Rafael Uribe Uribe Existe (R.U.U.E.)

“Rafael Uribe Uribe Existe” (“R.U.U.E.”) is a photographic project, the conception of which emerges from the direct observation of a urban area located few miles south from Bogotá’s downtown, Rafael Uribe Uribe, which was named after an important Colombian liberal leader of the turn of the XIX and XX centuries).

Considering Rafael Uribe Uribe a suburb would be a mistake. It is actually bigger and has more population than many mid-sized European cities, taking in consideration that it represents only a fragment of the southern urban ring of Bogotá, which includes other cities such as San Cristóbal, Usme and Ciudad Bolívar.

This urban conglomerate spreads over plains and hills, being the latter ones where the living conditions are the worst, due to the poor quality of the self constructed housing made by the last people to arrive and, as well, due to the instability of the soil. Paradoxically, the proximity of these areas to the nearby mountains, a 11,000+ feet high range, belonging to the Andes chain, makes the air much more breathable than in any other location inside the metropolis, all this while one gets immersed in a pleasant quietness.

Even though these places already existed one hundred years ago, their population began to boom during the second half of the XXth century, as a result of a massive and uncontrolled migration of a Colombian post-rural social stratum. People, whose ancestors had lived for centuries in villages, were forced to flee in order to avoid finding themselves in the middle of a cross fire among the several forces that want to take control over the drug business: the corrupted army, the extreme right wing paramilitary and the extreme left wing guerrilla. A conflict that began in the XVIII century in the form of several bloodthirsty wars between the Liberals and the Conservatives.

This migration phenomena wouldn’t present many differences from, a priori, other similar rural to urban migration cases if it wasn’t because, in this case, there is a total lack of management by the Government, contributing to make these people completely feel to be on their own, being just few NGO’s those in charge of helping the ones who are in the biggest need of education or any other sort of assistance. Many locals struggle each day to find a way to survive, and many of them fall into felonies, contributing to raise the insecurity of the place.

One of the saddest consequences of this situation is that most of the habits and traditions that these people brought from the countryside are being forgotten, especially by the youngest ones, who see them as obstacles to their social aspirations. A people whose feeling of belonging is suffering a process of degenerative alienation, kicked off at the very moment they made contact with the Bogotan cultural maelstrom.

The first impression when first stepping on the site, is to be facing a very lively place, but full of contradictions. Contradictions that affect many aspects of the everyday life, being all of them very visually appealing to the eyes of a photographer.

From among these contradictions, for instance, one can outline the cohabitation of 2 aesthetics, a priori, opposite to one another: the aesthetics of the dominant construction systems used for the housing, result of constantly evolving methods of self construction, where the 30 x 20 cm clay brick and the corrugated plates are the main characters, and the calculated aesthetics of the clothing of the youngest ones which, by the way, live in those same houses. Clothes, that act as a set of codes that determine who’s who in the street jungle of the city.

One interesting thing about these two aesthetics is that while the providers of the former one can mostly be found on site, those of the latter one can only be found in Bogotá’s downtown, being this a key point to explain how many of the local youngsters want, in fact, get rid of the southern moods, leave the place, move few miles north and build up a new identity.

This situation makes the place act as a sort of unwanted and indefinite stop-over for many people. A reality that doesn’t contribute to help in the maintenance of their identity, being this point the most heartbreaking one to the eyes of the photographer because, once this transitional movement towards the “western” world will be over, the already agonizing identity of the people of Rafael Uribe Uribe, and all its nuances, will be lost forever.

Facing this probable outcome, it was considered mandatory to intervene in a way that could hinder this correlation of events, and reverse the situation. Taking in consideration that those cities of the world that have succeeded in keeping a certain amount of quality of life are actually those who have made efforts to protect the differences between the several communities living in them by enhancing interaction instead of, passively, letting them vanish.

The intervention had to bring the city of Rafael Uribe Uribe, and its internal dynamics, to a central point of debate, as a representative of many suburban structures of Latin American cities, and this could only be achieved by breaking the Aristotelian law of contraries, where two objects from different kinds “apparently” can’t coexist in the same subject.