[Content Warning: The quoted Wikipedia segment recounts an incident of extreme violence against a notable Black figure in Colombian history.]
Cartagena was the only major trip in Colombia we took outside of Bogotá, and our visit to Palenque, about an hour and a half outside of Cartagena was by far the most interesting part of that trip. Standing in front of the sign on the left photo was a multilingual Polish woman.We had a really interesting discussion on languages and Linguistics. I mentioned that I had read somewhere that Polish is one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn. She said, “Oh yes, you shouldn’t bother learning Polish; it’s not really useful outside of Poland.”
Palenque de San Basilio was one of many walled communities called palenques. Enslaved Africans founded hundreds of palenques across Latin American and the Caribbean as refuges after escaping slavery in the 16th and 17th centuries. Only San Basilio has survived to the present day. In 2005, UNESCO listed it as a place of Intangible Cultural Heritage, or a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Among the reasons include its unique religious rituals, medical practices, music, and its language, Palenquero—the only creole language in Latin America with a lexical Spanish basis and grammatical characteristics of Bantu languages.
The pictures above show our tour group disembarking into the town plaza. The lower right picture show our guide wearing a t-shirt Michael and I really wanted to purchase for a friend, but he said it was not available. In English, it reads “For as long as I am Black I am historic, I do not need a month, I exist for a lifetime.” The word “Kutú” in the mural behind him means “power” or “strength” in Palenquero.
The most prominent feature of square, aside from the church, is the monument to Benkos Biohó. The plaque reads
[The] second half of the 16th century in the Biohó region, a region of the Bijagós Islands in Portuguese Guinea (present-day Guinea-Bissau): Benkos Biohó, also known as Domingo Biohó, who led a rebellion of runaway slaves in Granada in the 17th century. Becoming THE GREATEST HERO (FIRST FREE TOWN of America) SAN BASILIO DE PALENQUE. Founder of Palenque in 1603 Assassinated on March 16, 1621 in Cartagena de Indias Ma Kankamaná Community Council of Palenque Bolívar Governorate 2019
Biohó was born into a royal family in Guinea Bissau. He was of Mandinka origin. He was seized by the Portuguese slave trader, Pedro Gomes Reinel, sold to businessman Juan Palacios, and later, after transportation to what is now Colombia in South America, sold again to the Spaniard Alonso del Campo in 1596, in Cartagena de Indias. He made his first escape when the boat that was transporting him down the Magdalena River sank. He was recaptured but escaped again in 1599 into the marshy lands southeast of Cartagena. He organized an army that came to dominate all of the Montes de Maríaregion. He also formed an intelligence network and used the information collected to help organize more escapes and to guide the runaway slaves into the liberated territory, known as settlement.He used the title “king of Arcabuco“.
On 18 July 1605, the Governor of Cartagena, Gerónimo de Suazo y Casasola, unable to defeat the Maroons, offered a peace treaty to Biohó, recognising the autonomy of the Matuna Bioho Palenque and accepting his entrance into the city armed and dressed in Spanish fashion, while the palenque promised to stop receiving more runaway slaves, cease their aid in escape attempts, and stop addressing Biohó as “king”.
This treaty was violated by the Spaniards in 1619 when they captured Biohó as he was walking carelessly into the city. He was hanged and quartered on 16 March 1621. Governor García Girón, who ordered the execution, argued bitterly that “it was dangerous the extent to which Biohó was respected in the population” and that “his lies and enchantment would drive the nations of Guinea away from the city.”
The murder of Bióho resonates even today in Colombia, as it created a lasting narrative governments making promises and then committing treachery. He also remains a symbol of resistance, because the people of Palenque refused to surrender, even after his murder, forcing Spain to eventually sign a new treaty in 1691, making it the first free village of formerly enslaved people in the Americas.
When we tried to take pictures of the statue and plaque, the women wearing red, yellow and blue in the two lower pictures rushed in to pose in front. We asked our guide if we were supposed to tip them. He told us, “Here we do not call them tips. We call it support.”
A young man from Palenque teaches the delegation words from the Palenquero language
Part of the tour was this young man giving us a Palanquero language lesson. He told us that Palanquero was a mixture of Kikongo (one of the 440-680 Bantu languages), Spanish and a little Portuguese. He tried to get us to speak simple sentences in Palanquero, but most of the people on the tour were older, and he was a little frustrated by how slow we were. The multilingual Polish woman did the best.
On the next stop we learned something about Palenque’s musical history. Several groups from Palenque have become famous throughout Colombia. Other tour groups came in and out, and the small room became stifling. The person who talked to us got a pretty good rhythm band going on about 15 different instruments he handed out to visitors.
Palenque also has a reputation for famous herbalists. I said had a bad back and he gave me some plants to crush and rub on it. Turned out to be arnica.
We went to an old-style Palenque house, in which everything was handmade, including walls constructed of wood and cow manure.
Then we went to a threshing shed. They were out of wheat to thresh, but they taught us some of the common threshing songs sung in Palenque.
We had a little lesson in hair braiding as resistance. Sometimes women would braid escape maps into their hair. Here’s an instagram reel that explains a little more about it.
So after we left Palenque, were we interested in the colonial history of Cartagena? Not really. We walked around some, and I took a picture of this monument from the fight for Colombia’s independence from Spain. Translation follows. Maybe in colonial histories there are no good guys, but the people who burn lepers alive in their homes are definitely the bad guys.
TRIBUTE FROM THE PEOPLE OF CARTAGENA DE INDIAS TO THEIR UNKNOWN MARTYRS EXECUTED IN 1816 AS A RESULT OF THE 1815 PACIFICATION AT THE CONVENT AND PLAZA DE LA MERCED. JUAN BAUTISTA MARIN. FRANCISCO CASTRO. JOSE LIBERATO PRETELT. JUAN JOSE DE LA PENA. SANTOS LUENAR. DOMINGO PUMAR. PEDRO MORENO. LIBERATO RODRÍGUEZ JOSÉ MANUEL CALDERÓN JOSÉ VILLAPOLL. JOSE ACEDO. BENANCIO ALVAREZ. PEDRO MARTÍNEZ ORANCAS. FRANCISCO MENDOZA CLEMENTE CARRIAZO JOSÉ MARÍA SOSA. TIBURCIO FLORES. DOMINGO VICTORIA. PEDRO ANTONIO GARCÍA. EDUARDO ARASO. MANUEL MARTINEZ. DIEGO ORTIZ:
THROUGH THEM WE PAY HOMAGE *TO THE FOUR HUNDRED SACRIFICED ON THE SHORES OF THE SEA IN BOCACHICA, IN DECEMBER 1815 *TO THE HUNDREDS OF SOLDIERS BEHEADED IN THE BAY OF CARTAGENA, IN DECEMBER 1815 *TO THE UNFORTUNATE LEPERS WHO, IN CONSIDERABLE NUMBERS, WERE IN THE CAÑO DE LORO LEPER HOUSE AND WERE BURNED ALIVE
TO ALL OF THEM, WE, THE PEOPLE OF CARTAGENA, OWE OUR FREEDOM
February 9, 2026 The Center for Memory, Peace, and Reconciliation mostly focuses on atrocities and assassinations that happened in Bogotá during Colombia’s violent history of the last decades.
In Colombia, transitional justice is understood as a set of mechanisms, both judicial and extra-judicial, that guarantee the rights of the victims of the internal armed conflict. These mechanisms were incorporated into the countries constitution in 2017 and is officially referred to as the Integrated System for Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-Repetition (Sistema Integral de Verdad, Justicia, Reparación Y No Repetición. This integrated system is composed of three institutions: – Peace Tribunal (Justicia Especial para la Paz) – Truth Comission (Comisión de la Verdad) – Search Unit for Disappeared People (Unidad de Búsqueda de Personas Desaparecidas)
Is this space designed/arranged for safe listening?
Yes, it has private rooms for attention to victims of the conflict.
Is restorative justice actually taking place in this space?
No, but it has the potential to become a site for these practices.Some public encounters between victims, civil society and Ex-Guerrilla members have happened in this space. In March 2018, The Center of Memory in Bogota was the space where women victims and ex-guerilla members held an emotional meeting to share life experiences during the war. The victims agreed that their role was not an obstacle to agree on the need to rebuild the social fabric, seeking to transform the past into opportunities for the future.
Who is the audience/the intended participants for this space?
Conflict victims and civil society in general.
How or to what extent is this space public?
It is a public building and has public spaces but they have a visiting schedule from 8 am to 5 pm. Monday and Sunday closed.
What are the politics of this space, either in terms of its location, design, spatial, or visual aspects?
It is an important space for documentation of conflict and generation of collective memory. The center states the importance of Social memory as a transitional justice tool. As a result of a public contest of architecture, the project of Juan Pablo Ortiz architects, established a meaningful and emotional relation with the victims, as part of the initial stage of the construction process. From the beginning of the project, a deep respect for the memory and unique conditions of the place were established as a priority. For this reason, the construction of the Center started with a series of community activities that included the participation of more than two thousand people.
Different collectives that represented the affected populations of the Colombian internal conflict were called to perform ten symbolic actions. A total of 2600 individuals gathered on the site to share their stories and to make personal contributions of soil brought from their hometowns. These contributions were storage in glass pipes that are now a visible and integral part of the building.
Physical/factual description of space:
The Center of memory is a building composed of two joined structures: a monolithic volumen made out of 200 layers of soil that represent the 200 years of independence of Colombia, and an underground section that balances the relations with the natural, urban and social surroundings. The project was intentionally built with a formal simplicity to obtain space flexibility and an easy change of use in the future.
Sustainability was a key aspect of the building design. The architects worked to generate a low impact construction that respected the surrounding historic sites. More than 70% of the building is implanted under the soil to generate the least environmental and landscape impact. The underground section includes a sequence of courtyards that enable illuminated cross-ventilated interior areas. The project is located at the grounds of a mass grave, next to the central cemetery of the city and a metropolitan park. The building honours the lives of the individuals resting in the site, and therefore looks for a deep connection with the land.
“An architecture that respects the cemetery, with silent and timeless features, with a subtle recognition throughout the park landscape is proposed” (Ortiz, 2018). The building was constructed with local, solid and long-lasting materials. A research on vernacular techniques of construction was conducted to find the appropriate matter. As limitations of construction techniques with 100% organic materials were found, the structure was built using 90% of inorganic soil and 10% of cement, in order to meet the seismic resistance rules of the city.
The building is located in one of the most deprived areas of Bogota, between el Samper and el Santa Fe neighbourhoods, near the city center. It is easily reachable by public transportation, and it became an urban connector, distributing pedestrian traffic from the park, the avenue and its surroundings. The construction of the project was completely financed by the Mayor’s Office and the Local Council. It is property of the Secretary of Government of the city that guarantees the site operation. The center has been open for ten years.
Analytical description of space:
The Center of Memory was built to create a space where memory and conflict victims were dignified. It was originally an idea of human right defenders to serve as a site that supported the culture of peace during the internal conflict. It opened its doors in December 2012, as part of the program Bogota City of Memory of the High Council for the Rights of Victims, Peace and Reconciliation. Since then, it has become a space that welcomes diversity and provides an opportunity for changing the meaning of Colombian violent history.
