colombian-American photographer Juan Manuel Echavarría created a photography exhibit about the NNs which appeared in Colombia, the United States and Europe.

Exhibition of photos of NNs' tombs, by Juan Manuel Echavarría.

Exhibition of photos of NNs' tombs, by Juan Manuel Echavarría.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Fewer Murders, More Injuries

Police hustle away a young man a week ago in San Victorino. I don't know what he had allegedly done - perhaps assault or theft.

While Bogotá leaders have crowed in recent years about the city's decreasing
rates of kidnappings and homicides - during 2013 the homicide rate was 16.7 violent deaths for every 100,000 Bogotá residents, down from 22.1 per 100,000 in 2011 -  personal injuries have increased, from fewer than 42,000 in 2009 to over 45,000 last year.

'A city under the scourge of
personal injuries' reports El Tiempo.

The rise in personal injuries could well be a measurement issue. However, in a more peaceful city, one would expect a dramatic drop.

And, during the past few weeks, I've happened on more than my share of scenes of violence. Here are a few images.

An alleged thief lies on the sidewalk near the Museo de Oro. Other people had kicked him until the man in the striped shirt intervened. Soon after, police showed up and took him away. 

A policeman attends a young man (not visible), who had just been mugged by three youths who left his face and arm blooded before running off.  

The young man's injuries left blood splattered across the sidewalk.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Axis of Killing

South American homicide rates:
The region has some of the
world's highest murder rates. 

At the risk of being associated with a United States president of limited intellectual and moral capacity, it's hard not to call the triumvirate of tyrranies which blocked the United Nations Arms Treaty yesterday evil, evil, evil.

North Korea, a totalitarian dictatorship which has millions of its own people in concentration camps and threatens nuclear war to get attention; Syria, who dictator is massacring his own people; and Iran, which has also threatened to annihilate at least one of its neighbors, have blocked an arms treaty which could cut the ongoing slaughter of civilians around the world.

The arms treaty would, finally, impose some common-sense rules on the international traffic in weapons ranging from handguns to surface-to-air missiles. The treaty would, among other things, try to keep weapons out of the hands of murderous dictatorships. Maybe that's why these three regimes oppose the treaty.

The question shouldn't be whether or not to approve this treaty, but why such common-sense rules weren't created many years, civil wars and massacres ago.

Homicides on headstones. (Photo from IPS news)

The treaty is strongly supported by both Mexico and Colombia - nations which have been scourged by firearms violence fed by the globe's unrestricted weapons trade.

Fortunately, the treaty could still become international law thru a vote by the General Assembly, where support appears to be overwhelming. Then, however, it will have to be signed by individual nations. Nations such as Russia and China, which have sold weapons to authoritarian regimes, will probably resist

Assault rifles and bullets: Subjects for free trade?

signing, as will nationsl like Pakistan, which wants to weapons to threaten India, at the expense of its own children's food and education. For its own part, the U.S.'s powerful and paranoid gun lobby opposes the treaty because, it says, it could restrict private ownership of guns - even tho both the treaty's authors and independent analysts say that won't happen.

Ironically, the treaty would actually benefit the wealthy arms exporters in North America and Western Europe which already apply strict controls to their arms sales. That certainly doesn't make it right to hawk weapons to nations which lack money for food and schoolbooks, but it's a little bit less evil.

Ironically, one of gun rights' fundamentalists' strongest arguments is the supposed need for citizens to protect themselves against a tyrranical government. So, it's ironic that gun rights defenders are allying themselves with and defending the interests of exactly such dictatorial regimes, which obviously are not worried by a free trade in arms.
By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours