If ignorance is bliss, Cartagena is its physical manifestation. As an outsider to this city and this region, you will be force fed the kool-aid that Cartagena is a city of magical surrealism. Famous travelers like Anthony Bourdain tell you that you will arrive and never want to leave.
Fuck them, fuck them all up the ass. Cartagena is hell on earth.
There are many reasons why this is an apt metaphor for Cartagena, the main ones being corruption, ignorance, and the heat.
I never saw the big corruption first hand, but you can see the little corruption every where. It was in the university. There were students who tried pleading with me with those slimy, corrupt little eyes that most people can notice from a mile away. “Profe, just bump my grade up a little, just enough so I can pass.” These people wonder why they are stuck in 100 years of solitude. Taxi drivers who think because you are white they can bump up your taxi fare by 10,000 pesos. “It’s Sunday, and there are no customers, so it is more expensive.” Get out of here with that bullshit marica.
The corruption can be seen by the absolute disparities in wealth between the rich who live in the Miami Beach imitating neighbourhood of Bocagrande, and the rest of the city. How is it that a majority of the city is living paycheck to paycheck, while a small minority take advantage of the gringo dollars from tourists, and the rich from Medellín and Bogotá who populate Bocagrande? It’s corruption.
For many Cartagenans, the only way to make life worth living is by ignoring the horrible living conditions they put up with everyday. I saw this when my students wrote essays for me. I would ask them to write me a 3 paragraph or 5 paragraph essay on whether or not Cartagena was a good city to live in. The vast majority of the students would write that Cartagena is the best city to live in in Colombia.
What was the biggest reason why?
Guess…
The centro histórico. Those beautiful, gigantic walls that surround a tiny, miniscule part of the city is the main reason why Cartagena is the best. The Cartagenans themselves have been drinking the same Kool-aid as the gringo tourists that clamour out of the Rafael Nuñez airport everyday. They can’t see that the only benefit that the majestic, colonial architecture gives them is a cool photo, and for some, enough money to live off of. Open your eyes guys.
The most apt reason that hell is the perfect metaphor for Cartagena is the heat. 32 degrees celsius everyday. Add humidity to that and you are in a sauna as soon as you walk outside. For anybody with a little bit of money, they can avoid the heat easily with an air conditioned house and an air conditioned car. For the vast majority though who must use public transportation or live in a barrio where electrical outages are a weekly occurrence, there is no escape. They are forced to sweat their balls off.
For many gringos, they think this is cool. How lucky that ‘these people get to live in +32 degree weather everyday for the entire year. I wish I could live here.’ Wrong. You don’t. I lived here for 1 year, and I wanted to escape after 1 month. There is only so much sweat that a gringo can take before it gets overwhelmingly disgusting. You begin to feel like a pig wallowing in its own filth.
Any gringo worth his grain of salt in intelligence would be able to look beyond the world-famous walls of Cartagena, and see that behind them is a world of shit. Congested roads, garbage filled streets, lack of police, cracked concrete, no public spaces, sub-standard beaches, and the infernal heat. Nobody wants to live there, not even the Cartagenans who are able to get out of their kool-aid induced trance. Even Colombian authors have made the same observation.
It’s a real shame because underneath all of this shit, is a real culture. Delicious traditional food, the incredible dance and music of champeta, and of course the incredibly warm, funny, and friendly costeño attitude.
A lot of Colombian and gringo people may not agree with me, but the best thing for Cartagena to do would be to get rid of the tourists. The greed, and corruption that tourism has created here is destroying any chance this city has at real development.
One paisa said it to me this way: “Antioqua (the home of Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel) went through 20 years of drug wars that did not affect Cartagena one bit. In a decade we have managed to pave all the roads in the cities and towns, and we are the most developed region in Colombia. Cartagena still has areas that are only accessible to donkey and motorcycle. What have the Cartagenan’s been doing for 30 years?”
Cartagena is its own circle of hell where the people are punished for their ignorance by never being able to escape from it.
If you go to Cartagena, go because you want to enjoy beautiful architecture, overpriced food, and some litter strewn beaches. You know you trip is superficial, and don’t act like you can’t see what is in front of you. No intelligent, sympathetic human being who values justice would ever want to live in Cartagena.
Have fun my friends.