Graffiti and Politics Collide in Bogotá

Jack Curson

Street art is a common fixture in towns and cities across the world, but when arriving in Bogotá you can’t help but be struck by the sheer quantity and diversity of graffiti in Colombia’s sprawling capital. Beginning with the drive down Avenida El Dorado from Bogotá’s airport into the city’s historic centre and through to exploring the capital’s many bustling districts, graffiti is an ever present in the city. Whether it be tagging, stencil sprays, adbusting or murals, urban art in its many forms adorn huge amounts of the city’s facades and is an inescapable fact of Bogotá’s appearance and culture.

Beyond this initial intrigue, exploring the history behind urban art in the city reveals a number of interesting stories. In 2011, Bogotá’s City Council made the decision to legalise graffiti in the city as a result of a campaign for justice which followed the tragic killing of a young street artist in the city. Furthermore, looking into the meaning behind some of the most eye-catching murals in the city reveals a collection of stories that are both fascinating and troubling, stories which capture and illustrate the themes of conflict, migration and reconciliation which permeate both Bogotá and Colombia’s recent history. In this way, taking a deep dive into graffiti in Bogotá is taking a deep dive into the culture and politics of Bogotá past and present.

Violence, Resistance and Change: Legalisation and its Consequences

'Abundance. But only on our walls.'

The history and tradition of graffiti in Bogotá as an integral part of the city’s culture and landscape dates back many decades, however the city’s urban art scene was subject to national and international attention for all the wrong reasons following the killing of Bogotano street artist Diego Felipe Becerra. On the night of 19th August 2011, Diego, alongside 3 of his friends, were painting on one of the many overpass bridges in northern Bogotá. Diego was in the process of painting his signature, a cartoon character created in the early-20th century silent film era called Felix the Cat, when a pair of police officers came across the group. As Diego was running away from the pursuing officers he was shot in the back, a wound which tragically caused his death at just 16-years old.

A homage to Diego - a technicolour painting of Felix the Cat.

In a panicked attempt to justify their actions, the police officers constructed the story that Diego, who they alleged was in possession of cocaine, had attempted to rob a bus and then pulled out a gun with which he threatened to shoot the officers. Despite also planting a gun at the scene to incriminate Diego, the police officers’ account of the event was quickly proven to be a total fabrication. Diego’s friends claimed that they’d only been pulled up for painting graffiti, something which was supported by the fact that Diego’s hands were covered in blue paint, of which none was found on the gun that Diego was supposedly wielding. Furthermore, an autopsy report established that Diego had been shot in the back, thereby contradicting the story given by the 2 police officers.

Diego’s family, his friends and the Bogota graffiti community of which he was a part quickly embarked on an unrelenting fight for the truth to come out and justice to be served. The overwhelming forensic evidence, which both exonerated Diego and incriminated the police, sparked a major public outcry and spurred significant public protests in the city. This combination of public discontent and grassroots campaigning drew global attention to Diego’s killing, with the United Nations Office for Human Rights condemning the clear evidence of police brutality. Both the officer that shot Diego, who was a relative of the city’s police chief, and his partner admitted to falsifying their accounts and altering the crime scene. Both of the officers were dismissed from the police force, however neither were convicted for their actions.

Whilst the consequences for the police officers involved clearly falls well short of true justice for Diego, one positive that came out of the young graffiti artist's death was the decision to legalise graffiti in the city. Decriminalisation doesn’t mean graffiti artists can paint anywhere they want, but it does mean that painting on walls without permission is now classified as a violation rather than a crime. As such, the worst consequences that graffiti artists can face nowadays are fines rather than imprisonment. However, it's clear that the decision to legalise graffiti in Bogotá wasn’t a sudden act of altruism by the city’s officials, led by the then mayor and current president of Colombia Gustavo Petro. Many point to the urgent need to improve the city establishment’s relationship with the younger generation as well as its broader reputation as a key motivation for the decision. Others in the graffiti community have suggested that the focus on urban art being painted on approved buildings has in reality been an attempt at controlling graffiti in Bogotá.

