The whole world suits Ciudad Bolivar. For five decades, the town in impoverished south Bogotá has been a landing point for thousands of people who have fled violence or migrated in search of opportunities. For this reason, its residents call it Little Colombia. A city that wants to welcome not only those looking for the future, but also those who come to visit: tourists from all over the world, who are curious to know about it. “We want to move from being the back of the world to being the window to the world,” says Andrea Ochoa, founder of the Amigos del Turista community tourism association.
Ochoa’s face, serious and with only the occasional smile, lights up when she tells the history of her city and neighborhood, Mirador del Paraiso. He speaks without blinking, with an almost defiant determination, as if to say: “This neighborhood I live in, dare to speak ill of me.” During the eight years of the society’s life, it claims to have received more than 5,000 visitors. Walk along Calle de La Memoria, one of the points on this route where local stories are told through murals. “We want to tell our story and salvage the collective memory of the sector with the changes that have occurred over the past 30 years,” says the leader.
The arrival of the TransmiCable aerial cable in 2018 marked a turning point for the region. Local residents explain that the trip, which used to take one hour, now takes 10 or 15 minutes. Thus, the number of visitors began to increase. “We identified an opportunity,” Ochoa says, and the city’s cultural diversity was the way to go. “Since everyone has the knowledge, we decided to use it as a business opportunity.” One of these projects has become, according to Deputy Director of Development and Competitiveness of the Region’s Tourism Institute, Catherine Eslava, “one of the most important developments that we have in Bogotá.”
Tourism focuses on the social fabric
It is a tourism bet that revolves around the social fabric and interconnectedness. “It is the force that enables us to move forward,” Ochoa says. He explains that many of the current residents are the first settlers of the place, or their children or grandchildren, people who came to the vacant lands and, little by little, built the neighborhoods directly. “That’s why there was always help from the neighbors, the community bowl, the Sunday lunch to help build the house. This social obligation of ‘Neighbor, come help me,'” Ochoa says.
Thinking about how to benefit from mass tourism, representatives of 14 projects created Red Tejiendo Sur in 2020, an alliance to link different initiatives with tourism, from handicrafts woven with plastic bags to Afro dancing and mural painting. During the tours that Ochoa takes with his association through the neighborhoods of El Mirador del Paraíso, El Paraíso and Bella Flor, they also visit production projects that promote their products. “Tourism has allowed us to generate a solidarity economy,” says Ochoa, who, in addition to being a guide, owns a screen-printing workshop where he sells T-shirts and postcards. They have also partnered with IDT, which provides training on topics such as marketing or business management and contributes to “improving the conditions of the area to make it attractive for tourism” through “campaigns to beautify public spaces or enhance security.”
Magali Peña, leader and creator of Casa Mayor, a space that works with older people to reclaim their memories and traditions, recalls that in 2015 there was talk of community tourism in Ciudad Bolivar. “Because of how broad the show was, we started working with the neighborhood community action board to convince people to come,” he says. But they didn’t succeed. Fear prevented that.
Ciudad Bolívar represents the border between urban and rural areas in Bogotá. It is a border that was disputed between the end of the last century and the beginning of the current century by armed gangs, paramilitary forces, and the army. “They were passing drugs, they were being kidnapped, and there were ‘false positives’ (extrajudicial executions committed by the military).” “The war was difficult, and the area was designated a red zone,” Peña explains. Although the conflict has stopped, stigma persists, fueled by high rates of poverty and crime, but also by ignorance and prejudice.
Dismantling stigma
Peña says first-time visitors arrive feeling intimidated. “They think they will steal their mobile phone or camera once they take it out, but during the tour we have to speed them up so they stop taking pictures and we can move on,” he says. He admits that they cannot guarantee security, but stresses that the neighbors see the tourist as someone who contributes. Ultimately, their trajectories consist of “social processes that become tourist attractions, while remaining social.”
Examples include the Monarca Collection and the Violeta Community Library, founded by Carlos Solano. Monarca has filled the streets of the mountain city’s most upscale neighborhoods with murals. While she is “reclaiming spaces and beautifying the area” with them, she is offering graffiti workshops for tourists, part of the Ochoa Association tour. Violetta creates healthy educational and recreational spaces for local children, while organizing literary outings and immersive readings with tourists. “We even conducted literary dialogues with visitors,” Solano says. “We want tourists to come to the neighborhood, because not everything is next to the cable station. There is more,” he adds.
Especially since there is rural tourism. “74% of the city is rural,” recalls Gabriel Diaz, founder of the Ciudad Bolivar Community Rural Tourism Association, which includes 42 peasant families. Legalized in 2011, it was the first community tourism association and welcomed around 12,000 visitors. “We want to show the knowledge and traditions of the peasant part,” he says. On their tours, visitors learn about the traditional uses of herbs such as lemon balm and mint, participate in potato-growing workshops, traverse ecological trails through the Andean forest, and visit a museum of ancient agricultural work tools.
Tourism has become an opportunity for the residents of Ciudad Bolivar to tell themselves what they want. “People come to think about crime, drugs and violence; being here they realize that there are people who are resilient and work with love,” Ochoa says. He concludes: “This city has given me everything: my passion, my love, my victories and my goals. I have dreams and ideals thanks to it; I see myself realized here. Thank God that we arrived here, where no one wanted us, but where we saw opportunities. We are life transformers, drivers of change.”