Importing the American Way of Death

Future fat? Young women leave a Bogotá McDonald's
with ice cream cones. 

This NY Times story has got to be one of the most startling (and ignored) pieces of news reported in recent years: Immigrants to the United States, despite better education, nutrition and health care, are dying younger and suffering more chronic diseases than did their parents and grandparents back home, mostly in Latin America.

That's because, along with the benefits they find in the U.S., these immigrants also adopt U.S. habits, including too much food, especially fatty foods, and a sedentary lifestyle. The predictable results include obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Celebrating American culture! Lots of Dunkin' Donuts in
Bogotá, too. 

So, will somebody please explain to me why Colombians (and others across the planet) are embracing this deadly American lifestyle?

(Hint: Maybe because corporations make huge profits from it.)

The recent book 'Salt Sugar Fat,' by Michael Moss, documented how big corporations aggressively market unhealthy foods to kids and adults with few scruples. Why should we expect companies to behave any better in Colombia?

On the path to the American Way, forget traditional
fruit markets like Paloquemao....

United States fast food chains such as McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts are invading Colombia, hand in hand with sugary drink makers Coca Cola and Pepsi, promoting chronic diseases which rob years from people's lives. El Tiempo editorialized last month that more than half of Colombians are overweight or obese. (In contrast, one of every six children under age five and one out of every six pregnant women is anemic, numbers which are particularly high in rural areas.) Convenience stores, like the Oxxos colonizing Bogotá, hawking unhealthy processed foods, are trying to drive out traditional mom-and-pop stores which feature breads, fruits and vegetables.

...and head to processed, fat-packed products at chain stores. 

Already, several Latin American countries, including Chile, Argentina and Mexico, are among the world leaders in per-capita cola consumption. Colombians consume about 50 liters per capita per year - just a little more than one third of the 130 liters an average Argentinian drinks - but you can be sure that the soft drink companies are doing their best to make Colombians drink more sugar.

The chronic diseases caused by overeating create huge costs for health care systems and are compounded by trends toward sedentarism, fueled by increasing car use.

These two people just bought churros -
deep fried fat in batter. 

El Tiempo reports that in 2009 Colombia's Congress passed a law intended to combat the country's increasing junk-foodedness, but that it was never regulated or enforced.

Peru recently passed such a law, which restricts advertising to children and the sale of unhealthy foods in kiosks. The law is, naturally, opposed by stores and advertisers, which make lots of money by pushing harmful stuff onto children. But, incredibly, a Catholic Church leader also attacked the new law as a restriction of freedom and parental authority. Strange, isn't it, for a church that's so eager to prohibit so many other things. Or is it that abortion, euthenasia and gay marriage are moral issues, but child obesity and heart attacks are not?

In practice, the avalanche of junk food advertising just leaves both kids and parents at the mercy of predatory corporations.

Vitamins! But the churros seller has the nerve to label their junk food 'nutritional.'

Another goal of the American way of death is to stamp out low-profit habits such as bicycling... 

and walking...

and replace them with the profitable car driving. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Do Edible Ants Hold The Answer?

Tourists buy hormigas culonas
near Plaza Bolivar today.

Planet Earth is facing a looming food crisis, not only because the number of humans is increasing, but even more because more and more of those humans want to eat meat, which requires lots of land and resources.

Fortunately, the Food and Agriculture has a solution: Eat Insects!

Even better, Colombians are already eating ants, called hormigas culonas, which are in season right now.



Mouth watering? Hormigas culonas come roasted and salted.



Insect eating isn't as crazy at it sounds. Cultures all over the world eat all sorts of insects, with no apparent harm. The hormigas culonas (lliterally, big butt ants), a traditional food of indigenous people near the Venezuelan border, come streaming out of their nests this time of year and are caught in nets strung in trees. There's apparently little harm done to the ant colonies, since the insects streaming out are males, whose only function is to reproduce and establish new colonies. As long as just a few get thru, the species reproduces itself.

Edible ants for sale.

Of course, today ants are only a novelty food in Colombia. But there are good reasons why ants, grasshoppers and even insect pupae could be an important part of the human diet. They grow quickly, occupy little space and provide lots of protein, nutrients and other stuff.

More importantly, insects are much more productive than vertebrates in turning feed into meat. For each ten kilograms of feed a cow eats it produces only one kilogram of cow. Because an insect is cold blooded, it requires much less energy to maintain itself. As a result, an insect produces about eight times more 'meat' per amount of feed than a cow does. (Poultry are more efficient than cows and pigs, but less than insects.) Best of all, you can eat a whole insect, including usually its exoskeleton - but just try biting thru a cow's backbone.

The big-butt ants are supposed to be aphrodisiac.

Insect farming also has the benefit of reducing concerns about animal suffering, since insects are presumably less intelligent and sensitive than than mammals. And insects could easily be farmed at home, in small areas, reducing deforestation impacts.

Does the idea of eating insects seem gross? That's strange, since crustacean delicacies like shrimp, crab and

lobster are taxonomically speaking just marine insects.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Legacy of Rogelio Salmona

The entrance to the Archivo Nacional, just south of La Candelaria, one of Rogelio Salmona's many works in Bogotá.

Pedestrians walk along Jimenez Ave., the Eje Ambiental,
designed by Rogelio Salmona but never completed
and now sadly neglected. 

Rogelio Salmona is unquestionably Colombia's most famous architect of recent times. Born in 1929 in Paris, the son of French and Spanish Jewish parents, Salmona's family moved to Bogotá in 1934. He grew up in the Teusaquillo neighborhood, and after the Bogotazo violence returned to France to work for years with famed architect Le Corbusier.

Returning to Colombia in 1957, Salmona taught in the Universidad de los Andes and designed many buildings and other structures which have become landmarks, mostly in Bogotá, but also scattered across Colombia.

Salmona's works are known for their brickwork, their curves and for being open to and integrated into their surrounding environments. With their quiet pools and interior patios, they seem to bring the outdoors inside. Those characteristics also show the deep influence of Arab/Moslem architecture in Salmona's style.

The Gabriel Garcia Marquez Cultural Center in La Candelaria. The building was designed by Salmona and built by the Mexican government in honor of the Nobel-Prize winning novelist, but contains nothing about the writer. 

Las Torres del Parque, behind Bogotá's bullfighting stadium. The complex curvers around the stadium, and was supposed to house people of all classes, but now seems to be inhabited by the wealthy. Salmona lived in one of the towers during his final decades. 

The Jorge Eliecer Gaitan house-museum, which has never been completed. 

A view of the Biblioteca Pública Virgilio Barco and its contiguous park, which forms part of the Parque Simon Bolivar. 

Visitors cross bridges in the Biblioteca Pública Virgilio Barco.

A pathway to the Biblioteca Pública Virgilio Barco.

Pools and pathways in the Biblioteca Pública Virgilio Barco.

Pools of water at the entrance to the Biblioteca Pública Virgilio Barco.

Pools and bridges at the Biblioteca Pública Virgilio Barco.

Entrance to the Postgraduate Social Sciences Building on the National University's Bogotá campus. 

Brickwork on the Postgraduate Social Sciences Building on the National University's Bogotá campus

A pool in the Postgraduate Social Sciences Building on the National University's Bogotá campus

Students relax in the Postgraduate Social Sciences Building on the National University's Bogotá campus

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Drug Policy Sanity Breaks Through?

Juan Manuel Santos receives the OAS drug report from OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza yesterday in the Casa de Nariño.

The report is in, and it's not what Washington wanted.

An Organization of American States report presented yesterday in Bogotá recommends drug decriminalization.

“Decriminalization of drug use needs to be considered as a core element in any public health strategy,” concluded the OAS group.

The U.S. government had declared itself open to discussing alternative drug war strategies - just as long as it was clear that only option would be more prohibition.

Predictably, Washington's response to this latests report was to play the same old broken record.

"Any suggestion that nations legalize drugs like heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and methamphetamine runs counter to an evidenced-based, public health approach to drug policy and are not viable alternatives,” said a U.S. government drug policy spokesman.

What evidence is that? More than a decade ago, Portugal decriminalized possessing all drugs, and observers generally consider the experiment a success. On the other hand, the violence fueled by drug prohibition is undeniable evidence of prohibition's failure.

The U.S. position looks increasingly absurd when two U.S. states have legalized marijuana and the drug is de-facto legal (in the guise of 'medial marijuana') in more than a dozen other states - and those U.S. states haven't collapsed into anarchy.

Colombian Pres. Juan Manuel Santos was present at the report's presentation and welcomed its ideas.

"This was what we wanted," Santos said, "empirical evidence without prejudice, and now the real work begins, which is the discussion at the political level. Let it be clear that no one here is defending any position, neither legalization, nor regulation, nor war at any cost.

Many Latin Americans have long believed that Washington insisted on the futile War on Drugs as an excuse to meddle in Latin America. I believe rather that the U.S. insists on these policies for domestic reasons - it doesn't look good to retreat in any kind of war.

But as the U.S.'s position becomes more untenable, it only makes conspiracy theories look more believable.

A U.S. official recently warned that countries should take into consideration the impacts on other countries of their domestic drug policies. That's fair enough. So, is the U.S. looking at the epidemic of violence which its own prohibitionist policies have unleashed across Latin America?
How will this report affect drug policy? I expect it to nudge forward efforts underway, most notably in Uruguay, to legalize marijuana. The report itself observed that the region has little support for legalizing cocaine - even tho cocaine trafficking fuels much of the region's violence. But, in the same way that some call marijuana the 'gateway drug' for drug abuse, perhaps it will also be a gateway for legalization.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Day of the Recycler

Yell for your rights!

'We march for the right to be included.'

Bogotá's recyclers - the people who scavenge thru the garbage in search of things they can resell - celebrated their day today with a march in which they protested against efforts by big businesses to take away their livelihood. Individually, they expressed concern about not getting agreed to benefits for their work, as well as for giving up their horsecarts.

Nohra Padilla, a long-time grassroots activist who has organized Bogotá's recyclers recently won the Goldman Prize, often called the Nobel Prize of environmentalism.

Modern city? A horse cart passes a Davivienda Bank.

'What will happen to those of us who don't appear in the census?'

The drawing argues that public officials want to hand the recycling business over to big companies. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Toilet Paper Revolution

Venezuela's empty shelves conspiracy?

Please don't squeeze the economy!

Surely, Simon Bolivar and Carl Marx would have been proud: Venezuelan government officials announced yesterday that "The revolution will import toilet paper."

The revolutionary plan is to 'saturate' Venezuela with toilet paper in order to prove wrong the opponents' claims that the government has bungled the economy, creating shortages of basic goods, including things like toilet paper, milk, meat and sanitary napkins. Instead, the chavista government claims, the shortages are a conspiracy by opposition businesses (led by Empresas Polar) to destabilize the government.

Which way should the
toilet paper revolution turn?

The government's claims are absurd. If shortages could overthrow the Venezuelan government that would have happened long ago. Fourteen years into chavismo and counting, businesses are trying to survive and turn profits in the face of counter-productive government control measures.

Any conspiracy behind the widespread shortages is the government's doing. By limiting supplies of foreign exchange money, the government's made it difficult for companies to import supplies and spare parts. But mishandling the electricity system and generating fequent blackouts, the government has hobbled production. And, most of all, by limiting prices, the government has taken away the incentive to produce and sell goods.

The 'conspiracy' here is obvious and teaches a simple lesson: Governments don't know how to run business.

While other Latin nations have moved forward on social issues such as abortion and gay rightsVenezuela's so-called 'revolution' has been remarkably timid. But Caracas is importing toilet paper!

No word on where the Revolution will go toilet paper shopping. However, it certainly won't be close ally and inspiration Cuba, which suffers chronic shortages of basics such as toilet paper and light bulbs.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Poor Year for Free Trade

'United States beats Colombia in first year of Free Trade Agreement,' headlines Sunday's El Tiempo.

The numbers are in, and they don't look great for Colombia.

After one year of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States imports from the US have shot up, but Colombia's non-traditional exports to the U.S. have risen little.

Potato farmers protest the Free Trade Agreement
recently in Bogotá.

The advocates, who called the FTA key for Colombia's economic growth, point out that the United States' economy has had a troubled year, which has generated weak imports. And, in fact, the first year's results show some hopeful signs: hundreds of small Colombian businesses have exported their products to many different parts of the U.S. And, encouragingly, the exports being sold to the gringos include manufactured products like vehicle parts, which generate skilled employment back here in Colombia. Close to 200 new products are being exported to the States, according to the Colombian government's count.

The benefits weren't equally distributed, however. While hundreds of companies based in big cities including Bogotá, Barranquilla and Cartagena started exporting to the States, traditionally poor regions like El Cauca and El Chocó benefited little.

'Exports to the U.S. didn't grow,'
reports El Espectador.

On the other hand, some Colombian exports, including agricultural products, declined.

But I've seen relatively little attention to the new imports, which are heavy on agricultural products, and their impacts. That's not surprising, since the U.S. heavily subsidizes its farming industry. A neighborhood nut seller told me that the importer he buys from has switched from Chilean to U.S. suppliers. Some of the US nuts were good quality, he said, but others didn't match the Chileans' quality.

I'd like to know what proportion of these agricultural imports are making healthy foods less expensive and more available, and what proportion is adding to the flood of cheap junk foods, which benefit nobody but their marketers. And then there are the cheaper cars, to jam Colombia's roads and poison its air.

And how about the victims, such as potato farmers, who now have to compete with mechanized U.S. megafarms, which receive huge subsidies from Washington?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours