“Colombia, the only risk is wanting to stay” was the tourism industry’s slogan to overcome the bad image of Colombia caused by the drug wars’ heydays. To prepare for my first Colombian adventure in 2014  I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez wonderful  “Memories of my Melancholy Whores” you and of course “Love in the Time of Cholera”. But nothing could prepare me for the party I had at Andrés Carne de Res where two friends took me in Bogota. It was a blast of a party only übertroffen superseded by my Carnival in Rio experiences. First my table held one of the best steaks I ever had, later everybody was table dancing. I love photography but at Andrés Carne I failed to do my job since I had forgotten  to charge my batteries beforehand. This might explain why I could enjoy this blast of party so much. The drug wars are gone but one Latin American challenge prevails: I had been attending Portuguese lessons an der Pontifícia Universade Católica do Rio Janeiro. One of my fellow students was a young Colombian. To further practice my rhetoric skills in Portuguese I had to give a presentation on urban landscapes in Latin America. Among several other photos I selected one photo showing a working class suburb of the Colombian port city Cartagena. My fellow student felt a bit hurt – claiming his country would not be appropriately pictured with this image. I understand that upper class Latin Americans sometimes prefer not to deal with the appalling social injustice. In the course of a business trip to Panama I was visiting neighbouring Medellin in Colombia.

Here, in the Colombian highlands, in a city where even a few years ago bloody drug wars were raging, I finally got to know a Latin American city where rich and poor were slowly trying to get closer. A non-corrupt administration converted entire Medellin into a green liveable and Mas o menos secure city, built teleféricos to better connect the poorer neighbourhoods on the mountains with the more affluent central parts. Colombians I met while touring the graffiti-laden poorer areas on the hills were so kind to accompany me on a night out in posh Poblado. They told me that, despite all efforts, they still felt being in another universe. In his famous book “The open Veins of Latin America” Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano was trying to analyze why Latin America was still so poor: The rise of Europe just had been possible by its depletion of Latin America. There is a lot to argue.