Colombia (Lonely Planet, 5th Edition) - Jens Porup [23]
García Márquez seemed to be tying up his career when he published the first volume of his memoirs, Living to Tell the Tale, in 2002, but didn’t fail to surprise when he came back in 2004, at the age of 76, with yet another novel Memories of My Melancholy Whores, the story of a dying old man who falls in love with an adolescent girl who sells her virginity to support her family.
In May 2008 he announced that he had finished a new novel, a ‘novel of love.’ The title had not been announced as we went to press.
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Television
The telenovela, incomprehensible to many English-speakers, with its over-the-top acting and convoluted soap-opera–style plots, dominates the airwaves in Colombia. Sitcoms and hour-long dramas are sometimes introduced, but they inevitably wind up turning into telenovelas, or disappearing. Telenovelas tend to only run a year or two. Channels Caracol and RCN battle it out for the top telenovelas in the country.
The Colombian media enjoy a high level of freedom of the press, and hard-hitting news shows and exposés are popular. The longest-running shows are El Mundo Según Pirry, Septima Día and La Noche.
Colombians, as a rule, have little interest in television shows from the United States, either dubbed or subtitled; your joking reference to Friends or Seinfeld is likely to get no more than a blank stare. Local versions of syndicated reality shows are popular though, including Factor X, the Colombian version of American Idol, and Cambio Extremo, the local incarnation of Extreme Makeover, the plastic surgery extravaganza.
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Cinema
Colombian cinema is preoccupied with the country’s dark side – the ongoing civil war that continues to rage in the jungle, and the ever-present temptations of easy money in the drug business.
The most internationally famous of recent Colombian films, Maria, Llena Eres de Gracia (Maria Full of Grace, 2004), a Colombian-US coproduction, is about a pregnant 17-year-old flower-industry employee who leaves her small-town existence to smuggle heroin into the US as a mule. Catalina Sandino Moreno was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the film.
Soñar No Cuesta Nada (Dreaming Costs Nothing, 2006) tells the story of a group of soldiers who discover a cache of millions of dollars hidden by the FARC in the jungle. Based on a true story, it chronicles their attempt to keep the money and their ultimate capture.
Colombia’s most filmed city is Cartagena. The English-language adaptation of Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera (2007) is the most recent movie filmed in this highly photogenic city.
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Architecture
Colombia has some lovely colonial architecture. Cartagena is the real highlight here – the old walled city Click here boasts tiled roofs, pleasantly worn balconies and flower-filled courtyards along twisting, narrow streets. Villa de Leyva and Popayán Click here are also famous for their old-world charm.
Bogotá is home to a few well-preserved examples of 17th-century mannerist-baroque structures known as arquitectura santafereña, including the Capilla del Sagrario and the Casa del Marqués de San Jorge.
The Spanish Empire left a legacy of many colonial churches and convents. In the early days these were generally small and modest, but later tended to reach monumental dimensions. Unlike in Mexico or Peru, colonial churches in Colombia have rather austere exteriors, but their interiors are usually richly decorated. Cali