Slashing Science

A researcher protesting on Plaza Bolivar this week displays
a sign claiming he needs a microscope to see his science budget.

Colombian Pres. Santos has not, like U.S. Pres. Trump, denied basic science - but he is acting that way.

'Did you know that the government plans to cut 40%
of the science and technology budget?

The other day, across Colombia scientists protested against the government's proposed slashing of the science budget from 380 to 220 million pesos - a drop of 41%. The cuts include reductions in Colciencia's budget and the shifting of royalty money from science to road infrastructure.

Science isn't the only area scheduled to suffer: The environmental budget is also on the chopping block. That makes no sense in a country suffering a horrific deforestation rate, and in which the guerrilla demobilization has created new environmental challenges.

The big winner? Defense - which makes no sense, since the FARC, Colombia's biggest and oldest guerrilla group, just signed a peace treaty, gave up its weapons and demobilized.

Running with full tanks: Pick-up trucks carry soldiers thru La Candelaria.

An El Tiempo graphic showing the government's 2018 budget proposal.
The environment and science lost. The military won.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Troubles with Doña Juana

Trash piled high on Jimenez Ave. today. 

Few Bogotanos have ever seen Doña Juana, and many probably haven't even heard of her. But every one of us interacts with Juana every day, many times, each time we discard a piece of trash.

Doña Juana is the city's landfill,

Recycling bins outside the Paloquemao market.
The market does actually compost its organic wastes,
but I suspect that other 'recyclables' end up in the landfill.

In case you thought you've seen even more trashpiles on the streets than normal, you're not hallucinating. Doña Juana's neighbors have blocked the landfill's access roads in protest against the profusion of flies and rats around the landfill.

The neighbors also want the city to build a trash classification facility by the landfill, where recyclable materials could be recovered - and which would mean employment for them. Bogotá recycles only a tiny amount of its waste.

Recycling is good, but better still would be reducing the amount of material sent to the landfill in the first place. The recent law taxing disposable plastic bags seems to have made some difference. A similar tax on other disposable packaging, such as plastic bottles, would be another good step.

A typical scene: Trash inside '
recycling' bins. 

Instead, since land is cheap, the city will just once again expand the dump's boundaries, and these environmental conflicts will repeat themselves.

These plastic bottles will become trash after one use, and fill up the landfill.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Our Home for Used Tires

Displaced people wait on a Median Strip.

You'd be angry, too, if you were out on the street and your potential home was occupied by...discarded tires.

Displaced people tossed tires onto the sidewalk.
(Photo; El Tiempo)

That was why a group of people who said they'd been displaced by Colombia's violence occupied a vacant building behind the Central Cemetery today and tossed the used tires stored inside out into the street.

Workers move tires out of the building.
Where will they take them? To an illegal dump?

The situation captures the intersection of two Colombian disfunctions: the lack of solutions for people displaced by the internal armed conflict - some say that Colombia has up to six million displaced people, perhaps the second-largest number in the world. And Bogotá's inability to find a solution to the problem of used tires, which are tossed onto sidewalks, median strips and parks. In this case, this vacant building had been filled with old tires, which waited there for some homeless person to crawl inside, light a fire and start a viciously polluting conflagration. Other cities have found ways to reuse, or at least responsibly dispose of, used tires. But that costs money, and Bogotá officials don't want to offend the tire companies by forcing them to charge deposits.

As for the displaced people, they charge that the government has failed them on promises to provide new homes, and are demanding a solution.

Much of the building is still packed with tires, which generate huge pollution when burned.

A displaced man from El Chocó tells how he was driven from his home by paramilitaries.

Used tires wait on a sidwalk along 26th Street, near the National University.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

What's Going On With ISAGEN?

Protesters against ISAGEN's sale in front of the Supreme Court today.

'Energy sovereignety.'
'ISAGEN is not for sale.'

You've probably seen posters and protesters about ISAGEN, which is Colombia's 3rd-largest electricity generator, providing 16% of the country's energy. ISAGEN is a multi-billion-dollar company headquartered in Medellin and owner of 5 hydroelectric generating plants and 1 thermal one.

But if ISAGEN is a keystone to Colombia's economy and infrastructure, it's also a valuable company, 57% owned by the government. And the president sees it as the golden egg whose sale can finance construction of Colombian infrastructure, particularly highways.

But is it a good idea for Colombia to let such a critical piece of its economy pass into the control of foreigners? So far, French, Canadian and Chilean companies have expressed the most interest. Will they find it in their interest to manage the company well, to invest in it? What if the buyer goes bankrupt one day?

ISAGEN's Sogamoso hydroelectric dam. (Photo from ISAGEN's website.)

But ISAGEN workers unions are protesting the sale, fearful that privatization will bring layoffs and other cutbacks, as usually happens. And, as always happens when a big public company is to be privatized, opponents call it a threat to national sovereignety - which it very well may be.

The other day, in response to lawsuits, a judge temporarily suspended the sale, sending ISAGEN's shares tumbling and even causing the peso's value to dip.

Men walk past posters on Carrera 7 protesting the proposed ISAGEN sale.

A protester's sign says: 'ISAGEN is for everyone!'

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Outlaw Economy

San Andresitos workers fill Simon Bolivar plaza in protest against an anti-contraband law.

They're scattered across Bogotá, with names like San Victorino and San Andresitos - the latter named

Protesters wearing shirts charging that the anti-contraband
law would mean monopolies and destroy small businesses. 

after Colombia's Caribbean island of San Andres, which are notorious for smuggling. These stores' cheap imported goods carry a reputation for being contraband and often serving for laundering drug money.

At least, that's what many authorities believe. And perhaps the best evidence that they're right came the other day when thousands of owners and employees of the San Andresitos filled San Victorino and Simon Bolivar plazas with a deafening protest against a law raising penalties and jail terms for buying and selling contraband goods.

Colombia's huge contraband industry might seem innocent enough: It provides cheap imported running shoes, electronics and refrigerators, not to mention all of the gasoline consumed in regions near the Venezuelan border. It also employs many thousands of Colombians.

San Andresitos stores on Calle 13 in Bogota.

However, cheap smuggled goods don't pay taxes, depriving the state of money for schools, roads and police and hurt domestic manufacturing. This is felt particularly in provincial health programs, which are financed by duties and taxes on cigarettes and whiskey - two heavily smuggled items. The cheap, smuggled, untaxed products are also particularly cheap, placing them within the reach of children.

However, contraband's worst impact might be its role in money laundering. Drug cartels find it difficult bringing their illegal millions in profits back into Colombia thru the banking system. So, they convert them into legal goods, which may be either legally imported or smuggled in thru places like the La Guajira peninsula and marketed in the San Andresitos.

For years during the late 1990s and early 2000s, cigarette makers Philip Morris and British

Cigarettes, many of them smuggled, for sale
next to candy in La Candelaria.
Many of the boxes carry warnings in
English instead of he required
Colombian ones.

American Tobacco facilitated cigarette smuggling into Colombian, flooding the country with cheap smokes and helping terrorist groups launder drug money, according to investigators and Colombian government officials.

The San Andresito businesses skirt around the fact that so many of their products lack documentation. But, if those products aren't illegal, why are the San Andresito people so up in arms against it?

That cheap camera, pair of jeans or MP3 player may not be so innocent.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Nicolas Neira, Martyr

Nicolas Neira, 1989 - 2005

Today, his anarchist companions, memorialized killed activist Nicolas Neira on the tenth anniversary of his death. Neira, a 15-year-old student, was killed in May 2005 after participating in May Day a protest on Carrera Septima just south of Calle 19, converting him into a martyr for other anti-state activists.

A candle for Nicolas Neira.

Neira, who had asthma, was reportedly overcome by tear gas and hit by riot police. He collapsed on the pavement, where he was trampled by the crowd. Neira was carried to a hospital, where he died May 6 from his internal injuries. The riot police did not aid Neira, forcing other protesters to find a taxi to transport him to a clinic. Police have alleged that Neira's injuries resulted from the protesters' own violence.

The individual police who allegedly hit Neira were never identified, but two police officials were banned from public posts for their responsibility in Neira's death. A judge ordered the Colombian government to pay Neira's family 160 million-pesos in compensation. That has not satisfied Neira's parents, but criminal charges against the police officials have not advanced and the family has taken the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The tragedy also converted Neira's father, Yuri Neira, previously an insurance company executive, into an activist for victims of state violence.

Another plaque for Nicolas Neira.

At this evening's memorial, the anarchist crowd called the state 'criminal' and 'murderer.' "Death to the state," they chanted, "long live anarchism."

Yet, altho state security forces clearly carry responsibility for Neiras death, that same state did issue a judgment against itself and order itself to pay damages to its victims.

Perhaps the state is not really pure evil after all.

The memorial's location, on the Carrera Septima shopping strip, did not smack of anarchism and anti-capitalism.

The other day, an anarchist 'colectivo' painted this portrait of Nicolas Neira on Calle 26 west of the Central Cemetery.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Bullfighting's Back?

They won. Hunger striking bullfighters in front of the Santamaria Plaza last year.

Brace yourself for the protests.

Coming soon: Anti-bullfighting protesters
march thru downtown Bogotá.

The Constitutional Court ruled today that Bogotá Mayor Gustavo Petro must reopen the Santamaria Bullfighting Plaza to bullfights, ending a long court battle.

A court had previously ruled that bullfighting is traditional in Bogotá, and the mayor lacked authority to ban it. He appealed, and the high court ruled against him.

For Petro, this is political disaster. Animal rights advocates have been among his most vocal backers, and this court ruling nullifies one of his few concrete accomplishments.

The Santamaria's empty arena. 

But Petro still has cards to play. It's probably too late to organize bullfights for the 2015 season, which normally runs from early January thru late February. And Petro claims that the 80-plus-year-old Santamaria Plaza needs a major renovation. The renovation project's contracting process keeps getting suspended for lack of interested companies, but expect Petro to rush it thru now to create another justification for keeping the plaza shut. The city's recreation agency has already closed the handsome plaza to tourists, for unfathomable reasons. Bullfighting advocates suspect that the real motive behind the renovation plans is to make the plaza unusable for its original purpose, bullfighting.

Setting aside bullfighting's artistic merits, or lack of them, it's always seemed to me that la fiesta brava gets picked on unfairly among the wide range of animal abuses permitted in Colombia. A few dozen bulls fight and die during a normal season in La Santamaria, but innumerable roosters suffer and die in the city's legal cockfighting pits, while nobody says a word. And, recently, I talked to a Spaniard setting up industrial pig and chicken farms here. The man told me that Colombia has no animal welfare laws. They do in Europe, he admitted "because they're crazy" there.

Evidently, Colombia's a very sane nation, since nobody lifts a finger to improve the conditions of farm animals.

Young bullfighters show their moves in front of the Santamaria Plaza.

The historic Santamaria Plaza during a pro-bullfighting demonstration.

Does anybody care? Animals packed together on industrial farms.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Fight Over Bullfighting Gets Loud

Anti-bullfighting protesters yelling across the street from the Supreme Court on Ave. Septima. I didn't get a chance to ask them whether they are also in favor of humane treatment of animals raised for meat.

With young bullfighters, or novilleros, on hunger strike in favor of the fiesta brava in front of the bullfighting stadium and a court predicted to rule in favor of continued bullfights in Bogotá, bullfighting's opponents have turned out.

'Danger: Murderers Working' A new mural near the bullfighting plaza.

An anti-bullfighting bull. Bullfighting bulls, which are a special breed, simply would not exist if not for bullfighting.

A sign outside the bullfighting stadium urges support for the novice bullfighters.

Inside the bullfighting plaza, a supporter of the fiesta brava wrote ¡OLÉ! on Cesar Rincon's cape.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Protesting Against a Pipeline

Protesting on the front steps of EcoPetrol.

As the Santos administration charges ahead with its plans to make Colombia a big exporter of oil, coal and other natural resources, more than a few rural communities and natural wonders are getting trampled on.

For the most part, I suspect, we never hear from those victims.

But today a group of people from Puente Nacional in Santander Department showed up on the doorstep of EcoPetrol to protest against the construction of a new pipeline and pumping station would cause what they consider to be a sort of ecocide.

Countryside near Puente Nacional,
Santander Dept.
(Photo: PuenteNacional.com)

According to the protesters, the construction of the 8-kilometer-long pipeline will mean cutting down some 3,000 trees along a path 33 meters wide. The pipeline's track will damage 14 streams, as well as wetlands, the critics say.

While this is a small environmental attack, I suspect that it's being repeated in similar ways across Colombia and the rest of the continent.

But few of the human victims - and none of the trees - have the resources and sophistication to protest on Facebook and on the front steps of Ecopetrol.

An anti-oil drilling mural
on Calle 26 in Bogotá.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours