Bogotá update. Demonstrations and felicitations.

Let me try this again...

Keeping up-to-date on here has not been going too well recently due to settling in, starting work and generally keeping busy and exploring.

I´m happy here...so far. It has taken a while to get used to the big city after being in Chester and Ireland, however I now feel much more settled. The job at the universtiy is going well, I´ve started some private classes and I have written my first piece for The City Paper.

On Thursday the 29th August (my Birthday) there was a public strike (paro nacional) As the university was closed for security reasons, I was off work and decided to go along, as a journalist, to speak to the people and see what was going on. Little did I know it was going to end up in an all dramatic mess!

POLICE: Poor people that fight with hungry people for the benefit of rich
people without uniforms and without HUNGER!"

The demonstration was mostly attended by farmers and university students who wanted to get their message of discontent across to the government. However, the usual violence between the people and police broke out due to many vandals and idiots harassing police from the beginning of the march.

Protesters on top of the old train station in the city centre,
just after the police intervention. 

In the end the protesters didn´t even make it to Plaza Bolivar, the main political square here in Bogotá, where they aimed to finish their march. The police intercepted half way there using brutal methods - firing gas cylinders and water cannons. 

Having got caught up in a stampede due to gassing, myself and Charlotte (a Scottish friend and fellow British Council assistant and journalist) after running away from the disaster, got off the beaten track.

We interviewed many people on the day, most of them in favor of the demonstration and condemning the violence on both sides. The majority simply wanted a peaceful march, although this was made impossible due to the hooligans who simply participated to cause trouble and also because of the Colombian polices extreme retaliation. 

Staff at Juan Valdez cafe frantically trying to salvage some of
 their chairs and tables that were removed and used to throw at police. 

A police officers uniform set on fire.

We later filmed and photographed some of the vandals in the street. There were people there removing the bricks from the pavement and hurling them at police, someone even managed to remove a police officer’s jacket and set it on fire. Young children, who looked around the age of 12, were partaking in the events.

An incident occurred where a man noticed us filming and became irate and violent, while holding a brick in his hand (Oh, the joys of journalism). We quickly scrambled off, although he followed us. We manged to side track into a nearby cafe in an area which seems relatively calm. But, alas, five minutes later the police had advanced up the road, along with the violence, and we ended up getting trapped inside the cafe for about two and a half hours. It was as if we were watching a massive TV screen outside, seeing the people hurling anything they could find (including the chairs and tables of the cafe) and gas cylinders and loud papa bombas (a type of homemade explosive)

Charlotte and I trying to avoid the pepper gas with scarves. 

The majority of the people that I interviewed told me that this was the worst violence at a demonstration they had witnessed in a long time. That evening, two people were killed due to further clashes with police in other areas of the city.

It was in interesting birthday, at least.