Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Cartagena's brand

This is a news item from the La Republica newspaper highlighting Cartagena's effort to brand itself as a great tourist destination and place to do business. While I love Cartagena, and I'd be glad to see it continue its rise to prominence in the collective global conscience, there's something that bothers me here. Cartagena is the capital of a state in Colombia called Bolivar. The state has a long, narrow shape, such that the south of Bolivar is very far away and isolated from Cartagena, which is on the northern coast of Colombia. In part due to this isolation, southern Bolivar is one of the most violent, war-torn areas of Colombia. Many of the displaced people floating around the country with nowhere to go hail originally from this region. In light of this, Cartagena's prosperity and status as a glamorous tourist destination is unsettling, and the fact that the city is devoting so many resources to further promoting itself as opposed to improving life in the rest of its state is really a disgrace. I know that we live in a complex, diverse world, and that promotion of one thing doesn't necessarily imply robbing resources from another thing. But this gap in wealth, in security, in quality of life between the capital of Bolivar state and its hinterlands is so glaring as to be obscene.

No comments:

Post a Comment