I am interested in talking about this region for different reasons, but mainly now that we are talking about limits and frontiers I think this place can be a great example. Maicao is the second most important city in the department after Riohacha the capital. Maicao is located 10 minutes away from the frontier with Venezuela, between the 70's and 80's the city was known for its free trade zone (FTZ) and a known center of smuggling of counterfeit goods such as cigarettes and electric appliances, a lot of legal and ilegal money made it through the city and Colombia; fortunately the government has put an end to a lot of the ilegal trading, the violence and the lack of order coming from the easy money. When you arrive to this city it is impossible not to compare it with a ghost town from the wild west, a lot of those turbulent years still remain in the environment clashing with the legal commerce that has made it through the years, the indigenous communities of the area and the gas, oil and construction companies that are bringing development to the region. The facades of the buildings are strange, like the whole town, some houses have exagerated pilars of concrete, with marmol finishes but with windows full of iron bars for protection. The commerce is the main economic activity and everybody is good at this, if you ask for something with a foreign accent the prize will double! Only five to ten minutes away of the city by car you can find indigenous communities that live in "rancherias" this communities live mainly from the care of goats, but they also have commercial and labour skills that are well used for their benefits. My short experience with them has showed me that they live in contradiction between preserving their culture and allowing the conforts of what we call "development".
Ten years ago the Colombian peso was cheaper than "The Bolivar" (the venezuelan currency) so Colombian residents would go to Venezuela looking for work, now the Bolivar is cheaper than the Colombian peso, so Venezuelans come to Colombia seeking for jobs, and Colombians go to Venezuela to buy food or other goods. Some residents are proud to be Colombians, some others would like to be part of Venezuela, and there are few that have the double nationality. It is difficult for me to explain the whole region in a few words and I believe I need to spend more time here to truly understand the essence of this place, but what I have seen to this day is extraordinary and is the social behaviour that really inspires me and makes me realize that people adapt to the environment and makes me question myself on how to predict social behaviours on an urban proposal
1 comment:
Great, Lucho. I think this city is very interesting. It seems its development history and relationship with its neighbors are quite complicated and keep changing. You are right that in such changeable city, predict what the social behavior is very difficult. As we discussed, I think people can adapt to the environment to some extent, but the space may limit the possibility. But you raised a very important observation – the economic, policy, governance, crime and international relationship are all have mutual impact with the urban space and the social behavior changes with them. For instance, you mentioned that the building façade is strange due to the security, how people move due to the economic development, the place is changing due to the governance. The difficulty is all these factors interact with each other and make the system becomes very complicated and unpredictable. Space on one hand is the product of all the above, but it is also one of the factors in the system; economic development is a result of others and a factor to others, etc. However, as we discussed before, there are some dominant factors. Like US / Japan economic power on culture and space. And I think what Fan discussed before about cycle is another ‘factor’ and’ result’.
Post a Comment