Safety, perceptions of safety, and annoying foreigners in Bogotá

Perhaps the most the interesting statistic related to crime in Bogotá is not that the city is one of the safest metropolises on the continent—though this is true—but rather bogotanos have a much more negative perception about safety in their city than other urban Latin Americans have about theirs. I quickly became aware of this phenomenon when I started to receive safety advice that bordered on the extreme—such as, take a taxi from the Transmilenio station to my apartment at night to avoid walking…a block and a half.

Bogotanos obsession with safety seems to be partially related to their social status. The richer, the more paranoid. In part, I think bogotanos’ extreme safety consciousness involves a class bias, a misunderstanding/lack of understanding of the poor on the part of the rich. However, it goes beyond the upper crust of Bogotá, as evidenced by Rosalba, the woman I live with, one of the most safety conscious of them all. I can only guess that darker times in Bogotá history, when murder and kidnapping rates soared, continue to resonate in the minds’ of bogotanos today.

However, the reality is far better than bogotanos would seem to suggest. Bogotá’s murder rate is half that of DC and pales in comparison to Guatemala City, San Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, Caracas, São Paulo, and Tegucigalpa. Figures for robbery and assault paint a similar picture. In any case, I listen to people’s advice and even if I often scale down their safety assessments in my head, I realize they are well-intentioned.

The intentions of another character I call into question. We’ll call the individual in question Paco, though he is a gringo just like me. Anthony Dest and I met Paco at a friend’s apartment. Paco is halfway through his year in Bogotá, participating in a teacher exchange with a school in a poorer area of the city. Without wasting any time, he explained to us how dangerous his situation was, how horrible some of the stories he’d heard were, and how we probably wouldn’t be exposed to “that Bogotá” because we’re attending a university.

To give us an illustrative example, Paco shared with us his daily bus ride that takes him through the Centro—without realizing that I live in the area he is talking about. It’s maybe not the nicest part of Bogotá, but it’s no scene from City of God. Throughout our (short) conversation, Paco continued to exaggerate without shame. While I have no doubt that Paco has been exposed to a number of the sad realities of Bogotá in the area where he teaches, he pertains to a group of people that loves to hype the dangerousness of their living situation, exaggerating in order to demonstrate to the isolated and insulated rest of us that they are living on the edge.

I think it is important to recognize the issues of conflict that continue to exist in Colombia and affect thousands upon thousands of people each year. A series of bombs set off by the FARC in various cities in the last two weeks serves as a reminder that violence in Colombia has a long history and has not gone away. But, Paco, let’s not pretend Bogotá is in the middle of a war zone. Your exaggerations do not help dispel stereotypes about Colombians held by most of the world and make people like me vent about you in the blogosphere to family and friends.

Now that that’s off my chest, I’ll say that the dynamic of the perceptions of violence and crime vs. the reality of Bogotá is fascinating, especially given the manner in which Colombians, over time, have become desensitized to violence. I am still looking for the answer to this puzzle, and I’ll let you know if I ever figure it out.