This vein of cynicism towards the City Council’s intentions was only inflated when in 2013, Justin Bieber was filmed painting over a mural commemorating Diego’s death. Whilst seemingly ignorant of the mural’s significance, the Canadian pop star painted over it with a Canadian flag that had a marijuana plant leaf in the place of the conventional maple leaf as a celebration of legalisation in his native country. Most ironically of all, all the time that Bieber was painting his picture he was surrounded by a 20 officer strong police escort for his protection. Given that Diego had died at the hands of the very same city police force that was now protecting an international celebrity painting graffiti in the city, it was inevitable that there would be a major outcry from graffiti artists and Diego’s loved ones. Regardless of intentions, not only was Justin Bieber’s disrespect to Diego’s memory a provocation, but the fact that the city was now receiving a PR boon as a result of a cultural practice it had for years targeted and criminalised felt to many like a co-optation of graffiti for the City Council’s own purposes.

However, decriminalisation has certainly had a number of positive impacts. It has reduced some of the risks and dangers associated with being a graffiti artist in Bogotá whilst creating a permissive environment which has led to increased opportunities to paint in the city. Commissions have become commonplace from local businesses and larger corporations, whilst even the mayor’s office has collectively paid local artists around $10,000 to paint murals of some of Colombia’s greatest historical figures and icons on a number of facades across the city. Legalisation has also facilitated the blossoming of a small but thriving urban art economy in the city. There are now independent shops selling spray cans and clothing from newly-created local brands, amateur graffiti artists are routinely paid to paint buildings across the city and a select few are able to make a living as professional graffiti artists. One icon of the Bogotá graffiti scene, Stinkfish, even collaborated with Prada on one of the luxury fashion house’s catwalk projects in 2014. Potentially more important than all of this progress is the way in which legalisation, in the absence of true justice, has created a constructive legacy for Diego following his death.

The Stories Behind the Art

One of the many murals in downtown Bogotá painted by professional graffiti artist, Stinkfish.

As with anywhere, graffiti in Bogotá comes in a vast array of forms, from more simplistic tagging to highly complex, large-scale murals. Reflecting on the stories behind some of the most striking of these murals reveals the way in which graffiti in Bogotá is deeply rooted in politics in its many forms, across local, national and international scales. Graffiti is at its very core a political form of expression and graffiti in Bogotá, the capital city of a country which has faced huge political instability in an already volatile region, embodies politics across its many spheres. Briefly looking at the backgrounds behind a few of the murals I photographed in downtown Bogotá gives a snapshot of their often deeply political nature.

First is a mural which has been painted on a wall close to the Teatro ECCI El Dorado on Calle 17, which depicts a woman wearing a colourful dress who is surrounded by nature in the form of butterflies, flowers and an a jaguar. The dress that the woman is wearing is of a style that is typical of Colombia’s Caribbean region, which is also one of the regions in Colombia of which the jaguar is a native. In the second half of the 20th century, huge numbers of Colombians were forced to flee regions in the north and south of the country, vast swathes of which had become battlegrounds in the conflict between paramilitaries, guerrillas, crime syndicates and the central government for control and influence within the country. Whilst some Colombians chose to leave the country entirely, many fled for the relative safety of Colombia’s cities, with southern Bogotá being a prime destination for internally displaced Colombians. Indeed, this part of the city is represented in the mural by the mountains which are shown as reflections in the beady eyes of the jaguar.

Given this context, it seems the girl in the mural is a representation of one of these internally displaced Colombians, who’s been forced to flee her home for the metropolis of Bogotá in the hope of greater security. Colombians who’ve fled their native regions and settled in southern Bogotá have been stereotyped as dangerous and violent, but the reality is that they are in fact the victims of violence, forced to leave their regional cultures, communities and environments in the hopes of a life free from the conflict. Here, the jaguar staring on stoically can be seen as reflecting a wistfulness for a home and way of life that for displaced Colombians existed years ago and hundreds of miles away. Cynically stereotyped by many as vicious and rapacious like a jaguar, the reality is very different. In this way, what at first sight might seem a simple decorative painting actually touches on themes of conflict, displacement and identity in Bogotá and Colombia.

Walking just a few minutes on from Calle 17 you reach the bustling commercial street Carrera 7, where the walls of a block of flats are adorned by a mural of a man walking along the street with a record clutched underneath his right arm. Today, the vast majority of street vendors from the street are either Colombians or Venezuelans, almost 3 million of which have fled westwards as a result of the socioeconomic and political crisis in Venezuela. The Colombian vendors have only been able to obtain permits to sell their (often counterfeit) goods following a spate of protests in response to their persistent harassment at the hands of the police. However, as foreign nationals, Venezuelans are unable to get official licenses and so are forced set up their stalls on wheels, so that they’re able to quickly move on when vendor’s accreditation is checked by local officials.

As increasing numbers of Venezuelans began to sell their counterfeit goods on Carrera 7, conflict between Colombian and Venezuelan vendors broke out, sparked by an increase in competition for business but typified by a distinct nationalist and xenophobic complexion. The two groups traded stereotypes, with the Colombians often referring to the Venezuelans as criminals and communists, whilst many of the the Venezuelans would refer to their Colombians counterparts as drug dealers and guerrillas. After persistent tensions, this hostility broke out into outright violence, with multiple street vendors of both nationalities being murdered in machete attacks.

Amidst the violence and hatred, some form of truce and reconciliation was clearly needed. In fact, it was a grassroots project organised by local urban artists, who also run a renowned graffiti tour in downtown Bogotá, that provided the spark for the mending of relations. A series of meetings aimed at bringing the Venezuelans and Colombians together to talk and gain an understanding of their respective experiences and struggles were organised. At first, few people attended, and those that did largely came to take advantage of the free food at the meetings. However, as time went on and the participants became more familiar with one another, they began sharing information about their personal backgrounds and interests. For example, it quickly became clear that despite the ‘othering’ of one another, in reality many of the Venezuelans were fans of Colombian music artists and vice versa, indicating cross-cultural connections and a common ground of interests which could be the basis for dialogue.

At the end of the programme, the participants were asked what they’d like to feature in the mural that was being planned on Carrera 7 as a way of representing the progress and reconciliation that had been made between the two groups. They agreed that the mural should focus on the man pictured walking along in the mural, a Venezuelan street dancer who performs to Colombian music on Carrera 7, in a reference to the street community of which both nationalities are a part as well as the cultural interests that they share. Again, what at first glance may seem like a simple picture is actually imbued with a fascinating story of migration, conflict and reconciliation.

Finally, on a wall overlooking a public car park on Carrera 5 is a mural of an indigenous child holding flowers and staring outwards. In a font borrowed from pichaçao, a form of Brazilian graffiti originating in the 1940s and identifiable by the distinctive sharp style of its lettering, the backdrop reads ‘Nadie es ilegal / Fuerza en la unidad’: ‘Nobody is illegal. Strength is Unity.’ Painted by a pair of female artists, one from Bogotá and the other from Lima, the piece is a reference to indigenous nomadic tribe groups that live in the borderlands between Colombia and Peru. Living in the more remote jungle regions of both countries, these groups face unique threats to their traditional ways of life and in practice don’t enjoy the same kind of legal protections and rights enjoyed by other citizens.

The message that forms the backdrop of the mural can be seen as a call for solidarity with these endangered groups, as well as cooperation between Peru and Colombia to provide greater protections through collaboration and diplomacy. The mural was funded by the Peruvian embassy in Bogotá, illustrating the way in which urban art has come to be so prominent in Bogotá that beyond being just an important sub-culture driven by creatives in the city, it is even seen as a means of communication and representation for foreign governments. Clutching flowers and looking onwards blankly, implanting this image of an indigenous child on one of the capital’s busy downtown streets provides a subtle but captivating reference to the challenges being faced by indigenous groups hundreds of miles away from the urban metropolis in the country’s hinterland.

Politics and Graffiti - Indelibly Intertwined

Graffiti has a history that dates back millennia, a history in which criticism and contention is a constant theme. Whether it be mockery of Christian religious practices in the ancient Roman Alexamenos graffito or an artful critique of the Umayyad Caliphate etched by Arab satirist poet Yazid al-Himyari onto the walls between Sajistan and Basra in the 8th century, expression of political views and resistance to authority is an ever-present of graffiti over time. In its tradition and by its very nature urban art is rebellious, which is something that won't change, regardless of legalisation in Colombia's capital. In a broader sense, the decriminalisation of graffiti, an art which is fundamentally an act of defiance based on an artist asserting their own vision and message on the public realm, can be seen as a contradiction in terms. However, whilst the origins of de-criminalisation of graffiti in Bogotá may have been in many ways cynical and acts as no substitute for justice for Diego, the way in which legalisation of graffiti in Bogotá has created new opportunities for independent artists, collectives and brands in the city is a tangible positive legacy for Diego. More broadly, by looking at the story behind de-criminalisation in Bogotá and looking at just a few of the countless murals in the city, it is clear that graffiti in Bogotá and beyond is, and always will be, political to the core.