Hormigas!

It's hormiga culona season!

Those are ants collected in Santander Province, near the Venezuelan border, which are sold in little plastic bags costing a few thousand pesos. They were a traditional food of the Guanes indigenous people, providing proteins for their diet, and are now a popular novelty food. They taste crunchy and salty, and even have their own web site.

The ants are also a bit risque. Hormigas culonas means 'big-butt ants.' And some say they're aphrosidiacs. Go find out for yourself.

This blog written by Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours.

National Priorities!

Watching the Supreme Court at Work?

This is the scene these days in the Plaza Bolivar, Colombia's seat of government. The building in the background is the Palace of Justice, which receives little spectator interest, despite huge decisions, such as the recent one nixing Pres. Uribe's hopes for a third-consecutive term.

But now that they've set up a big-screen TV in front of it, broadcasting the World Cup, the Justice Palace appears to have an audience.

Perhaps the last time that it got so much attention was when the M-19 guerrillas invaded the building in 1985.

Soccer's definitely the number one sport in Colombia. But Colombia, with 45 million people, didn't make the World Cup this year, while Paraguay, with 5 million people, and Uruguay, with 2 million, did. What makes Colombia such an underperformer?

(Incidentally, the big screen also shows propaganda for the city government.)

Written by Mike, of Bogota Bike Tours and Rentals.

Gay Rights March

Today, June 27, Bogota gays held their pride march. As in other years, it was colorful, flamboyant, and noisy, and undoubtedly offensive to some people.

But the annual event receives the city's endorsement, and Bogotá's leftist mayors have traditionally participated.

Bogotá, incidentally, has a gay neighborhood, Chapinero, and laws which are surprisingly progressive for a traditionally conservative, very Catholic nation: Same-sex couples can register civil unions, inherit from each other and receive each other's pensions.

Even more paradoxical, perhaps, is the fact that Colombia's supposedly revolutionary neighbors, Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia, haven't taken such progressive steps.

Colombia's most prominent organization advocating for rights for sexual minorities is Colombia Diversa.

This blog written by Mike Ceaser, of Bogota Bike Tours

Chavez, the movie II

Subtitle: A Chance to Vent About Hugo Chavez...

Oliver Stone joins a lamentably-long list of entertainment world personalities turned long-distance political analysts who from their studios in California, romanticize Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chavez as a wonderful, dramatic, romantic figure. They're welcome to their opinions, altho the reality is that Chavez is running Venezuela into the ground (and I lived in Caracas for several years).

Stone says Colombia gets a free pass on human rights issues, despite its very troubled record. I guess Stone doesn't know how to do a search in the Washington Post for its recent stories about

the 'false positives' scandal, the alleged criminal tied of Pres. Uribe's brother.... and others.

But a fundamental difference between Colombia and Venezuela is that Colombia has generally respected and accepted international institutions' critiques. Not always, but often. Even Colombia's own courts have condemned its military officials. Try looking for that in Venezuela, where judges who don't follow the line get jailed themselves.

Case in point is the recent condemnation of the Colombian government by an Organization of American States court for the 1994 assassination of Senator Manuel Cepeda, a far-left senator. Cepeda's killing was part of the mass killings of leaders of the Union Patriotica political party, which was linked to the FARC guerrillas.

Colombian courts had previously condemned two state officials for the killings, and recognized the state's responsibility.

This blog written by Mike Ceaser, of Bogota Bike Tours.

Still Coca Country?

Have you ever pushed in the side of a balloon?

What happens? It bulges out someplace else.

Many observers, including The Economist magazine, say that South America's coca leaf crop is like a balloon. When erradication pressure reduces acreage in one area, more gets planted in another.

Years ago, coca was grown only in Bolivia and Peru. Governments chopped down and pulled out

the crop in those countries - and what happened? Colombia became the biggest coca leaf grower, as it has been at least until recently.

A just-released survey of coca leaf plantings by the United Nations Office on Drugs reports that Colombian acreage declined 16% between 2007 and 2008, and 60% over the past decade. But production in Peru rose 55% over the past decade. Production in Bolivia has also risen slightly. So, Colombia may have lost its first-place position among coca leaf producers. Here's a NY Times video on coca erradication in Peru.

Regional production has declined by about 5%, but that's not much to crow about, especially considering the billions of dollars spent on the drug war, and the countless lives ended and ruined.

Some people call it all futile.

On the other hand, the War on Drugs has accomplished one thing: it's raised the price of drugs on the street, and therefore undoubtedly discouraged some people from becoming drug

consumers. That is a good thing.

However, by squeezing the supply of drugs, the war pumps up prices on the supply end, enriching drug traffickers and increasing their incentive to supply more chemicals and invent new ways to smuggle them. Should drug control efforts be focused on the supply or the demand end?

In Colombia, the drug trade has long enriched vicious guerrilla, paramilitary and plain old narcotraffickers. In Peru today the drug trade is giving new life to their own vicious rebels, the Shining Path Maoists.

The drug war also means millions of people imprisoned, most of them impoverished drug 'mules,' while the kingpins

generally stay rich and comfortable. Many other people are caught in the crossfire between the outlaw groups which traffic drugs, because as long as drugs are outlawed, outlaw groups will be the ones getting rich off of them.

The drug war's ultimate goal must not be to erradicate crops in South America or fill prisons worldwide with people engaged in the consensual conduct of selling substances to people who want to buy them. The war's goal is to protect the well-being of people who might otherwise become users or addicts.

Unfortunately, that might not be happening. While coca leaf erradication in South America may limit the amount of cocaine reaching the strees of the U.S. and Europe, those same potential drug consumers have access to lots of other chemicals, including vicious synthetic ones like methamphetamines. If the erradication were squeezing the supply, street prices would rise,

but that is evidently not happening.

If the U.S. and Latin American nations are spending untold riches to ruin the lives of innumerable people in Latin America and enriching outlaw organizations in order to keep cocaine products off of the street, only to push them into methamphetamine addiction - then we're accomplishing nothing.

Finally, if this drug erradication campaign is really pressuring the supply, then I wish someone would explain to me why they haven't started planting coca leaf in Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, or even Africa or Asia. Are the narcos practicing self-restraint? Do the appropriate soil and climate conditions stop at the borders?

Throw in the towel? Decriminalize drugs? It's worth serious consideration.

Mike Ceaser runs Bogota Bike Tours and Rentals

Colombia and the Material Support Law

The United States Supreme Court just reaffirmed a draconian law prohibiting support - of any kind at all - for groups considered terrorists by the U.S. government.

What's wrong with that? Well, for one thing, one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. In the day when U.S. administrations considered South African apartheid an acceptable evil and when Chile's Pinochet dictatorship was a strong U.S. ally, groups using violent means against those governments could have been labeled terrorists. These particular cases involved people who had given human rights advice to Kurdish rebel groups, and the Kurds are clearly an oppressed people deserving a homeland. The last time that I researched this, I found that the law also brands as terrorist collaborators people who give any kind of support, even a glass of water or a night's lodging, to anyone who has risen up in arms against a government recognized by the US - no matter how criminal that other government. So, anybody who helps the armed groups resisting the oppressive government of Burma, which renamed the country Myanmar, are also branded by this law.

What's the connection to Colombia? Large parts of Colombia's territory are controlled by armed groups like the FARC, ELN and Paramilitaries, which are very justifiably classified as terrorists by the U.S. And many of the innocent civilians who live in those areas are forced under threats to help those groups by washing their clothes, repairing things, providing food and lodging...anything. Thus, millions of poor Colombians are considered guerrilla collaborators and banned from the United States.

It's a very unjust situation.

Santos is 'El Man.'

So it's Santos, as we all knew and expected, altho not by quite this margin. Such an overwhelming margin makes it a bit scary.

In his acceptance speech, which I'm listening to now, he sounds a lot like Uribe - squared.

We hear a lot about 'work, work, work.' And about how the judicial branch, which was about the only branch of government that stood up to Uribe. Does that mean 'impartiality,' or 'You better do what I want!'?

In his acceptance speech, a candidate who has just won by such an overwhelming margin, one might expect, perhaps, humility, empathy, flexibility. In his hour of victory, he might throw a bone to the guerrillas, whose backs are already against the wall, and make some offer of peace talks. He might also address his most glaring weakness - the terrible human rights violations which occurred under his watch, particularly the 'False Positives' scandal. But I'm not hearing any of that.

Even so, another four years of Uribismo might be good for Colombia, if the guerrillas are finally defeated - although that's not likely. But Santos can afford to mention his mistakes and aim to atone for them. If not, Colombians might just get fed up with more Uribismo pretty quickly.

Still, one thing is clear: many (altho not necessarily most) Colombians support Santos (abstention was way over 50 %) and they don't want Mockus, whose second-round voting was little above his first. Mockus didn't even win in Bogotá, where he was mayor and had lots of support. Santos also represents the establishment - he's related to the current vice president and belongs to the family which owns the El Tiempo newspaper.