The Decadence of the Liberal Party

Liberal candidate Humberto
de la Calle: A good man,
but a bad campaigner.

During much of Colombia's history, the Partido Liberal was one of two dominant forces - along with the Partido Conservador - in Colombian politics. The Liberals produced some 30 presidents and helped introduce peace treaties with guerrilla groups, the secularization of the country and expanded rights for women and minorities.

The Liberals dominated the presidency after the end of Frente Nacional in 1974, electing 5 of the country's 7 presidents.

However, the presidency of Ernesto Samper (1994-8), whose campaign was financed by drug cartels, tainted the party (and by the same token, his succesor Conservative Andrés Pastrana's failed peace talks with the FARC guerrillas threw the Conservatives into disrepute). The 2002 election of Pres. Alvaro Uribe, who started his political career as a Liberal, moved far to the right, and won the presidency as an independent, drained both major traditional parties of relevance.

The Liberals' lack of ideological consistency may also weaken it. The party houses both far-leftists
such as e-senator Piedad Cordoba, who evidently sympathizes with both the FARC guerrillas and the government of Venezuela, and conservative evangelicals.

In this latest presidential campaign the Liberals made the mistake of choosing as their standard bearer Humberto De La Calle, who led the government negotiating team in peace talks with the FARC guerrillas. But De La Calle's candidacy never took off, receiving only 2% of the vote. And neither did the Liberals enter into a coalition with the only viable centrist candidate, ex-Medellin Mayor Sergio Fajardo.

The Liberal Party endorses Ivan Duque, right-wing opponent of the peace deal.

Finally, after choosing a pro-peace candidate in the first round, in the presidential campaign's second round the Liberals endorsed Ivan Duque, the political heir of ex-President Alvaro Uribe, furious critic of the peace negotiations. A voter could be forgiven for wondering what the Liberals stand for -if anything.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Senseless Vacancy on Carrera 2

Not a bad view from the roof.

Inside: Rubble and crumbling walls.

When I moved to Bogotá in 2005, I'd ride my bike past a small abandoned apartment complex on Carrera 2 one block north of La Salle University. The place had been invaded by a bunch of never-do-wells, artists and street vendors who inhabited the building irregularly, as did the carpentry workshop next door. 

One day, the residents got evicted - and the building has sat empty ever since, with the exception of a family of caretakers, occasional filming work and an annual haunted house. 

This afternoon, the building, said to be Bogotá's first aparment complex, was opened to the public and transformed into an art project. It was a sad scene: piles of rubble, disintegrating wood work, broken walls. But the place has retained some historical elegance, as well as developed a worn, delapidated beauty. 

The complex is in these blue
 buildings on Carrera 2.

Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like the owners, whoever they are, have any plans to turn the place into something useful. I talked to the young man who administers the building, and he agreed that leaving this historic and centrally-located building empty was tragic. He suggested the building might be turned into an arts complex. 

I agreed, and mentioned also the possibility of creating an apartment complex.

"No. That would be commercial," he said, with distaste. 

Aren't artists interesting? Better that the place should sit vacant and abandoned than be tainted by capitalism in order to provide homes for people.

An urban post-armaggedon jungle.

A crumbling work by Toxicomano.

Once upon a time, a nice place to live.

Watch out: Death.

An art installation.

Great views of the city and the hills.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Ernst Röthlisberger's View of Bogotá

An indigenous man being punished by public humiliation in the stocks.

Born in Switzerland in 1858, Ernst Röthlisberger arrived in Bogotá 23 years later hired as one of the National University's first foreign professors to teach history, philosophy and law.

The machine room in El Charquito,
the hydroelectric works at Tequendama.

Fortunately for us, Röthlisberger was also an enthusiastic documentary photographer, and chronicled soldiers, tragedies, construction work and everyday people. He returned to Switzerland about 1900, but his work was only revealed in 2015, when his descendents donated two albums of photographs to Bogotá's National University, which restored them. Dozens of his photographs are now on display in the Archivo de Bogotá.

Röthlisberger's photos show an interest in dramatic events, such as the construction of the El Charquito hydroelectric complex near the Tequendama falls, whose ruined machines still remain, and the conflaguration in the Arrubla shopping mall, located in what is today City Hall on Plaza Bolivar, which destroyed the complex and also many priceless historical papers, including Colombia's independence documents. 

Soldiers.

He also photographed recruits to the Thousand Days War, as well as common people on the street. To me, those are the most interesting pics: The wealthy in their bowler hats and the poor in their bulky ruanas and dark faces - whether due to heredity or work. 

