An Afternoon on One of The most dangerous streets in Bogota
It is 4:30 in the afternoon of a cold Friday in Bogota. At any moment a strong downpour can be seen from the dark clouds that cover the streets of the Santa Fe neighborhood in the center of the city. However, for those who live, trade, prostitute, sexually exploit, work or steal in the area, that's the least of it. In these streets never stops the action, the movement and the crime.

Between Caracas Avenue and Carrera 16A and Calle 19 and 22, there is another one of the great drug outlets, arms sales and exploitation of minors in Bogotá. In the eyes of some patrols of the Police are made all kinds of illicit, but nothing happens. There the law of the strongest or the 'most airplane' prevails, as sex workers say.

A month ago, when part of the problem of the Bronx migrated to the platforms and houses of the neighborhood Santa Fe, also appeared men who call themselves 'paracos'. They intimidate good and bad by posing as self-defense groups, and even set up 'collection office'.


EL TIEMPO found how, in a three-story house located a few meters from the 22nd street with Caracas, drugs are sold at any time and to any number of clients. Someone on the other side of the door somehow identifies who can be opened and who does not. Others already appear to be fixed customers because they arrive in luxurious cars and light trucks. Someone attends directly without having to get out of the car. (In addition: In Colombia more synthetic drugs are consumed than cocaine)

The night is almost here and the movement in the street increases. The bodies of transvestites are barely covered by a transparent mesh. Some have curves and faces of models, but their voices give them away; To others, the street markings and hostile life they lead make them appear aggressive. They have to be in this area, but in truth its fragility is so great that it equals the desire to leave its eternal corner. They want to leave anyway, because they live in fear of ending some night with a knife in the face or in prison to defend themselves.

"I have not done anything, my friend. I had to eat what I have for the piece because I am from this morning with a red ... "claims Marycarmen while adjusting the long red hair. It does not look like a wig tied very well to her short blond hair and natural.

The asadero of the corner of the 22nd street is the escampadero and the desvare of all of them, of all of them. Mary, as the people on the block tell her, order a quarter of a chicken and a soda. And it will have to do the impossible to recover those 4,500 pesos, because each time "customers are more elusive and poorer," they say.

The reality is that the 'fee' is the most demeaning for a human being in exchange for the 'service' they must provide. "Nobody pays more than 15,000 pesos per service. It does not matter if it's a dirty old nasty, or the boys who sometimes come in cars, "says another transvestite. And those fifteen thousand are all inclusive! "So the question is: what is all inclusive? It would have been better not to ask ... (See also: Prostitution in figures)

In the midst of the sordidness that is lived in these streets, you can get oral sex from 5 thousand pesos, a 'handled' by the same number, and from there on what touches. "The need has dog face," adds Marycarmen. He finished eating the chicken that was his lunch, it will be his dinner and, surely, the breakfast of the next day.

But that, in fact, is what least concerns them. Because now the threat is not the lack of work, but who want to control it.
The 'sayayines'

Four men appear at the bottom of the street, two very young and two others in their 35s; They have the evil in their faces. Intimidate with just passing by. It is inevitable not to feel a deep fear because it is one thing to see them on television and another to have them less than two meters away. They observe all their interlocutors with anger; Among themselves there is not the slightest expression of camaraderie.

They pass continuously on the street, inspect everything with the eyes, especially the people they do not know. And in the last weeks they have been dedicated to make life impossible for transvestites; Several have already beaten them, forbid them to stand on certain doors and have threatened to 'sweep' them. Why is this happening? "They just tell us it's the 'parachute' order," says Mary.
These parachutes, who claim to work with the Gaitanian self-defense groups, entered to fight micro-trafficking, extortion and territorial control with the old gang of organized crime that controls much of the neighborhood. It is a family clan, but no one dares even give the nicknames of its members. The truth is that last week appeared the first dead, a man known as 'Pipo', who was hit by a hitman five shots. Several testimonies realize that, in addition to his outrages, he was responsible for collecting the daily quota of hallucinogens sold the night before.

And usually leave the 'row', since at that time the customers have not arrived, as you well know. They have written in the hand or on a sheet the relationship of the debtors.

A group of these criminals began as 'carts', messengers who deliver drugs and hide it when police arrive that have not been allowed to corrupt. To be 'sayayin' it is not enough to have a bad face or know how to kill.

Your feeling with business owners must be foolproof. This includes being able to be captured to get to the model prison and there adjust the business inside the seclusion, because one of the drug outlets that moves in the famous prison center is also coordinated from the Santa Fe neighborhood.

Exploitation of children

But perhaps the most perverse thing these men promote and manage in the area is the sexual exploitation of children.

On Caracas Avenue is fully identified the house where they take the minors and deliver them to the pedophiles (for them, good customers). (Also: Networks of sexual exploitation of children took three zones of Bogotá)

Indignation and rage. That's what it takes to see these little ones come into the place. Their ages range from nine to fourteen: they are almost resigned to their fate, but surely thinking that any weight they give them serves for the haircut, a bazooka or food the next day. (Read also: Story of a mother who saw her son transformed by the drug)

Some of these children were also born on the street. Their mothers, victims of drug addiction, sold their virginity in exchange for a few bazuco ballots. It seems almost impossible to save them from that hell, because it also seems that nobody cares; Only to those who exploit them and take advantage of them.

The 'sayayines' watch that men come and pay them; Then they will give children a share. They also take care of the 'clients' of thieves who inhabit the area, as well as the indigents who arrived displaced from the 'Bronx'. Who drives and coordinates the group is Yeison, who runs the streets on a motorcycle.

He decides who is charged and who does not, and says that "the merchandise (prostitutes) in his area is not touched," so he prefers to be a client of a neighboring business: the popular Pool.
Corruption in the corner

And what remains paradoxical is the complicity of some of those who have the mission of fighting these crimes: the police. About 6:30 pm arrives at the corner of 21st Street with a 16 motorized patrol. The grill has, strangely, a scarf that covers the number of the vest in the back. It is impossible to try to get a cell phone to capture the image. The 'sayayines' are lurking.

Corruption also stops at corners, such as women or transvestites. It shows your best smile and has many more customers. Insurance will not starve or sell as cheaply as they do.

The Metropolitan Police of Bogota has been doing a stealthy job in order to dismantle these networks; Those of the corrupt uniformed ones and those that distribute, as wholesalers, the drug for the center and north of the capital. But everything is a process.

The street is filled with darkness and it is better to seek shelter again in the asadero. The diners are this time a group of young girls. None is of legal age.

They are accompanied by three teenagers who have their eyebrows tattooed and shaved; It is difficult to understand their role because they look like their boyfriends, but doubts are cleared when a Renault Clio is parked in front of the restaurant. One of them exclaims that his uncle arrived, asked to be sponsored (paid his account) and got into the car. The driver kisses him in the mouth and they leave.

Each picture is more depressing than the previous one. The young girls tell how they did with the clients of the afternoon, but their accounts show that none of them reached more than 20,000 pesos. They will have to return to the piece they share in the Los Laches neighborhood without paying the rent. What they have left is to pay the quota that the 'paracos' now charge them for letting them work in the area.
This is the day, hour by hour of one of the hundreds of streets of Bogota where microtraffic, corruption and sexual exploitation make theirs in front of the immobile eyes of the authorities, in front of the unusual mutism of the same society.

City Hall continues to plan to finish pots

This quadrant of the neighborhood Santa Fe, in the center of Bogota, is one of the places (pots) that are in the sights of the District Administration. The truth is that there is not enough capacity (neither police nor judicial) to intervene at the same time, but will be given gradually in the coming months.

Bogota Security Secretary Daniel Mejía said that the city's criminal groups are now being rearranged after the coup in the Bronx. (In addition: Taking of pots in the center of Bogota: direct attack on the micro-traffic)

"To get to all the work that was done in the Bronx, we took some time and was preceded by other major shots. Now we continue to intervene in an integral way different sites. We did it in the surroundings of the school Agustín Nieto Caballero and, this week, in the Estanzuela. We will continue in other points, "added Mejía.