CiudadArteria: la Ciudad que se Narra – Barranquilla, Colombia

Contact: Grupo Creativo Los Buenos Muchachos
Gerardo Ferro, Jorge Mario Suarez, Alvaro Serje
ciudadarteria@hotmail.com

OURMedia 3 included visits to local communication for social change projects. One of the visits was to CiudadArteria, La Ciudad que se Narra, in Barranquilla, on the evening of Monday May 19, 2003.

The following report was written by Clemencia Rodriguez, Associate Professor, Department of Communication University of Oklahoma clemencia@ou.edu.

Through the window of the bus I could see the city streets and alleyways all distorted by the water. Rain was falling strong on our bus, as I was hoping the project we were visiting would be under a roof. The urban landscape became more and more intense; the neat neighborhoods surrounding our hotel gave way to the clutter of streets filled with people, horse-carts, vendors. At some point the scene became surreal as the street vendors’ stands become so crowded that they actually covered everything else: the sidewalks, fronts of the houses and stores, fronts of churches and office buildings; the stands seemed to grow and multiply on the city as if fed by a distracted host.

The bus finally parked on Paseo Bolívar, one of the bussiest intersections downtown Barranquilla. As we descended—what is this bunch of gringos doing here?—people began welcoming us under their huge umbrellas—they were definitely better prepared! The street had been closed; on one end sat a huge video screen with a still larger cut-out rum bottle by its side (the rum company was one of the sponsors of CiudadArteria), and a video projector protected by yet another umbrella. On the other side of the street, rows of white plastic chairs collecting rain water. Some of us went under the people’s umbrellas. Some others simply decided to get wet and sat on the chairs; in the heat of the night the rain felt actually very good!

The event had started with a preamble: a group of musicians played drums, maracas and guacharanga while a young woman performer juggled with torches on fire. The imagery was stunning: the people under their umbrellas, the drums, the fire, the rain … I felt as if I was in a land of story-telling and performance … and I was.

As I took my photo camera out, a group of three little kids approached me: would you take our photo? Sure! Just lay still … word of mouth travels fast and for the next hour I would be photographing groups of kids demanding their portrait too. They wanted solo portraits, another one with their best friend, another one with their whole gang… at the end, as I told them I had just a few photos left, they all ran to the side of the street screaming and yelling a name: they wanted the last photos with their favorite “big” friend: the local policeman. Surprised, he smiled as kids climbed on him, behind him, on top of him, all wanting to be in the photo … and they are.

In the meantime, the rum sponsor had set up shop and was offering free samples of rum. It’s all we needed; a tiny shot of rum became a perfect complement to the rain, the excitement, the performance.

Soon the video projector was turned on and we began viewing what CiudadArteria actually is: the same kids I had just photographed, the same policeman, and many of the other people around us, the same ones inviting us under their umbrellas and wondering about the bunch of gringos …they were all the protagonists on the screen! We could see moving images of the neighbors going about their lives and being interviewed about their street, their neighborhoods, their city. CiudadArteria is a series of ten 24 minutes video-documentaries about everyday life in Barranquilla. Each documentary is then taken and projected on big screens on plazas, streets, and parks. The protagonists of the documentary, their families, friends, and neighbors, are then invited to see the screening, for free, and in the heart of a party of drums, music, dance, and performance. Their everyday lives, and the life of the city becomes something to be celebrated. The city looks at itself, as if a huge mirror suddently had become available for all to see themselves. I cannot stop thinking about the scene in Carlos Fuentes’ Old Gringo and how I wrote about it in my own book:

In Carlos Fuentes' (1986) novel Gringo Viejo, Arroyo, the Mexican revolutionary general, leads his people to attack the hacienda owned by the Mirandas, one of the regions' affluent families. Arroyo's people charge against the hacienda's compound, destroying and burning every building, demolishing the walls that housed their experiences of exploitation and domination. However, the revolutionaries leave one building standing: the hacienda's ballroom with its mirrored walls. Thanks to the revolution, they gain access to the ballroom and once inside, they stand in front of one of the mirrored walls and look at themselves for the first time. Fuentes (1986) describes this primordial moment: “Paralyzed by their own images, by the full-length reflection of their being, by the wholeness of their bodies. They turned slowly, as if to make sure this was not another illusion” (39).

Fuentes' words capture the magnitude of a community's experience of seeing itself for the first time. Here, the Mexican revolution allowed this peasant community to gain access to a medium previously denied, the mirrored walls. Thanks to this newly conquered medium, the community accessed an image of itself. The process of acquiring a new self-image brings with it yet deeper transformations; once these men, women, and children have seen themselves in the mirror, their notion of self, of who they are, of what they can accomplish, and how far they can go, will never be the same. (Fissures in the Mediascape by Clemencia Rodriguez)

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that communities need to be able to see themselves, in order to find out who they are, and where they want to go. Notions of empowerment, participation, taking-control-over-one’s-destiny do not make sense unless the community has a clear sense of who they are, a self-image. And that is exactly what CiudadArteria is providing for the citizens of Barranquilla.

CiudadArteria is a project developed by a group of communication undergraduate students and their professor Jair Vega, at Universidad del Norte. The students raise the necessary funds, interview people, produce the documentaries, organize the screenings, and then go on onto the city portrait.