At midday in the summer, Avenida Oriental — a central boulevard in Medellín — is usually congested in both directions. The sidewalks are crowded with street vendors, hawking food and clothing. Amidst the heat, drivers and pedestrians seek shade under the trees that form three long rows along the sides and down the center of this avenue, which is one of the main streets in the downtown core.
Colombia’s left took to the streets on Wednesday against President Abelardo de la Espriella and fared better than expected. Despite doubts about its ability to mobilize people, fears of police repression stoked by the president himself, the threat of rain and the fact that the protest fell on a weekday, thousands of Colombians demonstrated peacefully for hours. The marches, seen in the country’s main cities, were the first test of the ability of a battered left to mobilize the grassroots after losing power to a right-wing outsider allied openly with the United States and who embodies everything that progressives abhor.
Twenty-three children make their way to school with their eyes glued to the murky water of the Nare River to see if they can see the hippopotamus. The school route has become a kind of safari with the kids scanning the horizon. Everyone in the municipality has a story to tell about the hippopotamus; that his feces scare away the fish, that he eats the banana crops, that his footprints are the size of three palms, that he will capsize a canoe... The Puerto Nare hippopotamus is all that’s talked about here. For Luis and his brother Diego, he is not a stranger. They call him Selmo. Their mother shakes her head and asks them not to get too attached because the judge has allowed just 60 days for the hippo to be removed from the vicinity.
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