Marquéz on the Web

Gabriel Garcia Marquéz

When Nobel Prize-winner Gabriel García Marquéz's family decided to sell his documents to a center in Texas after his death in 2014, it caused lots of teeth grinding back in Colombia. After all, Marquéz, a leftist buddy of Fidel Castro, was no great admirer of Yankeeland - and was even banned from entering the U.S. for many years.

Yet, the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas has accomplished something which many Colombian institutions with less resources and sophistication might not have: It has placed tens of thousands of pages of Marquéz's documents online, where they are indexed and accesible in both English and Spanish. Expect a flood of high school and college papers on topics such as Marquéz's relationship to other authors, his publishers and the evolution of his works.

Bill Clinton and Marquéz.

The New York Times reports that the documents have already destroyed the myth that Marquéz (like Jack Kerouac with his On The Road) wrote his great novel One Hundred Years of Solitude in a spontaenous flow of creativity. Rather, Marquéz 'regularly sent out sections for reactions from friends and literary critics. He also published about a third of the chapters in newspapers around the world before the book’s publication, and sometimes made adjustments according to audience reaction,' says the Times.

Of course, Marquéz's relationship with the U.S. wasn't one dimensional. He traveled across the U.S. South, admired and learned from North American authors such as William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, and was buddies with Bill Clinton.

Among the documents on the Ransom Center's website are manuscripts, reviews, press clippings, letters and lots of photos of Marquéz with other literary luminaries, such as Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Venezuelan newspaper editor Teodoro Petkoff and even U.S. film makerWoody Allen.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Visa Blues

Sad and slow: Visa services row beside the U.S. Embassy.

Went to the U.S. Embassy the other week to get a new passport, and the folks there who offer support services for U.S. visa seekers are suffering.

Fewer than before: Visa seekers and their friends and
relatives wait outside the embassy.

The kid who took my passport photo pointed to the mostly empty space in front of his shop. Last year, that was full of visa applicants and their relatives, he said, sadly.

"That man has got us like this," he said, sticking his forefinger into his own neck.

Not difficult guessing who 'that man' is.

Coincidentally, I've read that U.S. tourism and applications by foreign students are down, too.

I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area right now, where the Internet economy is booming. Seems like every other shop and restaurant has a 'help wanted' sign: but Trump's stricter immigration laws are keeping out the immigrants who want to do those jobs, harming the economy.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

On Clinton vs. Trump, it's No Contest

Clinton for president of the U.S.

Tuesday's U.S. presidential vote will be a monumental event for both the U.S. and for the world. El Tiempo's editorial section today is full of column's about the election - all warning about the dire consequences of a Trump victory. And anybody who's followed this blog has no doubt where I fall, for the interests of Colombia, the U.S. and the globe.

El Tiempo's editorialists point out the likeliest immediate consequences for Colombia of a Donald Trump victory: a reduction in aid and more barriers to trade and immigration. Trump's discourse is erratict and his policies unclear, but he speaks like an isolationist. That suggests that he'd cut back on the post-Plan Colombia aid programs and reduce support for any peace processes here. Trump might also kill free trade agreements with Colombia, as he's denounced such agreements with Mexico.

Trump's evident hostility to and even racism against Hispanics would not help relations, either.

El Tiempo's editorialists also point out that most economists predict a recession if Trump wins and

The dangers are endless.

imposes protectionist trade policies and slashes taxes for rich people like himself, which would balloon the U.S.'s budget deficit.

Trump's authoritarianess, as eloquently described by the Washington Post's libertarian Volokh Conspiracy blog  could not only endanger the U.S.'s constitutional system, but also set a terrible example for weak democracies in Latin America.

Trump "is thrilled by the kind of authoritarian government that the Colonists fought a revolution to end." writes Volokh. "His world is a world of conspiracy theories, not reason and evidence. It is a world of putting your opponent in a jail cell after the election, not peaceful transitions of power. It is a world of mob violence, not law. It is a world of crushing political dissent, not limited government."  

The Volokh writers compare the U.S.'s possible future under Trump to Venezuela, where democratically-elected presidents have trampled institutions, converted the oil-rich nation into a near-dictatorship and, along the way, also devastated its economy. 

Trump's ignorance and denial of reality on environmental issues, particularly climate change, is yet another disqualifier. Climate change is already affecting Colombia and would undoubtedly accelerate under Trump policies.

I could go on about Trump's misogyny and sexual predation, his lack of political experience, his rotten business ethics, his instability, his evident affection for violence and for authoritarian leaders such as Russia's Vladimir Putin, and perhaps most of all the danger of a man like him controlling nuclear weapons - but you get the picture.

Hillary Clinton certainly also has her ethics challenges. But, as an experienced politician she's performed competently and has generally respected constitutional norms, as Volokh, normally no friend of liberals, points out. And Clinton would undoubtedly continue the Obama administration's policies of engagement with the world and Latin America. And her economic policies would likely continue those Obama, who has shepherded the U.S. out of a deep recession into a slow but sustained recovery. Even with the rise of China, Latin America's economy still depends heavily on that of the U.S.

For Colombia, for the U.S., for the planet and for decency, support Clinton.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Time to Round Up Glyphosate?

Glyphosate being sprayed over Colombia. (Photo; Wikipedia)

A World Health Organization panel recently labeled glyphosate, the main ingredient in the Round-Up pesticide, as a 'probable carcinogen.'

The evidence is not clear, as this New York Times article points out, and, in contrast, the German government recently ruled that the herbicide was safe. Glyphosate manufacturer Monsanto also insists the herbicide is benign.

But there's enough reason to feel concerned about using glyphosate, the world's most popular herbicide and to wear a mask and gloves while spraying it in the back yard.

Composition of the mixture sprayed over coca fields.
(Photo; U.S. State Department)

Unfortunately, however, that's not an option for many Colombian campesinos potentially exposed to glyphosate, which is sprayed from aircraft in a concentrated form to try to kill coca leaf plantations. Unfortunately, sometimes wind blows the herbicide onto homes, food crops and bodies of water, possibly leading to ingestion by people. Some reports have linked glyphosate to skin problems and miscarriages. And Ecuador worries enough about the impacts of herbicide spraying in border areas to have filed suit in international court against Colombia.

Glyphosate's effects are contested. While glyphosate does kill plants, coca leaf farmers have learned how to deal with it, by spreading a protective coating over their crops' leaves, harvesting the leaves when they see spray helicopters approaching, hiding coca plants between rows of food plants, or replanting quickly after spraying. According to some reports, there is even a 'Round-up ready' variety of coca bush.

A child's drawing shows coca leaf
spray planes killing animals. (Image: Daily Kos)

The loud and prominent coca spraying campaign has also generated lots of resentment against the United States throughout Latin America.

And while glyphosate spraying has been a component of Colombia's aggressive coca eradication campaign, Peru and Bolivia which do not allow spraying have also reported reducing their own coca leaf plantations. Moreover, it's not clear that reductions in coca leaf plantations have affected supplies in the United States and Europe. Cocaine prices are reportedly dropping in the United Kingdom, and higher drug prices in the United States may be due to a crackdown on precursor chemicals. It also appears clear that reducing supply is a much less effective way to combat drug consumption - since it drives up prices - than is reducing demand.

The latest report that glyphosate could be carcinogenic is no reason to ban the chemical. But it does provide yet another reason to consider shelving a dubious anti-drug campaign.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Female Solution?

Where are they off to? DEA agents on the move. (Image: YouTube screen grab)

United States Drug Enforcement Agency guys reportedly attended sex parties sponsored by Colombian narcotraffickers.

In early 2013, Honduras' ambassador in Bogotá resigned after revelations of sex parties with prostitutes inside the embassy.

A few years ago, US Secret Service agents started an international scandal by hiring prostitutes in Cartagena during the run-up to an international summit meeting in Cartagena.

The key factors here? Machismo and testosterone.

A New York Daily News cover about the
Cartagena Secret Service scandal.

Hiring prostitutes and attending sex parties may or may not be wrong, depending on your moral code.
But they certainly do generate scandal, and they can place agents in compromising situations and make them vulnerable to blackmail and extortion.

Fortunately, there is an easy solution to these male-generated problems: Hire only female agents and officials.

Women are of course not immune to sexual improprieties. But the endless parade of prominent men apologizing and resigning for involving their private parts with the wrong people suggests to me that there's something uniquely male behind this.

On the other hand, removing men from all responsible positions in government, business and even science might be difficult. And the U.S. government's solution: imposing a zero tolerance policy for paying for sex, might also be unrealistic, considering how ingrained the sex-and-partying culture appears to be.

Or, perhaps U.S. government bureaucrats believes they can re-engineer human nature and stop thos macho guys, far from wives and girlfriends, from noticing exotic women?

Perhaps a more realistic policy would be to accept commercial sex as a realistic part of male behavior, legalize and destigmatize it, so that it ceases to become a potential source of blackmail and extortion. That might, at the same time, also improve working conditions for the prostitutes involved as well as making it possible to ensure that those working women are not also on the tab of spies, narcos or terrorists.

And, while they're in the business of decriminalizing behavior, why not also consider decriminalizing drugs, as well. That would eliminate the whole need for those corruptible DEA agents in the first place.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Day the Cold War Ended

Headlines in today's El Tiempo announce the U.S.-Cuba detente and the FARC ceasefire announcement.

The quiet little island of Cuba rocked the region today with two announcements which may mean the end of the Cold War.

Cuba and the United States will normalize relations, meaning that Washington has accepted that hemisphere's only communist nation, and one of very few in the world, is no threat to democracy and capitalism.

And the FARC, the hemisphere's oldest and largest Marxist guerrilla group, announced in Cuba a unilateral, indefinite ceasefire in its war against the Colombian state.

Coincidence? Partly, perhaps. After all, not even Cuba's closest ally Venezuela seems to have known in advance about the Cuba-U.S. agreement. But both moves reflect a transformed world in which capitalism - if not liberal democracy - has triumphed and the communist vestiges are either futile or irrelevant.

The FARC have announced previous ceasefires, but never before an indefinite one. This one may not even last - the FARC leaders promised to call it off if the military attacks their forces. But it's yet another sign that the guerrillas are tired and weakened and really want to reach a peace deal in Havana.

