Lorenzo the Llama and Friends

A common scene from Bogotá's San Victorino Plaza, the heart and soul of the city. People buy and sell clothes, toys and fruit here. Hucksters perform black magic. Faded prostitutes show off. And Lorenzo the llama struts his stuff.

Lorenzo, who is from Peru, was born with bad teeth, but that doesn't appear to embarass him.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Peace and Justice?

About five years ago, the Law of Peace and Justice was passed, intended primarily to aid in the demobilization of Colombia's vicious paramilitary armies and promote the confession of their crimes, while contributing to some degree of justice.

The paramilitaries have committed about the worst sorts of horrors you can imagine - mass chainsaw murders, feeding people to crocodiles, chopping people apart alive... Along the Colombian-Venezuelan border, people told me they found sacks of chopped up human flesh floating down the river, evidently placed there by paramilitaries to terrify those living downriver.

Five years on, this is what's happened: Only two convictions, which happened only this week, and those for only eight years each. These paramilitary leaders were likely guilty of mass murders, forced displacements, narcotrafficking, kidnappings, etc. But eight years is what someone can get for a simple drug deal in lots of countries.

(To the government's partial credit, however, about a dozen paramilitary leaders are in U.S. prisons, which is exactly where they planned not to be when they agreed to be tried using the law. However, these men were extradited because they'd allegedly continued committing crimes while in prison.)

Meanwhile, many say that the paramilitaries, who supposedly demobilized years ago in mass ceremonies actually continue operating in many regions.

What the Peace and Justice Law has accomplished, however, is to generate lots of confessions:

163.000 homicides

32.000 forced disappearances

66.000 forced displacements

3.500 children recruited

More than 800 kidnappings .... all of which shows how measly the punishments are.

This blog written by Mike Ceaser, of Bogota Bike Tours

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