Colombian Citizen.

Universidad del Quindio Iván Darío Vásquez Feijo Audio-Oral Class Professor Julián Caballero

THE STIGMA OF BEING A COLOMBIAN CITIZEN

COLOMBIAN HISTORY It’s not a lie that Colombia has such a great recognition or a huge fame due to drug business and that’s why it’s called the cocaine capital and one of the most dangerous countries around the world. Colombia has been a country with several problems since 1948.

That date could be the starting point of the violence in the country and it took two main characters which are the most relevant political parties now days. On the one hand, we have the Liberal Party and on the other one, we have the conservative party. Both of these parties have been fighting to get the control of the whole country, and as a consequence of that, the violence was brought. Even if that was not a civil war, it was characterized as extremely violent, including murder, assault, harassment, destruction of private property and terrorism by the alignment politic. After that, the murder of Jorge Eliecér Gaitán who was a presidential candidate from liberal Party, triggered an event that was

ary R e v o l u tf ioor nc e s o f armed ia C o l o m b) (FARC ed under a p p e a rw e r o f a the po alled man c Antonio Pedro (also Marín known l as Manue nda or Marula ).

Tirofijo

called the “Bogotazo” that was a violence reaction of revenge by Gaitán death

Deep Discrimination I n Venezuela there has always been a suspicion in regards to the Colombian people who arrived in that country in times of economic prosperity, the government of Venezuela also blames Colombians for the shortage situation that is hitting the Bolivarian Republic. Another country is Chile; many of our fellow citizens from Buenaventura have to face several insults like “Simios Culiaos” or “Colombianos conchaetumadre”. Even in Peru, some authorities attribute the increase of sexually transmitted diseases to Colombian prostitutes.

It is clear the image that the whole world has about Colombian people due to the violence over the years is not the kindest one.

We are such a bad society and it’s normal to hear comments about cocaine and Pablo Escobar. Without going so far, a kind of discrimination has been developed over the Colombian people in neighbor countries.

Anti-Colombianism

-Panama -Venezuela -Argenitina -Chile.

COLOMBIAN CULTURE

First of all, the Colombian culture plys an important role in all this issue of being criminal and rogue people, maybe it sounds rude coming from a Colombian citizen but it might be mentioned.

This not pretends to blame the whole culture, but from the legacy that was left by the colonial era, many Spanish conquerors and some illustrated people gave us a very bad “habit” when they stole our treasures..

MALICIA INDIGENA This probably could be the worse philosophy but it makes sense when we are referring the most common phrase between Colombian people which is (Spanish= Malicia Indigena). A Colombian is a person who is entrepreneur and he always wants to stay one step ahead, but the real question is how much must he stay ahead over the other people? This could be defined as a stupid competition which consists on getting a target even if we don’t care about other’s integrity.

Antes de aprender a caminar, un niño colombiano aprende a repetir que "por la plata baila el perro"

“the TV business is not understood by people from other countries as we do here” and this is probably a double-edged sword.

TOLERANT SOCIETY

people should not be made to pay for the sins of others.