History

Three and a half centuries after Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada founded Bogotá, the Spanish writer Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo referred to the city as "The Athens of South America." Needless to say, Quesada's intention was not precisely to reproduce ancient Greece in the New World. Like his fellow Spanish conquistadors, he arrived in search of riches. Although he returned home without finding El Dorado, the city he founded eventually became famous for precisely the reasons he stood out himself. Jimenez de Quesada was no violent man; he was a law graduate, a writer, and one might even say, a poet.

When Quesada landed in 1538, he immediately understood he was on good land. Impressed by the savannah, with its rivers protected by enormous hills, he immediately decided this would be the site for the city. Not even the difficulties in building at such altitude and such distance from the sea could dissuade him. Thus, on August 6, 1538, Santa Fe was founded on the West Range of the Andes, at 2640 meters (8661 feet) above sea level, 700 kilometers (435 miles) from the Atlantic Ocean and 370 kilometers (230 miles) from the Pacific. The city was named after Santa Fe in Granada, Spain, where Quesada was from. Soon after "de Bogotá" was added to the name, after "Bacatá," the name the natives gave to the place. In 1819 it became simply "Bogotá."

Santa Fe did not remain a quiet place for long, at first because seekers of El Dorado came and went incessantly and later because the city remained almost ungoverned. The city changed hands, from Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic) to Lima (the capital of the viceroyalty of Peru) in 1550. The great distances between Nueva Granada (as Colombia was then known) and the centers of power in Hispanic America meant that the local governors worked more or less independently and at times anarchically.

For this reason, a new viceroyalty was established in Santa Fe in 1739. Thus began the cultural flourishing of the city, which reached its height toward the end of the 18th Century, with the Ilustración Granadina or, Granadan Enlightenment. Figures appeared such as Celestino Mutis, who taught Newtonian physics and founded the Jardín Botánico and the Observatorio Astronómico, and Antonio Nariño, precursor of Colombia's independence.

Santa Fe was the cradle of the independence movements. The first insurrection took place on July 20, 1810, the first step toward New Granada's independence. The revolutionaries won a brief independence in 1813, but Santa Fe fell under Spanish rule once again in 1816. The following period of terror finally ended on the August 7, 1816, with Simón Bolívar's triumph in the Battle of Boyacá. Bolívar's plans included making Santa Fe the capital of Gran Colombia, a confederation of states that stretched over most of the continent. But Bolívar's dream was never realized, and the city assumed the more modest role as capital of the Republic of New Granada, which was renamed Colombia in the second half of the 19th Century.

After independence, Bogotá became Colombia's historical as well as geographical center, witnessing further fights and battles. Civil wars toward the end of the 19th Century between federalists and centralists would feed later disputes between the Liberal and Conservative parties. During this period the ambiguous feelings toward everything Spanish became palpable, feelings that moved between familiarity and resentment, between a desire to imitate and a desire to break with Spain. Examples of colonial architecture can still be seen in areas such as La Candelaria. At the beginning of the 20th Century, however, several French-style palaces were built nearby. This was the Republican period, by which point the population of the city had reached 100,000. A new cultural flourishing could be seen in the streets, driven by the creation of universities, and a traditional Bogotá character began to develop: men dressed in black gathering to drink coffee and speak about politics and other issues. The streetcar appeared at the same time, and gaps between social classes widened as more people immigrated to the city from the countryside.

Bogotá's cold and drizzle also started to gain a reputation. Bogota's history is, one might say, rather wet. The legend says the mythical Bochica separated two stones to empty the lake that covered the savannah, thus preparing the territory for Jimenez de Quesada to build the city many, many years later. During the Republican period it wasn't the lakes, but the rain which gave the people of Bogotá their identity. While the architecture started acquiring a Parisian feel, the people started looking more and more like Londoners. Historians have written about the rain in Bogotá on many occasions. For a long time, at certain hours of the afternoon, Bogota became a river of umbrellas. However, although it is still rainy and cold, the capital has lost much of this image. Increases in population and pollution have raised the temperature here as in other places.

Modernity arrived in Bogotá thanks to violence. On the April 9, 1948, Colombia's 20th century history was split in two. It all started in the capital, with the murder of the political leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, a liberal loved by the people and despised by the governing class. The people took to the streets, raided the shops, and burnt the churches and official buildings. Until that day, the city of 400,000 people had withstood many earthquakes. But the "Bogotazo," as this event is known, left behind a ruined city. That was the end of the streetcar and of the city's aspirations to be like London or Paris. From that time on, the North American influence became clear. The first modern buildings went up, and twenty years later, the first skyscrapers and shopping centers appeared. Migration from the provinces continued, and the contrasts between the rich North and the poor South became even more striking.

Recent local governments have concentrated on bringing people back to the city center and improving a transportation system that takes nine million citizens to and from their destinations every day. At the moment, the underground is being extended; new transport systems are being established; and roads are being built.

Bogotá is a city in which energy and chaos, insecurity and emotion, violence and creativity come together. It is certainly not a quiet place, but then one would never call it boring either. Those who enjoy Bogotá find a strange fascination in its chaos. The city is full of contrasts: gray by day, colorful by night, surrounded by green mountains protecting the vast valley, sunshine announcing rain, professional beggars, abject poverty next to modern shopping centers, and a true synthesis of classes, styles and regions. People sip coffee waiting for the rain to stop. At once, modern, classical and primitive, Bogotá is a unique city.

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