An Arauca awakening

As we've mentioned before here, Colombia's popularity as a tourist destination has never been higher. The country is very much in fashion, not just among backpacking types but for a range of tourists. 

In many ways, it could be argued, we're just at the start of this upward swing. The potential for sustained growth in this sector appears substantial, like the size of the country itself (for the record, of Colombia's 32 departments, three are bigger in area than the island of Ireland).

'You are now entering Tame, Arauca.' (Photo from Facebook.)

We already have fairly well-established areas such as Cartagena, Santa Marta and their surrounds on the Caribbean coast, the Eje Cafetero (coffee region), Medellín and the capital city Bogotá to name the most obvious.

There are other areas, however, that are practically virgin territory when it comes to tourism, and more or less anything else for that matter. Vast tracts of the previously written about Caquetá and Putumayo, for example, fall into that category.

Another department that has plenty to boast about but is rarely even considered as a place to visit is Arauca on the eastern extremes, bordering Venezuela. It's part of Colombia's vast Llanos or plains; in over-simplified terms, cowboy country.

As has been the case with most of the country's other more remote locations, one big reason why tourists, both those from inside and outside, were reluctant to visit was down to the internal conflict. Now, however, with the Farc and paramilitary problems fading post the peace agreement, the associated security concerns are also abating.

What's more, in this air of optimism circling around Colombia, coming from both near and far, everybody's looking to get some warmth (strike it rich, we could say) from this new positive light. And why not?

Tame's historical role in Colombia is evident. (Photo from Facebook.)

To this end, those working in Arauca's fledgling tourism sector certainly don't lack energy and enthusiasm. The problem, though, is getting their message out to a wider audience in a country full of beauty spots, varied as many of them are. Other Colombians are unaware of the region's attractions, never mind outsiders.

As Carlos Alberto Duque, the creator of the Colombia Realismo Mágico slogan and who realises the tourism potential Arauca has, puts it: "Each place has sights to show off, a story to tell, but not many are good at getting the message out there."

Arauca's location doesn't help either. By bus, it's a good 12-hour trip from Bogotá just to reach its borders and, on the way, the argument could be made that you pass places more or less equal in terms of landscape and culture. Coupled with this is the fact that, for many backpacking types, it's unnecessarily off the beaten track, basically a 'road to nowhere', considering Venezuela is off-limits for most right now.

That aside, while our short visit to Tame was mostly taken up with the town's annual festival, the all-round tourism pull the place has is evident.

For starters, what's a negative is also a positive. Not many tourists come here, so as tends to happen in such places, the locals are even friendlier than the Colombian norm. There also doesn't appear to be any 'gringo prices' in operation.

Some of Tame's, um, impressive sights ...

For bird watchers, the region is fluttering with delights. Indeed, its wildlife in general is a big selling point (and a reason why we'll be keen to return to go on the look for caiman, giant turtles and monkeys to name just a few). 

Throw in the fact that over half the area of the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy National Park, home to Colombia's third highest peak, is situated in Arauca and nature lovers have plenty of reasons to visit.

From a cultural point of view, outside of the cowboy and meat-eating lifestyle, there is an indigenous influence in certain aspects, something that the locals seem eager to enhance and promote. 

Tame itself is known as the 'cradle of freedom' (cuna de libertad), the place where Latin America's great liberators Simón Bolívar and General Francisco de Paula Santander met for the first time, just weeks before the decisive Battle of Boyacá in 1819. This is honoured with an impressive monument of the two men seated in conversation.

Another not-very-well-known attraction is Arauca's cacao. The department is actually home to award-winning chocolate on an international level. Chocolate could become for the region what coffee is for the Eje Cafetero, which draws tourists all year round.

Specifically, in relation to the town of Tame, its climate is relatively fresh for a low-lying tropical region. So even with temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius, it doesn't feel overbearing thanks to the refreshing breeze blowing about.

With plans afoot to develop a 'Ruta de los Llanos', basically a multi-departmental tourism-focused way through the plains, Arauca's delights could be set to become more accessible and widely known.

An 'Arauca awakening' of sorts. You read it here first!

_______________________________________

Facebook: Wrong Way Corrigan - The Blog & IQuiz "The Bogotá Pub Quiz".

Border battles: What next for Colombia and Venezuela?

In many ways, there is a sense of inevitability to all of this. Although those who call the shots in both Colombia and Venezuela are pretty much from the same stock, the ideologies they (claim) to follow are far from similar.

Nicolás Maduro: quashing Colombians. (Photo from Facebook.)

Considering socialist Venezuela's anti-US stance, having a neighbour that is, politically speaking anyway, rather cosy with Washington has always been a sore point.

Add in a president who has been feeling the heat both inside and outside his country since taking office in 2013 from a more charismatic and popular deceased predecessor and this attempt to unite the people against 'foreign insurgents' isn't surprising. 

It's also not without historical precedence. Problems at home? Create a distracting rallying point.

In fact, in this particular case, it's a line Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro (as Hugo Chávez before) has been spinning for some time: Colombian paramilitaries are active in his country, plotting to overthrow his rule. 

Colombia is also the source of narco-trafficking and other illegal activities that cross into Venezuela. And all these actions are getting clandestine support from none other than former Colombian president and current state senator Álvaro Uribe.

This siege mentality, whether perceived or real, appears to have reached a head for the Maduro administration with its decision to expel over a thousand Colombian citizens from the country and close the border.

Understandably, the sight of their countrymen fleeing across that border, taking whatever belongings they can before their dwellings are to be, allegedly, demolished, has angered Colombians at home.

So far, the reaction from Bogotá has been strong words only; President Juan Manuel Santos is hoping on finding a diplomatic solution to this mini-crisis. 

Such an approach is to be expected from a man currently trying to close a peace deal with guerrillas to end over 50 years of internal conflict in his country. The dove isn't about to turn into a hawk just yet.

If the more belligerent Uribe or any of his Centro Democrático party colleagues were calling the shots things could be far more delicate than they are at present. 

Indeed, Uribe has already called the Venezuelan government's action 'an attempt at genocide'. This came 24 hours after Maduro accused him of being a paramilitary leader and an assassin.

However, the idea of this escalating into anything more serious is unlikely at this remove. 

Alongside the Santos diplomacy, in many ways the Venezuelan leadership is on a tightrope. Engaging in what many at home would see as an unnecessary military confrontation with the neighbours could be the beginning of the end for Maduro and co.

We're not quite at the brink, but both parties would do well to recall their shared heritage. 

The many people in the two states who venerate the great liberator from old Spanish rule, Simón Bolívar, should remember that if he had had his way there would be no border. 

Yet right now that line in the map seems as pronounced as ever.
______________________________
Facebook: Wrong Way Corrigan - The Blog & IQuiz "The Bogotá Pub Quiz".

With O'Leary in Bogotá

It’s pretty much well known that the Irish are migrants. Coming from a small island, yet at the same time close to a host of the world’s old superpowers, it was pretty much inevitable that we’d wander outside our shores to see ‘what’s out there’.

The Irish-Colombians: O'Leary still stands the tallest though.

Indeed, in the early days of Ireland’s human history, its inhabitants took on the role of travellers with gusto, regularly raiding the neighbouring island of Britain. 

Subsequent generations would pay a hefty price for such daring. But before total British interference, in our early Christian days, our brightest and best traversed the European continent in what you might call an Irish-Christian educational enlightenment.

Subjugation to our English neighbours didn’t change that; the only difference was that emigration wasn’t seen as a choice for many, but more of a necessity. 

It meant the masses went on the move, rather than just the privileged few. And for most of those early movers to the 'New World', leaving the homeland didn't guarantee any great improvement in conditions. It would be a few generations down the line before those of Irish descent started being treated as equals with their superiors.

However, some of those who left did find instant success, or at least had a big influence in their new abodes.

In South America, that tended to manifest itself in the military sphere. For one, you had Admiral William Brown, the County Mayo man regarded as the father of the Argentinian navy. 

On the other side of the Andes there was Bernardo O'Higgins, Chile's founding father and the bastard child of a County Sligo man. The signs of that Irish interaction, and others, can be seen today in street names and the like across Argentina and Chile.

Yet, one place where the Gaels didn't seem, at least I had thought, to leave a mark was in the north of South America. OK, a few Irish lads had a recent, less than positive run in with Colombian officialdom in the early part of this century, but that was about the height of links between Ireland and the land that is now called the Republic of Colombia I'd known about.

Irish charm: A dapper, young O'Leary. (Image from wikimedia.)

'There's always one', though, and that more positive association comes in the face of a Mr Daniel Florence O'Leary. The County Cork-born general was an aide-de-camp under the great liberator (that's a loaded title) from Spanish rule of these parts, Simón Bolívar.

In his later years, as a historian and diplomat, he wrote important memoirs documenting what was a landmark period in South American history. He also played a part in securing Venezuelan independence from what had been Gran Colombia.

In between all that, he found the time to father nine children; that might help to explain the odd few ginger-haired Colombians knocking about.* (Now, while this writer hopes to leave a positive mark on Colombia, replicating the reproductive exploits of O'Leary isn't part of that; not right now anyway.)

It's fair to say that he doesn't get the same recognition in Colombia as his aforementioned contemporaries in Argentina and Chile — perhaps for valid reasons — but there is, at least, a bust honouring him in a Bogotá city park. He did, after all, breathe his last breaths here, as well as leaving a decent gene legacy. (For the record, his remains lie in Venezuela’s National Pantheon.)

That’s something the rest of us Irish in Colombia, 127 at the last official count, will do well to emulate. Perhaps in time, though, a bust of ‘Wrong Way’ will be erected in La Perseverancia?
__________________________________
*If anyone knows of living descendants of Daniel O’Leary, it would be much appreciated if you could let us know here.

A special thanks to the staff at Bogotá's Instituto Distrital de Patrimonio Cultural for providing me with valuable information.

'Flagtastic' result! Thanks Scotland!

Phew! They’ve pulled through, and with a little bit more to spare than it looked immediately beforehand. 

A huge section of Colombian society can breathe easy once more. The right decision has been made. Scotland is staying in the UK.

Why bother with the Colombian tricolour when you can fly the Union Jack?

You see, had our Tartan friends voted to leave, one of the possible changes made to a streamlined union would have caused a big headache here in Colombia.

I’m referring to a modified Union Jack, minus Scotland’s cross of St Andrew and the accompanying blue colour. This is because the most popular flag in Colombia is, it appears, not their own national tricolour but that of the UK.

'Jack on the back.'

It’s everywhere. Taxis, buses, shop windows, pubs, clothing, dogs – the works. It’s a safe bet that the majority of those here who have this strange affinity with it have no real idea of the place it represents. 

For one, you’ll meet Colombians who think that London is a country, if they’ve actually heard of the place before that is.

In some ways I can see the attraction that this mixture of white and red crosses on a blue background has. As flags go, it’s aesthetically impressive. Plus, it did represent greatness and endeavour in the not-too-distant past.

Yet, at the same time, for others the flag is – or at least was – a symbol of repression and subjugation.

As an Irishman born into and brought up on the nationalist, separatist tradition, that latter interpretation was the one I was destined to follow. 

Nowadays, with what I hope is a more balanced, worldly view of things, I tend to be more relaxed when I see the good old Union Flag. Well during my sober, right-thinking moments that is.

Sure isn’t it just three colours put together in a particular pattern, after all? 

At times, though, it’s not just bulls that can have adverse reactions to flags and how they’re flown, or not flown as the case may be. (Check out the video below or click on the following link for an example of that: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HkyokhX9Ag.)

In weaker moments, I do question Colombians who display the flag or wear it on their jeans, T-shirts and suchlike. A lot of them, as alluded to above, don’t know its origins. Plus, they tend to be a bit bemused as to why it should bother me. Fair enough; as I said, I’m learning to let it go.

However, when I don my Venezuelan football shirt – the country that is now Venezuela being the birthplace of Simón Bolívar, the chief liberator of South America from ‘old’ Spanish rule and thus a Colombian hero – it doesn’t go down too well with some here. 

Come on guys, the two peoples and national flags are practically the same, right?*

I guess we could all do well to retract from this rather abstract symbolism and focus on more concrete, practical things. Now, where did I put my Union Jack briefs?
__________________________________________
*For a more general piece on Colombian (and others') independence, read Whose land is it anyway?