COLOMBIA: Bogota Beggars

Like an efficient hostess, Colombia is preparing well ahead of time for the ninth Pan American Conference, scheduled tentatively for December. A primary move has been to rid Bogotá’s streets of beggars, which last week were strangely free of the lame and the halt—result of a preconference roundup of 300.

Bogotá beggars are efficient, too. They avoid jurisdictional disputes by an agreement allotting favorite spots (church doors, hotels, markets), have a system of renting children to childless professionals.

Their hero, the late El Chivas (by legend a university student who, disappointed in love, took to drink) made a living by merely staring soulfully at the sky, holding out his hand, never saying a word.

But Bogotá’s beggars have yet to reach the imaginative heights of the Chilean beggar who carried a closed coffin on his shoulders through Santiago streets, asking alms to bury his dead child. Prying police found pesos in his pockets, no corpse in the coffin.