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...how Bogota's ex-mayor organised street performances, set up a hotline and more
By Anastasia Moloney
When Antanas Mockus was mayor of Bogota, he went around the capital dressed in a spandex, Superman-type suit urging residents to become “super citizens.”
To shame jaywalkers and pickpockets, he sent 420 mime artists into the streets to walk behind them and mimic their actions. And he gave motorists cards with a thumbs-down sign that they could hold up, like soccer referees, to signal another driver had committed a driving offence.
Mockus, who was also formerly a presidential candidate, believed it was worse for a Colombian to be humiliated in public than to pay a fine.
He also launched “Women's Night” and asked the capital’s men to stay home in the evening and look after their children. Some 700,000 women went out to free, open-air concerts put on for them.
Twice elected as mayor of Bogota – in 1995 and later in 2001 – he made the capital city safer. The capital’s murder rate declined, as did the number of traffic accidents.
These days, Mockus is famous for applying his novel initiatives to tackle high levels of domestic violence in the country.
In 2011, 43,000 women reported being beaten by their partners, according to Colombia's National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences.
And from January to October this year, there were 34,855 reported incidents of women being subjected to domestic violence by their partners. During the same period, 932 women were killed in Colombia, some a result of violence in the home.
However, in the oil-producing city of Barrancabermeja, in Colombia’s central-northern Santander province, figures showed the number of domestic violence cases reported dipped the year after Mockus initiated a campaign there.
TACKLING JEALOUSY
Under the banner “Without jealousy, there’s love,” the campaign initiated in 2009, and sponsored by Colombia’s state-owned oil company Ecopetrol, set out to prevent domestic violence in the city where incidences were three times higher than the national average.
From April to December of 2009, 1,071 cases of domestic violence were reported in the city of Barrancabermeja. During the same period in 2010 that figure had fallen to 838, according to the official website of CorpoVisionarios, a think tank founded by Mockus that is overseeing his campaign against domestic violence.
Mockus plans to next year roll out the initiative to another 10 municipalities and five cities across the country, including the tourist resort town of Cartagena.
So how has he tackled the problem in Barrancabermeja?
Several years ago when Mockus set about analysing the root causes of domestic violence, he came to the conclusion that jealousy was often the main reason why men beat up their wives and girlfriends.
As such, he decided the best way to tackle domestic violence was to help men deal with jealousy, and perceived or real infidelity.
“We decided to work with the perpetrators of violence, something that’s not so common in Colombia, in a country where traditionally efforts to combat domestic violence have focused on caring for the victims. When jealousy affects mental health, the aggressors act like addicts,” Mockus told Colombia’s El Espectador newspaper in a recent interview.
In Barrancabermeja he set up a hotline, “Jealous Persons Anonymous,” through which psychologists and therapists provided counselling to victims. The hotline helped callers control their jealous rages and people talk through problems in their relationship.
During its first 20 months, the call centre received over 2,000 calls from local residents.
Mockus also introduced short performances into the city’s streets and public squares. Actors would pretend they were a couple having an argument that ended up with a man hitting a woman. The actors would then talk to the people who watched the play about why they didn’t do anything and what they should do to help.
In addition, he organised the distribution of whistles to residents in the city. They were asked to blow their whistles three times if they witnessed violence in the home or in the street, and if they heard a whistle to respond by blowing on their whistle. More noise creates more public action and response, Mockus argued.
Mockus’ team also worked with the local press to raise awareness about the city's high levels of domestic violence and the language being used by journalists when reporting on violence against women.
Mockus aims to change mindsets, and eventually behaviour, by community disapproval, peer pressure and combating apathy.
Critics of his eccentric ways may brush them aside as nothing but gimmicky antics.
But Mockus has shown it’s possible to break the taboo of domestic violence and get people to stop in the street and think about the problem.
At least in Barrancabermeja, the issue of domestic violence is now less of a private issue taking place behind closed doors, and more of a public issue that people are talking about.
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