Human Rights Under Killers' Gaze

'Where are my children?'

She cried out that the killers had come to her town, taking away the people and burning homes.

It was a theatre piece on the Plaza del Ché on the campus of the Universidad Nacional, but the story was one which has been repeated again and again during Colombia's long armed conflict. Altho such atrocities were committed by all sides, this play was undoubtedly aimed at the right-wing paramilitaries, who for many years did the regular military's dirty work.

But the far left also produced millions of victims, both in Colombia and abroad. So, it was a bit ironic watching this play under the gazes of Marx, Lenin, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, whose various regimes themselves committed wholesale human rights abuses.

The performance was part of the Summit for Art and Culture for Peace.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Colombia, Climate Change Victim or Culprit?

'A dryer coast and rainier Andes mountains because of climate change.'

Yesterday's El Tiempo headlined a report about climate change's coming impact on Colombia: higher temperatures and droughts in some regions and flooding in others. Colombia can expect less predictable harvests and more natural disasters, such as landslides.

'Climate change, a different challenge for each region.'

El Tiempo's article also framed Colombia as a victim, pointing out that the country produces only 0.37% of the globe's CO2 production. That's true enough - but Colombia is also the planet's fifth-largest coal exporter and an important producer of petroleum, all of which is burned elsewhere and turned into carbon dioxide. Colombia is also suffering galloping deforestation, which turns forests into aerial carbon. And, a car driven a kilometer here, or a mile of plane flight here pumps as much carbon into the atmosphere as does the same car driven or a plane flown in the U.S., Europe or Japan.

Colombians are not climate victims, but POOR Colombians - like poor people all over the world - who don't drive cars, don't travel by plane and consume little - are the victims.

Climate change victims, or culprits?

What can Colombia do to deal with climate change? Construct water reservoirs, build dykes around Cartagena and Santa Marta and move peasant farmers to new lands. It will be expensive and traumatic.

The wealthy, whose high consumption ways are causing this mess, will likely weather it best in the end.

And the El Tiempo newspaper, naturally, falls into that category. Its reporting about climate change is squeezed in between advertisements for the cars and international travel which pump more CO2 into the atmosphere.

Colombia has climate change victims, but those complaining about it aren't among them.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Evolution of La Candelaria

Residents walk along a cobblestone street in La Candelaria.

 La Candelaria, Bogotá's oldest neighborhood and still the city's heart, has undergone multiple evolutions.

Poor people walk uphill toward the
Egipto neighborhood.

For centuries after the city's founding in 1538, La Candelaria was the home of the city's elite, its power brokers. The wealthy began moving out of the historic center during the 1920s, according to a report by the Universidad Nacional, and the 1948 Bogotazo devastated the city's center, pushign the wealthy north to newer neighborhoods such as Teusaquillo, Chapinero and Usaquen. Meanwhile, amid Colombia's chronic violence, the city's historic center became known for crime, poverty and decay.

However, since the early 2000s, thanks to Colombia's increased stability, lower crime rates and growing economy, La Candelaria has experienced something of a renaissance, with tourism, growing universities and rising property prices.

And now a study by Universidad Nacional students makes it official: La Candelaria is gentrifying.

Dying breed? A neighborhood shop.

According to the university report, monthly apartment rentals in the neighborhood are around a million pesos - a hefty sum in a city which defines an income of more than 200,000 pesos per month as being 'not poor' - and houses can be worth several billion pesos.

As a result, says the study, "the traditional low-income residents are beginning to migrate to other parts of Bogotá, such as the south, which can be noticed by the replacement of shoemakers and bakeries with expensive restaurants."

Today, La Candelaria still feels like a neighborhood. But, as rising rents force out traditional residents, it may lose that and turn into a district of old buildings, quaint cafes and museums.

Universities, such as the Catholic La Salle, have expanded, bringing more students and money to La Candelaria.

Increased police presence has made tourists and residents feel safer, altho crime remains a problem.

However, will La Candelaria ruin itself thru success?

Traffic jams have become chronic in the historical center. But instead of discouraging private car use, officials are allowing the Externado University to build a huge parking garage on the hillside.

A few years ago, someone built this faux-old house on Calle 9.

Whether because of corruption, lack of laws or lack of enforcement, the city keeps permitting constructions which conflict with the neighborhood's historic ambience.

Are those mushrooms behind these houses?

This multi-story apartment building going up on a cobblestone block of Carrera 3 doesn't look very colonial.

Some scenes of La Candelaria?

The Abadia Colonial Hotel was renovated by its Italian owner.

A beggar woman hawks flowers on a La Candelaria doorstep.

A delivery bike in front of a quaint store.

A view down Calle 10.

A theatre and the recently-renovated Muisca Hotel.

Tourists walk near La Plaza del Chorro.

Locals play their daily board game.

A used book store's doorway.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Lessons of the EPL

An EPL fighter. (Photo: Semana)

When someone calling themselves the EPL issued a communique a few days ago expressing its interest in joining the FARC-government peace talks in Havana, many Colombia observers probably scratched their heads.

After all, Colombia is only supposed to have two guerrilla groups: the Revolutionary Armed Forces

'Combating, we will win.' The EPL's logo.

of Colombia, or FARC, who recently commemorated their 50th anniversary, and the smaller National Liberation Army, or ELN, which is in talks about peace talks. But the EPL, or Popular Liberation Army? Didn't they disappear years ago?

In fact, Colombia did once have an EPL guerrilla group, but whether it still does is controversial. And that story illustrates the troubles of negotiating with and demobilizing guerrilla groups.

The EPL was founded in 1967, and grew to have some 4,000 fighters. It specialized in extortion, kidnapping, cattle rustling and money laundering. In its formal philosophy, the EPL adhered to the ultra-Stalinist ideas of Albania's brutal communist dictator Enver Hoxha. In 1991, weakened by attacks from the military and right-wing paramilitaries, some 2,500 EPL fighters demobilized, handing over 850 rifles and founding a political party named Hope, Peace and Liberty, or EPL by its Spanish initials.

'Megateo' in front of an EPL banner.

But the EPL's troubles weren't over. It now became the target of both the left and right. The FARC, calling the demobilized EPL fighters traitors to the revolutionary cause, deliberately murdered several hundred of them. (Ironically, at the same time, members of the FARC-associated Patriotic Union party were being murdered by right-wing forces. The U.P. martyrs have been memorialized, the EPL victims forgotten.) Then, in 1993, EPL defiant leader Francisco Caraballo was captured by the military, and in 1996 one of the group's few remaining fronts turned itself in to the military, while another joined a paramilitary group, supposedly the guerrillas' sworn enemies.

After that, the EPL mostly evaporated, except for a few clashes with the military and the 2006 kidnapping of a businessman and politician's son by people claiming to be EPL members.

However, in 2013 Víctor Ramón Navarro, or Megateo, presented himself to reporters in Catatumbo as head of the EPL's Libardo Toro's front.

To United States and Colombian authorities, however, know Navarro basically as a drug trafficker, Semana magazing wearing gold rings encrusted with diamonds and emeralds.

Want an easy 9 billion pesos?
A wanted poster for 'Alias Megateo.'

for whom they offer millions of dollars in rewards. And his sincerity as a communist revolutionary was called into question when a photo appeared of him wearing a thick gold necklace and he showed up for an interview with

And reporters with Semana magazine also wondered about Navarro's guerrilla legits when his 50 fighting men appeared wearing new uniforms similar to the Colombian military's and carrying brand new Israeli-made Galil rifles. Who or what was sponsoring these people?

Now, the EPL guerrillas want to join the peace talks. But do they still exist, and are they really guerrillas, or a criminal band calling themselves guerrillas?

Some say that the trouble started back in 1991, when the EPL only partially demobilized. And that may have been in part due to the violent hostility from the FARC, who evidently didn't want to lose a guerrilla ally.

With the government-FARC peace negotiations advancing in Havana, the EPL's story illustrates the many ways which a peace deal can go wrong. Does the FARC's central command really control all of its units? Might some guerrilla fronts refuse the peace deal, or morph into violent criminal bands stripped of ideology? Could a guerrilla demobilization trigger another episode of murderous revenge taking?

Meanwhile, someone will have to decide whether the so-called EPL guerrillas deserve the amnesty offered to political groups which have resorted to violence, or should be fought and incarcerated as simple drug traffickers.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Attacking the Peace Talks from the Left

'A peace as an excuse for perpetuating inequality.'

Pro-rebellion posters cover a mural showing
a land-mine victim. Land mines, which
kill and maim many civilians, are
planted by Colombia's guerrillas.  

'And the solution is -rebellion.' These posters appeared today in Bogotá's Teusaquillo district denouncing the FARC.-government peace negotiations going on now in Habana, Cuba.

Until now, most criticisms of the negotiations haves come from the right, which labels them give-aways to the guerrillas and charges that violators of human rights will get off with only symbolic punishments.

In contrast, these anonymous posters, with their calls for 'liberation' and denunciations of inequality, are attacking the talks from the far left, as failing to solve society's ills. Their view seems to be that the solution is rebellion - a new 'revolution'. Does Colombia really want to rewind itself to the 1960s?

'In rebellion, LatinAmerica recovers its existence.'

'A same past, a same enemy, a same possibility: Liberation.'

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

R.I.P. Carlos Gaviria, Colombia's Civil Libertarian

Carlos Gaviria, 1937 - 2015.

Ever wonder at Colombia's surprisingly liberal laws, at least on things like drugs, gay rights, medicine and prostitution?

Brought to you by Carlos Gaviria.

For many years, the 'personal dose' of cocaine and marijuana was legal to possess and consume (altho not to buy and sell).

Colombian same-sex couples can't marry or adopt together, but they can inherit, receive each other's pensions and almost all other rights of heterosexual couples - surprising for a very Catholic developing nation.

Same thing for prostitution, which is conspicuously legal here.

And, to the Catholic Church's endless frustration, in Colombia abortion is legal in several narrow circumstances, and this is one of only three nations which allow euthanasia.

For these civil liberties thank - or blame - to a big extent academic, politician and Supreme Court judge Carlos Gaviria, who died this Tuesday at age 77.

Gaviria grew up in the Antioquia region, where he worked for many years as a judge, professor and human rights activist. In 1987, he fled Colombia during a wave of murder of leftists by right-wing forces linked to the government. Gaviria returned in the early 1990s and became a judge on the Constitutional Court, where he remained until 2001.

Gaviria is remembered for participating in two milestone court rulings: A 1994 ruling depenalizing the possession and consumption of the 'minimum dose' of drugs. Prohibitionist drug policies, Gaviria's opinion held, "damages human dignity, personal autonomy and the free development of the personality."

In 1997, he was the driving force behind a court ruling depenalizing doctor-performed euthenasia. Today, only Colombia, Belgium and Holland allow this practice.

Thru his support for these and other civil liberties, Gaviria helped set a liberal tone for Colombia's courts, which are markedly more progressive than either the populace, presidents or Congress.

As the far-left Polo Democratico Party's presidential candidate in 2006, Gaviria got trounced by far-rightist Alvaro Uribe. Yet, Gaviria still won a historically high vote for a leftist candidate.

During the campaign, Uribe labeled Gaviria a "disguised communist," which Gaviria denied. But Gaviria incited controversy by declaring that 'killing so that people lived better,' was different from killing for money, a statement which seemed to justify guerrilla crimes.

So, the next time that you smoke something that's not tobacco, violate church dicta or otherwise think for yourself in Colombia, you can thank Carlos Gaviria.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Semana Santa in Paloquemao

Dried, salted fish for sale in front of Paloquemao Market.

A few scenes of the shopping rush today in Paloquemao Market, particularly in the fish section.

No space for one more.

Check out this bagre.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours