Photos of the Day

These two little girls were accompanying their father, a street vendor on Calle 22, just west of Carrera 7. Is this the start of a lifetime reading habit? Hope so.

Under Peñalosa, the police have aggressively pursued such vendors, clearing them off of sidewalks. But what harm is this guy doing? The sidewalk is wide, and no formal businesses nearby are selling books.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Who Owns the Sidewalks?

A cop watches as vendors gather up their goods on a side street off of Carrera 7.

One of Mayor Peñalosa's most prominent and polemical policies, clearing public spaces of illegal vendors, may have hit a roadblock.

Courts ruled recently that vendors who sell on a particular spot for a considerable time acquire rights

A car occupies a sidewalk in the Los Martires neighborhood.
If you park your car on a sidewalk long enough,
does that make you the sidewalk's owner?

of possession for that piece of pavement, something like eminent domain, and can't be driven off without a sort of due process. By the same token, the court ruled, by permitting vendors to use sidewalks as their retail space for years, it is implicitly saying that they have a right to be there, and authorities can't suddenly change the rules.

This is an age-old battle in Bogotá, and one which the city won't ever win. As long as there are poor people here and the sidewalks offer access to many potential customers, vendors will occupy them, even if they are forced to play hide-and-seek with the police.

A cop escorts a vendor off of Carrera 7.

It is true that many street vendors are a nuisance: They clutter and block sidewalks, compete with tax-paying formal businesses and contribute to an atmosphere of anarchy and disorder. But they also serve many functions, providing a livelihood to poor people and easy access to products for the rest of us. I've bought headphones, books, socks, fruit and shoes on the street (or sidewalk).

If only authorities could distinguish between 'good' vendors who don't block pedestrians and
don't compete with neighboring shops, and those who do do damage to urban living. Unfortunately, making such a distinction is nearly impossible, and therefore

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Plaza San Victorino UInder Guard

A police line on Plaza San Victorino today.

Plaza San Victorino, known for the nearby stores selling inexpensive toys, clothing, housewares and

Barricades on the plaza's west side.

other things, is sealed off these days. The city fears, reasonably, that, given the chance, street vendors will invade and occupy the plaza, as they have done many years before as Christmas neared. 

Some years, police invaded, the vendors rioted, and the police used tear gas. This year, they want to avoid those crises before they happen.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

It's Mamoncillo Season!

A mamoncillo and guama vendor on La Ciclovia.

It's mamoncillo season! Those fun fruits which you split open with your teeth or fingernail and suck the jelly off of the seed for a sweet and sour taste are out on the street again.

A mamoncillo ready to be sucked.

Also known as mamón, and more scientifically but less poetically as the Melicoccus bijugatus, mamoncillos are related to the lychee and the maple tree, but look like grapes. You can't eat the whole thing, tho. You crack open the peel and squeeze out the jelly-covered seed, which you proceed to suck and suck. And that's the origin of the name: 'mamoncillo' comes from the verb mamar: to breast feed.

For sale alongside the mamoncillos, you'll often find guama, a huge legume, whose beans are covered with a sweet, white fluff, which you suck off.

Guamas for sale.

If you want to try mamoncillos and guamas, do it soon. Their seasons are short!

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Poverty Amidst Plenty

Maria and two of her children.

The headlines roar it out: Colombia is one of the planet's economic stars, with a growth rate above 6% - perhaps the world's fourth-highest. Colombia recently overtook Argentina to become Latin America's third-largest economy.

But not all Colombians are celebrating those headlines. Throughout the countryside, in the Pacific Coast and in south Bogotá, Colombia remains an extremely poor nation, many of whose citizens feel little opportunity to rise. 34% of Colombians live below the poverty line, according to government statistics which seem overly positive to me. But in some regions, such as El Chocó, more than half of the people live below the poverty line. Colombia also has one of the world's most unequal wealth distributions, altho both poverty rates and inequality have improved in recent years.

For that matter, we pass by lots of severe poverty every day in central Bogotá.

Maria Bridget, who is 33, is one of those people. I don't remember how I first met her, but I've known her for years, during which time she's squatted at times beside a river and with her six children and grandchild in a tenement room in the sometimes violent Santa Fe neighborhood.

Maria is not poor because she doesn't want to work. She and her children glue posters to polls and walls and vends trinkets, often balloons, on the pedestrianized stretch of Ave. Septima. But even so, it's always a battle to pay the 15,000 peso daily rent on the room she shares with her extended family.

Because she can only manage to pay only a single night at a time, she pays far more for a run-down room than would someone who could pay their month's rent in advance. Besides that, there are clothing and food costs - even tho the children eat some of their meals at school or in free municipal soup kitchens. Recreation doesn't appear to be in Maria's budget, except perhaps for the glue I smelled on her breath.

A girl in a Bogotá slum.
(Photo: Corresponsales del Pueblo)

"We have to get the rent any way we can," she says. "If we don't pay 4 or 5 nights in a row, they'll kick us out."

The balloons she sells on Ave. Septima belong to another woman, who farms them out. Maria earns 1,500 pesos from each of the balloons she sells for four or five thousand pesos. But some days, especially when it rains or the police evict street vendors, she sells only a few balloons.

"If I don't sell, I don't earn anything," she says.

She can make from 10,000 to 30,000 sticking posters on walls, but that work is irregular.

A Colombian hillside slum. (Photo: Wikipedia)

Maria and her own two siblings became orphans when she was ten after her father was shot to death and her
mother died of some disease she couldn't identify. She doesn't remember what her father did for a living or have any idea why he was killed.

It was drizzling when I spoke to Maria in a small fish restaurant in the Las Nieves neighborhood. The rain doesn't help balloon sales.

"Today I've only sold three balloons," she said, and headed back out to the street.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

René, Seventh Ave. Movie Man

He's one of those people you pass every day. Or maybe you've even given him a couple thousand pesos for a pirated movie, without thinking twice about it.

Rene Aragon has been selling pirated movies on Ave. Septima, near the Centro Internacional, for about four years. He's become something of a landmark, with his grin, loquaciosness, bad teeth, bad Spanish, ebullient personality and shabby clothes, which make him resemble something of a movie character himself. He's 43, but looks a decade older, for which you can blame the sun, pollution and perhaps certain substances consumed along the way.

A native of Spain's Basque Country, Aragon hawked candies and cigarretes and taught languages before selling movies on compact discs: besides Spanish, he speaks English, French, German and Basque, his native tongue.

He recently told an interviewer with a Bogotá cultural magazine that he didn't like racism, 'bad police' and pollution - which is certainly understandable considering his location on Ave. Septima, one of Bogotá's smoggiest spots.
He also surprised the interviewer by saying that his expensive
pleasure was not going out to the movies, dining or even traveling home for vacations, but paying for his wife's rehabilitation for her addiction to basuco, a cheap form of crack.

But movies are his pleasure and his passion. He sells dozens on a day when the weather's good. His secret of success, he says, is the breadth and sophistication of his cinematic knowledge, particular arts films. He also sells documentaries, war films and even new releases.

One thing which surprises you talking to Aragon is the roughness of his Spanish. But that's deliberate, he says, because of his distaste for the language of the occupiers of his native Basque Country. Leaving Spain, he says, was his gesture of protest in favor of Basque independence. A strange way to rebel, it seems to me.

Before Colombia, he'd lived in Ecuador, where he taught English. But he got bored and came to Bogotá, where he met his girlfriend.

Pirated movies have done well for him. He can sell as many as 80 per day. At 2,000 each, you can do the math yourself. I always suspected that he secretly sold a less legal product as well, but he told me gave up selling that years ago.

Even tho Aragon operates beyond the edge of the law, occupying public space and selling pirated goods, he says he's reached an understanding with the police. Before they carry out sweeps against street vendors, he usually finds out.

"It's not like I give them money or anything," he explains. "But we're friends. We talk. They want to know what Europe's like. Sometimes, I give them a few movies."

His strategy's worked. Not long ago, Ave. Septima's sidewalk was almost too crowded with vendors to walk down. Today it was actually passable. And Aragon is one of the survivors.

Aragon feels no guilt about selling tax-free and rent-free on the street. Once, he said, he went down to City Hall and offered to pay taxes - but was refused. He'd tried, at least.

"If you pay taxes, you're legitimate," Aragon observes, pointing out that many Bogotá stores, such as internet cafes, sell pirated CDs. "But you only get hassled if you're on the sidewalk."

Neither does he feel any guilt about profiting from the labor of the movie industry. After all, he points out, the movie houses make millions. Rather, he considers himself a sort of revolutionary, putting movies within reach of the common person.

But how about those small-time movie studios who make the artsy movies he likes so much? Well, he's doing them a favor too, Aragon explains, by helping spread their message.

"Is it fair that they charge 30,000 pesos for a CD which costs 600 pesos to make?" he asks. "To me, it's elitist."


Want a movie? Call René at 301-528-1153


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Selling Snail Slime on La Septima



A snail at work.

Edgar is something of an institution on Ave. Septima, where he sells snail slime on a table on the sidewalk by the Kokoriko restaurant across the street from the Colpatria Tower.

Snail slime?

Edgar claims his slime eliminates scars and miscolored skin patches. Some people must believe in it, or at least are willing to give slime a try, because he stays in business.

Snail slime supplies for sale.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

San Victorino Gets the Christmas Spirit

Ready for a dip? Swimming pools for sale.

Not much walking room. 

You know Christmas is upon us when you can barely walk across Plaza San Victorino. This year, the  ity authorities seem to have reached an agreement with the vendors, permitting them to set up on part of the plaza, as long as they leave the rest clear.

Dress up for the Millonarios game!

Feel an urge for a dip? There are swimming pools for sale. Want to dress up? Jewelry's and clothing are on offer. Bored? Buy a board game. 

Bored? Try a board game. 

An open-air jewelry mart.  

A cart loaded with carpets. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

No Cyber Monday in San Victorino

San Victorino, Bogotá's bustling central shopping district, was packed this afternoon. Cyber Monday, apparently, hasn't caught on yet here.

Vendors sell Christmas trinkets and clothes in front of a building that burned down several years ago.

Suddenly, the police arrived. All these street vendors are selling illegaly.

 Time to drage it all away.

Rolling away...

A lone brave vendor is left. But they'll be back.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours