My stay in Cartagena has been a bit more extensive than what was originally planned. Fortunately for me, Cartagena is a city that deserves a long stay. My Colombian friends had rightly recommended for me to stay in the lively neighborhood of Getsemaní, historically known as the area where servants and slaves would spend the night after the closing of the gates of the walled city, which was inhabited by Spanish only.
Cartagena de Indias was founded by Pedro de Heredia, at a place with rich indigenous cultures, and with the goal to turn the city into the main port to store and ship gold to Spain. Cartagena was often attacked by pirates, and for this reason the Spanish built a magnificent wall around the city. The wall would turn up protecting the city to the passage of time – maybe nowhere else in Latin America can one see so many well-preserved XVIIth century buildings. There is a plaza dedicated to Simón Bolívar, who had a decisive victory here and whose phrase to that effect adorns his monument: “People from Cartagena: if Caracas gave me life, you gave me glory”.
Artist Rafael Ortiz, a local Colombian artist and the only person that I had the number of, turned out to be a great host. Ortiz, who moved to Cartagena from Bogota searching a better quality of life, received me with his family and has been a great guide to the city. Ortiz makes a kind of work that faces the challenge of adapting its conceptual strategies to a local art world that doesn’t go much beyond decorative paintings. Ortiz has initiated projects that make artists interact with the city of Cartagena, and he has even done collaborative workshops with high-risk youth from the poor neighborhoods in the area.
Cartagena receives a good amount of tourism, although fortunately U.S. companies have not invaded the city yet. This is certainly close to end, given that right-wing president Alvaro Uribe is doing all he can in order to get the Free Trade Agreement through. Uribe won re-election by a landslide and tomorrow Monday will mark his historic taking of office (the first presidential re-election in the modern history of Colombia). The event has been met with violence from the guerrilla groups in Colombia, since Uribe has taken a strong stance against the guerrillas. As a result, the whole country is in yellow alert and under military watch until the taking of office.
Even so, the conflict does not seem to affect the neighborhood life in Cartagena, which is a quiet, low-key town. “Get ready for the worst” told me artist Maria Posse, who was the first one to welcome me to the city, and forewarned me about the bureaucratic speed of everything here. Indeed, once I had started the paperwork here I realized that it would be hopeless to try to resist the lethargic rhythm imposed by the sea, the humidity and the heat.
An example of high impracticality and slow speed is exemplified in the telecommunications here. Perhaps due to lack of government regulation, phone communication has resulted in true communication chaos and on a secondary “call” market. The companies Movistar and Comcel dominate the cell phone communications, but due to their reciprocal high costs in calls to either company as well to ground lines, few people can maintain their own cell phone bill and most don’t want to call from one type of company to another. As a result, in every corner in Cartagena there is a person selling cell phone calls (although not always to every kind of cell). International calls are out of the question, unless if one goes to an international calling location.
In order to try to avoid this telecommunications labyrinth, I thought appropriate to cut to the chase and simply buy a cell phone. This, under the logic that the system would work, seemed to be the solution, but I had forgotten that this kind of logic simply would not hold here. The woman who sold me the cell phone functioned a bit like the customs agent: “you can start calling immediately” –she said when I inquired about the service. “It will take 24 hours to start working”— she said once I had paid. After the 24 hours, when we phone wasn’t working yet, she said: “ it’s just that sometimes it takes a few days to get going because the system is so backed up”.
In the meantime, while I try to find a phone that works and rescue the Panamerican van from the sea, time here passes in its own unpredictable fashion and I have no choice but to sit around and walk around Getsemaní, and do things such as being an spectator in the neighborhood’s beauty contest.