Viva la independencia!

20/Jul/2009, Colombian Independence Day

A cloudy sky and brusque breeze keep the streets cool as people mill about enjoying the spectacles. Vendors are out in force, chanting out their wares for anyone nearby: fresh fruit! chorizos! sandwiches! fried platanos! arroz con leche! aromaticas! face paints!
Red, yellow, and blue Colombian flags abound. Some clutched in children's sticky hands alongside foam cut-out pets-on-wires; some worn as garments; some flying overhead the capitol building; some lying castoff in the street amid fruit rinds, sandwich wrappers, cigarette butts, empty styfofoam cups, and other miscellaneous detritus of festivities.
Metallically-dressed performers move like robots when children fill their chest boxes wiht coins, and stray dogs trot around happily gnawing on edible remnants. Near the square, a circle of people gather around a pair of keyboards upon which a young lad lavishes national tunes while a man in a white linen suit sings into a microphone. Behind them an old veteran shuffles a dance and flaps his jaw in time with the words, a vacant grin spread through his white beard. His old blue Navy jacket with its sickle-and-hammer shoulder patch and furry collar stands in grim contrast to the stiff green fatigues of the National Soldiers standing guard around the plaza with assault rifles and pimple-pocked cheeks. The veteran hitches up his patched and discolored trousers, already perched up near his ribs, and adjusts the red fez on his head wiht a gangly nd gnarled hand. A medal pinned to the jacket indicates a fierce pride in his past, outweighing his need to pawn it for food or drink. Someone in the crowd offers him a cigarette, and he gratefully accepts, bowing stiffly before resuming his jig.
Near the Presidential Palace, a crowd gathers, restrained by police--distinguishable from the Army only by the words--and portable crowd-control fences. The people hold signs demanding justice, asking for peace, deploring the lies, and condemning the FARC. Based on that last, and their overall content attitude, I'd guess these folk support Uribe but want even more persecution of the rogue terrorist forces who no longer have any value or goal other than continuing to exist in indiscriminant violence. But some disagree.
A man pushes a wheelchair in which sits a mannikin dressed in a white tunic with a scale in one hand and a rusty machete in the other, an oxygen mask over her face.
Across the street another circcle gathers. People place coins on numbered upsidedown buckets, wagering on which one the trained guinea pigs will run to after their street-suave owner releases them. Children rush to deposit coins as the man goads the crowd with a microphone headset. All I can think of is the cuy I ate in Peru.
A grizzled fellow approaches as I sit on a bench. he greets me respectfully, talking about literature and how he saw me writing.
"I also write," he says.
"Si?" I reply incredulously, "Por un periodico o que?"
No, he says, just for pleasure. He writes about the government, the streets, the people. We lapse into the informal as he presses a dogeared and discolored half-width legal pad into my hands indicating his address scrawled on the cardboard back.
"Guardalo," he says, asking me--if I've understood correctly--to write his life and send it to him. I hide my initial excitement saying, "Yeah, okay. I will." We shake hands, and he leaves. If I can make anything out of the spidery Spanish writing, perhaps I can actually get something done. If not: I'll use the encounter as inspiration and make up the rest. Sure...
The crowd around me thins out as the smoke from a nearby chorizo grill wafts past. I look up nad stare into the eyes of Simón Bolivar as the man carrying the enormous oil painting walks in front of my bench. Slightly spooked, I decide it's time to stroll a bit.
Two guys kneel on the sidewalk in front of a display of landscapes amid an array of spray paints and splotches of color. Their hands, coated in so many hues mingled to dark brown, dab at swaths of color, and spray circles and slashes to produce sunscapes and twilit forests for the amusement and purchase of passersby. Hunched over like that, they must be zoned on fumes: they wear nothing over their faces, though many in their audience hid behind surgical masks in fear of the Flu.
A family of dirty children sprawl in the alcove of a closed bank, forlorn mother (or grandmother) watching with wizened eyes. I hand her my baggie of sausage and fried banana, and she accepts it with mumbled thanks.
"Hey buddy, where you from?" A man in a greasy tweed coat sticks his hand out. He's balding and tall for a Colombian.
"The States," I respond by rote.
"Really? Whereabouts? I'm from New York." I take his hand before kneeling down to appraise a machete as a gift for my brother. He mentions something about calling his sister as I answer "Detroit." If this man thinks I'll just hand him my cell phone...
"What brings you to Colombia?"
Just visiting. What brings you to Colombia? His English is damned good.
"I got in a cab in the city and it turned out the fuckin' thing had bad breaklights, and when a cop pulled us over he found narcotics under the seat so they deported me." Sob.
I tell him I didn't have anything with me--no, not even enough to buy you a coffee--except my books. Lo siento, buddy. He finally walks away, leaving me in peace.
I spend another hour or so reading in the park as the anticlimactic independence day festivities wane toward twilight and bedtime.