Copa America Final and Colombia Final

All right, now it’s my last day in Colombia, for real…

Our plan for the day was to hit a museum and wander around a different center of the city, before heading to Poblado to watch the soccer game. Though Poblado is definitely not the best place to watch the game—it’s mostly tourists, not locals—, it’s close to the airport, and I was worried about traffic being bad after the game.

We called Uber Motos to our first destination: La Casa de la Memoría. Though not the premiere museum on the Drug War, it has a unique local twist—it’s not necessarily aimed at tourists, rather, at locals who are still dealing with trauma and struggles from the time. As our Uber Motos took us across the city, across the river, through tunnels, and down that wonderful main boulevard that runs long-ways down the city, you could tell that the city was excited for their big day. Restaurants and bars, even convenience stores were decking themselves out with red, yellow, and blue balloons and flags. Looking around, so much of the city was in a Colombia jersey, and that number only grew as gametime drew nearer. The whole city was just energized, excited to show their might in finals of the Copa. It was an exciting place to be. Now, of course, I’m sure Miami was exciting on the day of the game as well, but, being Messi’s now home, I’m sure it was mostly Argentinian hype, not Colombian hype. A few friends wrote me, telling me that all the US media was underselling Colombia, clinging to that Messi hype train…

We got off in a new neighborhood, Buenos Aires, which had a much more local flavor than Poblado. It reminded me more of certain areas of downtown Lima than anywhere else I’d seen in the city. That’s a nice way of saying it looked more third-world than Poblado or Laureles, I guess.

The museum was really well done, very hands on, and interactive. Again, it was about how to deal with this collective trauma from the Drug War. Each exhibit was about how a different community was impacted—farmers, workers, blacks, natives, and even more abstract “communities” such as the environment, public trust, and democracy. The exhibit that resonated with me the most was that about how democracy was compromised. Disguised as a game of rock-paper-scissors, it shows how, though paper cannot beat scissors, it can team with rock to, together, defeat scissors. Assigning meanings to these three objects: scissors as political corruption, paper as a vote, and rock as trustworthy politics, it shares a story of how corruption can be defeated with the people’s permission and a strong democracy.

Another exhibit was a selection of pop music written during the war. The emotion these artists experienced led to a unique soundscape, forming a mix of metal and classical, using the intense, harsh sounds you can get from metal, while expelling the emotions of a late Mahler symphony. I’d recommend listening to a song or two from the group Frankie Ha Muerto to get a sense of this. (They currently only have 400 monthly listeners on Spotify)

One of the most powerful displays was how the war effected the children. They had a list of words they asked children at the time to define—words like “peace,” “death,” “hate,” “life,” “violence,” and “family,” just to name a few. These definitions, though surely cherrypicked, were twisted understandings of what these things are. “Death” was described as the country of Colombia, and “child” was described as a “victim of violence.”

In addition, there were plenty of interviews with those who’d gone through the war in different ways, including the wife of the president who was shot, and people from these different minority communities discussed.

The museum roots many of these problems to the nature of Colombia. The fact that the government has often been quite centralized, unable to regulate or manage those living and working in the remote fields of Antioquia. The lack of regulation and government presence allowed these cartels to grow, allowed for violence to occur, and eventually, dragged the country into an all-out civil war.

A final exhibit was a hall of family photos, each on small picture-frame screens, which, after a few seconds of showing the photo, turned to gray, highlighting only in color a victim of the Drug War.

The whole museum was very powerful, and it really showed the scale to which this war impacted everybody, and particularly in Antioquia. It also did a very good job of reminding us that this wasn’t very long ago—one should not be ashamed to still be recovering from it—and the whole country is still trying to move on from what was just a few decades ago.

With this rather downer of a start to the day, we decided to cheer ourselves up by strolling downtown to the Plaza Botero, which is filled with sculptures made by, well, Fernando Botero, of course! Botero is an interesting guy… the way in which I see is art is “what if we had the Mona Lisa, but she was fat?” or “what if we had Europa and the Bull, but she was fat?” but apparently that’s the wrong way to look at it. He doesn’t paint or sculpt “fat” figures, rather, “exaggerating the curves of the human body.” How that’s different from fat, in practice, is beyond me.

"Boterismo in Action": What if Pablo Escobar sill died, but he was fat instead?

The Plaza Botero is filled with these sculptures, and by it is the art museum of Antioquia. Inside showcases Antioquia’s surprisingly thriving modern and contemporary art scene. For a place as traditional and Catholic as Colombia, I would have been surprised to see this museum here if it was my first day in the country, though after having spent some good time in Medellín, I can’t say I’m super surprised. Antioquia is a fast-evolving place, and I have a feeling that a lot of it is spurred on by the Drug War. That afterwards, they needed to rebuild themselves, reform an identity, and from that, you end up with this thriving modern art scene.

We walked around for a little longer, around this downtown that in unmistakably local, as opposed to Poblado, we got ice cream from a mobile, gasoline-powered froyo machine, and we took the metro back to the apartment. That was actually very cool, as the metro is above ground, and we got off at the stadium stop. So, naturally, there was lots of happening going on around the stadium, and it seems like there may have been a massive watch party there.

I really liked the Medellín metro system. Lachlan had actually only taken it once, and the system doesn’t show on any maps app for some reason, so I enjoyed the puzzle of, on the fly, spur of the moment, piecing together what our route home should be. But overall, the stations are clean and nice, the trains run frequently, and the system is accessible enough for most locals. The trains are crazy full, though, and I was told that this was a normal occurrence, not just one because of the game.

After some relaxation, we took our Uber Motos downtown to Poblado to, well, do what I had come all this way for: watch the game! We found a spot at a pretty crowded bar, ordered a few Aguilas and a few pizzas, and waited for the game to start. Because of some chaos in Miami at the stadium, the game was delayed by almost an hour and a half, and I was starting to get nervous about making my flight… But eventually the game started, and the energy was just insane. Seemingly everyone in the county was watching the game, and the entire district of Poblado had been set up to watch. Bars had set up tables spilling into all the streets, streets were closed, and even fireworks were set off (which is illegal there, though I’m sure overlooked on game days). It helped that it was a good game, and Colombia put up a solid fight against Argentina. Any time anything would happen, you’d just hear a roar from all the bars around, all the people in the street, not to mention everyone around you. The whole city was going through the same emotional rollercoaster at the same time, and Poblado’s blurred line between outdoors and indoors made that connection to everyone else in the district just so strong.

Regulation ended at 0-0, and the game entered an overtime. By that point, I had to leave for the airport, disappointed that I had to leave behind this exciting atmosphere. My taxi driver had the game playing on his phone, and we both watched overtime intently as he navigated the windy mountain roads leading to the tunnel. I thought that I’d be missing the part of the game that was in this over 8 km long tunnel, but remarkably, they have cell service in the tunnel. Again, it’s amazing just how developed this infrastructure is here—there’s no way that a 8 km tunnel in the US would have reliable, fast, and continuous cell service the whole way through.

I got to the airport, with the game still at 0-0, and as I was handing my passport to the immigration officer, he let out a big scream of disappointment. Argentina scored what would be the only goal of the game. Since I was the only one in the immigration line, he let me peek behind his desk to watch the remaining few minutes on his phone, while we chatted a little bit about me coming down just for the game.

Well, with that rather disappointing end, I want to end this wonderful trip (for real, this time) on a high note… Though I came down to watch a game I couldn’t see the end of while out and about, it is good that I didn’t see the disappointment of everyone in Poblado, I guess. Lachlan told me that it was really depressing down there, and he was jealous that I left when the energy was at an all-time high. And coming down again, even if the game was a bust, was so worth it. I feel like this second time here, I could do more, I was more free. I understood Colombia better, I trusted Colombia more, and I had the guts to go around and do what I wanted. The weekend was perfect, and it was worth the 2 hours of sleep I got before work on Monday.

Again, I’ve said it before, but now that we’re actually to the end of my time in Colombia, I’ll say it again. Please change your thoughts on the country. They’re trying to move on, and in many ways, they have, amazingly successfully so. But the world hasn’t seen that change. The world is stuck with the bad impressions made decades ago. I mean, hell, the US travel advisory for Colombia is still at a level 3: reconsider travel. I did not feel for a single second unsafe, and frankly, I’d rather wander around Medellín alone in the dark much more than doing the same in Miami. I just hope I had a chance to share, even if to a small audience, the wonders, beauties, and enjoyment that this place brought to my life. I’m sure I’ll be back, because there’s still so much to enjoy, explore, and see.

I’ll be back for more, who knows when, and who knows where, but for now, Ian out.