The center commemorates the victims of the conflict and upholds the values of peace, truth, justice and reconciliation, by offering spaces for attention and assistance to visitors. It has available spaces for teaching, community meetings, divulgation services and peace campaigns, related to the internal conflict. The mission of the Center is to provide a space for the reconciliation and transformation of collective imaginaries related to the internal conflict. Moreover, it contributes to a peace building process while making visible the different experiences of victims. The center promotes exhibitions, art performances, and collaborative initiatives that generate the creation and construction of collective memory and reconciliation.
The first thing you see when you enter the building is an interactive map, where you can see assassinations and massacres that happened around the Bogotá area. The pictures and names of the victims are matched with the locations where they were murdered. The Youtube Embed option on WordPress wouldn’t let me embed a Youtube link, so you can find it here. There’s also some great political graffiti, which I wrote about last time we were in Colombia
This collection of soil from sites of massacres and assassinations is reminiscent of the the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, informally called “the Lynching Museum,” which we visited on our Southern tour of U.S. civil rights landmarks. The translation of the plaque reads
THIS MEMORIAL
FOR LIFE
is inhabited by handfuls of earth
contributed by the public over seven years.
With the 2,012 glass tubes embedded in these walls,
we symbolize more than forty thousand records
of people who were victims of murder and disappearances,
and thousands of testimonies delivered with the earth sown with memory.
We recover voices, struggles, we make visible what has been hidden, disappeared, or silenced, because memory resists death.
Because we build the past so that dreams may return.
Translation of plaque:
EXTRAJUDICIAL EXECUTIONS: DEATH AS A REWARD The term “false positives” became popular to describe the extrajudicial executions committed by members of the National Army against innocent civilians, mostly young people from impoverished backgrounds seeking work or better opportunities for their families. These victims were presented as guerrillas killed in combat in order to inflate military statistics in the fight against insurgent groups. In exchange, those responsible received promotions, leave, decorations, and other rewards. Most of these crimes were recorded between 2002 and 2008 in different regions of the country. In the Bogotá area, the phenomenon became more notorious with victims in Ciudad Bolívar and Soacha, where an estimated 19 young people were murdered.
The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) has documented 6,402 victims between 2002 and 2008 as part of its investigation into Case 03. As of August 2025, 182 people had been charged as the main perpetrators, most of them members of the Armed Forces and other state agents. Eighty-five percent of the members of the security forces involved have accepted responsibility. In the most advanced sub-cases concerning enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions—such as those in Norte de Santander, the Las Mercedes Cemetery in Dabeiba (Antioquia), the La Popa Battalion in Cesar, and Casanare—50 members of the security forces and third parties have acknowledged their responsibility for these serious human rights violations and breaches of International Humanitarian Law (IHL).
Besides the permanent exhibits, the museum also has classrooms for students to learn about the history of human rights abuses in the Bogota area, and revolving exhibitions. One of these exhibitions was about small rural community impacted by Bógota’s suburban sprawl. Alto Fucha has provided safe spaces for former guerrillas and their victims to meet. Translation of banner:
FUCHA: BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS AND THE CITY In the upper reaches of the Eastern Hills lies the Alto Fucha region, the source of the river that bears its name. This ecosystem has been affected since the mid-1980s by unchecked population growth, largely due to forced displacement. This is compounded by pressure from private and state actors to construct large-scale urban and tourism projects, which have led to further displacement, gentrification, and various forms of violence. With the deterioration of the environmental balance, natural disasters—such as landslides and mudslides—have also occurred, primarily impacting the most vulnerable population in the area.
Amid this process of territorial transformation, the construction of the National Army’s Logistics Training Battalion in the Fucha River basin not only caused serious environmental damage but also solidified a militarized relationship with the territory.
On September 12, 2024, the Specialized Forensic Analysis and Techniques Group (GATEF) of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) confirmed the discovery of human skeletal remains within the facilities of this battalion, as part of investigations stemming from the statements of Sergeant José Leonairo Dorado, who confessed to his participation in acts of torture and other human rights violations, including the disappearance of Pedro Movilla.
In response to these events, the community has organized to defend its territory, primarily through Community Action Boards, using initiatives such as Environmental Classrooms, Eco-classrooms, and spaces like the House of Rain, where artistic, cultural, and peace education processes are developed. Likewise, collectives such as Huertopía and Endémico Andino continue working to care for nature, its healing through the recovery of ancestral knowledge, and the construction of new ways of inhabiting and organizing the city.
What can we learn from rural ways of inhabiting and remembering?
Included in the Alta Fucha exhibit were short films about the ecosystem and the residents telling their stories.
Another temporary exhibit explored Colombian trans history and other LGBTQ+ stories. Below are some of the quotations on the wall:
“They told me they were going to rape me to cure me of my effeminate nature. That they were going to teach me how to be a real woman.” Testimony of a trans woman displaced by paramilitaries in the Caribbean
“In the neighborhood, bodies of transvestites began to appear with signs that read:’This is what happens to you for not respecting.'” Testimony of a resident of Medellín
“We are victims too, but we are never invited to memorial events. “Trans activist, Bogotá
“Telling our stories is dangerous, but silence is more so. If we don’t speak out, they will continue to believe that we don’t exist.” LGBTIQ Collective of Valle del Cauca
“Absentes Presentes”—Those who are missing, disappeared, or dead, but present in the memories of the people. At the annual protest at the School of the Americas/WHINSEC in Fort Benning, GA, participants carry crosses bearing the names of those killed by graduates of this school. As their names are called out, the crowd sings a mournful chant, “Presente.” The translation of the plaque:
Enforced disappearance is a crime against humanity that, due to its complexity, has been difficult to measure, resulting in institutional databases that frequently have inconsistent figures. This is largely due to underreporting between reported cases and those without a formal complaint. It is estimated that between 1,500 and 2,000 people living in the city are missing; however, more than 18,000 people have declared themselves victims in Bogotá, most of them from other regions of the country.
Currently, the Search Unit for Missing Persons (UBPD) has two regional search plans involving the Capital District: one focused on the Sumapaz district and its surrounding municipalities, and a regional plan covering the rest of the districts. The latter establishes that, of the 132,877 people reported missing, 3,678 were registered in Cundinamarca between 1948 and 2016, of which 1,714 correspond to events that occurred in Bogotá. As of April 2024, there were 473 search requests.
The Observatory of Memory and Conflict (OMC) of the CNMH attributes 19.8% to paramilitaries, 13.8% to the State, and 7% to guerrillas, while the Truth Commission (CEV) identifies paramilitaries as responsible for 52.8% and the FARC-EP for 24.2%. Besides the civilian population, both members of the armed forces and insurgent groups are among the victims of this crime.
These figures have made Bogotá an epicenter for organizations and families of victims who actively search for missing persons, as well as create and promote profound processes of memory and the search for truth, justice, and reparations. Among them are the Association of Families of the Detained and Disappeared (ASFADDES), the Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE), the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation, FUNVIDES, the Reencuentros Corporation, the Colombian Association of Victims of Kidnapping and Forced Disappearance (ACOMIDES), among many others.
What implications does disappearance have on how it is silenced, forgotten, or remembered in Bogotá? To what extent does it fuel endless searches?
This graph shows the number of kidnappings in Colombia and the locations where they have happened the most.
Outside the museum, what should have a moving collection of letters to and from prisoners, from families to the authorities, from former prisoners to their torturers, was crippled by a design flaw. The white lettering on transparent glass was almost impossible to read while the sun was shining. Bogota does have a lot of cloudy days, but this was not one of them. I fiddled with filters, contrast and other techniques to make the writing legible, but was not successful.
That night we went out to eat with friends and found this graffiti: “Beware of Sad Dog.”
February 9 Gurú is a Chilean friend of Camila’s, who came to participate in a conference on Nonviolent Communication (I presume.) She works on women’s issues and teaches yoga back in Chile. Camila suggested we have lunch together at Mini-Mal a restaurant that specializes in Indigenous and Afro-Colombian cuisine.
While we waited for Camila, I used the translator on the phone to read the menu, but since many of the words were Indigenous, it didn’t help. For example: “Cured and smoked pirarucu, grilled pineapple, green chili mayonnaise, farofa, lemon ants.” (Yes, they do eat rather large ants in some areas of Colombia). A lot of the food mixed savory and sweet things together (rabbit stew in coconut milk), which I don’t enjoy. I think I ordered the empanadas, and we ordered native potatoes as a starter—all very good.
In the evening, Gurú, Camila, and I went to see the film, Hamnet, while Michael saw Marty Supreme. Gurú and I were weeping at the end, and Camila wanted to know why it had moved us so much. My Spanish comprehension is poor, and Gurú doesn’t speak much English. However, we managed to describe the tragedy of two people who were in so much pain they could not comfort each other after their son died. Gurú identified some foreshadowing events that I had missed earlier in the film.
My back was in agony after the film because of the theater seats, but it’s been a long time since I’ve wept uncontrollably at the movies.
Mariska Hargitay as Olivia BensonSmoke from bomb arising above fieldsRabbi Drorah SetelBarbra Streisandteenage girls
That night I had three dreams:
Olivia Benson from Law and Order SVU and I were with an Indigenous tribe in the United States. I don’t remember what concern brought us there. A little boy with a hang glider-type contraption was at the periphery of a group of adults, whom Benson was talking to. While the adults were discussing things, he climbed on top of a high place and jumped. Everyone was horrified as we saw him falling, not flying, but as he got closer to the ground, he appeared to be floating. People started sliding down huge piles of dirt to him, like, mountains of dirt. We would get to the bottom of one and then slide down the next mountain. We got to the bottom, and then a bunch of us went to a camp to take showers. For some reason, I was dirtier than everyone else. There was a very long line for the showers. At some point, waiting in line, I realized I needed to go to the bathroom. Teresa Nickeson, a friend from church, told me that a shower was free to use. I entered and saw there was nothing there. She pointed me to a door, and I saw a toilet. I woke up and went to the bathroom.
In the next dream, we were living in some dystopian version of the United States, even more dystopian than now. The country was at war and we could see smoke coming up from a bombing in the distance. Many people had died from a disease, especially many children. We were visiting a couple of friends of Michael in the Midwest. He asked if we could give them some fruit, and the husband immediately began to bring out tons of produce to show that they didn’t need it. We talked about his two dead teenage daughters who have been friends with Michael’s daughter. Then, a wild-looking man came to the door, and the husband started yelling at him. He said the man could come in and get some food, but then he needed to leave. The wild man began racing around the house, acting obnoxious and mean. After the father threw him out, I found out the year was maybe 2017 or 18. I told him we’re in the year 2027 and none of this has happened. Your daughters didn’t die. And then poof, his daughters Hannah and Anna appeared wearing windbreakers. And there was no war and the smoke disappeared and I think I began seeing other things that didn’t happen. I spoke more realities into being.
I felt very empowered.
The last dream I remember, I was with our Rabbi, Drorah. We were in crowded auditorium, and Barbra Streisand was squeezing by. Drorah asked if Streisand had gotten her letter about Puerto Rico. (This was after Bad Bunny’s triumph at the Super Bowl.) There was more to the dream than that, but it ended with me having a conversation with Drorah. Two teenage girls were giggling at the end of the table. Drorah snapped at them for being rude to me, and one of the girls said “No, we think you’re super cool, you have this, like, Goth thing about you that’s really interesting. I said “I always wished that there had been Emos back in my time because I felt very alone in high school. If there had been Emos around, at least I would’ve had a group of friends that I could have related to. I was just depressed by myself.” And the girl said, “Right! Everyone needs a group of friends who understands them.“
I talked about the dreams with my therapist when I got back. She noted that all of them, in a way, deal with theme of lost children, which might have been the influence of Hamnet.
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The picture I had of Camila for our final day together, didn’t really express who she was. So I took something from a webpage describing her what she does. Her current work is with Resuena, an organization “set out on a dream to expand the access to Nonviolent Communication in Colombia so that it becomes part of the day-to-day culture.”
Below is the bad picture I took of Camila at a diner for breakfast. She really wasn’t unhappy at the time. One of the aspects of Colombian cuisine that Michael really appreciated is the soups, and the fact that Colombians eat soup at breakfast and lunch. I remember with fondness Colombian pastries on previous trip. I
t struck me that this simple diner had works of original art all over the walls. I said it seemed like I saw art everywhere I went in Bogota. Camila told me its presence was especially prevalent in her bohemian neighborhood.
A love of beauty and plants also helps describe Camila’s character. She has plants in every room of her apartment except the utility room. I documented them here:
We decided to go to the Bogota public market and eat all the fruits we hadn’t eaten yet (and we had eaten a lot of different fruits.) The excursion turned into buying fruit that doesn’t need to be turned into juice. Of the fruits you see here, we liked the mangosteen the best (the little brown ones). Since Colombia is full of microclimates, almost anything can be grown. Camila also took us to visit her friend who organizes community-supported agriculture (and allows artists to use her space, because, well, it’s Bogotá).
What else? By the time I got to Bogotá, the bruise I got from my fall in Medellin had grown considerably worse. As it dissipated over time, I realized it had hematoma at the center, which explains why the muscle in my thigh hurt so much when I moved it. I used one of my hiking sticks as a cane for the rest of the trip.
In a moment alone with Camila shortly before we left for the airport, she was discussing her goals for the next few years. She then asked me about my goals. Without thinking, I said, “I’d like to make compassion cool again.” She asked how I planned on accomplishing that, and I said, “Well, maybe that’s what my next novel will be about. Right before we left, she handed me this pin and told me, “This is to remind you that your job now is to make compassion cool again.”
Our guide Camilo told us this artist is famous for painting animals in apocalyptic situations
Returning to Camila’s place gave me a chance to rest my knee—which I did the day after a graffiti tour of Bogota with a young man from a tour company run by Camila’s friend. His name was Camilo, and he had been an art student at one of the more than 100 universities in Bogota. He went all the way back to graffiti as a movement in the 1960s, to Cornbread, a young man who began ,spray-painting, “ I am Cornbread“ on walls all over New York City to impress a girl. People began to ask, “Who is this Cornbread guy?“ However, when the girl rejected him, Cornbread wrote on a wall, “Cornbread has retired.” The graffiti movement started in New York and then Philadelphia, and soon began spreading. Bogotá is now the global center of street art, with 500 km of painted walls.
Tagging is the most basic form of graffiti, in which individuals or “crews” paint their logos on walls. The higher up on a wall, the more street cred you have. Camilo says he has seen them as high as three stories. The artist that painted the two homeless kids kissing (whom he had seen on the streets) incorporated tags from all over the city into their pants. The painting is called The Invisibles, which, Camilo said, is appropriate, because graffiti is a way that invisible people use to make themselves feel visible.
Tags evolved into “bombs,” huge, balloon-like letters. When Camilo began his career as a street artist, he used stencils, and only then began to appreciate how much skill it took to spray paint these bombs freehand.
Felipe Diego Becerra used Félix the cat as his logo. One night in 2011, as he was painting a wall, the police shot him in the back. At the hospital, the doctor asked his parents why the the police had shot him. When they told him the reason, he asked them to quickly come into Diego’s room and take a photo of his hands covered in blue paint. The police accused him of pulling a gun on them. Graffiti artists all over the city went on a 24-hour graffiti-thon, in protest, many of them painting pictures of Felix the Cat.
The Diego Becerra story continues oddly, two years later when Justin Bieber came to town for a concert. Noticing the art on the walls, he asked if he could try his hand at it—with a police escort.
….Justin Bieber performed his first ever concert in Bogota on October 29, the following night he decided to hit the streets and show Colombia his skills with a spray can. But instead of stopping him, ticketing him, even hassling him, local police gave him a personal escort.
For several hours he painted about 40 meters of wall on 26th street in Bogota with his entourage and security in town — local police were on hand, again, not to stop him but to make sure no one bothered him while he “tagged” the wall.
Traffic was redirected and Bieber was allowed to “paint” several crudely drawn cartoons, phrases and his own signature at his own leisure. At one point, Bieber looks to be ordering his police escort to remove the news cameras that were shooting footage of his foray into street art. If this wasn’t bratty enough, he even shows his support for fellow-pop-brat with misplaced machismo, Chris Brown, by painting the words “Free Breezy” on the wall.
The only thing that sets these two young men apart, aside from questionable talent, is fame. The same people who killed Becerra are protecting Bieber yet both kids were doing the exact same thing.
When artists like Banksy are blurring the line between fame and infamy in the street art world and forcing us to ask these questions — someone like Bieber takes an already controversial art form that has spent years building credibility to misfit-status. It goes from high-art to simple vandalism for the sake of street-cred. Nothing Bieber was doing that night, on that wall, in Colombia was for the sake of art or in the true spirit of graffiti. It was just as contrived a move as his attempts at rapping. It’s an effort to be rebellious without any risk — and to have the police there, as your backup, is as soft as it gets.
Without even getting into the quality of the art that Bieber threw up on that wall, the real concern is his coopting of graffiti for his own personal gain. Was this his way of showing the world how “street” Bieber is? And was the open police escort their way of trying to make amends with the already marginalized graffiti community in Colombian? The same group of people that for years views the police as the enemy? Hard to say. Instead of the police, Bieber could’ve easily tapped any one of the many local, talented graffiti crews in Bogota to take him out — and I’m sure they would’ve gladly taken him on a tour of all the amazing street art in Colombia. But instead, police cars, flashing lights and security guards — a whole show was put on so that Bieber could clown around with a spray can. Maybe his swag coach felt this was cooler?
When most graffiti artists around the world work in stealth, worried about the police showing up while they’re painting, Bieber seemed more concerned with locals showing up while he was throwing up his pieces.
In fact, by the next day, local graffiti activists Mochila Ambulante did show up, with spray cans in hand, to cover up Bieber’s “graffiti.” They had no police escort and wore bandanas over their faces to cover up their identities. And while their work won’t make international headlines or cause outrage, perhaps Bieber got what he was looking for after all — attention.
The public protests that followed Bieber’s visit compelled the Municipal government of Bogotá to decriminalize all graffiti and street art. Three of the art departments in Bogotá’s 100+ universities teach street art. The community of street artists has established a consensus that everything that goes up on a wall is graffiti, so that some will not be more privileged than the others.
Some businesses ask street artists to paint their walls, and sometimes Bogotá chooses particular walls to become art exhibitions, asking artists to express themselves on them.
A Belgian artist came to Bogotá and added little men dressed in typical workers’ uniforms to some of the art.
Political graffiti also abounds in Bogota. One of my clear memories of the 1982 course I took through Bluffton College here in 1982 was seeing all the graffiti by M-19, a militant group opposed to the government that eventually became a political party. The current president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, was affiliated with M-19.
The words on the black and white mural say, “I did not choose war, but I was born a warrior.” The wall of people’s faces refers to the scandal of the “false positives,” in which the Colombian army murdered ordinary people, dressed them up in guerrilla uniforms, and claimed they were guerrillas in order to receive a bounty. The wall of army officers standing in a row reads, “Who gave the order?” (to kill the civilians.). And of course Palestine is on everyone’s mind, and would appear on the walls of all the cities we would visit.
Of course we wanted to see Camilo’s street art! The picture on the left was commissioned by a bank. It was meant to be two women weaving, but it kept raining and turning the threads into a rainbow of water. Finally the bank said they like the way it looked. (By the way, I kept that wedding hair-do for more than a week.)
Camilo and his team of artists receive a commission from Bogota’s emerald traders to paint the above. Pablo Escobar and other drug lords had laundered their drug money through emerald traders, who didn’t really have the ability to refuse if they wanted to keep their families safe. As a consequence, the traders developed a reputation for being a part of the criminal class.
When Camilo’s team asked what they wanted on the wall, they assumed the traders would want something that showed their status as normal part of Colombian society. But what they wanted was the Indigenous legend of how emeralds came to be.
In the land of what is now called the Magdalena River (where Community Peacemaker Teams works, incidentally) the Muzo creator God, Are, swept over the areacreating the mountains and valleys. On the shores of the sacred river, now called Minero, he formed two figures—one male (Tena) and one female (Fura)—and threw them into the river. There, they were brought to life. Once alive, Are taught Fura and Tena how to take care of the gardens that He had planted and make pottery. He gave them rules to follow including the requirement of fidelity in their husband and wife relationship. Are taught them that violating the laws he had established would lead to aging and eventual death. For a long time, Fura and Tena enjoyed their ageless lives in the beautiful land Are had prepared for them.
Then, one day, a young man appeared. His name was Zarbi. Zarbi was looking for a flower that could cure any illness and had crossed mountains and rivers, looking high and low for the flower without success. So, he asked Fura for help, and being a compassionate soul, she began to follow him throughout the forests looking for the flower. Soon Fura became aware of her attraction to Zarbi. She was unfaithful to Tena with Zarbi and as a result immediately began to age.
Realizing her error, she returned to Tena, who upon seeing her in her aged state realized that she had broken the law that Are had given them and would soon die. Not wanting to be left alone, Tena laid down on Fura’s knees and stabbed himself in the heart. For three days, Fura cried with the body of her husband on her lap, and her tears changed into emeralds.
Soon, Are returned to visit Fura and Tena and realized they had broken his laws. He changed the couple into large rocks. Angered, he also banished Zarbi, who in his own anger changed into a raging river in order to eternally separate Fura’s rock from Tena’s rock.
I’d say something about these crazy kids being so in love, but that would not reflect the meticulous planning they put into this wedding for a year. They succeeded, and they’re still so in love.
The flowers were lovely.
The friend who introduced them performed the ceremony and described their almost love at first sight meet-up in a way that made every one laugh.
What more shall I say? Should I mention that music after the wedding dinner was at a decibel level that made the furniture vibrate in the next room? And that I lay on a vibrating couch with my head turned away from the banquet hall because the flashing lights would. have triggered a migraine?
Have I mentioned yet that Michael’s daughter Beth got married on February 24 in Medellin and that was the whole reason for our South America trip? Well, now you know.
Michael and I left for Medellin on the morning of February 21. For lunch, we ate at Champi, a few blocks from the hotel, which was our first exposure to traditional Colombian food. Michael is a fan. It’s bland, has at least two, usually three starches in the meal and generous servings of meat (beans in less privileged areas.) The coconut lemonade was superb. Cuban coffee was the most expensive coffee on the menu, more expensive than cappuccino. But I noted with appreciation its use as a remedy for headaches.
In the evening, we had dinner with the Taberlys, the family of Eric, whom Beth is marrying. The guy in front is a cousin of some sort and owns the restaurant, Bárbaro, which is famous in Medellin for its steak.Clockwise: Eric’s younger niece, Eric’s sister Simone, Beth, with Eric’s older niece on her lap, Marta, Eric’s mother, Rubens, Eric’s father, Michael, me, Juan, Simone’s husband, and the aforementioned cousin. They may be the nicest family I have ever met, and we are beyond thrilled that Beth is now a part of the
After lunch, Michael and I were passing by a pharmacy and encountered three Venezuelan women. They had laminated papers with pictures of themselves and their children. In English, the papers explained that they were not asking for money, but needed baby formula and diapers. Colombia took in more than a million Venezuelan refugees, but they are not as welcome as they used to be. Michael bought the diapers and formula.
In the evening, we had dinner with the Taberlys, the family of Eric, whom Beth is marrying. The guy in front is a cousin of some sort and owns the restaurant, Bárbaro, which is famous in Medellin for its steak.Clockwise: Eric’s younger niece, Eric’s sister Simone, Beth, with Eric’s older niece on her lap, Marta, Eric’s mother, Rubens, Eric’s father, Michael, me, Juan, Simone’s husband, and the aforementioned cousin. They may be the nicest family I have ever met, and we are beyond thrilled that Beth is now a part of that family.
Our first disaster of the trip happened the next morning when we were going out for breakfast. as I stepped off the curb, my ankle collapsed, and I fell. In the course of the fall, I twisted my left knee and landed hard on my left thigh. The three pictures show my thigh and knee on the day of the fall, February 23, and my thigh on February 27. Fortunately, I had brought some walking sticks in case we would be hiking on rough terrain, so I began using one as a cane.
Friday afternoon before the wedding, we went on a tour of that Eric and Beth arranged of Medellin’s city center. However we first wrote on the metro, which, as our guy, Juliana, told us, is the only subway system in all of Columbia. Paises, as people in Medellin call themselves, are very proud of it.
The visit to Botero Square was memorable. Perhaps our favorite part of the visit was a Venezuelan rapper who created memorable lyrics at the top of his head. I have finally gotten a video clip of him loaded, which appears at the bottom of the post.I have always thought that Botero was a one trick pony. People refer to his “gordos,” or “fat people,”or “gorditos,” roughly “charming little fat people.” But he never liked this designation. For him, his art was about playing with proportion, according to a Julianna (with the gray backpack). She pointed out that the horses in his paintings have thick legs and tiny heads. If you look up his paintings that show houses, they often show people who are far too big to live in those houses.
I was in too much pain to finish the tour, so Juliana called me an Uber, and I went back to eat lunch at the hotel. Michael and I had been enjoying mora juice, which is blackberry juice, and I ordered it at the hotel restaurant for the first time. The waitress asked if I wanted it with sugar or without, I ordered without and learned that the blackberry juice we had been drinking, and probably all the juices we have been drinking have been full of sugar.
That night we attended a party for which the requisite attire was “cocktail dress.” I hope I passed. Every thing advertised as a cocktail dress looks itchy to me. I found a second-hand silk dress that felt great, except for the itchy tag. Although, it may look like I’m drunk in the picture, I drank only water. The decorations were real fruit and quite lovely, although David’s mother-in-law hinted that maybe I shouldn’t eat the centerpiece. David wrote a beautiful tribute to Beth, and Eric’s mom and sister did the same for him.
The event was really for the young people though, who apparently enjoyed shouting at each other over over the extraordinarily loud music.
Note: I originally wrote this reflection for my blog, then adapted it for my organization’s CPTnet. I’m adapting it back again a little.
Since a St. Louis, Missouri prosecutor and Grand Jury have determined that Police Officer Darren Wilson killing unarmed teenager Michael Brown did not merit a trial, I have been busy tweeting #Ferguson on the Christian Peacemaker Team Twitter account. Those tweets have been getting a lot of retweets. We have no people working in Ferguson and I have asked myself why I am inundating the account.
I think it has to do with the disposability of human life, with the contempt shown to Michael Brown when the authorities left his body in the street for four and a half hours and did not bother interviewing key witnesses to the shooting for weeks (until there was a public outcry.) That contempt connected directly with our work in Colombia, Iraqi Kurdistan, Palestine, with indigenous communities in North America, and with migrants in Europe. In all these cases, people in power have deemed the people we work with disposable.
If you want to drive Colombian farmers off their land so that you can make big profits with palm oil plantations, it’s okay to assault them, to threaten to rape their nine-year old daughters, to kill their animals, to burn their homes, to use the instruments of the Colombian state illegally to evict their communities’ teachers. And of course, you can do much worse. The types of violent harassment cited above are just some issues the communities we work with have been dealing with recently.
In Iraqi-Kurdistan, our civil society partners have had to drop most of their work to focus on the some most disposable people in the world: refugees. And these refugees have included those from the Ezidi/Yazidi community, whose wives, sisters, and daughters are now in ISIS/DAESH brothels, women considered worthless except for sexual gratification.
And then there is the project CPT Europe participated in this summer, welcoming the refugees that Europe wishes would just disappear, and who, because of European policies, have drowned by the thousands in the Mediterranean, fleeing the violence in countries such as Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
In Palestine, for nineteen long years, we have watched the forces of military occupation say it is acceptable to arrest, jail and torture Palestinian men, women and children without due process, and destroy their homes if Israel wants their land for settlement expansion. It is acceptable for soldiers to shoot teargas at Palestinian children on their way to school and look on as settlers attack them.
In our work with Indigenous partners, we have watched again and again naked racism strip them of their sovereignty, strip their lands of their resources, and leave behind the toxic poisons of their industries. We have watched the Canadian government shrug as 1800 Indigenous women are reported murdered and missing.
So I think it’s all related—Mike Brown, VonDerrit Myers, Tamir Rice, Tina Fontaine, Loretta Saunders, Bella Laboucan-McLean, Marissa Alexander, Jalil Muntaqim, Leonard Peltier…People of color who lost their lives, livelihoods, and freedom because here in North America they were considered just as disposable as the people we work with in Colombia, Palestine, Lesvos, Turtle Island and Kurdistan.
The good news, of course, is that our Colombian, Indigenous, Palestinian, Kurdish, and refugee partners are revealing to the world that they are a treasure—as are the people of Ferguson. The season of Advent is upon us. Let us listen.
Good hashtags to follow #BlackLivesMatter #TheologyofFerguson #StayWokeAdvent. Good accounts: @FaithinFerguson, @BroderickGreer @MikeBrownCover. The #Ferguson hashtag has a lot of good information, but you will also find really racist tweets there.
A young mother shared in church on Sunday the pain her family was going through with their foster child at the moment: a pain coming from loneliness, frustration, anger and yes, love for this child that they welcomed into their home last year, and whom we have welcomed into our church.
It made me think of something I have found to be true in my life—that there are some forms of sadness more worth having than some forms of happiness.
Some people, Christians in particular, find this statement bizarre, or even a little offensive—as though I am romanticizing depression. And I truly don’t mean that. There was a time in my life when I did think depression was an essential part of my personality, because I had no memory of a time when I was not depressed. Then I went to college, and found out what it was like to be happy. I learned that much of my depression had its roots in external sources like family dynamics and the Findlay, OH public school system, and that I was more myself when I was not depressed.
Usually, I tell people who are alarmed by statement about sadnesses worth having that everyone who has had children has experienced pain they would never have experienced, had they not had children. Some parents, in particular have had children who experienced illnesses or other hardships they never anticipated when they felt the drive to become parents, but the vast majority of people think that having their children were worth that pain.
But I am usually thinking about the pain absorbed by people who have chosen to take risks, for the sake of love, that most people choose not to. Like the people at my church who chose to become foster parents (and before that, worked as volunteers with undocumented migrants), I have chosen to take risks in my life that took me to sad places. I have worked for a human rights organization, Christian Peacemaker Teams, since 1993, that currently has projects in Palestine, Iraqi-Kurdistan, Colombia and with Indigenous communities in North America. Often it seems that every small triumph our partner communities experience arises out innumerable setbacks, failures, and humiliations.
By choosing to write novels, I also essentially chose a life of rejection. I think my current depression is partially rooted in the fact that all three of my previous novels came from a very deep place of inspiration, were enthusiastically received by beta readers and then…the end. So I am struggling with the question of why I was handed these novels—almost compelled to write them—so that maybe 20 people could appreciate them. (I’m exaggerating a little, but am at a low place.)
Women and children of At-Tuwani in the South Hebron Hills, Palestine, remove roadblock to their village
So why live this sort of life? Why put myself by choice among people who did not have the choice to live the life they did? Because when ordinary people choose to struggle together to change their worlds, and when the world takes notice, and begins to reach out to them and stand with them and tell other people about what they are doing to claim their human rights and their dignity; and when the systems and powers that are oppressing and robbing those people finally have to stop telling their lies about them and back off; and when you have been a small part of standing with them and telling their story…there’s a deep, tired joy in all that makes you extraordinarily glad you got involved.
And once I get to a certain point in my novel where it stops becoming work, and characters take on a life of their own, and it’s hard to stop writing—that’s an adrenaline rush like no other.
So at times like these, when I feel everyone of my fifty-two years, and all the young writers on Twitter seem to understand how to navigate the publication and agenting system so much better than I do, and the war in Gaza and the ongoing depredations of ISIS, and tawdry reality of Ferguson, MO and the LAPD and Prime Minister Harper make me dread approaching the CPT Twitter account every morning, I remember and believe:
Note: The following post originally appeared on the Jewish Pluralist website. I have adapted it slightly to avoid confusion.
I manage the Twitter account for my human rights organization, and lately, I find I have to take a deep breath every time I check it. Since we have a project in Palestine, our Twitter feed follows other accounts concerned with peace and human rights in Palestine/Israel and now, it’s all about the bombing in Gaza. We also have a project in Iraqi Kurdistan; the team there is dealing with land confiscation by oil corporations and Syrian refugees. (Remember them?) In Colombia, corrupt authorities have used riot police to evict a community we accompany. The Supreme Court of Canada has just ruled that Ontario could open the land of our Anishinaabe partners to industrial logging. But right now, Gaza trumps all on Twitter.
When a friend who runs The Jewish Pluralist website asked me if I had anything to contribute regarding the war in Gaza, I told her that I just could not find the words to write about the current situation. Part of that may be due to my having entered another cycle of depression this spring, but I think mostly, having worked in the region since 1995, I just see no light at the end of this tunnel, and no light back from where I started, and how can I write in the dark?
However an e-mail I read from Noa Baum—an Israeli woman who does a poignant and educational one-woman show about Jewish and Palestinian experiences of the 1948 and 1967 wars—got me thinking. She writes, “As despair sees it, anyone who still hopes, who still believes in the possibility of peace, is at best naïve, or a deluded dreamer…”
She made me realize my despair is formed from different stuff. It grows from love—love of Palestinians and Israelis I have worked with, celebrated with, grieved with. People who were dreamers at one time and who have for decades, under craven political leadership, seen their work treated like trash. My despair is based on the knowledge that I have almost no power to facilitate peace or human rights in the region. I can only witness, document, and at a micro-level, provide accompaniment for individuals, families, and small communities nonviolently resisting the occupation. Any real change is in the hands of Palestinians and Israelis working at a grassroots level, and people at the roots have been trampled until they are bloody.
I had chosen not to share graphic images of dead and mutilated children coming across the Twitter Feed. But one picture this week dug its claws into me and would not let go, so after some internal debate, I did post it on our account. It shows a little girl in profile, gray eye open in death, with a tear slipping from its corner. Jehan Alfarra (@palinoia), who tweeted the picture from Gaza wrote, “Shedding her final tear, she leaves us.”
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