The Economist points out that the guerrillas' move hands the Colombian government a difficult choice: if it ceases attacks on the guerrilla it will implicitly accept a bilateral ceasefire - an idea which Pres. Santos has repeatedly rejected. But, whatever happens, the guerrillas have clearly signaled that they want 'no mas.'

The ceasefire will be great news for Colombia if it means an end to kidnappings, attacks on infrastructure, car bombings, land mines and all the other horrors the guerrillas have inflicted on Colombia.

As for the Washington-Havana detente, it removes a source of tension between Colombia and its biggest trading partner, Washington, since Colombia has maintains normal relations with Cuba. And it further weakens Venezuela, already in an economic tailspin, which has long counted on Cuba as its closest ally and unwavering partner in denouncing Washington policies. Now, Venezuela becomes the hemisphere's prime target of U.S. criticism.

'Times in the Americas are changing,' says The Economist.

That's true. But if capitalism seems to be triumphing everywhere - including 'communist' China and inevitably in Cuba, one can't say the same about liberal democracy. Looking across the hemisphere, it's unclear whether liberal democracies, on the model of the U.S., Canada, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and others will prevail, or whether the region will become dominated by authoritarians disguised as democracies, on the model of Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Gabo Lands in El Imperio

Marquéz at work on 'One Hundred Years of Solitude.'

The Marquéz family's sale of the Nobel laureate's papers to an academic center in Austin, Texas has, understandably, generated lots of polemic back in Colombia.

"For the National Library (of Colombia) it would have been an honor to have those materials," Culture Minister Mariana Garcés told the FM radio. "For Colombia, it's a great pity not having them."

She said that Colombia had expressed interest in the collection.

One of the manuscripts donated to the Harry Ransom Center.
(Photo: Harry Ransom Center)

But the location is also appropriate in some ways. For one thing, the Harry Ransom Center, which is part of the University of Texas, also holds documents from some of Marquéz's literary influences, particularly William Faulkner, whose fictional Mississippi community helped inspire Marquéz's town of Macondo.

Perhaps more relevantly, Marquez lived the last half century of his life in Mexico City, where he is buried. Some Colombians resented what they considered Marquéz's small contributions to the mostly poor people who inspired his stories. So, it's in a way appropriate that his papers will rest outside of Colombia as well.

Marquéz's corrections and editions on manuscript
of 'The General in his Laberynth.'

But the Texas donation also draws attention to the Colombian novelist's often difficult relationship with the United States. A life-long friend of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, the young Marquéz worked for Cuba's government news service, Prensa Latina, for which he was based for a time in New York. But because of Marquéz's relationships with leftist groups, including the Colombian Communist Party and the M-19 guerrillas, Marquéz was for decades banned from entering the U.S., which he sometimes referred to as 'El Imperio' - until his friend Pres. Bill Clinton reversed the order. Now, Colombian Marquéz scholars will have to travel not only to El Imperio, but to the land of the Bush family, in order to study the Colombian idol.

Marquéz's family did not completely stiff Colombia. Items including the typewriter he wrote 'One Hundred Years of Solitude,' on and his Nobel Prize medal will go to the Colombian National Library.

Many commentators on the El Tiempo newspaper's story about the sale seemed to get a cynical pleasure from the spectacle of the leftist writer's family selling his material to a United States institution.

"That's the Colombian left," wrote Fercast0513. "Just imagine, Gabo's son sold his leftist father's files to a university in the North American empire."

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Sex Work: From Problem to Solution?

The Cartagena Hilton, where a White House advance team member may have hired a prostitute.

In April 2012 U.S. Secret Service agents produced a huge scandal by hiring prostitutes while preparing for Pres. Barack Obama's visit to Cartagena, Colombia.

Sex workers leader Fidelia Suárez.

Bizarrely, the scandal overshadowed the international summit meeting Obama was attending - and dragged on and on, as details dribbled out about the agents' activities with the hired ladies of Cartagena.

But throughout the whole episode and after, the Obama administration repeated one point: Nobody directly employed by the White House had had a dalliance with a prostitute. Now, however, an investigation by the Washington Post newspaper finds that one minor White House advance team worker may have brought a prostitute to his room in the Cartagena Hilton Hotel.

Sen. Armando Benedetti.

The worker, a 25-year-old Yale University students, was a 'volunteer' paid on a per-diem basis, in charge of coordinating car transport in Cartagena. Hilton Hotel records indicated that he had received a female overnight guest. The worker, whose father had contributed almost $24,000 to the Democratic Party, denies having hired a prostitute in Cartagena, and in another case in Cartagena a prostitute was registered to the wrong room.

In any case, the Post's reporting suggested that U.S. government investigators had been pressured to leave out information about any White House connection to the scandal.

What two consenting adults do together is their own business, especially where prostitution is legal. But in this case, one of them was responsible, in at least a small way, for the safety of a president. And, even where it's legal, the prostitution industry inevitably has connections to organized crime.

But you can bet that if the U.S. government workers had associated with narcotic cartel leaders instead of prostitutes, the issue would have received much less attention.

The sex workers advocates in a recent march for workers' rights. 

The new polemic comes at a time when Colombian prostitutes are speaking up, at least a bit, and asking for labor protection like any other job. Senator Armando Benedetti has introduced a bill intended to guarantee benefits and protections for sex workers. A court recently ruled that sex work is a profession like any other. During a recent discussion about the issue sponsored by El Tiempo, a spokeswoman for a prostitutes' organization described abuses by police and exploitation by brothel owners.

