Colombia's impressions (1/2) Cartagena de Indias

Just landed from a two-week trip to Colombia and Venezuela. Very intensive, but not enough to really realise about the disparities within both countries. Let me talk a bit, first, about Cartagena de Indias and then about Bogotá. In a later post I will drop my impressions on Caracas.

The first one, Cartagena is a historical city and a very beautiful one (if you move far away from the walls, things change!). It has colourful colonial buildings and very charming squares full of history. Sea food is really good (I really loved Las Muelas de Cangrejo) and the sorrounding islands, called Islas del Rosario, are really close to an objective idea of how the paradise should look like and a good place to dive. Within the walls and the Getsemani Neighbourhood are really good restaurants but also nice "terrazas" to taste good Rhum (try el rincón de Fidel!). Beaches like Boca Grande o la Boquilla are a good start to get the pulse of the local life. You shouldn't miss them! However, besides these beautifuls sights there are others like the Bazurto market, or the Manga neighbourhood, which I'm sure they don't appear in leaflets of travel agencies. They are parts of "the other Caribbean" and show two important features of latinamerican cities: 1. "the missing middle", that is, the inexistence of a consolidated middle class and 2. the high levels of polarization, by which one can find two different societies living in the same city, but doing two completely different lives. One characterised by the opulence and the other by the lack of opportunities.

Some facts about Colombia...

In a few days, I'll be heading towards Colombia, a country I don't know too much about, besides those news insistently talking about violence and cocaine laboratories in the middle of the jungle. I'm really excited about it. I've travelled to Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia for professional issues, but never to this country nor Venezuela (in august I'll travel there for a wedding). These five countries conform the Andean region, a place in the world characterised by its diversity, both human and geographical.

I've been searching in the Internet about some info, and I came across this article written by James A. Robinson from Harvard University, which look pretty interesting: "A Normal Latin American Country? A Perspective on Colombian Development"

Besides that, there are some main characteristics which I think Colombia share with its neighbours (I'll test them out while listening to cumbia) and crucially weaken its institutions and thus, its development prospects:

• States are fragile and do not reach the whole country (important levels of corruption, inefficacy of the public initiatives,
  
• Inequality (economic and social) hampers the consolidation of a common and shared view of the country in the social imaginary. Consequences: the most important source of state revenues are indirect taxes and all five countries are major exporters of labourers.
  
• Geographic disparities within these countries determine important economic and social development differences across regions
  
• The political systems of representation are fragile and incapable of aggregating the different needs of country
  

Unfortunately, Colombia suffers from another two crucial issues: high levels of violence from paramilitary forces, revolutionary groups and the army, as well as from the illicit activities related to cocaine production. Both seem to be closely related. Besides the instability that both issues generate at the institutional level, they have generated around of 3 million of displaced people!

@ marginal revolution there is another interesting post (and discussion) about this country.