Category: Culture
A Painter’s Progress: The Graffiti of Marcel Marentes
Marcel Marentes told me he was painting beneath a bridge one day. The police arrived. One officer jumped off his bike and ran down beneath the bridge to see what Marcel was doing. He was sure they were putting up pro-rebel symbols – something that qualifies as a serious crime in Colombia.
“Who is it? ELN? FARC?” asked the first policeman up top, referring to the country’s two largest rebel groups.
The second policeman came down and looked at what Marcel was painting under the bridge. Continue reading at Beacon…
Taking On A Beer Monopoly Never Tasted So Good
If beer really is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy, then, at least to Colombian Berny Silberwasser, God must have forgotten Colombia.
Back in the 1990s, Silberwasser’s Colombia was awash in tired, Bud-Light-like swill. So Silberwasser set off on a pilgrimage in 1997 to taste his way through the craft beers of Europe and the U.S. And there was enlightenment. When the beer enthusiast and culinary arts graduate came back, he decided to come to the rescue for Colombia’s next generation of drinkers. In 2002, Bogotá Beer Company came alive. Continue reading on Ozy…
photograph: bogotabeercompany.com
A Hole In The Drum: The Musicians From Buenaventura
The place smelled like rotten fish when I walked into my house that day, and a fat woman wearing a bandana was screaming – or maybe singing – at the top of her lungs. There were children and kids of every age. The younger ones played a rambunctious game of hide-and-go-seek that ran late into the evening. Every once in awhile you could hear the soft dance of mallets on the marimba or a palm strike a drum. But it sounded for only a moment, and then it faded it away.
Colombia’s Pacific port city Buenaventura is sinking in a human rights crisis. Awhile before the news started to break last week, a group of musicians from Buenaventura came to Bogotá and stayed at my boarding house – where I keep a room. I got to hear them play. It was a surprising encounter, and let me enter a world of Colombian life that rarely reaches the capital. Continue reading on Beacon…
Walls in Cartagena: The Ironwork of Ernesto Muñoz
The hot sweat coming through the rugged flannel shirt Ernesto Muñoz was wearing spoke volumes about the man and his dedication to fusing power with elegance: he ripped off the heavy flannel, threw it on a giant stump, studied the piece of iron in his hands, threw the lever on a clamp to secure it, and with the fine teeth of a hacksaw, the blacksmith went into a dizzying spell of thrusts, putting all his might into the beginning of another afternoon building Cartagena.
“Of course I feel powerful,” said Ernesto. He put down the blade and took up a welder’s torch. Blinding white light illuminated his shop. Continue reading on Beacon…
Wes Michael Tomaselli 