In Bogotá, the poor Ciudad Bolívar opens its doors to tourists

Every Sunday in Ciudad Bolívar, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Bogota, an unusual image is seen: groups of touristsinstead of the usual workers, they get on the TransMiCable, a Cableway that runs through this commune in the south of the Colombian capital.

After a ten-minute tour through neighborhoods that cling dangerously to the mountain and striking colorful houses, curious visitors arrive at El Paraíso, a tourist center with an unprecedented view of Bogotá.

In 2016, May Rojas and Luisa Sabogal, two Colombian artists, launched this initiative that combines tourism and art, at a time when Ciudad Bolívar’s reputation was as a place of misery and violence.

The idea is “eliminate a little of the stigma that exists towards the town of Ciudad Bolívar through art”, Sabogal, 24, who grew up in this commune, explained to AFP.

The two entrepreneurs summoned dozens of “street artists”local and international, to paint “The Street of Color”a series of murals that tell the history and local culture with characters from the neighborhood and animals emblematic of the country’s rich biodiversity.

New Commune 13?

Since then, businesses, tourism agencies and even the “Museum of the Self-Built City”, that shows the history of the neighborhood itself. But the stigma prevents popularizing its tourist offer, especially among Bogota residents.

More than half of Ciudad Bolívar’s 660,000 inhabitants live in poverty, on less than 536,000 Colombian pesos per month (about US$135). It is also the town with the most homicides, 188 in 2023, according to data from the district security secretariat (SIEDCO).

“I am concerned about the issue of taking photos of the graffiti (…) if it was not safe to take out the cell phone… I had doubts,” Tomás Velásquez, a resident of Chapinero, an upper-middle class neighborhood in the north of Bogotá, told AFP.

Despite the fear, on average about 400 visitors a month now come to Ciudad Bolívar. An emerging tourism that the Bogotá mayor’s office celebrates for its positive impact on the economy and security of the neighborhood.

“The street where the graffiti is, was previously called the ‘road of crime’. It was a street where they killed, murdered, robbed… This year we don’t have a single crime in the Paradise area.”Andrés Santamaría, director of the District Tourism Institute (IDT), told AFP.

Taking as a model the famous Comuna 13 of Medellín (northwest), transformed into a tourist destination after suffering drug trafficking violence during the time of drug lord Pablo Escobar, the district government wants Ciudad Bolívar to become “one of the main tourist sites in the city.”

“Poverty continues”

Currently, 40 new guides are being trained in Ciudad Bolívar, and the mayor’s office supports the opening of a tourism office. Likewise, several local initiatives are expected to have the support of the IDT in the next four years.

The merchant María Sandoval, who opened a small tamales store four months ago – a traditional corn and meat stew – says that this new tourism represents “almost half” of your sales.

But a few meters away, the positive impacts of tourism raise doubts. Nadia Rojas and her daughter, skeptical, see the groups of visitors passing by in the distance.

“That is very good because tourism brings work (…) but everything is concentrated in a few,” criticizes Rojas. “The facades are painted, but poverty continues.”

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