The proposed law would, among other things, provide health benefits to prostitutes and their immediate relatives.

"The idea is that you (sex workers) have the rights of every other worker and aren't mistreated," Benedetti said.

But everything related to sex work continues to be sensitive.

"The problem with this type of project is that some think that I'm promoting prostitution, and the sex workers think that I want to end their profession," Benedetti said.

"When you talk about sex work, you talk about work," said Fidelia Suárez, representative of the Association of Women Seeking Liberty, an organization of sex workers. "We are not the problem, we are part of the solution."

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Joe Biden Looks Out for Colombia

U.S. VP Joe Biden - looking out for Colombia?

Air pollution in Colombia? The United States government is against it!

Cheap ethanol fuel for Colombia? The U.S. government is all for that one.

But as far as inexpensive generic medicines go - well, they could threaten Colombians' health.

Those are some of the messages in a recent letter from U.S. Vice President Joe Biden to Colombian Pres. Juan Manuel Santos. The U.S. government's concern for Colombians' health and well-being would be much more moving if the sentiments weren't also in the U.S.'s economic interests, as well as Washington's interpretation of U.S.-Colombian free trade agreements.

Biden wants old dirty trucks junked, to open
the borders to truck imports from the States.

Biden may very well stay up nights worrying about the damaging effects of diesel particles on chatarrización, or junking, of one old truck for each truck imported into the country. Predictably, Colombia has not been forcing truck companies to junk those old, polluting vehicles, something which would cut into the companies' profits. That creates obstacles to legally importing new trucks, most of which come from the U.S.
Colombians' lungs. But it also just so happens that Colombian law also puts roadblocks in the way of U.S. truck exports to Colombia. Colombian law requires the

From the press accounts about Biden's letter (I haven't been able to find the original online), it's not clear whether Biden wants Colombia to junk the truck-junking law as an obstacle to free trade, or whether he wants Colombia to actually carry it out in order to open the gates to more truck imports.

A mural in the Universidad Nacional in Bogotá shows a fat American eating Colombia's industries and benefits.

The cynic in me asks whether this law in any of its forms will actually clean Colombia's air. Will companies really junk their old, polluting trucks, or just throw out the shells and keep the dirty engines on the road? For how long will newly imported trucks run clean in a nation which doesn't enforce emissions laws?

Sugar cane harvesting. Cane ethanol is much more
environmentally sound than U.S. corn ethanol.

As for ethanol, Biden doesn't like the Colombian law which prohibits ethanol imports as long as Colombian ethanol production could supply the country's needs. That, after all, sounds a bit like a violation of free trade.

A charitable view would be that Biden worries about Colombia's ethanol supply out of concerns about health and the environment. (Ethanol, made from organic materials,is mixed into gasoline to supposedly reduce pollution and greenhouse gases.) But ethanol's pollution impacts are questionable - mixed into gasoline it reduces particulate production and carbon monoxide pollution, but in smoggy cities it can increase harmful ozone pollution.

Regarding global warming gases, ethanol's impacts are probably less positive. Researchers debate

Generic medicines are much cheaper -
and less profitable for corporations.

whether the sugar cane ethanol produced in Colombia and Brazil generates less carbon dioxide than does regular gasoline. But it does seem clear that corn-based ethanol isn't economically viable and produces more carbon dioxide than would burning plain old gasoline. But making ethanol from corn is politically profitable in the U.S., where presidential campaigns pass thru Iowa. That's why the U.S. wants to export its subsidized corn products to Colombia - even tho that loses the U.S. money and could drive Colombian small farmers into bankruptcy. (Of course, it's also true that this cheap corn saves Colombian consumers money. But I suspect that this cheap imported corn goes into junk food products, rather than healthy foods.)

Finally, Biden doesn't approve of Colombia's plans to accelerate approval of some 'bio-similar' versions of 'biotechnological' medicines, which are created from living tissues, after the original medicines' patents have expired. Such plans infuriate big pharmaceutical companies, many of which are based in the U.S. and charge high prices for the original medicines.

While it is certainly true that companies have a right to recover their research and marketing investments, and that pharmaceutical companies lose some income to generic substitutes of their products, it's also true that expensive medicines are out of the reach of most Colombians, and that these medicines' costs are bankrupting Colombia's healthcare system.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Gun Sale Gone Wrong

A Sig Sauer model S P2022 pistol. (Photo from Sig Sauer website)

It seemed to be yet another routine United States arms sale to Colombia: 64,485 Sig Sauer model S P2022 pistols, with a price tag of $28.6 million.

But this sale went wrong - in two different ways.

A military equipment shop in central
Bogotá advertises Sig Sauer products.

Several months ago, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that German-made Sig Sauer pistols, part of a lot shipped here between 2007 and 2012, were in the hands of Colombian security forces. That meant a violation of German law, since Germany has not authorized the sale of such arms to Colombia out of concerns about human rights violations and Colombia's internal conflict.

The sale put the U.S. government into hot water with the Germans because the U.S. had apparently promised the Germans not to resell the arms to a third country. Ironically, the U.S. government could have legally sold Sig Sauer pistols to Colombia - if they were made in Sig Sauer's plant in New Hampshire. However, the pistols shipped to Colombia were reportedly a mix of U.S.- and German-made arms.

German officials told Semana magazine that the case was "very grave," but that it required more investigation.

Whatever the human rights challenges of Colombian security forces, this apparently illegal sale underlines the importance of regulating and monitoring international light weapons sales, as the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, which is awaiting ratification, would do.

Perhaps the U.S. and German governments are monitoring these weapons to determine whether Colombian security forces employ them in human rights violations. However, they will not be able to monitor all of the pistols, because last November 100 of them were stolen from the police even before their importation process was complete.

Authorities reported recovering 36 of the pistols and arresting six people, including pawnshop owners, who'd participated in the robbery and black marketing of the guns, reports El Tiempo. A police official had sold the guns for 500,000 pesos, about US $260.00. each. But the other 64 guns are out there, likely in the hands of criminals, who may use them to rob, rape or murder civilians - or even to kill the police the guns were intended for.

By all accounts, Sig Sauers are well-made, long-lasting guns. So, Colombians will have reason to fear these weapons for many years to come.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

New Name, Same School of the Americas?

For decades, the School of the Americas played a controversial role in Latin American politics.

Founded in 1946 in the United States-controlled Panama Canal Zone, the school trained tens of thousands of military and police officials from Latin American countries.

Some of the school's alumni notoriously went on to commit severe human rights violations and even become military dictators, giving the school a sinister image among the left.

In 1984, the school was relocated to Georgia, and in 2001 renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (Whinsec).

Through the school's first decades, when it concentrated on anti-communist training, as well as during its recent incarnation as a anti-narcotrafficking academy, many of the school's students have come from Colombia, according to the 2004 book 'The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas' by Lesley Gill. Between 2001 and 2003, 21 of the school's 88 Latin American instructors came from Colombia - more than from any other nation.

Under its new name, the school was supposed to place emphasis on protecting human rights, Pres. Bill Clinton said at the time.

However, a recent study by John Lindsay-­Poland of the Fellowship of Reconciliation found that a number of the school's Colombian ex-students were later implicated in or convicted of human rights violations.

For example, Mauricio Ordoñez Galindo taught a leadership course at the school in 2001-2. Back in Colombia, he commanded an anti-kidnapping unit. In 2009 he was charged with participating in the killing of four civilians and is now serving a 46-year prison term.

Maj. Alvaro Quijano Becerra and Capt. Wilmere Manuel Mora Daza taught courses about democracy in the school in 2003-4. Back in Colombia, they were charged a few years later with collaborating with outlawed paramilitary groups by leaking them military information.

Others have commanded troops allegedly responsible for murdering civilians, according to Lindsay-Poland's report.

Jaime Lasprilla Villamizar taught the General Staff and Command course at the school in the early 2000s. Back in Colombia, Lasprilla commanded the Ninth Brigade near Huila, which committed nearly 60 extrajudicial killings, according to Gill. Lasprilla was never charged in the killings and in 2009 was promoted to brigadier general.

The report lists some 14 of the school's alumni associated or convicted of human rights violations or other crimes. I have no idea what proportion of the school's ex-students that constitutes. But if the school is supposed to educate its students in human rights, then any participation in abuses seems to be too much.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Foreign Profits Win Out Over Colombian Lungs

Lobbying by U.S. truck makers means Bogotanos will suffer from smoke-spewing trucks for years to come, The Chicago Tribune reports.  

It's a story which should embarass all Colombians - and shame those of us from the United States.

This year, the Colombian Ministry of the Environment planned to require emission filters on all new

A Coca Cola truck contributes to Bogotá's air - and lungs.
Filters can remove 90% of particulate pollutants.

trucks - an environmental/health measure long required in developed countries.

But U.S. truck manufacturers, which dominate the Colombian market, cried out to heaven, the Chicago Tribune reports. The air quality measures gave unfair advantage to European manufacturers, they claimed (because the Europeans make cleaner vehicles, perhaps?). The truck makers and buyers also claimed that environmental measures were too expensive for Colombia - even tho the lack of such controls costs Colombians many billions of dollars every decade in health and other costs, according to Universidad de los Andes Dean of Engineering Eduardo Behrentz (as well as untold human suffering).

Bogotá's buses don't bother with filters, either. 

Conveniently, the malleable Colombian environmental authorities postponed the new filter requirement until early 2015, the Tribune reports (and we'll see what happens in 2015).

"The Colombian government is on the (industry) side, and it's allowing the import of technologies that are considered obsolete in the country where they were created," Behrentz told the Tribune.

The truck makers and buyers apparently also used free trade agreements Colombia has signed to argue that health and environmental measures impose unfair restrictions on capitalism, according to the Tribune piece.

But the immense health damage from air pollution, which causes thousands of premature deaths every year in Bogotá alone, means other kinds of restrictions on people's lives.

Of course, trucks aren't the only culprits contaminating our lungs. Spend a short time on a Bogotá street and you'll see that cars, buses, trucks and factories all share the responsibility - as do the authorities who turn a blind eye to the problem.

EcoPetrol recently invested huge sums to lower the sulphur levers in the country's diesel fuel to 50 parts per million - a respectable level for a developing nation. But Behrentz says that money's wasted as long as the country doesn't require emissions controls and allows decades-old vehicles to continue operating.

Even police vehicles flout environmental laws.

Behrentz, who helped write the law which was postponed, sounds embarrased about his own government.

"I don't praise my own government that chose (foreign companies') interest over the interest of the Colombian people," he told the Tribune.

Also check out my blog (in bad Spanish) specifically about air pollution:

www.airenuevobogota.wordpress.com

The result...smog blankets Bogotá.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The U.S. Embassy's Awkward Neighbors

Jorge Alberto Parra, right, with companions by their tent across the street from the U.S. Embassy.

Just a few years ago, Jorge Alberto Parra had a solid job working in General Motors' Bogotá assembly plant as a mechanical engineer and welder. Today, he shares a plastic-walled tent with several other ex-GM employees, without running water, a toilet or electricity, except for a television run off of a cell phone battery.

770 days protesting, and counting.

The story of Parra and his companions might be just another story of poverty and survival, if not for the fact that their campsite is across the street from the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá. From their humble abode, Parra and his friends believe they've forced one of the world's most powerful corporations to change its policies and hope to compel the company to rehire them.

Parra is the president of ASOTRECOL, the Association of Injured Workers and Ex-Workers of General Motors Colombia. The protest began in August 2011 with 68 participants, Parra says, including mechanics, welders and electricians complaining of carpal tunnel, tendonitis hernias, they claimed they developed working at the GM plant. Parra himself says he came down with tendinitis, bursitis and carpal tunnel during his nine years working for GM. But GM did not recognize the workers' ailments as job-related, says Parra.

Parra inside the protesters' tent. 

The group set up across the street from the embassy instead of the GM factory because at that time the US government owned much of GM, having bailed the company out during its bankruptcy. Also, Parra believes that the U.S.-Colombian Free Trade Agreement obligates the U.S. government to improve worker conditions at U.S.-owned factories here.

During their stay here, the protesters have carried out a hunger strike, during which they sewed their lips shut, and also a pseudo-crucifixion.

The protesters' residential arrangement may be rudimentary, but has its comforts. They've got free round-the-clock security thanks to the embassy entrance across the street, free internet from a nearby hotel and bathroom and phone charging services from nearby businesses.

The employees of the heavily fortified embassy seem to tolerate the protesters at their front gate. But sometimes they do a little more. Parra says that P. Michael McKinley, until recently U.S. ambassador, even made several friendly visits to the protesters. (The new ambassador has not yet been appointed.)

The protesters are easy to spot
on this quiet, residential street.

McKinley "is a really friendly guy," says Parra.

But relations with embassy soured when the men symbolically crucified themselves and the embassy responded by calling the police, who closed down the block and sent in an anti-riot squad. Later the personaria, a municipal human rights entity, "who said we were provoking the embassy," Parra recalls.

U.S. unions and churches have supported the protest. The United Auto Workers even flew Parra to the U.S. for a six-month speaking tour. The pressure apparently produced some results. Last year, mediators from the States came down and tried to broker an agreement between the protesters and GM officials. But Parra says the company offered each of them only 10 million pesos - about $5,000 - and a course in opening small businesses, but that the company made clear it didn't want them back. What the workers really want, he says, are new jobs with GM.

GM Colmotores recently issued a statement saying that they had never fired employees because of health problems and that they had tried to resolve disputes via mediation and according to Colombian law.

Still, Parra believes, their protest has accomplished a lot - pushing GM to improve its treatment of workers injured on the job.

"We've accomplished more than ever before," says Parra.

And Parra says his group is determined to keep camping indefinitely.

"We're here until victory!" he says. "We'll welcome the new ambassador."


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Fault of Free Trade?

'The cry of the people.' During a recent march, protesters equate free trade agreements and multinational corporations with slavery.

Protesters in recent weeks in support of Colombia's struggling small farmers aimed much of their anger at one target: the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, which they say has opened the gates to imports and pushed down crop prices.

The FTA did reduce tarrifs and remove other barriers to imports of foods and many other products. However, in the case of agricultural products, the tariff reductions have barely begun - making it very doubtful that US imports are to blame - yet - for Colombian farmers' hardships.

On beans, for example, tariffs are to be phased out over a decade, at 10% per year. For milk, the phase-out period is 15 years, for rice,19 years. Since the treaty went into effect only last May, tariffs have barely changed. Many crops also have grace periods, during which tariffs are not reduced at all, and the agreement includes safeguards for Colombian farmers in case imports skyrocket.

And, the import statistics also cast doubt on the idea that free trade is to blame. Potato farmers have perhaps been the most vocal protesters - but last year's official potato imports totaled only 1 percent of Colombia's potato production. In the case of milk, imports constituted only 3 percent of domestic production. Can those tiny amounts really depress prices much?

In contrast, estimates suggest that contraband imports, primarily from Ecuador, are much greater and have much more impact.

But the idea that imports from the U.S. haven't yet hurt Colombian farmers doesn't mean they won't. In fact, they will, and Colombia will have to deal with many thousands of destitute farmers who will migrate to cities and live in poverty and misery.

On the other hand, free trade agreements do bring cheaper consumer products. But are those really beneficial if they mean cheaper junk food and

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Mother's Long, Futile Fight for Justice

In August 2007, two United States soldiers met Olga Castillo's 12-year-old daughter in a restaurant in the town of Melgar, took her to their base and raped her, Castillo says.

Castillo with a friend on Plaza Bolivar.

Since that day, the alleged crime has consumed Castillo's life. She lists off a long series of Colombian government and international human rights institutions she's appealed to - and had the door shut in her face: the ACNUR, the U.S. Embassy, the Defensoria del Pueblo and others.

Worst of all, the U.S. military men she accuses of attacking her daughter had diplomatic immunity and quickly returned home, where they're out of reach of Colombian law and Castillo's efforts.

The U.S. military did its own investigation of the case. But, according to a late 1989 news article - the most recent I've found - the U.S. never even showed the report to Colombian authorities.


All this despite a Colombian police report finding that the girl had been raped, and witnesses who saw the Americans' car arrive at the base late at night and drop the girl off near a public park the next day.

An unsophisticated person who makes her living selling handicrafts at fairs, Castillo - who is 40 but appears a decade older - seems confused by the many different agencies she's appealed to and received no help from. She's also frustrated because she doesn't understand computers.

"If I only knew how to use the Intenet, I could put international pressure on these people," she
believes. (If it were only so simple.)

While I have no independent evidence about what happened to Castillo's daughter, the woman seems to brim over with sincerity, and her feeling of trauma and injustice are palpable.

'Displaced by the Plan Colombia,' says Castillo's sign.

"What hurts most is that (my daughter) hasn't finished high school," says Castillo. "She should go to college. It's a daily torture."

Her daughter, now a young woman with a little girl of her own, doesn't like to talk about what happened to her that day in 2007. However, the trauma may have impacted her life far after. Castillo says that her daughter's partner beat her, injuring one of her kidneys, which had to be removed.

A man helps Castillo pack her tent on Plaza Bolivar.
She has not been given a permit to protest on the plaza.

Castillo believes that police and government institutions are actively shutting doors to her, and even accuses them of threatening her. Perhaps she's paranoid. Perhaps her long and unrewarded fight for justice has made her so.

Personally, I'd bet that Colombian and U.S. military authorities feel so certain that Castillo will get no help that they just ignore her.

The facts of this case aside, Castillo's situation is indicative of the injustice suffered, often unnoticed, by victims of crime by U.S. soldiers overseas, where they enjoy legal immunity.

After all these years of unrewarded effort, many people would have given up Castillo's fight as futile. But Castillo continues her battle, desperately seeking assistance of some international agency.

"Only when I know that (the soldiers) are in prison will I rest," she vows.

U.S. soldier's immunity clouds 2007 Colombian rape case (McClatchy News Service)

Investigan a dos militares de E.U. por violación de niña de 12 años en Comando Aéreo de Melgar (El Tiempo)

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Poor Year for Free Trade

'United States beats Colombia in first year of Free Trade Agreement,' headlines Sunday's El Tiempo.

The numbers are in, and they don't look great for Colombia.

After one year of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States imports from the US have shot up, but Colombia's non-traditional exports to the U.S. have risen little.

Potato farmers protest the Free Trade Agreement
recently in Bogotá.

The advocates, who called the FTA key for Colombia's economic growth, point out that the United States' economy has had a troubled year, which has generated weak imports. And, in fact, the first year's results show some hopeful signs: hundreds of small Colombian businesses have exported their products to many different parts of the U.S. And, encouragingly, the exports being sold to the gringos include manufactured products like vehicle parts, which generate skilled employment back here in Colombia. Close to 200 new products are being exported to the States, according to the Colombian government's count.

The benefits weren't equally distributed, however. While hundreds of companies based in big cities including Bogotá, Barranquilla and Cartagena started exporting to the States, traditionally poor regions like El Cauca and El Chocó benefited little.

'Exports to the U.S. didn't grow,'
reports El Espectador.

On the other hand, some Colombian exports, including agricultural products, declined.

But I've seen relatively little attention to the new imports, which are heavy on agricultural products, and their impacts. That's not surprising, since the U.S. heavily subsidizes its farming industry. A neighborhood nut seller told me that the importer he buys from has switched from Chilean to U.S. suppliers. Some of the US nuts were good quality, he said, but others didn't match the Chileans' quality.

I'd like to know what proportion of these agricultural imports are making healthy foods less expensive and more available, and what proportion is adding to the flood of cheap junk foods, which benefit nobody but their marketers. And then there are the cheaper cars, to jam Colombia's roads and poison its air.

And how about the victims, such as potato farmers, who now have to compete with mechanized U.S. megafarms, which receive huge subsidies from Washington?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Dictator for Democracy?

Raul Castro: First Secretary of the
Communist Party of Cuba, Dictator, and
now pro-democracy leader.

Today, a supposedly pro-democracy organization appointed the hemisphere's only dictator as its president.

If that makes no sense, it just might interpreted thru the lens of hemispheric politics.

The organization in question, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or CELAC, was founded in 2010 almost solely to defy the United States (and Canada) and to replace the Organization of American States, which is often seen as a puppet of Washington.

The CELAC is certainly not purely Latin. It has a dozen English-speaking member nations, albeit mostly tiny ones, and one Dutch-speaker, and 18 Spanish-speaking ones. Culturally, ethnically, linguistically or economically, these 33 nations with five official languages, lots of religions and varied economies and histories, have little in common.

