The Centro Memoria

A worker said the Centro Memoria will be
completed in another two months, but I doubt it. 

The new Centro Memoria seen behind mausoleum pillars.

Perhaps you've noticed the oddly-shaped structure going up off of El Dorado Ave. near the Central Cemetery. With its narrow slit windows, it reminds me of a fort.

It is to be the Centro Memoria, or Memorial Central, which I am told will contain exhibitions about Colombia's sadly violent history.

The Centro will fill a void, since Bogotá's many museums contain little about Colombia's troubled and tragic history of civil wars, narco cartels and guerrilla insurgencies. But I don't know the details of this new museum, and I wonder whether its exhibits will end with La Violencia or Pablo Escobar, or something like that.

The building is in an appropriate spot, a block north of the Central Cemetery in an area where victims of El Bogotazo were likely buried in mass graves. The block contains huge mausoleums, now empty. People working on the site say the structures will probably be demolished, perhaps to make way for football pitches - which would be an excellent addition for youths from the troubled Santa Fe neighborhood just to the south. But it will be a pity to lose the mausoleums, particularly since artists decorated them with thousands of images of people carrying stretchers, representing victims of Colombia's violence.

The center already has a website: http://www.centromemoria.gov.co/

Related posts:

Bogotá's History of Assassinations

Remembering Jorge Eliecer Gaitan

Artists decorated the empty mausoleums with thousands of images of people carrying bodies with stretchers. 

'Life is Sacred.'

The wide sidewalk has become a living space for homeless people. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours