on our drive through little towns in Boyaca (more…)
Archive for the ‘colombia’ Category
Our Lady of Goodyear
Saturday, May 29th, 2010days of prayer and action
Monday, April 20th, 2009Several US and Colombian NGOs and churches sponsored the Days of Prayer and Action to promote peace in Colombia -some good friends of mine have been involved in the organizing. Today they’re asking people to send President Obama a message for “change Colombia can believe in” to urge changes in US policy towards the country. Here’s a link to the Witness for Peace page for more details (you can still send a message even if it’s after April 20).
To go with this news, here’s a few very good materials that have come out recently on the futility of the current way the US is approaching the “War on Drugs” –
Plan Colombia and Beyond, a blog which does a very fine job collecting information and discussing policy and events related to the Colombian conflict, created this Compendium of Drug War Statistics showing the most recent data on drug fumigation/cultivation etc… in Colombia through easy to read graphs. It demonstrates pretty clearly that despite ever increasing military aid from the US used by the Colombian military and police, as well as for manual eradication (digging up coca plants) and fumigation, little has changed in terms of cocaine production and sale.
This excellent Witness for Peace video called “Shoveling Water” talks about the impacts of aerial fumigation with pesticides that is currently done to combat drug cultivation. If I were more tech saavy, no doubt I’d be able to imbed the video here, but, instead, you’ll just have to click here to watch it and afterwards you can sign their petition asking the US government to stop fumigations in the Amazon.
Friday, April 17th, 2009
rainbow o’ yogurt flavors
at our favorite bakery in Cali where you can buy yogurt by the glass.
(i’m not sure what the green is…the flavors were rum raisin (yes, strange), strawberry, pineapple, plain, green, peach and grape).
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
We’re back from our paseo through Cali, Popayan and Valle del Cauca. The city of Cali is in a valley between the Central and Western cordilleras of the Andes (Colombia has 3 cordilleras, Bogota is on a plateau in the Eastern cordillera and there’s a huge valley between the Eastern and Central cordilleras) and the surrounding area is Colombia’s center of sugar production, so there are lots of views of endless fields of sugarcane. The valley is totally flat and small enough that you can see both mountain ranges most of the time. Bogota has been cold and rainy so it was delightful to be in hot, lowland weather.
Santander de Quilichao – a little town we stopped in between Cali and Popayan with amazing old trees.
Processions are a major part of Easter week celebrations in lots of Catholic countries, and every little town in Colombia has their own – usually, a series of figures representing the Easter story are carried through town, with everyone who lives there walking along with them.
We wandered into Santander de Quilichao’s church and found that most of the town was there decorating the statues and the stands used to carry them with elaborate floral arrangements. It was a cool moment to walk into – a very relaxed and cheerful atmosphere and it felt like the people in the church were carrying out a labor of love with tremendous care.
We felt a awkward taking photos there, but, here’s a photo from Popayan (which was packed with photo taking tourists) of people doing the same thing in preparation for another procession:
And, us with friends who we traveled around with in the town’s gorgeous, tree-filled main plaza:
library on hoof
Monday, October 20th, 2008
I just loved the profile in today’s New York Times of a school teacher who has made it his life’s work to bring books and a love of reading out to remote areas. The teacher, Luis Soriano, lives in an area of rural, northern Colombia which has suffered a lot of violence over the years – it’s near Aracataca, the hometown of Gabriel García Márquez and the inspiration for the setting of One Hundred Years of Solitude.
As you can see in the photo from the article, instead of a book-mobile Soriano has book-burros; the story says that groups of kids wait for him to arrive at every stop and he reads to them before they borrow books.
Anyway, follow this link to go to the article – I thought it was a beautiful story. It’s also one of the things that I appreciate about Colombian culture – it seems like people generally believe very strongly in the transformative power of education – and books – and go to great effort to further their educations.
Friday, October 17th, 2008
Yikes, it has been a rough week for human rights in rural Colombia – there have been major protests in the southwestern part of the country, near the border with Ecuador. Nearly 7,000 indigenous people from different ethnic groups gathered to block the Pan-American highway to protest the government’s plans for a free trade deal with the US and displacement from their lands. Sadly the government’s response was to send in riot police — as of Wednesday, 2 people were killed and 100 wounded according to this story from CNN.
Justapaz, the Colombian Mennonite peace and justice organization, has put out an alert about the disappearance of a pastor they work with in northern Colombia. He has received many threats from armed groups, so they are very concerned for his safety. Making the government aware that people internationally are concerned about someone who is in danger from armed groups can be helpful in encouraging the government and police to act and actually investigate what happened – a friend who works for the organization describes what happened and provides a model letter and the email addresses or fax numbers where it should go, so it’s very easy to take action, you just have copy and paste – it’s all in English: Click here to read the alert
Additionally, an Afro-Colombian community leader who is from the Pacific Coast – one of the poorest, most remote regions of the country where most of the Afro-Colombian population lives – was murdered this week. Presumably he was killed by paramilitaries because he had been active in testifying against and denouncing paramilitaries who have killed and displaced many, many Afro-Colombians in the area where he lived.
His death provided a sad illustration for a report that Human Rights Watch happened to release this week – they argue that the Colombian government and current presidential administration is creating obstacles to the progress courts are trying to make in investigating and bringing to justice the paramilitary groups that have committed many murders and other atrocities. You can read the press release and look at the whole report here
Hopefully I’ll have a cheerier topic for next time…
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
Here’s a few pics from a trip we took awhile ago to Los Llanos – these vast plains to the east of Bogotá where we went over a long weekend with Abbey – who, sadly for us, has moved back to the US – and Christine who was visiting from New Haven…
Los Llanos are very flat with lots of cows and lots of green….
Sort of like the Midwest – except for these guys — and palm trees, etc…
It was a very relaxing little trip – like in other parts of the country, you can stay at a “finca” (farm) which always have cabins and/or a little hotel and restaurant and usually a pool. This finca also had cattle and horses, so we went horseback riding one morning…kind of hard to see, but I’m in the middle there -
fortunantly, we also spent some quality time in the hammock:
Here we are eating grilled meat – the Llanos specialty -
Some dancers at the restaurant we were at were demonstrating joropo, the local dance which involves lots of twirling and stamping done to harp and guitar music (but, really manly, cowboy-style harp playing if you can imagine that)…
Of course we had to photograph this wierd finca that we drove by – mostly for the giant concrete skull, but the castle looked fairly perilous also…
Monday, August 18th, 2008
We finally got (and then got around to hanging) some shades for our massive living room window that we ordered on our trip to Santander a few months ago.
Here they are:
They’re from a little town called Curiti (birthplace of Juan’s great-grandfather) which is totally dedicated to making things – rugs, chairs, purses, belts, shades, hats, etc… – out of fique, a natural fiber from the agave plant. Lots of artisans have little shops in the front rooms of their houses and there’s a small business that weaves made-to-order shades in all kinds of colors and designs.
There are lots of agave species, but they look more or less like this guy:
It gets dyed in every possible color – Juan took a nice photo of recently dyed fique being spread out in the sun to dry:
The lady in the photo invited us into her workshop where she and her family weave fique – here are the piles and bags of raw fique fiber:
The dye the fiber in big pots in the patio through the doorway in this photo. These are a few of the bags they make – we bought some cute little rugs from them:
Here’s the town – you can see that the plaza has a statue of an agave:
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
I’m thrilled to say that the news has gotten even more incredible and I’ve gotten the best birthday gift I could ever hope to receive!!! Alf was released!! We are relieved and so, so grateful. Ana and another friend are with him in a city on the Pacific coast where he arrived yesterday from captivity, they will travel to Bogota as soon as possible. His release was unrelated to the liberation yesterday.
If any more evidence was needed that Alf is an unbelievably nice person who always thinks of others, he called me to wish me a happy birthday, which I could hardly believe.
It’s especially wonderful to have this good news at a time when the whole country is celebrating yesterday’s liberations. It’s been really lovely to watch all the tv coverage of Ingrid Betancourt and the others liberated yesterday – the news coverage has basically been constant since it happened yesterday and they’ve shown many joyous reunions of all those people with their families.
Since Alf is a dual citizen with Norway, the story was all over the newspapers there and elsewhere in Europe. Here’s a story in English
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
Incredible news in Colombia! Apparently 15 FARC hostages were freed today – including Ingrid Betancourt (a French-Colombian who was a presidential candidate – she’s one of the most famous hostages, here’s more explanation on who she is), 3 US military contractors who were captured after a plane crash and 11 other members of the Colombian police and military. It’s a wonderful day for them and their loved ones – all these people have been in captivity for years. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of further releases and good changes in the future. Obviously, we’re also thinking of our friend who has been gone for too long…I hope this news means something good for him and that it will be a source of energy and hope.
There’s not yet a full explanation of how it happened – it was a military rescue, but one that was focused on intelligence and infiltration. It sounds like they were able to infiltrate the FARC to ensure that the hostages were together in a predetermined location and then members of the military were able to persuade the FARC members with the hostages to release them peacefully. Here’s the story from the New York Times
today’s moment of magical realism
Friday, June 27th, 2008my friend Abbey just sent me this photo that I can’t resist posting. It’s a funeral home and their slogan says “Generamos calidad de vida” (= we create quality of life). Love it.
Sunday, May 25th, 2008
There was an earthquake in Bogotá yesterday afternoon! A 5.7 magnitude, which is plenty strong enough to feel some very thorough shaking, but, fortunately, not enough to cause serious damages. It lasted about a minute which is a long time for an earthquake! The epicenter was about 35 miles away and there were some damages to buildings in that area, but no emergencies. So, a freaky experience, but, all is well.