Though September 22nd will probably never hold much significance for the citizens of the United States, for Colombia it could become a day of heated memory and angry fists against a blue-grey sky. For me, it will be a day remembered as a bizarre echo of revolution; a day I spent in Cartagena while watching the silent streets quietly toss rain around.
The Free Commerce Treaty was signed on the 22nd despite the overwhelming negativity against it, and though I still don't understand the United States government, I understand it less now as I find its insatiable hunger to control the citizens of the world with a powerful grip. Today, you see, it became one step closer to acheiving its goal of world domination, of a capitalist market gone wrong in a country that can't even support its own democracy. And while knowing this from afar seems vague and unimportant, I was truly shocked to see that on September 22nd, for the first time since I arrived in Colombia (and returned...and arrived...), I knew, with an air of absolute certainty, that I was here. The Free Commerce Treaty, despite its warm and friendly surface, is damaging: though it looks strategic, allowing our countries to import and export without any tax of any kind, we have to wonder--at what consequence? At what cost?
Save 50 pesos, lose 500 industrial labor jobs. Save on toilet paper for the next month, drop the GNP of Colombia to a mere coffee and cocaine dependence. How will these people even buy their American toilet paprr if they are sleeping under the trees it used to come from? How sad to be part of a naive child nation whose lunch money is irrevocably stolen and stepped on.
Part of the reason this country's reputation has gone the way of the misconception is due to its fascination with avoidance--of avoiding riots, manifestations, dangerous men, homeless children, unforgiving crime, and coups-de-force against an already-corrupted authority. This is why my University is lined in black metal bars (along with every window and door in the district) and why a man in hat and polished shoes paces between the gates and demands we open our bookbags to rummage around through the books we've brought and whatever else we might have brought. This is why my apartment is covered with wrought-iron fencing and guarded every minute of every day by a man on either side. This is why, on Friday, Cartagenans clicked shut their locks and patiently waited, with bitten fingernails, while the U.S. President signed a treaty that nobody wanted and everybody was scared to see.
People are afraid of Colombiabecause they are afraid of the perception of corruption; of lies, of manipulation, of armed guards with grimaced faces patrolling streets and dreams, of crime and violence run rampant through weary hearts. They are afraid of a danger, I suppose, that doesn't actually exist but possibly could exist without these frightening precautions. It's that unknown threat, that air of adventure gone sour, that spirit gone cold, that we fear--it is knowing that perhaps we have walked into a trap of indescribable pain, torture, and heartless, angry men with high connections. However, as I am a living testimony and am unfortunately forever stained a gringa to the bones, this is not Colombia: this is Hollywood, and last Friday.
So in an exaggerated attempt to subterfuge all paranoia and pandemonium, Cartagena decided it would become a human blockade for the afternoon. Like a paused button on a remote control jammed by somebody's finger, every bus, car, taxi, and person literally stopped, regardless of how far into their daily activity they had gotten, and froze. It just so happened that I was on a busy bus, who, when confronted with a road block, swerved onto a residential block and smacked, face-first, into a taxi doing the same thing. Though it smashed the back trunk of the unknowing taxi and successfully rattled my brians to the fullest, when the bus driver noticed he had crashed into a taxi, he swung the gigantic bus in reverse and pulled around the taxi, leaving the poor taxi's passengers in a cloudy daze. We finally found the right moment to jump from the wreckless bus and find our own taxi willing to take us to the center. When we arrived, we found the forces assembling huge metal gates in shapes of triangles and sticking an armed man between every visible crack within the barracade. We hopped from our taxi, paid in thanks, and found Cartagena's El Centro in a rainy drizzle and an unhappy sky, having gone there only in order, at the demand of my boss, that I open my bank account.
Let´s go ahead and tweak our image of Colombia as I have drawn it so far, from a musical, colorful world of exotic fruits and street sellers, to a more old-fashioned view: We have a land full of secrets, camoflauge, weapons, blockades, black trucks pacing back and forth with men pouring from all sides, sirens, horns, and silent streets....suspicious banters, panicked whispers between wide-eyed city dwellers, abandoned storefronts, papers blowing in the breeze, music stopped....grey clouds collecting on the horizon, skinny dogs and lazy men sleeping on trash and wedged in corners, armed guards with tear gas and threatening rows of silver bullets lining their fully-armoured body gear....lines filled to the mile of people anxious to get home, bags torn open and rummaged through like savages after illegal pleasures, questioning in a line-up more severe than I ever imagined.... Images, tweaked from my new view of colonial Cartagena, finally starved on Hollywood disillusionment, like a star gone wrong.
A girl from Thailand named Bua arrived last week, bringing with her a beautiful piece of Bangkok culture, a fascinating English accent, a repertoire of exotic tastes, pasts, religious experiences, and visions, and yet, I found that as we crept through the line-ups and marveled at the Colombian world we were tasting, we discovered the bond that threads travelers together--the bizarre and yet shared experience. As Bua, Micha (the new German), David (our appointed guide for the day), and I were shuffled through rows of camofluaged uniforms, I realized that something in my crazy image had changed: it actually wasn't that horrifying at all. I had woven my own Hollywood dream.
All the young police men who were trying so hard to do their jobs looked quite intrigued by our international bunch and, in all honesty, looked so bored standing around that any excitement excited them too. The next thing I knew, Bua and I were literally surrounded by a sea of camoflauged faces, not unlike puppies begging to play outside after a long day alone, asking questions about our nationalities and our jobs and our names. I even noticed, out of the corner of one keen right eye, one of the guys aiming his camer phone our way and snapping a memory. A gringa! A real gringa! I can imagine him saying, proudly displaying my picture. So then, after making our way through the crowds of greens and blacks, we started realizing how though Cartagena suddenly looked amazingly deserted, filled with only roaming trucks and over 4,000 soldiers, patrolling the streets in vests lined in silver bullets and tear gas bombs were really just kids, like ourselves, who try to open bank accounts and get dates for the weekends. We were just four kids trying to get to the bank, and they were just guys doing their job.
And yes, after a morning that took us six hours to finish, we arrived, exhausted and soaked, to a bank that had closed for the day.
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