Gay Pride and Social Prejudice

The centro has always been a place where unconventional proclivities and desires converge in public. To be sure, the north of Bogota has never wanted for brothels or casinos: sex and gambling are integral parts of the Colombian recreational canon. But like every good burgher’s bad side, vice in the north is kept behind closed doors. Downtown, in the centro, they are aired in public – almost as a badge of honor. “You may have faux-French cheese and college degrees, but we do as we please, nyungka.” Hairy transvestite? Show us those thighs. Unrepentant glue-sniffer? I’ll fetch you a paper bag.   

Much of Bogotá has been ravished by overdoses of globalization and cheap consumerism, but the centro has managed to squeeze a little charm from its decades-long downgrade from commercial and residential hub to welfare crack-baby since being swept by widespread political violence in the late 1940s. If there’s one thing the commercial classes won’t stand for, it’s a pleb who plays with fire. (Understandable enough). In burning down much of the centro to protest the 1948 assassination of their presidential candidate, the swinish multitude lost a country but gained a neighborhood.

Apart from several beautiful square blocks of majestic 18^th century government palaces, the centro is a vast grey swamp of rotting concrete blocks, shiny, pink, plastic trinkets and homeless amputees. If Lady Fugly and Sir Chernobyl had a lovechild, it would look something like the centro. During the week, of course, this mix is brightened by a few government-employed suits and the occasional French tourist. Not enough, however, to distract one from the legions of unfortunate young men sleeping on most park benches and beneath every shit-stained, spray-painted statue of a mediocre conquistador (the latter a particularly widespread accouterment of the modern Latin American metropolis). 

Yet when the rest of this 8m person metropolis slumbers away the weekend, the centro stays alive. Rather than run off to the country-home they haven’t got, Bogotá’s humbler families come to the city center to mingle, sample the curbside vendors’ yellowy fried-and-sizzling fare, and marvel at the various street performers. In a way, the range of entertainers offers something of a (sad, partially cracked) window on the world: while one block plays host to little indigenous Peruvian men playing the same minute-and-thirty-second flute riff echoing throughout suburban strip malls the world over, the next one hosts a travelling troupe of white-clad traditional folk dancers from deep within the Colombian frontier.

A country caught between its recent peasant past and urban pauper present, no one quite knows the tune the countryside children dance to or if they’re any good, but they’ve got adorable little green-and-white outfits and seem to be enjoying themselves, so everyone pauses to snap a shot on their cell-phone before moving on. (Someday someone will write a cultural history of the millions of shitty, uninspiring photographs taken around the world each day. As another Midwestern sage once said: “Everyone should be encouraged to make art, but 99% of them should never be allowed to show it.”)

Last Sunday, however, the largest musical crowd was amassed around a skinny, black adolescent making a very half-assed attempt at Billy Jean. Though Afro-Colombians make up a significant proportion of Colombians (estimates vary between 10-20% of a total population of 47m), they are all but absent in the capital. As racist as any other Western Hemispheric country – if not a little more – Colombians are fascinated by, if institutionally unwelcoming toward, blacks. When one of them dances in the street free of charge, the people appear in droves.

Struggling to keep the rhythm, the adolescent is now surrounded by 300-400 young mestizo families and couples; he has little choice but to continue. If he hadn’t brought this upon himself, you’d almost feel bad for him. Strangely, just up the street are two older, more muscular black men doing Thriller in perfect synchronization. Though far more talented, they have only managed to attract 8 or 10 ageing men and women to their circle.

____________________________________________________

Though a family-friendly environment, there are signs that something different was in the air that Sunday afternoon.  The first clue was a much larger manwoman, suggestively dressed as Cruella de Vil and posing for photo-ops with passers-by. Though Bogotá has its share of tranny hotspots, one doesn’t always see this demographic in great concentrations in the centro. Several feet later, a fat little man in nothing but white coochie-cutters and a pair of angel-wings lingers against the cast-iron gates of a 17^th century church. His companion, chubby, winged and likewise nearly naked, pulls the yellow Colombian national soccer jersey down from a nearby woman’s chest to make gurgling noises into her bosom. A homeless man and myself stop to exchange glances. “You know anything about this?” He seems to prod. “Me neither.”

The closer I got to the Plaza Bolívar, the city’s most prominent square, the more surreal the street became. One 6´4 transvestite dressed as Tarzan became two, and before you could say, “Somebody’s got a talented knack for Nair,” all of Seventh Avenue had become a runway from one of Berlusconi’s pre-trial nightmares. There were 7-foot Little Miss Piggy’s in miniskirts and on stilts, robust young men in Marie Antoinette undergarments, and very busty old women twirling about as Amazonian Tinker Bells.

I stopped to take a picture of an attractive group of giant samba-queens. “Meeester! Meeester! I want you to meet my grandmother!” The ladyman in the middle of my shot, evidently the ringleader, stepped out of the frame, only to come back a moment later with a stylish, graying man in black-rimmed glasses. They were old friends – and grinned at each as such. “Now take my picture with grandmother!”  As far as the eye could see – which, given the distractions, wasn’t very far – boys had become girls and girls had become dancing little goblins. Never have I seen so much skin outside of Budva.

The most intriguing aspect of this sartoro-sexual free-for-all was that at no point did it cease to be a family-friendly environment. The taller the tranny and the gigglier her bojangles, the more eager the families lined up to have their children’s picture taken. Nor are we talking about sexual-ghetto voyeurs: from all the evidence, these were young families out and about on an otherwise sunny Sunday afternoon, content to eat bitter mango with salt and lime (a favorite local delicacy) and marvel at the wonders of Colombian architectural incompetence. When a high-heeled troupe of 7-foot men with gasmasks and unruly breast implants came strutting around the corner in nothing but lace and black-leather loincloths, not a family thought twice before asking them to pose with their 8-year old daughter. The myth of “facho-conservative Catholic Colombia” was gone with the same wind that lifted the frumpy old man’s little pink skirt.          

________________________________________

Once in the plaza, there were thousands more. A stage and DJ had been set up at the far end of the square: all the classic anal-thumping ballads were blasting from the publically-funded speakers. There were police, of course, but not to excess. (Outside of Belgrade, one needn’t worry about anti-gay skinheads spoiling all the fun). Colombia had defeated Uruguay in the past 24 hours, so the ebullience of the crowd was viral: old and young alike were still spraying each other with the ubiquitous foam canisters that have become a hallmark of Colombian soccer victories.

Your correspondent even saw one reveler approach two officers of the law and spray them directly in the face with foam, laugh and walk away. Of course, they were only “auxiliary police” – conscripts from the lower sections of society who complete their two-year military service as impotent, unpaid foot-traffic wardens: with no guns and no prerogative to hand out so much as a ticket for jaywalking, they are more like bodies in uniforms to remind you who’s who in society. (And it’s not them: taken from the countryside and the slums, these “auxiliary” conscripts are often made to spend their “military service” guarding the entrance to chichier grocery stores in the north of Bogotá. But even if you steal a baguette, they haven’t the jurisdiction to stop you).

Meanwhile, little old ladies went up and down the crowd hawking lukewarm beers. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of contented adolescent emos, sucking away at Marlboros and sipping Poker (beer) as if it were the night before their arraignment. Never have I seen a happier crowd.

_______________________________________

As the sun began to set, people started trickling out of the plaza and down to the somber, ashen avenues built to shuttle them to and fro the furthest reaches of the sprawling, grey metropolis. Apart from two divas peeing against the side of City Hall, it was surprising how few of the event’s main attractions could be spotted beyond the plaza in the dark. Did they live in the neighborhood? Or change their attire before getting on the bus? Or was it all a figment of my imagination?

Dusk set in as I waited for the bus on 10^th avenue. Gone were the families, the princesses, the fairies and goblins and monsters and lions and tigers and bears. I could have done without the tutu-and-gas-mask donning dominatrix, but otherwise the afternoon was a shining success. People paint Bogotá as a staid, sprawling, daunting, monstrously unequal, classist and conservative city – which it is. But at times, in select moments of inspiration, it becomes the happiest, most democratic and enlightened of them all. 

Medellín to the Moon

The names of certain cities stick to the tongue like a loogie on a brick wall in early August. Medellín is one of them. Though not quite world-famous, it still lingers for some reason: is it because of Dan Rather, the history channel or PBS? You know it’s a bad place – beautiful, hot and dangerous – but you can’t remember why.  

The city’s two most famous sons are Fernando Botero and Pablo Escobar: as one ridiculed the country’s ruling classes, the other hunted them down. In what many consider Colombia’s most conservative city, that is saying quite a lot.  

As many of you have no doubt heard, Medellín was the world’s most violent city 20 years ago. In 1991, its murder rate was 381 per 100,000 inhabitants – more than twenty-five times the murder rate of Chicago in 2013, the deadliest American city that year. In 2013, however, the Urban Land Institute voted Medellín the world’s most innovative city – just above New York and Tel Aviv. Last month, it hosted the UN Habitat’s 7^th Annual World Urban Forum. Clichés and attention-grabbing, international competitions aside, they did choose the right town.

______________________________________

Medellín is also famous for being the heart of Colombian industry. Well before Bogotá became more than a backward bureaucratic outpost high on the Andean plain, Medellín was the national center of banking, commerce, coffee trading and textile manufacturing. As the relative power of the caffeinated bean declined in the latter half of the 20^th century, the city lost some of its economic muscle, but remained the headquarters of the all-powerful National Association of Colombian Enterprises (ANDI), a union representing the interests of the country’s most powerful industrial firms. Then as now, socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor is alive and well in Colombia’s most dynamic city.

Flying into the city is a strange sensation. Though 8 hours by bus, the 400km from Bogotá take scarcely 25 minutes by plane. After hundreds of miles of rugged, uninhabited mountains interspersed by snaking rivers, the plane lowers its flight over a vivid green patchwork of hillside country manors sown into the earth like juxtaposing puzzle pieces. The domineering capital of a rich and fertile region, Medellín has scrills.

But as a Midwestern sage once said: with great privilege comes great responsibility. Despite the city’s rightly commended efforts to enfranchise much of its poor, the gap between the city’s light-skinned lords and its darker-skinned peons looms large. The booming hillside slums, however, are far from the saddest – or scariest – part of town.

______________________________________

Halfway into the hour-long bus-ride from the airport to the city, the sky morphs into a dark and ominous purple. Since entering any “world” city for the first time is a memorable, enduring and eye-opening experience, the threat of a nasty storm only added to its allure. As the black clouds gathered their thoughts, we pulled over at the intersection of a busy thoroughfare to let our first passenger out. While the guitar-doting man in the Marlins hat descended, I made eye contact with another gentleman standing nearby. The latter was around 30, clutching a little Chihuahua in one arm and smoking a cigarette with the other. Just beneath his baggy athletic shorts was a large tattoo of a woman in suggestive attire (I even put on my glasses to verify it wasn’t a lizard or a dinosaur).

As we entered the city center, the skies came crashing down like a glass ceiling at Smith College. As sheets of rain fell upon merchants and schoolchildren scrambling for shelter, a new element emerged to the surface. Like a flood, they arose from every direction: fiends, cluckers, glue- and crackheads of every extraction – as far as the eye could see. Though it only lasted a moment – 3-4 blocks at most – it felt like the opening scene of a dystopian English film (Children of Men? 28 Days Later?). I saw more shoeless, disheveled fiends in three minutes in Medellín than I have seen in the past five years alone.

Nor were they simply homeless: they were young, skinny, strung-out, dirty and desperate; clutching little glass capsules and darting between cars – an army of indigents reclaiming the streets at the only moment possible. Here in the center of the city, under a dark sheet of rain, our bus careening past cathedrals and Botero sculptures, there were more vulnerable, crazed and cracked-out young people than any parent, municipality or country might care to admit.

Five minutes later, we crossed a bridge and left the center for the leafier part of town we were staying. As if magically, the avenues widened, the trees grew tall and the buildings all turned to brick. Once again we were surrounded by well-heeled Colombo-Spaniards, Toyota 4-runners and Japanese take-out joints. We had crossed the threshold. 

It rained without stop for the next 12 hours.

______________________________________

      

To awake in Medellín is to awake in a paradise lost. It is 68 degrees and sunny, and a slight breeze has managed to penetrate the bamboo and flower-studded courtyard. The window perpetually ajar, you awake to the sound of birds chirping. If it weren’t me arising to these circumstances, I would condemn them as decadent, bourgeois and cliché. But it was, so I won’t. If good Americans die in Paris, the middling ones at least go to Medellín.  

We have breakfast and walk to the metro station. There is a café or a pool-hall on every corner of the tree-lined boulevard en route. Men lounge in white pants and adolescent boys ride shirtless by on their friends’ pegs. Women with gigantic bundas saunter on down the sidewalk like they’re selling caramel apples at the Alabama State Fair.

Unlike many parts of Bogotá, the street that leads to the metro, 70^th Avenue, is neither boogie and benumbed nor prolie and depressing. Many neighborhoods have achieved that cool, calm and collected self-confidence of a people mostly happy in their ways. Every establishment has outdoor seating – even the barber shops. Life is conducted in the open air rather than the under horrible white hospital lights most Colombians install in their homes and places of work. Perhaps it is the weather: as anyone who has been to the beach can attest, vitamin D is a powerfully democratizing force. And when it’s a little too warm to stay inside, it matters far less where you live.

But it’s not just the weather. Residents of Medellín are on the whole warmer, fresher, friendlier and more curious than the counterparts in the capital. A 7-year old girl dressed up as a police officer came up to us on the metro to ask us where we were from; she then inquired about which part of the United States Switzerland was in. The rest of the passengers in the train car, mostly young mothers, smiled and turned to listen as we told our little volunteer representative of the Law what we were up to in her neck of the woods.

______________________________________

Medellín installed an above-ground metro in 1995 in the aftermath of some of the worst violence to befall any city in Latin American history. In no time it became the pride of the city, if not the country; and with good reason. It is clean, attractive, fast, effective, inexpensive and, once again, above ground. From its spacious, air-conditioned cars the passenger has a 360-degree vista of the city in every direction. Downtown, a series of daring new skyscrapers and 19^th century churches dot the immediate cityscape. Further afield, relentless orange-brick slums creep up the sides of the mountain ranges that flank the city to the east and west. They resemble an avalanche in reverse, only trickling off at the top.

With the exception of tall and balding men, most things are prettier from above. Even the rotting carcass of Calcutta is mysterious and stunning from the sky. Viewed from the elevated train, Medellín is a city of myth and wonder; of Spanish tiles and lush green gardens; colorful, bustling markets and towering steeples. It is hard not to see why paisas, as people from the region are known, take such immaculately curated pride in their little corner of the world.

We get off near the end of the line to transfer to the cable-car that slices up into the mountain through Santo Domingo, one of the city’s largest – and previously one of the continent’s most dangerous – slums. As recently as 2003, a year before it was opened, there was a 5pm nightly curfew. After sundown, the streets were policed by urban militias.

Today, Santo Domingo is (literally) one of the city’s most colorful neighborhoods (pictures on book of face forthcoming). The cable-car stops two times as it ascends the hillside slum before reaching the Biblioteca España, a daring, award-winning new library near the top of the mountain. The black, boulder-like structures, which not only blend into the mountainous landscape but boldly defy it, were specifically placed in on the outskirts of one of the neighborhood’s roughest patches. It is also 5-6 blocks from the immaculate and modern cable-car – so even for the intrepid tourist, there is no escaping some “minimal” contact with the community.

Inside, a group of adolescent boys giggle, stare and follow us up three flights of stairs before working up the courage to ask for an interview for a school project. They are each wear baseball caps with silly headings like “RIOT” and “I LOVE RASBERRY PASTRIES” etched across the front. None of them have creased the bill of their hats; instead of wearing it, they simply place it on top of their head, rather like the old Bolivian women in their miniature English bowlers.

We sit down at a table in the library and the boys ask 3-4 questions. “What ees your name, sur?” and “How do you like May-day-jeen?” Before long, however, comes the almost inevitable “What do you thinks of May-day-jeen’s womans?” Though two of them are quite tall, they cannot be older than 14 or 15. I wanted to ask if they or their teacher had come up with the questions, but they didn’t seem to understand anything I said outside their prescribed questions.

______________________________________

Leaving the library, two 5 or 6 year-olds approach us. Maybe they were 7: in my mind, anyone under three and a half feet isn’t beyond kindergarten, but I could be wrong. They offer to give us a historical tour of the neighborhood: adorable but commanding, we had to accept.

The little rascals didn’t have much to say: “cable-car this, crime that; city government this, people living here and there that.” Though the one doing the talking didn’t utter a complete sentence or a single fact, he spoke with remarkable grace, confidence and charm: a born salesman (politician, pundit or PR-man), he could have sold water to a drowning man. This, they say, is another legendary paisa capacity: though inhabitants of a deep valley, surrounded by two mountain ranges and largely cut off from the world – and even most of their country – they are remarkably talented merchants, businessmen and spin-doctors.  

______________________________________

Apart from being friendly, warm, gregarious, sharp and shrewd, paisas are simply gangster. Though the thuggish affliction often translates into higher crime, addiction and pregnancy rates – all of which are extremely prevalent in Medellín – it means they also live more fun, exciting and (momentarily) meaningful lives. The city of “eternal spring”, it is always early June in Medellin: high 60s in the early morning and low 80s in the afternoon. At least in the hood, no male under 18 wears a shirt. Instead, they carve mullets and Mohawks into the back of their heads and spend the day shooting pool, watching soccer and flying around on motorbikes. Poor and ostensibly jobless, they have made permanent professions of what gap-year English lads can only dream of doing on holiday in Cambodia for several months at a time.

Residents of the Santo Domingo slum also grow up far earlier than most people on earth. After parting ways with our 5 year-old historian, we decide to descend the hill by the winding, curving, cascading series of steps that plunge from the top of the slum back down to the rest of the city. With two exceptions (one: an adolescent throwing rocks at us and two, a clucker coming up to me to declare that “he love money”), it was surprisingly safe. In some of the most commendable urban planning I have ever seen, there were soccer fields, piazzas and skate parks built around each stop of the cable car.

Within these public spaces mingled every walk of life, from young mothers to old paisa men. The best, however, were the two 2-year-olds with buzz cuts and overalls marching up the stairs – by themselves – as we went down. Less than two feet tall, for all I know they were still shitting themselves; but that wasn’t going to keep them from posting up in the piazza to peep game. Those who’ve seen Dave Chappelle’s “Baby on the corner” skit have a rough estimate of what the deal is. Across the way lingered a group of older kids, this time leaning against the back of the bench. None of them could have been older than six. If Allen Iverson was smoking blunts and drinking 40s at age eleven, kids in San Domingo have the block on lock by seven.

______________________________________

Unfortunately, instant gratification usually has its darker side – and the ability to live a thuggish, carefree existence is rarely distributed equitably across gender: for every shirtless 11-year old boy on the back of a motorbike in Medellín, there is a 12-year old girl doused in make-up, a cutoff shirt far above the bellybutton, booty-pants and cheap stilettos. Throughout the whole city, girls that couldn’t have been older than ten were not only donning coochie-cutters and platform shoes – they were still clutching their mothers’ hands as they did so. On the metro, girls as young as five were wearing lip gloss.

Beyond the age of puberty, this was practically the norm. For 5-6 years, young, poor and pretty women are ostensibly the talk of the town. By the end of their teenage years, however, there was not a single girl in Santo Domingo not toting around one or two children – and sometimes three. And it wasn’t just in Santo Domingo. Everywhere on the metro and all over downtown, mothers were extremely young, and young children were extremely abundant. For better or worse, Medellín must be one of the most fertile places on earth.

If only procreating were enough. Women in Medellín are also famous for squeezing themselves into comically revealing attire: scarcely a lady under 40 goes by that doesn’t give you a very accurate idea of her exact physical dimensions. But it is not just the balmy weather: the pressure to don makeup and cutoff blouses, painfully tight jeans and heels is ubiquitous in both myth and reality. The side of every other building downtown is draped with 30-feet ads for different no-name jean companies: donning a denim cowboy hat, the women in the ads scarcely wear anything else.

One cannot take public transport anywhere in Medellín without being reminded every 30 seconds of exactly what Colombian advertizing agencies and their clients think women should resemble: smiling, half-naked and pumped full of silicon. From the persistently pervy stares they illicit, their men seemed to agree.

______________________________________

Such is the paradox of Medellín that is hard to describe. Warm, sunny, funky, fun and friendly, it is also deeply conservative, if not reactionary, in its approach to gender and economics. Socially, however, it is on the cutting edge: no city in North or South America has better parks, squares, plazas, open spaces or public transport that I know of.

The Sunday we were there was also election-day, and public transport was free. However crowded the metro, people still waited for others to exit before boarding (something unheard of in Bogotá’s morally disastrous Transmilenio) and meticulously gave up their seat whenever a pregnant woman or elderly person boarded.

Everywhere we went – the botanical gardens, the Barefoot Park (a zen-like park of sand and fountains for children to run around barefoot and “feel their connection with the Earth”) or the typically-named Park of Desires – there were throngs of people – couples, families and extended clans alike – lounging, laughing, sipping fresh-squeezed lemonade and losing count of how long they’d been there. It seemed the most harmonious, civically-minded and family-oriented polity I’ve ever come across.

______________________________________

Yet as good privileged gringos, we were still obliged to head south to finish our day in the posh area of El Poblado, where rich, white and globalized Colombians mix almost exclusively with their European and American expatriate counterparts. For better or worse, such neighborhoods are usually the only place to find decent coffee or good books in Colombia, so with a mix of guilt and guilty pleasure we hopped on the southbound metro.

Whatever their claims to driving the cultural life of the capital, richer areas of Bogotá are as sterile as North Carolina’s eugenics program of the 1960s. Paisas being known for their notorious sense of humor, on the other hand, I was hoping Medellín’s boogified bits would be a livelier affair.

There was only one catch. Election-day in Colombia is more than an opportunity to elect the most extremist of various right-wing candidates: it is also a chance to sober up. Since no booze can be sold in the 24 hours prior to or during voting, many retreat from public places en masse. Indeed, that Sunday in El Poblado was the embodiment of the ancient dilemma one learns the hard way at some point in high school: “we’re best friends, but have I ever met you sober? This might not work.”

It was mid-afternoon on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and the neighborhood and its hundreds of bars and restaurants were completely empty. Worse, these are outdoor establishments – and they were still open. There were nothing but barren, empty tables as far as the eye could see. Nor were these bistros along the side of the Luxembourg Gardens: they were empty Hooters, abandoned burrito joints, endless barbecue cocktail bars and – wealthy, young Colombians’ all-time favorite – the ubiquitous, expensive and beautifully named establishment, Buffalo Wings.

Whether or not they were deserted didn’t seem to matter: each establishment was still blasting techno into the street on a Sunday at 3pm. It looked, felt, seemed and smelled like an abandoned playground for wealthy and deranged adults; some dystopian, tropical telenovela where “the worst of Dayton Beach” meets “the worst of Dubai.” More so than in Bogotá, rich, young and white residents of Medellín seem condemned to blindly imitating the miserable, overpriced, cultural nightmare they imagine their American counterparts to be living. As long as there’s booze involved, I guess it’s just about tolerable.  

Lenin and the Philharmonic

I have never seen a dead person. Whatever our childish claims to worldliness, we haven’t seen the half of it. Or even an eighth. One can spend years in the most “interesting” places without once seeing the inside of a hospital, a prison, an old folks’ home, a factory or a dairy farm. I have no idea where candy or Tupperware come from.

Nor, I suspect, do you. Most of us (reading this) live blindingly sheltered lives, where death and production have long since been removed from view. They only things I can make are pasta and conversation. And I’m not really making the pasta. Or the conversation: the wine is.

Last week I saw a beggar on the other side of the street. I was in a posh neighborhood not far from my apartment and mistakenly made eye contact with him as the light turned red. When the bulletproofed SUVs came to a halt, he rapidly hobbled across the street on stilted wooden crutches, hustling over to get our full attention. He certainly did. Catching a glimpse of his leg, I was hit by a surge of guilt and disgust: his right foot had been hacked off just above the ankle and was dripping with blood and cartilage. The wound could not have been more than a day old.

Who was this man and why had his foot been bloodily severed? Gangrene? Debt? Landmine? Sadism?  Why was he panning for coins in a broad daylight and not at the hospital? I hadn’t the courage or compassion to pursue either question to its rightful conclusion. Instead, I walked away as quickly as I could without running, as if pretending not to flee the scene of a heinous crime already committed would somehow lessen my complicity in doing absolutely nothing about it.

This is the closest I have come to seeing Colombia’s low-scale, fifty-year war. Yet in all likelihood there was nothing political about the man’s predicament: from the point of view of the passerby, he was little more than a minor environmental hazard, an aesthetic blight on the way to brunch. (For the record: we were on our way back). But from the privileged corners of Bogotá, this is what the rest of the low-scale war raging – or buzzing – in the rest of the country looks and feels like: at best, an uncomfortable nuisance; at worst, nothing. Some brown, unfortunate soul bleeding to death in the curb. All I have to do is put my foot on the gas and it disappears.  

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_________________________________________________________

­­­

It was a beautiful Saturday morning. We’d had a little dinner party the night before: curry, friends and conversation; peanuts and cold beer; youtubing old George W speeches: the happy, frivolous times of the young and relatively privileged. The next morning we were so proud of ourselves for having such remarkably good lives we decided to splurge and have breakfast in the posh end of the neighborhood. Warm croissants and freshly squeezed orange juice. Strong black Italian coffee. Waiters with little vests who smiled. Fellow patrons of only the lightest complexion – each of who was sporting the latest yoga garb or Harvard alumni gear. Scrambled eggs with corn, feta and mushrooms. Surely this is what civilization smells like in 21^st century Colombia.

_________________________________________________________

I hurried back home – as if the faster I walked, the quicker the memory of dripping blood and mangled flesh would fade from mind. We were going to a concert that afternoon and one shouldn’t dwell upon the undercurrents of history and depridation before enjoying a good performance of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. Yet I couldn’t rid the image from my mind. I wonder if he has died by now.

It was our first time heading to the National University of Colombia, in whose majestically run-down Auditorio León de Greiff, Bogotá’s outstanding Philharmonic plays once a week.

_________________________________________________________

The three best universities in Colombia follow three separate trajectories. The National, as it is referred to, is considered by many the foremost: it has the smartest students, is the hardest to get into and boasts some of the country’s most prolific professors. That being said, it is also famously radical, hugely underfunded and very rundown (depsite the fact that it charges a progressive tuition rate: very expensive for those who can pay, nearly free for those who can't). It's riddled facade and Leninist propaganda was par for the course for any public university in Latin America (outside Brazil, where the best schools are public and heavily subsidized by the state but reserved for those who attended private high schools).

The campus of the “National” is a predictable shambles: a smattering of late 1960s, plaster-of-Paris-white tower-blocks spread across a mass of swampy lands carved out of the grey, browns and blues of central Bogotá. Like an ageing actress, it is ugly but not without a certain charm. Next, but not necessarily in that order, is the Jesuit-run Javeriana University, a very stellar institute and the bastion of the country’s clever, urbane and Catholic bourgeoisie. It is just down the road from me and produced the majority of researchers at my current place of employment. (All of whom are very smart and lovely people, something I should have made clearer months ago; this blog is admittedly too harsh on Bogotá and its wonderful inhabitants).

Finally, the Universidad de los Andes, the only private non-sectarian university in the country and the (un)official home of the country’s ultra-elite. If your father is a senator, a warlord or the head of corporate development for a major multinational, you go to Los Andes. Though a very fine school, it also has a reputation for champagne socialism: an odd trait when you consider that members of the Left have a penchant for getting killed in Colombia. Then again, if it’s best to know your enemy, why not study him in undergrad? If Yale and USC had a one-night stand in the Adirondacks, their lovechild would resemble the Universidad de los Andes.

_________________________________________________________

To get to the National, you head west from the plush green neighborhoods that hug the city’s eastern mountain range. (Or, if you’re not an overprivileged twat such as myself, you head north from the southern slums, east from the sprawling exurbs or south from the blocks of nicer, newer suburbs to the north). If I did not make this clear enough in previous posts, going west is not a pleasant experience. Not that it’s dangerous; it’s just very unfortunate for the eyes, ears, lungs and soul. As if the city’s planning commission were a mule, a prostitute and a malarial child, the dusty parts of central Bogotá that have sprung up in the past 3-4 decades are crass, grey, shoddy, shortsighted, uninspired, chaotic and tacky. That in no way reflects my opinion of the people that inhabit these quarters: I am sure they are much nicer than many of those in my neighborhood. Just that their architectural forebears did them no favors whatsoever.

The National is surrounded by bizarre and middling neighborhoods of this sort, such that when you find it, you’re in something of a green oasis. The taxi lets us out where the highway runs perpendicular to the campus’ eastern entrance. Just before the unassuming gates – closer to metal detectors than lions or tigers in stone – are two hotdog stands and a mural voicing its firm support for the Union Patriótica (UP), a left-wing coalition led by demobilized members of the FARC. Encouraged to enter electoral politics by the conservative government of President Belisario Betancourt in the 1980s, over 4,000 of the UP’s members would be murdered for their political affiliation in the next 6-7 years. A great many of them were shot in broad daylight with the tacit support of the state and military; their assassins enjoy almost perfect impunity to this day.

It’s unfortunately a Saturday, so we don’t get to see the brainy little hordes of radical lefties marching about chain-smoking, generally sporting long and mangy hair and overgrown, elbow-patchy jackets (mind you: this is pure speculation). Visiting college campuses anywhere is an extremely insightful glimpse into a country, city or society’s psyche – all the more so when you’re abroad. Though it’s not a representative sample of any country’s population, it gives you some idea of what the people who will be running much of their polity's  educational system, government, non-profit and cultural scene will look like over the next quarter century. But I degress.

_________________________________________________________

It was chilly that day: over the empty campus lingered a grey and menacing green – the kind that speaks as much to failure as it does to fertility. Once through the rusted metal gates that protect our citadel of learning, there are kiosks of varying delight: candy, used books and pirated films to last entire semesters without stepping inside a library. Inside, we are not the only ones: a certain kind of literati – the good, impecunious one – has also slipped through the gates to attend the show.

The line is long and the crowd is placid. People look thoughtful, modest, intelligent and interested: the kind that cities should naturally produce – and be produced by. Little Andean girls are dressed up in white gowns, accompanied by their fathers; an old incapacitated man in tweed is wheeled around by his doting friends. The university bookstore is just to my left; in its windows are old, yellow tomes on biophysics, agricultural methods and comparative politics by varying faculty from the National.  

We get to the front of the line and I produce my barely legible student ID card (nyungkas is broke). I ask for one adult ticket and one student: shameless, you’ll say – but would you rather I spend the money on skittles or beer? The kind woman gives us two student tickets, smiles and tells us to enjoy the show. They are $5 a piece.

We leave the outdoor ticket booth and walk around the corner toward the entrance to the auditorium. Now we are in a Latin American public university. The heart of campus is a grand open plaza: on one side the library (top picture), named after Camilo Torres, the Marxist priest turned guerrilla who died fighting in the Colombian jungle in the 1960s. The massive wall of the library is empty save for the bearded smile of his reassuring face. Of course, the priest is also brandishing an automatic weapon. To the left of the library is the nursing tower, a monstrosity that would make the French public university system proud. Finally, facing the library is our Auditorio León de Greiff (lower picture). Again, a single image flanks its off-white walls: that of Che, vindictive as ever and glaring into Camilo’s eyes. “Why are you enjoying yourself? We both wind up dead, you know – our causes as lost now as they will be 50 years from now.”

_________________________________________________________

I have no idea how to write about music, so very soon I shall let you go. Suffice to say that what had on the outside been a sad, gray and disheartening scene – whatever my deep admiration for leftist iconography – soon turned into something beautiful. Outside the theatre, it was cold, raining, rundown and revanchist. Whatever the moral high-ground may be, murals of Lenin Square depicting “victims of police, gringo and imperialist brutality” do not always conjure warm and fuzzy feelings of studious indifference. Inside the auditorium, however, is a completely different world – a warm and majestic place with soft, thoughtful lighting, striking angles and patterned wooden panels dancing up and down the horizon of the auditorium at different heights, a skyline of sliding Japanese doors. The kind of ambiance that makes you want to do your homework, honor your parents, drink Earl Grey and smoke strong cigarettes.

By the time the first movement began, the theatre was nearly sold-out. For the cost of a sandwich, we were sitting twenty rows from the stage, front and center. It was International Woman’s Day (I’m not sure if this is celebrated in other parts of the world or just in machista countries), so the emphasis was on, you guessed it, cosmetic patterns of galactic stardust. Seriously: just what about women would they praise? After all, the current conductor of the Bogotá Philharmonic is a woman, in addition to the lead pianist. Must we spell everything out?

In perfect National University fashion, the first presenter opened with a speech on the resilience of Colombian women in the countryside: their strength, resolve and determination in the face of paramilitary violence, land grabs and economic ruin. It was profoundly political and very moving. In a country that by and large does not read, it is also too easy to assume that people are somehow less informed or politically engaged; in the case of the symphony-going crowd that is simply not the case.

_________________________________________________________

At intermission, people mingled and went for a coffee. A tinto, as black gold is called in Colombia, was fifty cents. People of all ages, tastes and styles mingled in the lobby: everyone seemed to know one another and get along as old chums. Old and young; well-dressed and in rags; the hyper-educated and the self-taught worker; Spaniard, mestizo and indian: they were all there. Like a Mister Rogers block party for Colombians between the age of 10 and 90, everyone seemed content and solidaire. It was the People’s Philharmonic in every sense of the term.

Since I cannot put into writing how beautifully they played, I cannot convey the feeling of rapture that came over me as I sipped my dirty, weak coffee in the rain. This is why people live in cities, pay taxes, ride buses and work in cubicles – five days a week for decades on end. For afternoons such as this, it is worth every minute.

Democracy in Ecuador

Ecuador has been poised at a crucial juncture in its history for several years now. President Rafael Correa, the University of Illinois-trained economist and leftish firebrand, has been in power for seven years – longer than anyone in the country’s history. Of 131 seats in Congress, 91 belong to his Country Alliance party – and with 70% of Congress, he has more of a supermajority than LBJ ever enjoyed. But we’re not here to talk about electoral politics, are we?

The end of my first visit to Ecuador coincided with local elections two Sundays ago. I know what you’re thinking: boooor-ing, in the voice that only Eric Gade can pull off. Most of you don’t give a rat’s ass for midterms back home, so why bother with those of an underdeveloped banana republic unknown outside its geographical nomenclature? (Speaking of republics, Ecuador is the world’s largest exporter of bananas). Because the country is on the very cutting edge of democratic politics – and has a thing or two to teach the rest of the continent, if not the world.

In the six years prior to Correa’s election, Ecuador went through four presidents – one of whom was ousted by a military coup; one who fled to the Dominican Republic after being accused of mishandling debt negotiations that lost the country $9 billion; and another who was forced to step down amidst massive popular and indigenous protests. Compared to his predecessors, he seems a godsend for the small nation of 15m; if current approval ratings are to be believed, the voice of the people may actually have been heard. 

Of course, none of this prevented his party from being trounced in Sunday’s elections. By the end of the day, Correa’s Country Alliance (AP) had lost the capital, Quito, failed to challenge the conservative incumbent in the country’s largest city, Guayaquil, and ceded the industrial center of Cuenca to an opponent on the left. For one of Latin America’s most successful politicians in decades, Correa has had surprisingly little luck in converting his nationwide popularity into victory at the urban polls – despite the fact that he himself hails from the country’s coastal and economic powerhouse, Guayaquil. Of the ten largest cities in the country, his dominant AP party does not control a single one. Why don’t urbanites like him?

______________________________________________________________

My friend was waiting at arrivals when we touched down at Quito’s sparkling new airport around 8pm. Since Venezuela has dropped out of the Andean community, our line at the visa counter was thrice as long (in admirable Andean solidarity, there is one line at the airport for Ecuadorians, Colombians, Peruvians and Bolivians and another for the rest of the world. It is hard to imagine the day when Cleveland International Airport will have one line for NAFTA members and another for the citizens of Switzerland, Singapore and Somalia) – but entering the country could not have been easier. Since coming to office, President Correa has gotten rid of visa requirements for citizens from all but 10 countries. For those from the other 186 recognized states in the world, all you need to legally enter this tropical Andean Eden is waltz right in. (For a list of those who cannot enter, see here).

To my knowledge, this is the only place on Earth with no restrictions whatsoever on people from Haiti, Mali, the Congo, Timor-Leste, Sudan, Burma, Iraq and Syria – a list that could no doubt go on much longer. Such a policy is a perfect example of the kind of rational and progressive logic that characterizes much of Correa’s strong-handed reign: unorthodox and open-minded policies driven home by a decisive, pragmatic and often ideologically flexible administration. It didn’t hurt that the woman who stamped our passports was paragon of sweetness and gentility: I think I will love this country.

Located some 25km northeast of the city, it takes 90 minutes to reach the Mariscal Sucre International Airport from the center of Quito. Luckily, my buddy lives in Puembo, a small town only 15 minutes from the shiny new portal. When his family moved there 25 years ago, theirs was a landscape dotted with rolling green pastures; pear, palm and papaya trees in the foreground and dotted white peaks of Cotopaxi in the distance (on a clear day). Today, it’s but another sprawling exurb hugging the only two-lane road that leads to the capital’s only airport (to put this in perspective: to bring the entire capital – and by default the country – to a complete physical standstill would only require seizing one small part of one small road. This thought makes me wonder if I’ve been in Colombia too long).

Yet to reach my companion’s compound is still an adventure: countless lefts and rights through blocks of make-shift single-story housing as we speed through the shanties in a giant, silver, tinted Chevy pick-up – dodging a donkey here, a rattling old school-bus there. Outside each bodega, groups of 6-7 youths linger over barbecue pits or steaming, rust-stained cauldrons. Some of the properties on the higher side of the street are draped with beautiful, overflowing flowers and ivy-decked Byzantine walls: only in passing the front gates can you catch a glimpse of the haciendas whose foundations are just being dug behind them. On the other side of the street or around the corner – wherever views of mountain or city do not suffice – the properties are far more modest. More often than not, they are one-story cement blocks with the shells of 2^nd and 3^rd story additions whose completion their occupants have yet to finance. Homes of mud and earth are not unheard of.

Finally begins the homestretch: a left turn onto a straight-shot open road. We’d be going 70mph instead of 50 if it weren’t for the ubiquitous speed-bumps. On the right, a series of open fields dotted by crumbling homes and errant livestock; on the left, a single, straight line of 8-10 ft walls, scarcely visible behind a stream of magenta, mauve and maroon petals poring over from the other side of the wall. For whatever reason, the barrier seems natural: you don’t wonder what’s on the other side of the wall. Until he presses the button.

On command, two large wooden doors open toward the street as if the sea were parting – knightsbridge being lowered across the moat. What was moments ago a derelict suburban road rung with donkeys, adolescents and hot-green painted, sulfur-spewing public buses had opened up onto paradise. Once inside, the gates close behind you as quickly, subtly and silently as they’d opened. For the outsider, your window of opportunity into the kingdom was between 3 and 4 seconds: enough to catch a glimpse but not enough to storm it.

As if by sorcery, we had disappeared into another realm. To the left and right alike were multiple Japanese and American SUVs. Before we could step out of the car, two Labradors, one black and one yellow, had come panting over to greet us. They were not the fearsome beasts one might have expected: would the wall alone keep the hordes at bay? We soon found out it wouldn’t need to: the German shepherds spent most of their time roaming the other, more exposed, side of the compound, just next to the cows kept for home-made milk and the goats for fresh cheese. One should be forgiven for feeling just a little invincible from within.

In front of us lay the kingdom: a cornucopia of crimson, auburn, pink and purple; showers of daffodil, dodger blue and Brunswick green. There are more colors, shapes and textures in a single Ecuadorian garden than the western half of the United States. Giant towering trees of unknown specie create an outer ecological crust over the property: beneath their top layer of green is a powerful pyramid of competing genii: palm trees dripping with strange and colorful fruit; dark, rich willows with birds of song on every other branch. One mustn’t forget the garden’s history from below: from the savagely fertile earth spring flowers of every size and temperament – some are sweet, blue and sorrowful – others orange, brazen and brash. 

We are shown to our quarters, separate from the rest of the compound yet connected by covered passageways and floral courtyards. At no point can you see more than a quarter of the property: the vegetation and the disparate lay-out of various chambers and guest-quarters ringing the main house see to that. In the five nights I stayed there, I learned only the minute-long jaunt to the kitchen: out the door, down the corridor, right at the pool, left at the grandparents’ chambers and left again before the peacock garden – which contained peacocks. At table, we drank orange juice plucked from the tree that morning. I tried in vain to try to make conversation with his octogenarian grandfather: why is small talk with the very young and very old so very difficult? There were four generations of my host’s family at breakfast that morning. 

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_____________________________________________________________

That night we drove to a friend’s house for drinks. An apostate in a new land, I used the immunity of having just arrived to ask any number of brash questions about the country’s geography, economy, demographics and politics; after all, it is the least understood in South America after Paraguay, Suriname and the Guyanas. The discussion quickly veered toward Correa, a matter on which those who had been close friends since childhood were now in deep and fervent disagreement.

The upper classes are almost uniformly against the incumbent president: for seven years, he has been crass, brash and extremely dismissive of traditional elites. At a recent weekly town-hall appearance, he openly railed against the institution of the ministry of foreign affairs in front of the working-class population that had come to hear his weekly address, this time in the disadvantaged south of Quito. Lambasting the expense of many consular offices, he called for the automation of nearly all consular duties. It should come as little surprise why certain sectors of society like him more than others.   

Correa is also wildly known for being anti-business, which in some regards rings true: he has squeezed businesses foreign and local for corporate taxes; appropriated oil companies; stripped the financial industry of its control of media outlets; and vastly increased social spending. Government ministries shot up from 21 to 37 in his first five years – which somebody in addition to foreign oil companies should ideally pay for. As individuals, Ecuadorians are being (effectively) taxed for the first time in their country’s history. This can hurt.

But Correa is also building roads. And vast new networks of modern and efficient health facilities. And increasing education and social housing. How does he foot the bill? As my friend told me, for the first time in his life it is considered an honor and prestige to work for the national government. Of course, this has to do with wages as well as honor, but the point should not be lost: Correa’s “Citizens Revolution” involves a strong and varied mélange of his electorate – and many of the country’s best and brightest are now eager to work for the government for the first time. As my friend said, “I never found anything in the private sector that could seduce me to get up at 5:30 and put in 12 hour days.”

_____________________________________________________________

Early in his first term, Correa notoriously threatened to default on Ecuador’s foreign debt interest payments. Positing they had been signed by corrupt and incompetent previous governments that had been acting in bad faith, he called any continuance of such payments “illegal” and “illegitimate”. Though he did not go through with this threat, it sent politico-economic shockwaves throughout the region and world. Pundits were quick to tar him as yet another irresponsible Latin: a better looking Christina Kirchner with a PhD and a suit. Somehow, he weathered the storm and fixed for even bigger battles. 

Prior to taking office, the Ecuadorian government received 13% of oil sales from the stuff extracted within its borders and sold abroad. The rest went to shareholders of various American, Brazilian, Canadian, European and Chinese firms. Upon taking office, Correa gave firms a choice: flip the script and pay Ecuadorians 87% instead of 13% or face forced expropriation. Seven firms went for the door, but the other nine stayed put and contributed an extra $870 million to Ecuador’s state budget in 2011 alone. All of them are still operable in Ecuador to this day.

Which brings us back to dinner, drinks and internecine conversational battle. My companions had all gone to the same elite private high school in Quito. One was running a government ministry; another was in charge of in-country marketing for KFC; another is helping a Korean firm build Latin America’s first tech city, based in the middle of the jungle and modeled on Songdo. They were an ideal microcosm of the Ecuadorian elite: lighter-skinned, European-educated, bi- and trilingual, smart and mostly very successful. At around age 30, they were not too young to distinguish their own interests from those of the rest of the country, which often enough were not aligned.

Those in the opposing camp were angry about two things: one, Correa’s an arrogant and dictatorial prick with little regard for the opposition’s feelings; and two, he makes them pay significantly more in taxes. (A possible unarticulated third: he gives hope to the country’s underclasses). All things said, the first two are very valid reasons for despising a man. Hell, I was aggrieved at having to pay 22% sales tax at restaurants and cafés over the eight days I spent in the country, regardless of the fact that it contributed to my friend’s salary, who in turn was hosting me and whose subsidized petrol took me around for free: didn’t they know I only eat out and ride in cars on vacation?

To conclude. Having never made any money, I have never paid any taxes. Or real taxes, mind you: whatever the surtax on lager, skittles and plane tickets I’ve given the good people in Foggy Bottom a hundred fold. But the real issue is this: Americans did not pay income taxes until 1913 – a figure that jumped from 7% to 77% over the course of WWI alone. Mass murder and the collapse of civilization aside, there are few situations in which people voluntarily hand over their wealth in the interest of the collective. Hence many people’s amazement at the unprecedented success of Correa’s presidency.  

As one of the guys put it that night: “Correa’s presidency does not serve a single of my individual interests: he throttles my company and strangles my personal fortune. I do not support him in the least for what he’s done for me. From a macro perspective, however, he’s given the country more in seven years than any president in this country’s history: not only roads, hospitals, schools and housing, but respect, accountability and honor. He may not be my president, but he’s the president of the rest of Ecuador’s 15m people. And for this I’ve no choice but to support him.”

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­____________________________________________________________

After several days in Quito, we took a bus to Mindo, a small eco-friendly town carved into a cloud forest about two hours west of the capital. In recent years it has grown from a jungle backwater into a regional destination for middle-class Ecuadorians and foreigners who enjoy ecological sight-seeing, bird-watching and other strange and thrilling things that white people do to kill time (bungee-jumping, rafting, paragliding, rappelling, hand-gliding). Old Germans and Americans, middle-aged French, and Brits in their late 20s: you get the point.

Mindo had two striking features apart from its natural beauty and rustic charm: one, the unbelievable inequality between those who’ve managed to tap into the tourism market and those who haven’t; two, the storm of political activity sweeping the town in the days before the nationwide municipal elections.

It is no secret that Ecuador is extraordinarily beautiful and ecologically diverse. When you include the fact that residents are helpful, kind and friendly, and the local currency is the US dollar, it makes perfect sense that older Yanks in particular should flock there. Of Mindo’s 3000 inhabitants, 250 are said to be foreigners, most of who are German or American, retired and enjoy nature. So far, so good.

But converting to the dollar may have also caused a housing boom that’s exceeded local demand. In this town of village-like proportions, there were at least 50 gorgeous, wood-grained, Swiss-chalet-like hotels and hostels, the vast majority of which were empty. Next to each is a local dwelling: usually a crumbling log home with corrugated tin roofs and surrounded by a trench of mud, rubbish and chicken shit. I do not suppose this differs from what most of the town looked like 20 years ago, but the contrast is telling.

The very business-oriented owner of our hostel spent his day tapping about his Mac and pushing overpriced, homemade hot-chocolate, cocktails and honey on us. When that didn’t work, he tried to sell us tickets to a local frog concert. What did this entail? Listening to local polliwogs do their nightly mating-call from the comfort of his buddy’s backyard. The scams went on forever: expensive eco-guides (i.e. someone’s ambulatory cousin), limited edition bird-watching socks and cloud forest-inspired frappés. In many parts of Ecuador, the cart is getting ahead of the horse: half the town pretends to have a foot in 21^st century Northern California, while the other half rattles along in a jungly early 20^th century Andalucía. Where these disparate bedfellows come together is in politics.  

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­____________________________________________________________

I have not read Tocqueville in years, but like to think that stumbling into any small Ecuadorian town at election time is strangely reminiscent of the young Frenchman getting off a smoky black train in 1820s Chattanooga amidst a roaring crowd of Andrew Jackson supporters: the mayhem, the fervor, the political banners, the absolute and utter belief that politics is nothing but a matter of charisma, energy and willpower – and through these things alone, the atom can be split, the girl seduced, the fascists defeated, the last two cookies simultaneously taken from the jar. In the week before elections and throughout the entire country, there was a not a single block without some colorful smattering of battling flags and banners. Often the lopsided, mud-caked shacks would be covered in the most.

But this was more than your average “burgers and brats” election where power brokers bring out the butchers and (literally) trade sausages for votes; in Ecuador, municipal posts seem as hotly contested as presidential ones in the United States. Of course, part of this has to do with the fact that voting is mandatory. If I have to go to school, then I may as well starch my Jncos before doing so. On the other hand, locking little ones in a classroom doesn’t make them any keener to learn. So why do Ecuadorians take elections so seriously?

______________________________________________________________

Several interesting rules apply to election time in Ecuador. One: no booze in the three days leading up to the election. From corner store bodega to three-star Michelin restaurant, not a drop of devil’s juice can be bought or sold in the entire country from Thursday at midnight until the polls have closed after Sunday’s vote. An electoral precaution also practiced in Colombia, it says three things about these governments relationship with their electorate: they don’t trust them; they don’t trust them to hold their drink (at all); and they certainly don’t think they have the foresight to stock up ahead of time.

These minor insults aside, the ban also says something about the special place held by the elections: they are holier than holy – collective moments for reflection, health and stable mind; extended moments of poise and concentration, sobriety being the greatest enemy of folly. Elections aside, social scientists should be salivating at the data to be had on an entire country that is stone-cold sober for three full days: homicide and domestic abuse cases are only the most obvious cases in point. But what about the breakups that would never occur, the wages never lost at the tracks, the flippant remark never made to one’s boss?

Yet for the people of Mindo, the week before the election is a time for celebration. And since all campaigning must cease as of the Friday before Sunday’s election, Thursday night’s a party. All day long and in the rain, pick-ups drive up and down Main Street with 8-10 youths in tow, each wearing matching neon-yellow t-shirts and waving flags. Switch the flags for arms of any sort and you’d think they were the Lord’s Resistance Army if it weren’t for their pudgy outlines, mild countenance and seemingly good-natured enthusiasm for democratic process. Almost more telling, however, were the candidates they were so eager to back: “Little Joey for Comptroller,” “Sally the Septuagenarian for City Councilor,” “Tommy the Tank for Local Treasurer.”

I only mock their names because half of them were misspelled variants of the American original (Wilyam, Jhon, Brand-in and Jaysin are but a few examples: they say that on the Pacific coast there are a great many chaps called “Usnavy Gonzales” or “Usmariño Sanchez” as in to commemorate the presence of the US Navy and Marines. In school they used to call this “Empire by invitation”). But a great many candidates were also young and comically “unpresidential”. Many of the images looked like awkward poster-children for internet model recruiting websites: “high school female athletes needed for family-oriented detergent commercial” or “big hair and toothy smile needed for national peanut campaign.” Every photogenic mommy with a GED seemed to be running in Mindo.

But the atmosphere of the event suggested that democracy in Ecuador is far more than a popularity contest or beauty pageant. During the last night of campaigning, local power brokers rolled out the stage for the band to play in the rain. Families sauntered up and down the street, snacking and sipping orange drink, while party aficionados chanted anthems in the drizzle. From midday ‘til nightfall, the streets were packed with life and youth and good-natured enthusiasm – and it wasn’t just one political party. The yellows, the greens and the reds – which correspond to no color-associated ideological affiliations – were all present. It was like a well-mannered, highly attended high school prep rally for Andean families in the rain forest. I’ve never seen a more peaceful, orderly or enthusiastic political outpouring. Song, speech, song, over and over again, was the order in which they crooned our little rainy cloud village to sleep that night; the party was still alive and kicking when I went to bed at midnight on the other side of the river.

____________________________________________________________

I don’t know which parties were running on what promises in Mindo, but it almost doesn’t matter. In a town that relies heavily on a tourism industry only likely to grow, it might seem odd that people take such an interest in local politics. But it reveals a deeper trend in Ecuadorian society: whatever the president’s popular feats at the top – reversing the country’s oil fortunes, investing in roads and hospitals or sticking it to the Colombians and the Americans over the airwaves – he also benefits from the fact that Ecuadorians are almost hyper-politically-engaged. A tireless workaholic and ruthless pragmatician, Correa’s pace seems to go down well with everyone in the country, regardless of political affiliation. As the woman who drove us to the bus stop said: “he may be an arrogant, nepotistic, tax-mongering despot, but he’s delivered on far more than any politician in this country has in decades.”  

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­____________________________________________________________

As my friend, the government official, was apt to remind me, Correa is nothing if not a master political operative. One day he is dining with Ahmadinejad and praising Ecuador’s links with “democratic Iran” and the next he’s lauding the small Andean country’s historic ties with the Jewish state. Granting Julian Assange asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London might not have won him many friends in high circles, but at times he’s less concerned with traditional diplomatic protocols, as his above comments about his very own ministry of foreign affairs have shown.

Yet his experiments go well beyond the realm of mere politics or prickly matters of state. Since coming to office in 2007, he has also dabbled in less-publicized ways of bolstering his small Andean nation of 15m: cultural autarky. In June 2013, Correa passed a communications bill requiring (at least) 50% of all music played on Ecuadorian radio to be home-grown. Since Ecuadorian artists accounted for less than 10% of airplay before the law, they have seen a sharp increase in their national exposure. The idea, of course, is modeled after countries like Argentina who imposed similar laws in the 1980s and 1990s – and now enjoys one of the most dynamic national music industries in the world. As Ecuador’s Vice Minister of Culture Jorge Luis Serrano put it, “This is a country full of talent, the problem has been the lack of industry, the lack of support from the government. We have it now.”

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­____________________________________________________________

  

In the end, Correa’s party still came up short in the 23 February elections – particularly in Quito. The president himself had warned that the loss of the capital would be “very dangerous” for the continuing success of his “Citizen’s Revolution.” On what slogan did the inexperienced, 39-year old opponent run his opposition campaign? “Less taxes, less fines.” For all Correa’s genius and drive, perhaps you needn’t always have a PhD in Economics to hear the voice of the people.