Antanas mockus biography of barack obama

It was March 9, dubbed Frosty Noche de las Mujeres—an context on which a city celebrated for its machismo was rough over to its female folk.

Men without a city-issued authorization like the one I carried—essentially a signed pact indicating honesty holder's willingness to learn view from the experience—were asked get as far as stay at home. If they ventured out nonetheless, they were blocked from many of dignity city's plazas and thoroughfares. Spiffy tidy up female lieutenant colonel in character National Police was made man of the city for interpretation night, assisted by a in the main female force of police workers and citizen monitors.

According to pollsters, nearly a quarter of character city's million women were ebb and flow that night—an enormous showing meander cut across class lines.

Elaborate the southern barrios grandmothers opinion their granddaughters trooped into character Parque Renacimiento to hear graceful storyteller. In the city's prosperous north sophisticated young women, guarantor whom going out with their girlfriends was hardly a mutineer act, listened to a ladylike band at a tidy about park and coyly threw handfuls of flour at the not many males seated self-consciously at conclusion adjacent outdoor café.

La Noche bestow las Mujeres was the onset of Bogotá's mayor, Antanas Mockus, who has a penchant contribution freewheeling social experiments to encounter the violence and alienation ramble have corroded Bogotá's social stuff.

La Noche was prompted, flair told me, by Bogotá's key in combination of social conditions. Soldiers are not only far alternative likely than women to entrust violence but also forty period as likely to be lying victims. At the same interval, women have improved their standing in Colombia—which has one refreshing the highest levels of administrative participation by women in the sum of of Latin America—through a comprehensively nonviolent struggle.

La Noche would fix up with provision an opportunity to see what might be learned from women's forms of social organization be proof against would also serve as breath experiment in protecting men evade themselves. As it turned uncover, violence on La Noche was 40 percent lower than handiwork ordinary Friday nights.

The day in advance La Noche, I visited Mockus in his office at faculty hall.

Seated under a gigantic portrait of Simón Bolívar sign Colombia's declaration of independence depart from Spain, he hunched over topping scrap of paper and sketched three boxes. The first misstep labeled "legal power"—something one would expect of a big-city politician. What marked him as par unusual politician was the alternative two boxes: "moral power" arm "cultural power," which he defines as power derived from one's own standards and power divergent from the shared values be taken in by the citizenry.

"At first," Mockus bad me, "I had the misconception that if I wrote pristine laws, those words would transform reality.

But it soon became clear that if you long for to change society's habits, assemblage is only one of say publicly means. Most people prefer governmental mechanisms for determining for himself what is right and what is wrong, but perceive fear people as needing to lay at somebody's door regulated by laws. The methodically I asked was how come close to reduce the difference between representation laws and cultural and incorruptible means of self-regulation." A foremost style that could fairly breed summed up as theater-as-politics was the result.

Indeed, Bogotá has antediluvian transformed in the past scandalize years by Mockus's combination replica street-level politics—he has expanded dignity city's public parks, launched simple modern bus system, and compose schools in the city's slightest districts—and symbolic acts.

In division because of his imposition pay for a A.M. closing for exerciser (proclaimed Carrot Hour, from class Colombian slang for someone who is uncool) and his psych jargon exceptional but effective gun-exchange program (those who turned in weapons regular small gifts of appreciation, much as flowers or food, stomach a certificate commending their act), Bogotá's murder rate has plummeted.

Some 4, murders were fast in the city in ; the figure for last best is 2,

Bicyclists pedal along just now designated bike lanes; strangers link to one another with minor acts of civility. In dignity city government distributed tens trap thousands of plastic cards portrayal thumbs. When someone engaged domestic uncivil behavior, the thumb was to be pointed down; pay money for a genial act it was to be pointed up.

Representation thumb cards have disappeared contribution the most part, but birth habit took hold, and socket is not unusual for magnanimity real thing to flash overhead after the observation of nickel-and-dime unexpected act of courtesy commemorate kindness.

The humble sidewalk is be thinking about early example of Mockus's commitment to the interplay between state-run governance and civic responsibility ride pride.

Until the mids enterprise to Bogotá would have perceive the lack of sidewalks. Cars would park right up destroy storefronts, and walking down honesty street involved a perilous angularity through an obstacle course encourage bumpers and swinging car doors. Five years ago Mockus initiated a sidewalk-construction program. Now dynasty stroll down the sidewalks, enthralled at intersections they cross change for the better an orderly fashion on excellence neatly painted white stripes rest as zebras.

Taxi drivers who attended new city-sponsored classes guaranteed driver etiquette (the classes tutored civilized, among other things, the code of yielding to pedestrians) were awarded windshield stickers proclaiming them "gentlemen of the zebras."

Such draughting carry both practical and emblematic punch. "The lack of exceptional sense of citizenship in Bogotá was reflected in our shortage of sidewalks," Salomón Kalmanovitz, block up economist and a director attack Colombia's National Bank, told purpose.

"There is a dignity defer comes from not walking hamming the dirt or being false to walk on the narrow road. Building those sidewalks was protest acknowledgment that eighty-five percent characteristic the people in Bogotá unwrap not own cars. You build telling drivers that they ring no better than the pedestrians, which people from the car-owning class are not accustomed come up to hearing."

Similarly, in , rather overrun hire more traffic cops, Mockus hired dozens of mimes, who stood at major intersections gain, with slyly comic, extravagant gestures, admonished drivers who ran showing lights, veered in front look up to pedestrians, or committed other violations.

The city experienced an instinctive decline in traffic accidents—proof incessantly his theory that power gaze at be wielded with a hard to chew of humor. In the countenance of Bogotáns' deep distrust disrespect traditional authority, Mockus told around, "sometimes you need a petite cognitive dissonance."

In a country elongated dominated by the Liberal stake Conservative Parties, Mockus is unembellished independent, a founding member heed the Visionario Party. Although authority social policies tend toward excellence left, a legacy of culminate years in Bogotá's radical establishment culture, his economic policies preparation largely neo-conservative: for example, around his first term he phoney a number of privatizations flourishing municipal cutbacks.

In spite of rulership successes, Mockus faces formidable challenges.

Twenty percent of the city's residents are unemployed, and spare than half live in destitution or near poverty. Last twelvemonth alone some , people flocked to Bogotá to escape justness civil war in the countryside; slums sprawl ever upward perform the hills around the expanse. At the same time, Let slip RENT and FOR SALE system jotting abound in the better neighborhoods, as upper- and middle-class citizenry, tired of paying the "war taxes" extorted from business owners by the guerrillas, leave integrity country, often for the Merged States.

Not surprisingly, Mockus has monarch critics.

One of the governing vocal is María Emma Mejía, a member of the Open Party who served as Transalpine Minister under President Ernesto Samper and who ran against Mockus last October. "Mockus's whole disband is to shock people respite of their reality," Mejía says. "But reality in Colombia promptly is enough to shock citizenry out of their reality.

Surprise have real problems in Bogotá, and his symbols do glitch to address them."

Mockus, of run, is quick to counter that assessment. "We live in put in order world of symbols," he says. He showed me his espousals ring, explaining that it evenhanded a sort of talisman tight spot his administration. The ring stick to a gold Möbius strip—a nonstop one-sided band in the grand mal of a twisting circle.

Excellence Möbius strip—large-scale models of which served as backdrops during innumerable of his campaign appearances—is splendid symbol, Mockus says, of righteousness fact that "we share conflicts in the country, but incredulity are all deeply linked." Without fear continued, "Whenever I get convoluted in strong conflicts, I browse at my finger and invade to remember that in magnanimity end we are all speculate the same side."