Posted on 01/26/2004 3:23:25 PM PST by El Conservador
I went to my place of birth, Barranquilla, Colombia (pop.: approx. 1.3 million), for 2 weeks, from January 2-19.
Pretty much I arrived to the same country I left 3 years ago:
-Same guerrilla and paramilitary violence.
-Same recession.
-Same widespread corruption.
But, hey, I still love the place.
A few anecdotes:
1) My dad gave me his car to move around in town, because I wanted to rent a car (not a very bright idea there). One of my cousins, a 34-year-old Bill Clinton sexual emulator wanted me to take him to a particularly seedy part of the city so he could go to, let's say, a house of sin. Of course I refused, not because of the purpose of the trip, but for its route (a "Greengo" with a lot of "monee" exposing himself).
2) One of the big political scandals in Barranquilla was the installation of "yellow zones", parking spaces with a park meter. Of course, the park meters were never put to work, and instead a guy charged you for the parking. This was a real deal for the former mayor, who probably got a lot of payola for the purchase of the useless park meters. Only in Barranquilla.
One of the reasons I wanted to go to Barranquilla, besides visiting my family and friends and unwind a little bit, was, believe it or not, to see the Third-World stuff you only see there.
See, living in the industrialized world may be better, but this overly organized, impersonal culture can bore a hot-blooded Latino, so I had to go to get some south-of-the-border absurdity:
Chaotic driving: Driving in Barranquilla is like driving in Miami, Mexico City and Bombay at the same time. Two-lane streets miraculously become three-lane. You have to compete with big-a$$ buses, busetas (smaller, shuttle-type buses), and even horse-drawn carts!!! Also, have you seen a large U.S. city where cows roam free in the streets???
Corruption: Although this is no laughing matter, the cases of corruption there seem so outrageous, you don't get a fit of rage, but you laugh your a$$ off. Pedestrian overpasses that no one use (people still risk their lives crossing the street old-style), yellow zones, and others that would get an American fuming with rage, but that will make a Colombian split his/her sides.
One of the things that really outraged me is how people has to make superhuman efforts to do things that in the U.S. could be taken for granted:
My uncle’s wife’s niece is a pretty, very smart 20-year-old business administration student in a public university in a town in inland Colombia called Pamplona, and her tuition ran for CO$530,000, approximately US$200. Yes, it’s correct, 200 dollars. She was in Barranquilla on vacation, but she wanted to go to Pamplona the same night I met her so she could get a credit or a loan to pay for her tuition, because her family couldn’t afford to pay it. She ran us through the whole story, and I felt bad how a person could lose her right to enroll in college for a measly US$200, I wound up giving her the money, barely knowing her, because I really, veritably felt bad for her.
But there’s one thing that impacted me and made me quite happy: The support conservative-leaning president Alvaro Uribe has right now.
Alvaro Uribe is a very tough, straight-talk, hands-on president, who has captivated the Colombian population of all walks of life (except for the usual suspects: Leftist unions, especially the teachers’, government workers’ and oil workers’, leftist students, leftist academia and the not-surprisingly liberal media).
Colombians now feel secure to travel around the country without fear the leftist guerrillas will kidnap them, invest money, start businesses and all the thing Colombians couldn’t do because of the state of intimidation the country lived prior to Uribe’s inauguration.
Now Colombia has a more optimistic outlook on life (the pessimists are still there, even in my family) and feels less paranoid.
So when you see a Colombian happy, partially thank Alvaro Uribe.
Those guerrilas would make L.A. gangs look like choir boys. They'll literally slit your throat for a buck.
I heard an expression there: God made Columbia so beautiful, he had to make the people corrupt. Or something along those lines.
Barranquilla, Cartagena- a very beautiful city, Riohacha and Puerto Bolivar (real wild west places at the time).I also seem to remember a place named Rancho Perdida, or something like that. And then Buenaventura and the road to Cali up from the coast thru the jungle and into the mountains. First time I ever ate bar-b-qued monkey on a stick(but not the last-quite a roadside snack!)
Columbia is beautiful indeed.
it is a total shame what is going on there, i would love to go back, but i don't know that i would feel safe there again.
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