Colombia´s capital and largest city, Bogotá, registered 1344 murders in 2014.  Toronto, Canada´s largest city and sometimes prone to mistake itself as the nation´s capital, counted 57 homicides during the same twelve moons.  Demographically speaking, Toronto reaches the knees or at most the waist of Bogotá. The latter has at least double if not triple the number of citizens as the former.  But tripling Toronto´s murders would not even yield a tenth of Bogotá´s.  In terms of violent crime, Toronto stands at ankle height beside her southern sister.  This nearly slapstick discrepancy in stature keeps smacking me with the insistent question: “what gives?”

To add to the absurdity of the comparison, between 82 and 92% of Bogotanos claim to be Catholic whereas only 34% of Torontonians profess the faith.  So what gives?  In a country where every other woman bears the name of the Virgin Mother and it is a daily occurrence to bump into men called Jesus, why is killing each other second only to soccer as the national sport?  

My musings on this question grow increasingly bemused with every Colombian I meet.  It would not be a caricature to paint the Colombia´s national character as amiable, warm and extremely hospitable.  Even in big, bad Bogotá people are much more apt to swap friendly salutations than in Toronto, the Good and the Mute.  People love to get together and shoot the breeze, even if it´s only to bellyache about the weather.  Complaining about the “cold” (a nocturnal 10 degrees Celsius) is the inexhaustible fount of Bogotano conversation, because every single day of the year is pretty much identical climatically.   

So what gives?  An overwhelming Catholic, personable majority struggling like a sweaty sleeper tied up in sheets and nightmares  to free itself from an extended legacy of terrific violence.  And it is not at all clear that this sleeper, who says very nice things while sleeping and even very kindly serves you coffee and crackers somnambulating, is able soon to wake up.   Colombian Jesuits whose opinion I trust sadly suspect that violence has become so habitual to their compatriots that any peace accord signed in Havana, Cuba will likely hit the rocks, not due to a lack of political will, but rather owing to a want of public practice. 

Colombia is thus in limbo.  Or perhaps, more accurately, its position is eschatological, in the already not yet.  The already is a remarkably congenial people capable of great familial and communal solidarity.  A people that rightly contrasts the anxious individualism of North America with its own sociable joie de vie.  A people very humane in their happy manner of being together and that generally has not suffered the misfortune of learning that time is money. 

The not yet is the more mysterious.  Be it the long shadow of colonialism or the short run of narco-trafficking, the country seems enslaved to a power not its own.  Despite the popular plea for peace and stability, the homicides and as nearly a murderous pessimism keep the population in a tortuous armlock applied by a terrible, invisible hand.   

Living in Colombia I too find myself inhabiting another already not yet.  I read the statistics, watch the news and hear the stories of ubiquitous hold-ups.  But my personal experience contradicts all of this.  If meteorologically Bogotá is always cool and rainy, experientially I have only lived sunshine and warmth here.  I have only been victim to astounding generosity.  For this reason, lacking all empirical evidence, I cannot quite come to believe the bloody violence that supposedly surrounds me.  It strikes me only as unproven theory.  In praxis my Colombia is extremely homey.

Hopefully the not yet of my inexperience will never come to pass.  So long as this not yet remains practically unreal for me, I´ll hold on to my foreigner´s optimism for Colombia.   Given all the fine people I know here, they´ll have to knock this optimism out of me.