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Monday 09 November, 2009
I have developed a great fondness for shitty border towns. I like their dustiness (even when they're not dusty and windswept I imagine them to be, like some lonely last frontier), I like their bleakness and their anything-goes quality. I like to imagine that everyone is a little shifty and that anything can be bought for a price. The men are mustachioed and the women are fierce. In reality, that is no different from the rest of Latin America, but I like to pretend that it is. I like the grotty hotels and I like how cheap everything is, and so I have taken to Ipiales like a duck to water.
Alright, so it's not TECHNICALLY on the border... that honour goes to Rumichara, surely an even bigger shithole but half the fun. Ipiales is 2.5km away and the main town straddling the divide between Colombia and Ecuador.
I spent all day yesterday getting here, almost eight hours on a little buseta that hooned along cliff edges and narrow bridges, fearing for my life more than once - although that's a common theme of my South American bus journeys, and I should be well used to it by now.
I arrived at sunset and got me to a hotel, Colombians having warned me not to trot around at night alone with all my stuff looking lost - sound advice, considering the ridiculous amount of stuff that I am currently lugging around, the Colombian postal system being prohibitively expensive and my new studded leather Zara heels too precious to entrust to anyone else. (Yes, I bought heels. Three months ago. No, I haven't worn them. They are magnificent. That is all.)
A Colombian Lurch by the name of Jose checked me in. He wasn't the chattiest of fellows, the only words he actually uttered being "eleven thousand pesos." Still, Jose wasn't going to get me down - I had a triple room and a TV to myself for all of $6.
8.00pm: Even the LP didn't have much positive to say about Ipiales. What they don't know is the shittier the town, the more I like it. I venture out for dinner into the freezing cold... a neat 8*C in good old Ipiales, yow.
8.15pm: I do a lap of the less than inspiring main square and settle on a Piko Riko chicken joint. They bring me a set menu with a soup for starters. It's a godsend to warm me up, and as an added bonus I see that they have given me not one but three chicken talons. How kind. There is nothing like spooning up some piping hot soup only to be confronted by a scaly claw with nails, rudely chopped off at the ankle.
8.20pm: My main arrives. I decide to leave the talons in favour of eating the literal half a chicken they have plonked on a plate with some bloodstained rice, frijoles, salad and a potato that seems to have been plucked directly from the ground and delivered to my plate, dirt and all. Half a chicken. However, it's tasty and filling and only sets me back by about $4. I love Colombian food, I really do.
10.30pm: Bored. Lonely. There are no other travellers in this town; I think they all take off as soon as they arrive. For company I watch some ludicrous Richard Gere film where he is tried in a preposterous Chinese court and the Chinese characters speak English to each other.
11.00pm: I spend the night huddled in bed in my leggings, socks, hoodie, sleeping bag and the blankets from all three beds in my room. It's cold.
8.00am: I wake up early, ready to get a head start on the Santuario de las Lajas, an amazing church built onto a suspension bridge in a ravine just outside of town. I wander out down the main street and find that I have been a little ungenerous to Ipiales - it's a lot bigger than I thought, and this morning it's buzzing. There are a lot more indigenous faces in the street, which I haven't really seen since Guatemala or maybe Nicaragua. Everyone looks windswept and ruddy-cheeked and they are all rocking woolen ponchos. The shops lining the crooked street are the usual: Super Maxi American Discount Store, three enormous blinking casinos, religious kitsch cake shops, a store called Luber that makes me laugh - lube? lover? lube-lover? who knows - an underwear store with an impressive display of croptops for the premature sexualisation of the town's prepubescent girl population, and the same platic-smelling made-in-China clothing stores that you see everywhere. My favourite-named store is "Jesus's Hairdressing". So this is where our Lord and Saviour has been all this time; I guess hairstyling is a step up from washing the feet of his disciples. I hope he doesn't specialize in Latino mullets. That truly would be a sin.
9.00am: The citizens are keen to be of service, bellowing "a la ORDEN!" so aggressively that I am too scared to enter their stores. "Siga, señorita, siga siga SIGA," commands a man who wants me to peruse his hot pink and yellow onesies. Maybe later.
Here's the problem: I only have 11,000 pesos left, which is about $6. That needs to buy me a meal, transport to and from the church, and a cab to the border. It's going to be tight, but I really don't want to get money out, since my Australian bank (looking at YOU, ANZ) is essentially mugging me for $20 every time I get cash out. I would do better if the local kids just held me up every time instead.
Here's the other problem: despite the extreme friendliness of the locals in helping me find the bus stop, there are no buses to the sanctuary today, due to a cycling competition. Of course, on the one day I am in town and keen to get an early start; I tend to specialise in poor timing. A taxi would cost me 7,000, which is out of the question and also not possible, I discover, since the highway to the sanctuary is totally closed until either 11am or 1pm, no one seems quite certain.
(There is actually a third problem, and that is that my nose is running copiously and I also need to go to the loo and not only am I low on tissues but my hostel's price for the night evidently does not cover toilet paper, which I don't want to spend my scant remaining pesos on, but that is really another story for another time. I am pilfering serviettes and cursing myself for being caught unprepared and with my pants down, so to speak.)
9.30am: I decide to embrace my own unfortunate sense of timing and use the next four hours to appreciate Ipiales. Four hours is a very long time. I discover a second, grander square with an impressive Russian-style church, and the market - a bleak concrete square dotted with wooden stalls with slabs of raw meat hanging on hooks. Just the smell I was after on an empty stomach at 9am. Three street dogs get into a ferocious brawl and people watch disinterestedly. I skirt around them and wander up a street full of fruit-sellers. Oooh, it looks good... too bad I can't afford any of them.
9.40am: I give in and decide to get breakfast. The only thing that every sit-down cafe I find offers is eggs, and they proudly deliver me a plate of pale scambled eggs and even paler french fries. "There you go, Mami!" the girl says cheerily. Mmm. I do however wash it down with a lulo juice. Colombia has the most amazing selection of fruits I have ever seen, many of which I had no idea how to eat (and let's be honest, still don't). Lulo is kind of like a sweet tomato, and its juice is delicious. Last week I bought some at the supermarket and not knowing how to eat it, sliced it up and chomped in. It was bitter. "Wow," said Clara, "I've never seen anyone eat lulo like this." She was intrigued. Why, how do you eat it? I asked, keen to learn from a Colombiana. "As juice," she shrugged.
And indeed they seem to blend up all their amazing fruits into juice, rarely eating them raw or plain. Only one fruit per juice. "I got my juice guy to do something amazing the other day: he made me juice with strawberries AND bananas!" Sarah once said triumphantly back in Medellin. And none of them make it into fruit salads, that seemingly reserved for boring staples such as apples, mangoes, papaya and strawberries.
10.30am: A group of people have lined an arbitrary strip of street that smells strongly of urine to watch the cycling race zip past. Well, zip might be the wrong word - every now and then a cyclist comes wheezing up the hill to a smattering of applause. I am shocked to see that they are women, braids peeking out from under their helmets. I've been in machista countries for too long, it would seem. Women can cycle too!
The woman next to me has dolled herself up for the occasion, with red red lips that are lined in black pencil, an alarming sight at best. I do appreciate her sense of occasion.
11.40am: The road is still closed; it is now almost midday. "Twelve-thirty, maybe one," says a traffic cop when I ask him when it will reopen. Sigh. I go for another walk. This time I find another market, the key goods on sale being gumboots and knives. These are a practical people.
12.30pm: Internet. Seriously, four hours is hard to fill when you have nothing to do. A little indigenous girl who is maybe three trots up to me. "What are you doing?" she demands to know. Writing an email to my mama, I tell her. "Scribendo," she tries to repeat thoughfully. She smears her lipgloss on me and runs off chortling.
1.00pm: Finally, the road is open. I hop into a colectivo taxi that zooms out of town, along the edge of a road that looks across rolling patchwork green fields as far as the eye can see. Talk about picture perfect. What's not so picture perfect: the looming clouds on the horizon.
1.10pm: I am dropped of the road and walk down a winding cobblestone path towards the ravine. I pass a waterfall. I can't see the sanctuary. What if it's crap? Did I spend all day here for nothing? I round a final corner and wow - there it is. It is not crap. The cathedral was built in 1916 of grey and white stone and is gothic and imposing, looming out of the side of the valley. A river tumbles over rocks far down below the arches of the bridge. There are pigeons cooing in the courtyard and monks. Real monks. And nuns. I am a fan of people in religious dress and this excites me, but I am not wily enough to snap pictures of them. Monks!
Apparently in 1754 an indigenous woman and her deaf-mute daughter took refuge between the jagged stones of the valley during a storm, when the girl spoke, saying, "the mestiza is calling me," pointing to an image of the Virgin that was illuminated by lighting. I'm not really clear on why the Virgin was a mestiza, but anyway, her vision was basis enough for the church to be built there, a flimsy reason at best. But I can't begrudge that; the cathedral is spectacular.
1.30pm: It's fitting that, as some kind of meteorological homage to the deaf-mute and her vision, it begins pouring with rain, thunder booming in the distance. It will take more than a storm to make a believer out of me, but I see my cue to leave and scurry up the hill into a colectivo.
1.45pm: I'm sharing a taxi with a young indigenous guy, a man who squeezes in the back with us, his daughter on his lap, and his wife in the front cradling a statue of Jesus as though it were her baby. Lightning strikes around us and visibility through the rain is poor so we creep along at a snail's pace.
2.00pm: We arrive back at the colectivo depot. "Here we are," our driver says. It's hailing. Everyone laughs - there is no way any of us are getting out in this storm. We all sit huddled in the cab, watching the rain through the foggy windows. The little girl falls asleep. Presumably, so does the baby Jesus.
2.30pm: I make a run for it, into a cafeteria with a huge painting of Garfield on the wall. My soup again contains chicken feet; always a delightful surprise.
3.00pm: I farewell Ipiales, which is once again blue-skied and sunny, and get a taxi to the border. This is my final border crossing; I am a little sad.
3.30pm: Am highly unimpressed with this border. Not only did both Colombia and Ecuador give me a stupid computer scan instead of proper stamps in my passport, but the Ecuadorian guys are rude, craning to watch a telenovela behind my head, and laughing at me when I try to exit by a locked door. Fuckers. I am officially on Colombia's side in the cold war between the two countries, and all it took was a couple of rude border guards to get me there. I hope they're happy. Humph.
4.30pm: Get a minibus to the bus terminal on Ecuador's side so I can finally leave this border zone that I have been hovering around for the past 24 hours. Over a dozen of us are crammed together in a more than friendly way. The people sitting around me are very sweet, asking where I'm from and complimenting my Spanish. "Will you take me back to Australia with you?" jokes one man. The lady next to me has been travelling for fourteen hours straight, since 3am and is munching on an iceblock for strength.
5.00pm: At the bus terminal, I farewell my new friends and am rushed off the bus, my pack grabbed by a local tout who hurries me onto the 5pm bus to Otavalo, the town I am headed to. I rush after him, concerned that he might be making off with my pack: this is not something that has ever worried me before but I've heard a lot of stories about theft in Ecuador and those Zara heels mean too much to me.
5.15pm: A whiny teenager gets on the bus, seen off by her father. "Oh, I wanted a window seat, I hate the aisle!" she moans, looking pointedly at me. If this little whelp thinks that bitching and moaning will make me give her my window seat, she has another thing coming. I have shifted women five times her size from my rightful seat and I'm not giving up without a fight.
5.30pm: Our bus is pulled over on the side of the highway by the national police who search it, who knows what for. Two shaggy-haired stoner types are escorted off the bus and searched more thoroughly, along with their luggage. The police man comes down past us, and looks at my passport. "Get off the bus, and bring all your bags with you," he tells me. Is he serious? In my previous experience if anything I have been exempted from searches because I am a tourist and they want no trouble. Not this guy.
The eyes of the whole bus are on me as I drag my stuff down the steps and wait by the baggage compartment. This guy doesn't know what he's asking. He doesn't know how finely-engineered my packing is; he doesn't know how long it will take to go through my stuff while the whole bus waits. A German Shepherd prowls the edge of the highway next to me. I might be projecting but I think he's looking at me suspiciously.
6.00pm: The conductor comes round the side of the bus, out of breath from having to assist the police searching the other luggage hold. "Vamos!" he says to me. Not so fast, I say, the cops want to search me and all my stuff. He visibly deflates.
The policeman comes leisurely down the stairs. The conductor confronts him, pointing at me, asking if a search is really necessary. "Look at her!" he exclaims. I find this hilarious. The policeman has obviously forgotten about me, and with a languid wave of his hand, lets us go. I get back on the bus. I smile at the whiny girl next to me and she rolls her eyes: I know she was hoping I would be arrested so she could have the window seat. Not likely, missy.
8.30pm: Finally, finally arrive in Otavalo. I am dropped off on the side of a highway outside of town in the dark. This is clearly the middle of nowhere. "The town's that way," the conductor said, with an expansive wave of his hand. Me and all my bags try to hail one of the few passing cabs, to no avail.
8.40pm: Thankfully a taxi stops. There is an indigenous woman in the backseat who grins and tells me that we came on the same bus, and wants to know my life story. We drop her at home with a big wave, shouting goodbyes.
8.50pm: I unleash one of my patented Great Dane woofing coughs. "Oh," says the taxista, "that sounds bad. What you need is a special Ecuadorian drink, a liquor. It will fix you no problem." What is it? I ask. "Pure alcohol. We can set it on fire! I'll bring you a bottle. One gulp of that and you will be 100%." I didn't take him up on it, but now I think maybe I should have. Welcome to Ecuador, we'll drink to your health.
Tuesday 20 October, 2009
When people think of Colombia, and by extension Medellin, it's hardly surprising that the foremost image to spring to mind is that of mustachioed drug kingpin Pablo Escobar... and cocaine. Travellers who think nothing of gallivanting across Mexico, Gautemala and Brazil draw the line at Colombia, and in doing so miss out on one of the most interesting countries in Latin America.
Okay, so the news is not so good. Trying to find a positive news story for a friend who lives in Medellin so that she could assuage her mother's concerns turned out to be impossible. Here's one, I reported, Colombia is 92% kidnap-free! Oh wait... at the end it says that the Medellin region's crime is increasing alarmingly. Whoops. Don't tell her that. Okay, how about Medellin winning the soccer last weekend? Uh-oh, scratch that, someone died in a fight afterwards. Umm... you could remind her that the weather's always great? Oh, but there is a huge drought at the moment, and looming water rationing. Well, I have this article on tourism in Bogota booming...? Just don't tell her that last weekend twenty-five people were killed in the city.
But if you can get past all the bad news, or you're a journalist who thrives on stories like these, then Colombia is a great place to be. For an adventure, a thrill, and the knowledge that something bad could happen any minute, Colombia can't be beat.
Just kidding... sort of. Crime might be a big part of the country and I would be foolish to pretend that it doesn't exist. Yes, for every night that I've gone out and haven't been mugged, a new arrival to the city has been killed (a Colombian guy we know came back to Medellin for the first time in 8 years and not only was he mugged but they stabbed him for his compliance. The knife nicked his heart and he spent his first week in the city in a coma. But last week he was mugged at an ATM while our tiny blond English elf skips through the city unharmed, so maybe he's just unlucky). I marvel at the safety that I feel when I walk down the street and then am reminded that a few months ago two bombs went off a block away from my apartment building. No... Medellin is not particularly safe. And you only need to look to the news to hear the latest.
The Colombian news is an amazing phenomenon that needs to be seen to be believed. A story that would dominate Australian news for months in Colombia is just one of many new scandals that break every day. 48,000 government officials being investigated for corruption? Check. The President buying senate votes to ensure his re-election? Sure, all he had to do was change the Constitution... and now he's trying to do it again. Check. Vice-President being investigated for ties to paramilitary groups? The President's former adviser is a cousin of Escobar and has his name all over international million-dollar bank accounts that contain Medellin Cartel cash? Of course.
Warlords cut deals with the prosecution to serve preposterously short sentences, the city's crime rate is accelerating due to a power vacuum left by the recently disbanded Office of Envigado gang and homicides for the 18-28 male demographic are booming. Friends reported bus burnings in the north of the country, and the rumour is that the FARC guerrilla group are preparing a large-scale attack for early next year when the presidential elections take place. Investigations into paramilitary massacres continue, with so far scanty results. They are a mercenary army originally founded to protect landowners from the rebels, but have since grown exponentially and exist outside of the law, buying off politicians and arranging hits for political rivals, dominating the Colombian political scene to such an extent that there are precious few members of President Uribe's government that haven't been implicated in parapolitics.
The government is keen to show citizens that it's taking a stand and producing results in regards to the FARC. The civil war has been raging for about fifty years and shows no sign of slowing down. However, the military killing civilians and passing them off as guerrillas is perhaps not the best way to do so. This practice has been going on for years and the family members that are finally taking a stand and protesting have been rewarded with death threats for their troubles. There has been a highly publicized ongoing negotiation with the FARC to release hostages, some of whom have been held in jungle camps for as long as twelve years. Proof-of-life videos released last month showed chained prisoners sending messages to their families, but their haunted eyes and nervous tics would be hard for anyone to forget. Every day there is a new delay in the release of three of the prisoners, and the father of one has threatened to cruicify himself in Bogota's main square in protest.
Journalists are threatened all the time and one recently fled the country due to death threats. Radio newscaster Herbin Hoyos has left Colombia a number of times due to FARC death threats - he broadcasts a hostage radio station, agitating for their freedom. There is a sort of tacit media censorship and any article we translate needs to be carefully read for subtext and propaganda. I filmed part of an almost-riot last weekend and a sympathetic policewoman told me to put my camera away, and that if I was seem filming I could be arrested.
Government agriculture subsidies are being distributed among the rich, a presidential candidate is a former member of the M-19 rebel group, and fake tit-and-assed bimbos on TV are sleeping with each other's boyfriends, calling each other drug molls and suing. So really... Just like anywhere else, no?
Tuesday 27 October, 2009
8.30am: Wake up. Luxuriate in bedroom. I have a gigantic room, balcony and ensuite to myself and after the way I've been living for the past nine months, this is luxury like I have never known. I am not living out of a backpack. My clothes are in a wardrobe. I am not subject to the whims and drunkenness of my loud, door-slamming light-switching 7 or 8 roomates at any given time, and being kept awake by someone's snoring is a thing of the past. Sigh. Life is good.
8.45am: SHIT! Late for university.
8.50am: Scurry around quiet enormous apartment getting ready. I live with five Colombian guys. Not that you would know it - the house is spotless, a far cry from my all-female den of iniquity in France. Here, everyone has their own food cupboard, sinks are divided and there is a comprehensive recycling and cohabitation system that works like a dream.
My flatmates are a diverse bunch: One artist/musician missing the fingers on his right hand (how does he play the guitar?), a telenovela actor, a chef-in-training, another musician, and a Metro guy. Oh, and Leche, the cat. I feel that she dislikes me. Perhaps she doesn't want to compete for alpha female. Whatever, human trumps cat.
9.10am: Get dressed. Discover that at some point over the last month, the cat has pissed in my pack. It stinks. Well played, cat.
9.15am: Walk to the metro. Am frustrated by the inability of Medellin's citizens to walk in anything resembling a straight line. My crowd-dodging skills have been on the up since moving here. Almost fall over a tiny woman who aggressively and suddenly swerves in front of me. The light turns red while I trip over my own feet. A city chicken bus is bearing down on me, tooting furiously.
9.25am: Arrive at the metro, out of breath. All the seats along the platform are taken so I slump down against the wall. "Excuse me señorita, you can't sit here," says a prepubescent guard. "I'm not allowed to sit?" I ask, incredulous. "No. Sitting is only permitted on seats." Unbelievable. I stand, leaning against the wall, and glare at him.
Medellin is deservedly proud of its gleaming metro, as shiny and new today as it was when it was inaugurated 15 years ago. Perhaps this has something to do with the squads of metro police whose jobs entail forbidding eating and drinking within the turnstiles (I was prevented from entering the metro with food more than once, when the guards eagle-eyed me as I gulped down breakfast so I could get on the train). Whatever, it makes the ride to school brief and pleasant. The train is too expensive for the majority of the city's residents: at $1 a ride, it costs as much as the Sydney bus. And given that the daily wage is $8, not many can afford it.
But its pretty... for the portion of the tracks that passes through the city the train is suspended like a monorail, giving a panoramic view of Medellin and its surrounding hills.
9.50am: Arrive at uni. Wrangle with security. No, I don't have a student card, they didn't give me one, I'm only here for a month, etc. "Where's your receipt for payment, then?" a vigilant old guard asks me, eyes narrowed. I wasn't aware that I needed to carry the receipt around with me. What's the big deal, I'm in your computer system, etc. I go through this every day, both upon arrival and departure. They take their jobs seriously.
10am: Spanish class. We are talking about malnutrition in Colombia. Apparently 50% of Colombians are currently going hungry every day. "A taxi driver told me that over by the stadium people are killing and eating whatever passes by," me teacher says. "It turned my stomach." Oh please, I scoff, surely that's some kind of urban legend. She shrugs. "I don't know. There is a whole level of society here of people who are completely lost. There is a dirty sub-level holding up society," she adds. "You know, they say that the mayor has cleaned things up here, and that is true, but it's like looking into a pool of water - its clear on the top but the bottom is murky, and trash is floating up to the surface."
My teacher is a wealthy Colombian married to an Englishman. She seems to be a common example of Colombians who have attained some level of wealth and are now afraid that their countrymen might take it away from them and have to guard it, always looking over their shoulders. She has a lot of empathy for the lower classes and does what she can, volunteering to teach English in poor schools, but neither does she want to lose what she has already obtained. That's natural.
11am: We move on from malnutrition to gangs. The city is experiencing a gang war because of the power vacuum left by the Office of Envigado gang that was recently dismantled. My teacher shivers. "I used to work at the school in the barrio," she says, referring to the outskirts of the city in the poorer neighborhoods of Medellin. "La Violencia here was terrible."
From 1995 to 2005 there was a similar power struggle that ravaged the city following the death of Pablo Escobar. "Kids at school would come up to me and show me their arms, and say 'profesora, look at this!' and there would be a bullet embedded in their skin. And then all the other kids would come over and say, 'profesora, that's nothing, look at this,' and they would show me where they were grazed by bullets from gunfights in their neighborhoods."
Every week she would call the roll. Where are Gustavo, Juan, Giovanni? "Profesora," the kids would call out, "he's gone." The children got caught in the crossfire of gangs. "I would get threatening phone calls all the time, telling me they didn't like my skirt, that my hair was too long. Once a guy stood outside the school looking at one of the teachers and I heard him say, 'I don't like that guy's shirt. If he's wearing it tomorrow, I'll kill him.' It was crazy. I stayed for as long as I could but then finally I had to leave." She spent five years living in the States and London before it was safe enough to come back.
But now the violence is increasing again. Political experts recently said that the dismantling of the Office of Envigado was a bad thing for city security, because at least before they controlled the other gangs and minimised killings. "It's like when a shark passes, all the other fish shrink away," my teacher says.
12.30pm: Walk home from the metro station. The crowd suddenly parts and a couple comes running through. They are followed by a man waving a rifle. I also stop to spectate, wondering if I will witness a shooting, but all three of them keep running. The crowd around me seems disappointed.
12.35pm: I walk up Avenida La Playa, which is dotted with men handing out fliers, like some kind of human obstacle course. Today I don't dodge them, but take a flier. I glance at it, and am delighted with what I find:
Angels of Love and Luck: Difficult love - lost hope? Constant fighting? Have you felt used or humiliated by your partner? Don't suffer any longer: know the truthful and powerful secret of the Angels of Love. RECUPERATE YOUR HAPPINESS! Experts in recovering lost and impossible loves.
I take a second flier. Awesome.
"Don't leave your job until you come to me. Don't put your feelings in the hands of just anyone. REGINA MENTALISTA. Have you visited many places and found no solution? Have you only wasted time and money? 25 years of experience in solving problems of love, luck, and business; curing sicknesses such as impotence and frigidity. Bring a photo, an item of clothing or hair from your partner. I guarantee 100% the return of your love in 3 days. They will prostrate themselves at your feet begging pardon. Consultation: $4.
I can't help but wonder what kind of pressure Regina Mentalista might feel compelled to put on a wayward partner for the princely sum she charges of $4. This is a country dominated by gangs, after all... The reality is probably even more frightening than anything I could imagine.
12.45pm: I am given another flier and the guy says to me, "Hey, are you looking for work?" I glance down. It is a business card for Zandaly Massages. "Discretion, comfort, and pleasure". The black and white photo says classy, and the girl's exposed vagina says business. Hmm. Flattered or insulted? I decide that it comes down to how much they'd be willing to pay.
1pm: Back at work, my boss and I look up Zandaly's website. We know they're classy because they have one. We enter the virtual sex shop and click on the product list. Bizarrely, instead of pictures of sex toys, as advertised, the website's gallery showcases "The Old Town of Montreal". Hmmmm. Kinky in ways I hadn't even imagined!
2pm: Work work work. Today's stories are about the President trying to change the Constitution for a second time to allow him a third term in office. Last time he changed the Constitution he bribed a bunch of senators to do so; that's how they roll. A senator has just finished her jail term - she was busted for working with paramilitaries. The rebels may or may not release some hostages, paramilitaries have admitted to more massacres and mass graves have been found. Barranquilla's Queen of Queens Pageant is on, Shakira may or may not have had plastic surgery and may or may not be engaged. All abortions have been suspended, and Tom Cruise may star in the film adaptation of last year's dramatic FARC hostage rescue.
4pm: My boss announces that we are going on an excursion to visit one of his favourite ladies. I am expecting a prostitute or at least a stripper.
4.20pm: We arrive at Doña Estelle's house. Estelle is a white-haired, sparkly-eyed saucepot of a woman, who leads us through her charmingly cluttered house, past a huge portrait of Jesus and into the kitchen where laundry hangs off every available surface.
"Ahh, you gonorrhea, you sweet little gonorrheito, where have you been, why haven't you come to see me?" She clucks around, making us coffee and swearing fondly at my boss.
"When's the last time you went to church?" he asks her. "That language is so fucking ugly."
"I go every Sunday, she says solemnly. Then she perks up. "Oh, I have to call my son and tell him that you're here!"
She dials as the smell of coffee wafts towards us from the stove. "Hello? Mi amor? Were you sleeping? Oh, I'm sorry for waking you, I just wanted to tell you who's here... guess! No you have to guess! Okay, I'll tell you: that son of a bitch Dutch! Yes! He's here! Okay my sweetheart, I have to go, bye!"
She quizzes my boss about his work, his women, his apartment. "You live with another son of a bitch Dutch?" she asks. I love this lady. She could be my boss's mother; those two are cut from the same cloth.
She brings us all a tinto, a very sweet black coffee that all Colombians drink. As we sit sipping, Giovanni comes in with a square of lawn in his hands, puts it into a plastic bag, and walks out again. Giovanni has five names that people calling the house might use. He works in mysterious ways.
Monday, 12 October 2009
Prostitution in Medellin is rife, and cheap. My boss is friends with many prostitutes, and so for his birthday we take him to his favourite strip joint. It is seedy in the extreme. The tables and chairs are metal, the lighting is obnoxious, and the music is pounding. It's a rainy Monday night so the place is almost empty. There is a raised stage with a circular bar running around it with three poles. I have never been to a strip club, and I'm curious. It's disappointing. You know that you're in a sub-par joint when the eighties wedding night home video porn being played across one wall is more interesting that the strippers themselves. Ron Jeremy is a disgusting man.
Every fifteen minutes or so a girl hits the stage, circling the loop, occasionally half-heartedly thrusting on the poles, and removing her clothes with no finesse or drawn-out tease. This is not quite the Vegas showgirl-style extravaganza that I was expecting. It's sad, and it's not sexy.
Everyone at our table except my boss and me says that they don't like places like this and never come here. They're too scared to look around in case someone catches them seeming interested. "This isn't my scene," they say. "Do you know how ordinary all the guys are who come here?" asks my boss. "They are totally average. All of them tell their families and friends that this isn't their scene, and they come here on a weekly basis."
After their 5 minutes, the girls come round to the tables naked and blank-faced to ask for money. Each man gives them 1000 or 2000 pesos. That roughly amounts to about 60c - $1.30. There might be ten men in the room tonight. Still, an average girl might make 50,000 in a night and in Colombia that is good money - the average wage here is 15,000 pesos, or $8. A day. If a customer takes a fancy to one of the girls they can go upstairs for a more thorough service. We see a tubby middle-aged man follow scantily-clad girl who can't be older than twenty through the private door and I cringe for her.
I want to get a good look at their faces, I want to hear their stories, but their empty eyes scare me. I am ashamed, and I look away. Back to eighties wedding night porn, which is safer.
"It's like this," my boss says. "Girls get paid one thousand pesos per drink that they convince the customers to buy. So it's in their interests to drink a lot. In order to sustain their drinking, they need to take drugs. They work all night, go home to their kids and then need tranquilisers to sleep. Six months of that and these beautiful young girls are strung out and wrung out. They work in places like this for a while but the more addicted they become the lower the standard of work becomes until they end up on the street somewhere."
I've seen the street hookers. In the middle of the day we took a stroll through the dirtier parts of central Medellin. The youngest ones might be thirteen or fourteen, faces painted like dolls. They chew gum and lean up against the side of buildings like cartoon prostitutes. The older ones are in their late sixties and have no time to be coy. "Hey baby, what do you need?" demand some, while others hang out of balconies with gravity assisting the display of their considerable breasts.
Like in all third world countries, the women in Colombia - especially those of the lower classes - have it tough. From an early age they are taught that their ability to get a man is what will keep them afloat. They grow up playing the coquette. I visited a high school in one of the city's poorest neighbourhoods to chat with the kids. The girls were 14 or 15 years old and looked 19 at least. One of them said to me, "the men here are dogs. I don't know a single one who's faithful." From childhood, they accept that men have the power. If a girl doesn't have sex with her boyfriend, he'll find someone else who will. To keep him she does, inevitably gets pregnant, and more often than not he leaves. That age-old anti-fairytale.
Without a completed education and mouths to feed, Colombian women become even more desperate to find a man. The country is reputed to have some of the best-looking women in the world, and wholeheartedly lives up to it. Walking down the street can be intimidating; the girls get made up, take care of themselves, and look askance at foreigners who dress scruffily. They don't understand why a woman wouldn't want to look her best at all times. They wear tight, brightly-coloured clothes like plumage, and strut down the street confident that all eyes are on them. They need them to be.
Plastic surgery here is a thriving industry, and relatively cheap, and in order to stay competitive, many women have procedures to augment their natural good looks; boob and butt implants are among the most popular elective surgeries. I studied Spanish at a private university in Medellín and saw first-hand evidence of girls being given boob jobs by their parents for their quinceañera (Latino girls come of age at fifteen). They need to look good to attract a mate, and they need to outplay, outwit and outlast their competition, Survivor-style.
Prostitution is not limited to the lower classes in Colombia. A study conducted by a university recently revealed that 2% of female students in the Caribbean city of Cartagena consider prostitution to support their studies. "The girls appeared to be predominantly beautiful women between the ages of 18 and 25, from upper-middle class backgrounds. They target wealthy men who will provide them with money required for luxuries such as clothes, cosmetic surgery, cars and apartments." However, the study asserted that the girls had been "spoiled but not loved" and were frequently victims of child abuse and neglect.
Although adultery in ultra-Catholic Colombia is considered a sin, in Colombian culture it has been socially accepted for men because of a belief in men's "inherently libidinous" nature. In June 2001 the Colombian government gave bigamy legal status because it was simply impossible to punish bigamous men. They are protected not only by society but by the women who share them, and the lawful acceptance of the practice serves only to promote further infidelity and negatively affect families, especially children, who look to their parents for models of behaviour. At home, women transmit social and cultural codes to their children, thus becoming 'gatekeepers' of Colombian patriarchy.
In 2007 the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt held the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. In their declaration, they denounced machismo as such: "Machismo reduces women to the state of sexual objects, condemns lesbians and promotes sexism, prostitution and trafficking of women and girls, and violence against women [and children]."
The Dictionary of Mexican Cultural Code Words defines machismo thusly: "... machismo meant the repudiation of all 'feminine' virtues such as unselfishness, kindness, frankness and truthfulness. It meant being willing to lie without compunction, to be suspicious, envious, jealous, malicious, vindictive, brutal and finally, to be willing to fight and kill without hesitation to protect one's manly image. Machismo meant that a man could not let anything detract from his image of himself as a man's man, regardless of the suffering it brought on himself and the women around him. ... The proof of every man's manliness was his ability to completely dominate his wife and children, to have sexual relations with any woman he wanted, to never let anyone question, deprecate or attempt to thwart his manhood, and never to reveal his true feelings to anyone lest they somehow take advantage of him."
Admittedly, this becomes a multidimensional concept covering multiple personality traits and behaviors. It is difficult to classify someone as 'macho' or not without administering a full battery of reliable and valid personality tests. Lacking an objective definition, the term becomes an irresponsible way of associating negative character traits with an entire continent of Latin American men.
However, machismo exists and the physical manifestations of it in Colombia are obvious. Gender roles are being played out in such a way as to reinforce the stereotype. To compound the issue, machismo becomes even more pronounced in a country at war, like Colombia currently is, and has been for half a century. The abuse of women becomes a weapon of war, with rape being used to shame other men and bring 'dishonour' upon them by 'soiling' their women.
The prevailing perception on Colombia is that sex crimes are a second-rate violation of human rights. Over the past few years pressure from womens' rights organisations has led to the investigation of 183 cases of sexual violence against women during the Colombian conflict. However, this number is very low when considered that of an estimated two million displaced women in Colombia, one in five has been forced to leave her home due to sexual violence - which could mean as many as 400,000 potential cases of sex crimes in the country.
The situation is not hopeless. There are countless aid organisations working within Colombia to try to raise the profile of womens' issues, and educational campaigns for teenage sexual health. But until Colombian society can take a step back and analyse itself, and until Colombian women teach their children appropriate behaviour and respect, the situation of women will remain the same. Colombia is fighting a civil war, a war on drugs, deeply ingrained corruption, widespread gang violence, a foreign debt of billions and bilions of dollars, and poverty and hunger that is increasing by the day. The country has been teetering on the brink for so long that once again, like everywhere, women have fallen by the wayside. Other things, it would seem, outrank half the population's rights in importance.
"Do you have children?" one of those students asks me. They all listen carefully for my reply. I have already bewildered them with stories of travel and foreign cultures that they could only dream of.
No, I say, I'm only twenty-three. I have to explain that in Australia that is very young to have a family, and many people don't start a family until their late twenties or early thirties. My group of students stares at me, wide-eyed. "Here we start at thirteen," a girl says, looking at me ruefully. "Almost all my friends have kids," adds another.
I am at a loss. I want to give them a pep talk about staying strong, finishing their education, being masters of their own destinies, but coming from a privileged white woman that would sound preposterous. What do I know? I have options. As a foreign woman in Colombia I have control. I am able to choose who I want and in a relationship I can lay down the law, because I have money - or at least, that's the perception. Is that something that many local girls can identify with?
The situation for foreign men is, of course, ideal. Visitors to Colombia find themselves with a bevvy of beautiful women throwing themselves at every gringo they see. A gringo boyfriend is a ticket out. The men are flattered, but they shouldn't be. When your opportunities and options are limited, love is a business - a profitable one.