So, nothing in particular ties the CELAC's members together, except one thing: they aren't the United States.

The CELAC's reasons for being are to exclude Washington and promote Hugo Chavez's ideas about socialist revolution. It was not by chance that Chavez was a co-chair (along with Chilean Pres. Piñera) of the committee that drafted the CELAC's statutes, or that its first summit was held in Caracas and its third is scheduled for Cuba.

Sure hope Raul's not too busy jailing journalists and
arranging one-party elections to promote democracy?

At the CELAC's second summit, held today in Santiago, Chile,  Chilean Pres. Sebastian Pinera handed the organization's presidency to Cuban dictator Raul Castro.

The vice president of Venezuela also read a letter supposedly written by Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president who has held power for some 14 years and recently began yet another term even tho he's been out of sight for more than a month in a Havana hospital suffering from cancer. The letter called for unity among the organization's members and denounced the U.S. blockade of Cuba.

Are Venezuela and Cuba the CELAC's models for democracy?

It's healthy to have a counterbalance to Washington-driven policies. But nobody should deceive themselves that an organization evidently directed by Cuba, a dictatorship which permits no free press, and by increasingly authoritarian Venezuela, will promote democratic values like free speech and the right to vote.

Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer got it right in this quote in a Washington Post article: “it’s hard to take the CELAC seriously when in their foundational charter they put that they’re going to defend democracy and then they elect a military dictator as its president.”

Oppenheimer observes that the CELAC has no headquarters. I couldn't even find a website for the organization. Perhaps the CELAC will do nothing more than organize meetings and issue statements, as leftist demagogues are so fond of doing.

On the other hand, the CELAC might do some good if it makes some think skulls in Washington D.C. realize the imbecility of the embargo against Cuba, which succeeds in giving Cuba a moral standing it didn't earn and generates responses like the CELAC.



By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Massacres and Money Making

Demonstrating a shirt's bullet-stopping capacity.

United States massacres may turn into a business opportunity for a Colombian company.

Miguel Caballero makes children's vests, backpacks, t-shirts and other wearable things that are (supposedly) bulletproof. Remember how mom sent you off to elementary school with the admonition 'Keep your jacket on so you won't catch cold,' or 'Wear your raincoat so you don't get wet'? Well, now moms can add a third warning: 'Keep your bulletproof gear in case a madman with a high-powered gun bursts into your school (or house of worship, or shopping mall, etc) and starts blowing holes in people'.

It's only practical good sense, after all.

Armor your kids today!

Of course, the danger from shootings has been wildly exaggerated by the massive media coverage of the recent massacre in a school in Connecticut. I'd be willing to bet that children stand in far more danger from a traffic accident on their way to or from school than they do of getting shot. But, nevertheless, I'm sure that some psychologically vulnerable, overprotective parents will take money away from their children's schoolbooks and computer funds to buy V-Bags, Puffer Kids, T-Shirt Kids and Safety Vests which will make their kids feel embarassed and uncomfortable and little safer.

But the totally insane thing here is that, unlike cold and rain, this is a danger which shouldn't exist at all. It only exists because in the United States high-powered rifles are sold so freely violent mentally ill people can and do buy or steal them and then start killing.

I suppose there's nothing wrong with Caballero manufacturing wearable bulletproof accesories for children - except that it makes totally unnecesarry threat seem normal and acceptable, when instead society should be addressing the cause - too many guns. The social hysteria reminds me of the Cold War paranoia, when many people, including schoolchildren, lived in constant dread of nuclear annihilation from the Soviet Union. But the U.S.'s gun threat is a completely home-made danger.

The U.S.'s gun lobby is already very powerful, and thrives economically on these massacres, which cause booms in gun sales. (I just wonder whether, in their hearts of hearts, gun company executives felt a secret thrill when this latest massacre happened, because they knew it'd mean huge new Christmas sales). But a gun protection industry will create an even stronger lobby. I'm waiting for bulletproof pews for worshippers to take cover behind, bulletproof store windows in malls, and on and on, until everyday life is lived in a paranoid fortress and a multi-billion firearm-industrial complex has grown up which will defend to its last dollar of profit the right to commercialize high-powered murder machines.

During the 1980s and '90s feature stories about Colombians using bulletproof business suits were regular fare for the international media, and deepened the country's image as one big free-fire zone. Altho it still has a serious homicide problem, Colombia has changed profoundly since the Pablo Escobar days. Interestingly, according to news reports, the company now sells 95% of its products outside of Colombia.

Now, the paranoia has shifted north, to the U.S. But, unlike the case of Colombia, which has long been victimized by global drug trafficking and drug prohibition policies, the U.S.'s mass murder problem is completely domestically-created.

Interesting Addendum:

The Canadian government made an awkwardly-timed announcement the other week celebrating "new market opportunities for its gun makers in the form of exports of assault weapons - which are banned in Canada - to Colombia. The announcement came the day before the assault rifle massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. Those "new market opportunities" for Canadian companies are evidently a result of the recent Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

Since assault weapons are, thankfully, not available on store shelves here in Colombia, I assume that any "market opportunities" would be sales to the military or police. But those organizations have had serious human rights issues.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours