How to Kill a Neighborhood

When the city slashed a four-lane avenue through the hardscrabble Egipto neighborhood above La Candelaria last year, it may have eased the commutes of some wealthy Bogotanos, but it cut the heart out of this already-troubled neighborhood.

A mother and daughter walk past a spot where small
businesses were demolished to widen the avenue.

Construction not only razed small businesses and homes along the avenue route, it also divided the neighborhood in two and has residents risking life and limb to cross what had been a narrow street.

Few residents of the impoverished and high-crime Egipto neighborhood own cars, but they suffer the expanded avenue's dangers, pollution and ugliness.

Planners seem to have forgotten about pedestrians: Street lights are far apart. Here, two women climb over the dividing rail. 

Pedestrians then must wait for a chance to cross the avenue.

The avenue benefits wealthier outsiders. Few Egipto residents own cars. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Crossed-Legs Campaign

Campaigners in full crossed-legs campaign mode on the Plaza Bolivar. 

The people of this small, poor town in Nariño Department were sick and tired of the road from the nearest city turning into a muddy trap every time it rained. And their appeals to the government for aid hadn't helped. So, the women of Barbacoas chose a tactic they felt sure would get the attention of men in power: a no-sex strike.

Men carry a person on a stretcher past trucks
stuck on a muddy highway. 

The town's women started their 'crossed legs movement' last June. This week, they are demonstrating on Plaza Bolivar, in front of Congress, the Supreme Court and Bogotá's City Hall.

The women said the campaign wasn't popular with their husbands - especially at the start.

"Sure, they got angry at first," said Carmen Alejandrino Perez, "but since then they've understood that we're fighting for a just cause."

The women said they considered theirs a battle for education, employment and health services for their community.

'For the dignity of the town of Barbacoas.'

The 56-kilometer drive from the city of Junin takes about 12 hours under the normally poor road conditions, the women said. But when the rainy season turns the road into a swamp it can take days, because they have to stop overnight mid-way.

The region's economy depends on gold mining, demonstrators said. The area also suffers from drug crop fumigation, which often also damages food crops, and violence by armed groups. But the women said that "for our own safety," they couldn't say whether it was guerrillas, paramilitaries or narcotraffickers who threatened them.

A crossed-legs campaigner in action.

Even the town's men said they supported the enforced abstinence.

"Sure, there's frustration, anger and sadness," said Jorge Ortiz, "when you look for what you like most, and they don't give it to you. But after a while we realized that the women are fighting for something great and just. And that's why we're here."

He said that the publicity the women's no-sex strike had generated had already brought half the 200 billion pesos required to build the road.

"We're hoping to get the other 95 billion pesos we still need," he said.

The women made another prediction: that the town's birth rate would soon plummet.

Trying to right an overturned truck.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Pavement Priorities

No. 1: Trip into this trap on 14th, how far will you fall?

Take a wild guess at which of these Bogotá streets is about to be dug up and repaired:

No. 2: On Calle 17: Post WWIII ?

No. 3: On Calle 14, disintegration. 

No. 3: Near Plaza Rosario, steer right.

No. 4: In Teusaquillo, did a river run thru here?

No. 5: Carrera 3, a street that's almost sleddable. 

No. 6: Carrera 5, just south of Jimenez Ave., might turn into a sinkhole.

No. 7:One of Bogotá's most important intersections, the street's disappearing.

No. 8:Did a bomb or a meteorite hit this spot on Calle 17?

Congrats, you're right!!! No. 5! Carrera 3, between 12th and 13th Streets. (In front of Bogotá Bike Tours)

City workers have told us that Carrera 3 needs to be torn up and excavated to about two meters down because moisture is seeping up from the wastewater pipe running under the street. But if that were true, wouldn't we have seen or smelled something? And, even if the problem is real, is it really Bogotá's top road repair priority?

It all seems a bit suspicious - and really harms the neighboring residents and businesses.

Kids at play behind the caution tape. But at least they're safe from cars.

Here's our street torn up. An official from the local mayor's office agreed that there are other streets in far worse condition than ours. But he said those streets had been contracted for repair by the Urban Development Institute, the IDU, and as long as the IDU has those contracts, the local mayor's office has to spend its budget on different streets - even if they are in much better shape, like ours. You'd hope that local governments would protest this situation, which sort of holds their potholed streets hostage, preventing them from being repaired.

Less than a half year after it was repaved, the block below ours needed more work. Apparently, a sewage pipe was leaking. 

Related posts: Re-Re-Paving - Again!

Bogotá's Perpetual Public Works


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours