Word: bogota
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...Tehching Hsieh, which is profoundly political and aims to effect a change in its audience’s consciousness. But the art that I’m writing here about is more than just performance, it is performative. I’m writing about the art that transformed Bogota, Colombia from a capital of corruption and crime into a city with crime and murder rates lower than neighboring South American metropolises. I’m writing about “Cultural Agency.”Cultural agency is the philosophy, most notably espoused by Harvard Professor Doris Sommer, that every...
...close to the FARC say the group is moving toward ending kidnappings. But even as the number of abductions drops, authorities say the FARC is turning to extortion as an easier way to raise cash. An explosion that killed two people and damaged a Blockbuster outlet in north Bogota last month was one of several recent bombings that security officials have linked to the FARC. Meanwhile, the rebels continue to traffic cocaine, a lucrative business that provides the guerrillas some 70% of their income. In addition, the guerrillas still hold 23 police and army NCOs as bargaining chips...
...FARC's global image has suffered badly as well. "All of this had very high political [as well as] military cost for the guerrillas," says Leon Valencia, a Bogota political analyst. The United Nations and every other international organization deem the kidnapping of civilians, even political leaders, as a crime against humanity. The practice seemed to complete the rebels' gradual makeover from peasant warriors fighting for a Marxist utopia to ruthless narco-terrorists. When Betancourt, a French-Colombian citizen and a cause celebre in Europe, was whisked to freedom during last July's commando raid, much of the world lost...
...strategy is partly the doing of Alfonso Cano, who was named the FARC's maximum leader last March following the death, at the age of 78, of Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, the guerrillas' cunning but stubborn founding father. Though a hard-line Marxist, Cano, 60, who grew up in Bogota and attended a university there, "sees the world differently than Marulanda," says Carlos Jaramillo, a former government peace negotiator. "He has to make some changes. He can't let the FARC die and that's his big challenge...
...kind of special. After all, how many First Ladies of major democracies record songs about sex, drugs and other R-rated activities? How banal is it for Bruni to be provoking official protest from Bogota over her song Ma Came, (My Smack), which likens love for her man to addictive Columbian cocaine and Afghan heroin? Ditto the track Ta Tienne, (Yours), in which Bruni refers (presumably to Sarkozy) as "my lord, my darling, my orgy...