I liked the photo of the wealthy businessmen chatting and ignoring the indigenous street vendor alongside them - a scene which can be seen today. The bareness of Bogotá's eastern hills is a testament to the fact that residents cooked and heated their homes with firewood. 

Also jarring is the photo of the indigenous man seated on a sidewalk with his legs in the stock. Which is crueler, public humiliation or today's private solitary confinement?

The train to Zipaquira.

Carrying a confessional.

Mules on Plaza Bolivar.

Falls on the Rio del Arzobispo, today above the Parque Nacional - and almost off limits because of muggers.

Note the dramatic class differences in dress. Which side are the rich on?

A mill on the way up to what is now Monserrate.

A warship, presumably from the Thousand Days War.

The Arrubla conflaguration on Plaza Bolivar in 1900.

A view along the Calle Real, today's Carrera Septima, looking toward Plaza Bolivar.

The U.S. Embassy was located off of the Plaza Bolivar.

A view of the Iglesia de Egipto when it stood almost alone.

The Eastern Hills were completely deforested. Today, they are forested - with exotic pines and eucalyptus.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A New Life for Narco Properties

El Mexicano's old walled property near La Zona Rosa,will soon host the Chinese embassy.

During past decades, Bogotá was home to numerous properties which everybody knew belonged to narcos, altho few people were likely to say so out loud. Today, with the cocaine trade booming once again, Bogotá is likely newly awash in drug money, altho much less conspicuously.

Villa Adelaida, as seen from the street,
will soon house a restaurant.

Meanwhile, some of those narcoproperties of decades past are finding new lives. The 'Mexicano's' old high-walled estate located just north of the Zona Rosa was recently purchased by the Chinese government and is to be their new embassy site. The Mexicano's old wall could be useful for keeping out anybody inclined to protest against China's many human rights violations.

El Mexicano, whose birth name was José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, was actually Colombian, but liked Mexican music and Mexican money, earning him the nickname. He started out as a hired assassin for emerald kingpins, but decided that drug trafficking was more profitable and became a member of the Medellin Cartel, along with Pablo Escobar. El Mexicano may have been even more brutal than Escobar, and eventually unleashed a brutal battle for control against his old friends in the emerald business. He was killed by Colombian police in 1989.

Not far away, on Calle 70 and Carrera 7a, La Quinta Villa Adelaida has stood rotting away for decades. Built in 1914 by Agustín Nieto Caballero, founder of the nearby Gimnasio Moderno, a high school for children of the traditional conservative elite, the huge house later became the Baron Club,  the site of expensive carousing. However, the club's owner, Manuel Abajo Abajo, a Spanish citizen, was arrested in 1987 for narcotrafficking and sentenced to nearly a decade in prison.
s.

Villa Adelaida in its glory days.

The house passed to control of the government, and has been under renovation the last several years. Plans for the property have included a hotel and shopping mall - but ran into opposition from neighbors, who feared more traffic jams. Next year, if all goes according to plan, an expensive restaurant will open in Villa Adelaida.

Do more narco properties remain in Bogotá? Undoubtedly, many do. However, today's narcos have learned to live less conspicuously to not make themselves targets of authorities and rival cartels. At the same time, the Mexican cartels have taken the most profitable retail trade away from the Colombians, and the Colombian drug traffickers which remain have shifted their centers of operations the big cities to rural areas near the coasts and borders.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Gaitán Revisionism

Gaitán supporters at the site of his assassination during the 70th anniversary, April 9 last week.

Gaitán DVDs on sale
on the anniversary of his
assassination last week.

Seventy years ago last week, on April 9, 1948 on Carrera 7's sidewalk Juan Roa Sierra gunned down a leftist, firebrand politician, Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, triggering the Bogotazo riots and creating a popular saint. With all the attention given to the martyr Gaitán around his asssassination's 70th anniversary, it's worth taking a closer look at the man - and his imperfections.

I'm not disputing Gaitan's passion and sincerity. And there's no questioning the courage with which as
congressman he denounced the 1928 massacre, by Colombian soldiers backed by the United States, of banana workers employed by the United Fruit Company.

However, if Gaitán was sincere in his motives, some of his methods and actions can be questioned. And that makes one wonder what he would have done if he'd been elected president.

A monument to Gaitán on Calle 26 near the Central Cemetery.

Gaitán had, after all, already served as senator, minister of labor and of education and mayor of Bogotá. His term as mayor had been most polemical, as he tried to impose draconian - some would say almost fascist - policies, such as dictating to residents what colors to paint their houses, requiring shoeshiners and taxidrivers to wear uniforms - and, most notoriously of all, prohibiting the ruana from the streets of Bogotá. The ruana, a sort of overcoat, is used by Colombia's poor, particularly country people, so banning it was tantamount to expelling the poor from Bogotá. The measures were intended to 'cleanse' and 'beautify' the city for its anniversary, but they got Gaitán ousted prematurely from office.

Just imagine if a right-wing politician like Alvaro Uribe were to try something like that. We'd never hear the end of it. But because it was Gaitán who did it, the episode gets forgotten.

It's perhaps not surprising that Gaitán had fascist tendencies. After all, he studied law in Rome in the 1920s, under Mussolini. Gaitán's populist, angry speaking style was undoubtedly also influenced by Mussolini. So, it's perhaps significant that, as far as I've heard, Gaitán never denounced the European fascists' hatemongering, mass murder and warmaking.

Gaitán was a succesful lawyer. But evidently not a crusading, moralistic one. After all, the very day he was assassinated Gaitán and his friends were celebrating the previous night's court victory - the freeing of a military officer who had murdered a journalist.

If Gaitán was unprincipled enough to defend a journalist's killer, what could the nation have expected

Gaitán's old house, now a museum, in the Teusaquillo
neighborhood. During his life, Gaitán was criticized
for his expensive lifestyle while rallying the poor
against the wealthy.

from him as president, in terms of rule of law? Of respect for a free press? Of civilian control of the military? Some speculate that a president Gaitán would have refused to relinquish power and become yet another Latin American strongman.

Part of the idolization and martyrization of Gaitán is the belief that if he had survived he would surely have been elected president. But that itself is far from certain. Gaitán was on the left edge of the Liberal Party, which was badly divided internally. And Gaitán was a very polarizing candidate, loved by many and hated by many. He might not have won the Liberals' nomination, or might have lost to a Conservative candidate. (A Conservative in fact was elected Colombia's next president.)

A strong parallel can be made to Robert F. Kennedy, assassinated in 1968 while campaigning for the Democratic Party's nomination for U.S. president. Like Colombia's Liberals, the Democratic Party was badly divided at the time, particularly over the war in Vietnam and ultimately lost the presidency to Richard Nixon.

Another aspect of Gaitán's matyrization are the conspiracy theories around his assassination: some claim that he was killed by the Conservative Party, by the Russians, by the Cubans, or - most of all - by the CIA.

These are interesting theories, but they all lack evidence. Yes, Gaitán had lots of enemies inside and outside of Colombia, many of whom would have loved to see him dead. But I've read a lot about Gaitán's assassination and never found a single piece of concrete evidence of a conspiracy.

Gaitán's apparent assassin, Juan Roa Sierra, was seized and lynched by a furious crowd immediately after the shooting, making it impossible to be definitively prove that he was the assassin or to know whether there was a conspiracy behind him. (Gaitán's killing triggered the horrific riots remembered as the Bogotazo, and the following low-grade civil war known as La Violencia.) But the crowd must have had a reason for attacking Roa. And, afterwards, Colombia hired Scotland Yard to investigate the assassination, who also concluded that Roa had done it.

And if the CIA had been behind Gaitán's killing, we'd know about it. After all, the CIA backed coups in Chile, Guatemala, Iran and other places, all of which is well documented from released CIA files. And the CIA tried many times to assassinate Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, and that is also well-documented. (Castro, coincidentally, was in Bogotá at the time of Gaitán's assassination and had a meeting scheduled with Gaitán that very afternoon.) If the CIA were behind Gaitán's killing, we'd know it by now.

We don't want to hear about the imperfections and failings of the 'great man' many believe Gaitan to have been. And that's amplified when the man is martyred. But John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert were cold warriors, and Robert worked for red-baiter and hatemonger Joseph McCarthy. Abraham Lincoln was racist and made a fortune as a lawyer by representing railroad companies when he might have been defending escaped slaves who being hunted down by southerners who claimed to own them.. The Rev. Martin Luther King was a womanizer. Winston Churchill was an unabashed imperialist and held backwards, racist beliefs which would make him a pariah by today's progressive standards. After the Cuban revolution, Che Guevara managed a prison where inmates, including young boys, were executed without trial just for having been part of the old regime.

None of these defects prevent these men from being 'great' because they stood for or accomplished important things - even if they had big flaws.

It is uncomfortable to think that a 'great man' who changed history, or might have, was killed by a maladjusted nobody. But that seems to have been the case over and over again. It's much more interesting and satisfying to believe in a conspiracy or great dark forces. But, to do that, one needs proof.

Who knows why Gaitán chose to represent a murderous military man - particularly when the military was murdering Liberals? Were the rest of his cases more idealistic, or similar?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours