The Belen Neighbourhood of Bogotá: Peaceful and cultural resistances

Abstract

The Belén neighborhood of Bogotá is the second oldest in the city after La Candelaria (Cortés, 1982). It was accessed by crossing the San Agustín River that descended from the mountain range along the current Seventh or Presidential Street, and was a place of habitation for workers and indigenous people in the service of Spaniards and settlers.  Belen is part of the town of La Candelaria, and is also a parenthesis in the heart of the heart of Bogota.  A parenthesis, yes, because despite the urban renewal that began in 1980 with the La Candelaria Corporation, followed by the Plan Centro and the Land Management Plans (POT), the inhabitants of Belen retain the small-town essence that characterizes them even in the center of the city. A few blocks away from palaces, ministries and battalions; from the Palacio de Nariño and San Carlos; from the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Technology; from the 37th Infantry Battalion, or Presidential Guard.  That is to say: in spite of the neoliberalism that was born after World War II, son of capitalism and its expanded effect throughout the world, the gentrification, which consists of the restoration of urban centers in favor of profit, commerce, of the residential adaptation for the middle class expelling from the territory the poor that once inhabited them; Belen until now conserves very good part of its essence.  There, several generations of the same origin remain. They know each other, greet each other, and in many cases are related to each other. They conserve the essence of simple and hard-working people, most of them with the desire to remain living in the territory. They do not want to move to the outskirts of the city. Therefore, it is a plausible interest to spread a territorial commitment, undoubtedly strengthened in the conservation of games such as frog and shuffleboard, for example, which add to artistic expressions now also old as the traditional dance; all in an attempt to reduce the ambition of the builders to taste this bocatto di cardinale. That is to say, this particular delicacy that they have even tried to support with the Marca Belén. The Brand: that strategy so many times used, that takes us back to Colombia es Pasión and now it is updated with the Marca Colombia.