The IberoAmerican Theatre Festival's Inauguration Parade

The bi-annual (every two years) Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro is about to start, and they inaugurated it this afternoon with a colorful parade down Jimenez Avenue.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Stiudents' Strange Ceremony

This strange ceremony, mixing chicha, fire, a monster and indigenous dancing, was staged yesterday evening by dance and art students from the Antonio Nariño University, as part of their year-end project.

What it meant was not clear, and left open to interpretation, a student named Brayan told me. But it also had something to do with the injustice of the 1948 assassination of populist leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán on a nearby sidewalk, Brayan said.

The police, however, evidently did not recognize the artistic genius in the event, rather seeing it as more of a public nuisance, located between two TransMilenio lanes and in the middle of busy Carrera Septima - not to mention the smoke billowing into Bogotá's already-noxious air. The cops hurried the students away, and later fined their teacher under the Nuevo Codigo de Policia.

That all seemed wrong to Brayan.

"It's just an art project," he protested. "It's not like we were here burning things all day long."

Evidently, artistic smoke is not bad for you like regular smoke.

But Brayan saw an elegance in the episode. "We were memorializing injustice," he observed, "and now we've been met by injustice."

Brayan was collecting donations in a hat to pay his teacher's fine.

Certainly, in their zeal for public order and protecting our air, the police might think about going a few blocks north or west and citing the vehicles belching black smoke all day long.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Banana Massacre on Stage in the Parque Nacional

The 1928 banana workers massacre became a landmark event in Colombian history after Gabriel Garcia Marquez made it a key episode in his Nobel prize-winning novel 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'. 

This theater troupe, performing around mid-day in the Parque Nacional, didn't employ much subtlety in portraying the hardships of the banana workers, employed by the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita). Banana prices had declined, causing a drop in pay and benefits. Workers went on strike and the military arrived to back the U.S. company. With union leaders gathered in the plaza of the town of Ciénaga, near Santa Marta, in Magdalena Department, the soldiers started firing machine guns placed on roofs of buildings on all four corners of the plaza. Estimates of the number killed range from a few hundred to thousands of unionists. Afterwards, the corpses were loaded onto the trains used to ship fruit to the coast and dumped into the ocean. 

Some believe that the Colombian military acted because they feared that if they did not, then U.S. Navy ships waiting off the coast would invade. The U.S. Embassy at the time knew about the massacre, and reported it to Washington, but kept quiet publicly.  

The massacre brought fame to then-Senator Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, who made fiery speeches in Congress demanding punishment for the killers. But that didn't happen.

Today's performance portrayed the hungry workers with empty milk cans and starving infants. Death, with a skull head, pursued the workers and even chased Gaitán. Actors waved black and red flags, suggesting anarchism. Workers and Gaitán waved flags and yelled in protest. But a businessman denounced the workers as troublemakers who deserved repression.

For liberty! - if Death does not catch Gaitán.

Our poor starving babies!

The businessman, in grey on left, denounces the protesting workers as troublemakers who deserved what happened to them. 

Death victorious!

Shining shoes.

Forward!

Who will fill our empty milk cans?

On a different note, a homage to the disappeared.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Jazz in the Jorge Eliecer Gaitan Theatre

The jazz fusion trio. 

The legendary Teatro Gaitan on Seventh Ave. hosted an informal jazz concert this afternoon, as part of the city government's 'Bogotá Humana' campaign.

The very grand art deco theatre is named after populist politician Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, whose 1948 assassination triggered the Bogotazo riots, which destroyed much of the city. Gaitan made some of his demagogic speeches in the 70-year-old theatre.

It's a pleasant place right now, thanks to the city's pedestrianization of five blocks of Ave. Septima during the replacement of the bridge over 26th St. Unfortunately, this peace won't last. A sign at the construction street counts down the days until the new bridge is supposed to be finished and Seventh returns to its normal condition of noise, chaos and pollution.

The theatre plans a series of Sunday events for children over the next month. 

The theatre's front - quiet and car-free for a while yet. 

The lobby doors make a nice pattern. 

Gaitan's bust in the theatre. 

The theatre has a nice art-deco style, both inside and out. 

They've also used the theatre's entrance hallway for photo exhibits, this one about the teaching of arts to children.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours