Colombia: Shooting a gun in the air will get you a lesser fine than urinating in the street

Fines imposed on people committing a number of minor infractions have just increased exponentially in Bogotá, Colombia.

Clara López, secretary of the Bogotá Government's Office, said that these fines, as determined by the National Police Code, had not been updated or changed for more than 39 years, and were often seen as a joke even by the police officers who were trained to enforce them.

López told El Tiempo that the fees for these fines had been updated to reflect the increase in cost of life since 1970 so that throwing litter on the streets, which would have brought a penalty of 3 to 5 US cents just last month, will now cost you 16 to 32 US dollars (using today's conversion rate for the Colombian peso).

The changes come in light of a series of increasingly violent fan-driven public fights inside and outside soccer stadiums. "People who disturb the normal development of social activities, including in stadiums", the paper says, will now pay a fine of 1,315 dollars.

The 1,315 dollar rate is the highest fine mentioned but it also applies to having "sexual relations in a public place" and "urinating in public".

Interestingly, burning one's house down intentionally - which will now cost you a still paltry 162 to 324 dollars - or shooting a gun in an open space - which now elicits a fine of 324 to 648 dollars - will bring a much lesser charge than being caught having sex or urinating in public. My concern is that both those charges might be used to harass LGBT folk out in the street late at night, just as similar laws have been used elsewhere in Latin America to entrap gays and lesbians.

Another fine that caught my eye: The lowest fine of 16 to 32 US dollars applies if you are caught not raising the Colombian flag outside your home on national holidays.

Colombia Dispatch: Bogota

Bogota is all about....
Sudden downpours in the middle of a sunny day...
Kids in the playground celebrating the Independence Day - July 20th - by channeling their favorite historical figure (so cute)...
Anime grafitti artists who one day might make it to New York City and be utterly disappointed by the blah grafitti work on the walls of the Big Apple (they might do much better if they visit Spain). BTW: What is it with all the young men in Bogota sporting a Speed Racer spiky hairdo?
The hubby walking through a quaint but colorful neighborhood with his mom...
Pesky if somewhat domesticated waterbugs (remember the sudden tropical downpours?)...
The hubby and I posing in front of butterflies that light up with the colors of the Colombian flag...

Colombia Dispatch: Horsing around

Original it is not. I still remember the 2000 ¨CowParade¨ charity event which brought a herd of fiberglass cows - each painted by a different artist - to the streets of New York.

Calling themselves "the world´s largest public art event," the organizers have since set up similar outdoor exhibits throughout the world, auctioning different cows at the end of each exhibit as a fundraiser for different local charities in the host cities.

Enter Equus Arte in Bogota. Walking around the 93rd Street Park in Bogota over the weekend, the hubby and I ran upon several fiberglass horses that had been set up onthe periphery, each with a different design and look, some of them sorta `blah´but some actually quite stunning (the exhibit actually runs through September at various public sites throughout the city and features 74 different horses).

The event, set up by Fundacion Corazon Verde (Green Heart Foundation), seeks to raise money "to improve the quality of life of the widows and orphans of Colombian policemen."

On Thursday, El Tiempo profiled some of the artists, including Maria de la Paz Jaramillo who did "Azul," the blue horse below (next to the hubby). Sorry to say I didn´t take note of the other artists´ names.

Still, in the photo above you can also see how one of the artists took the opportunity to pose the question "Do kidnapped gays have the right to liberty?"

This is an allusion to the outpouring of emotion that erupted earlier this month through the streets of Bogota in reaction to the death of 11 politicians that were being held by the left-wing FARC guerrillas, who had kidnapped them a few months ago.

Tragically, the guerrilla still hold dozens of kidnapped individuals, some whom have been held for a decade or longer, some whom have a lower public profile than the various political leaders that still remain in their hands (including cause celebre Ingrid Betacourt) and some whom were kidnapped when they were very young. Among them a number of small town policemen who, in this country, usually come from the poorest regions and neighborhoods in the country.

The organizers have said that some of the funds raised throug Equus Arte will also go towards helping the families of those kidnapped policemen.

Colombia: Outside the Lourdes Church, the bodies of two men

Around 11pm on Sunday night, November 5th, responding to a phone call by a passer-by, police inves- tigators in Bogota found two men sitting on the steps outside the Lourdes Church in Bogota. One of the men had an arm around the other man's shoulder. Neither man was alive.

"Due to the position in which they were found it is assumed that they were a couple," said a lead detective to a reporter from El Tiempo.

The detective, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that they were looking into whether the men had committed suicide by ingesting poisonous substances as neither showed any signs of violence. He also said that two officers had reported approaching the men earlier that night when they saw them on the steps but left them be when they said they were just resting a bit before heading home.

Symbolically, the news of a gay couple committing suicide in front of one of the major churches in Bogota in the midst of legislative efforts to grant some rights to same-sex couples, was striking. After all, the Catholic church in Colombia, as in other Latin American countries, had led the opposition against the recognition of such partnerships. But some leading LGBT advocates were initially outraged that the paper had violated the privacy of the two men by discussing their sexual orientation in death when it wasn't clear that it had been public matter while alive.

Long-time LGBT-rights advocate Manuel Velandia Mora, writing in his blog, criticized the editors of El Tiempo for the language used in the headline ("Two homosexuals were found dead on the steps of the entrance to the Lourdes Church in Bogota") and, specifically, the word "homosexuals" arguing that it was no different than the language used by scandal-hungry tabloids to draw readership to their homophobic and lurid coverage of crimes committed against gays. Velandia also wondered if there was anything else to indicate that the men were gay other than the "position" in which the bodies were found.

Nevertheless, Mr. Velandia ended by saying that if the men were indeed a gay couple, the death of these two men should also highlight just how inadequate the authorities are in investigating the deaths of those who might be gay in Colombia as well as the lack of any governmental oversight or condemnation of crimes committed against gays in Colombia.

Actually, turns out that the men were probably not gay after all.

On Friday, the person who alerted the police sent a note to a listserv to which I subscribe. On his way to one of the many gay bars that surround the Lourdes Church plaza, he said it was impossible not to notice the two men sitting together on the church steps and that - as he got closer to see if they were ok - it was also clear that they were dead. So he called the police.

Eventually he made it to a nearby bar. The bouncers, who had a view of the church plaza, told him that the two men had been hanging out and drinking with the local artisans who sold their wares to tourists during the day. They hadn't paid much attention until they saw a tall man fall to the ground. That's when they saw the other men pick him up and prop him up next to another person who seemed to have passed out on the church's steps. They also noticed that the men had draped the tall man's arm around the other man's shoulder probably to help them to maintain balance. This, apparently, was how the police found them and what led the investigator to determine that they might have been a couple.

I'm not sure if El Tiempo responded to any of the concerns raised by Velandia, among others, but, in a follow-up article that was printed on Sunday, they proved that the original report was flawed, to say the least. In the article, Marta Stella Cano speaks of one of the men as having been her boyfriend and states unequivocally "The police and the journalists came out to say that they were gay, that they were a couple and that they had committed suicide out of love. But none of that is true."

One of the artisans who makes a living in the plaza, says that Julian Suarez Mosquera was just another artisan vendor, a "hippie," who he had met in the streets of Bogota and befriended. He says the other man, only known to him by the nickname of Popis, was also just another friend and not his partner.

The police say that they think the men died of mercury poisoning and are still investigating the deaths as suicides but those who knew Mr. Suarez say that they cannot believe that he'd take his life.

Community members say that both men were probably the victims of something that is known to afflict a lot of alcohol drinkers who buy bottles in the street: A poorly distilled adulterated form of alcohol that can be poisonous and deadly.