Periodista Means Journalist

 Let's start with Platypus

 

                Working from The Pocket Guide of Colombian Hostels, I find that the Casa Platypus is a good place to sleep in Bogota. Bogota is a great big city and the capital of Colombia. The Casa Platypus is a hostel. A hostel is a kind of hotel designed for foreign travelers. It is often a place to get useful information and to have a chance for finding someone who speaks a language you know. The personnel and proprietors these hostels are often welcoming to people from far off lands. You may expect those of the Casa Platypus to be like that.

                The colonial(or republican) style building of the Casa Platypus overlooks a plaza called Parque de las Periodistas.

                "Periodista" can be translated as "Journalist." I find journalists to be an interesting breed which has not quite died out. "Died out" may not quite be the best way to put it. World-wide, journalists see to often to be killed before the can die a natural death."  Assassinate" seems the more honest word.

                Journalists around the world are being assassinated for doing what they can to inform us honestly. They would like to tell us the truth about what they see going on around us. They used to find out about goings on, happenings, and doings, far and wide as well as those close to home. They used to be able to tell us about them without, so often, having to gamble their lives to do so. Today their odds are worse then ever.

                Journalists have carried on their craft for 300 years or so. Some of them are still trying to inform us about that which is going on. However, we have been killing, jailing, imprisoning them, and hiring fewer of them per capita for decades. So now we have fewer of them and they have fewer employers. I remember, as a boy scout, being taught that "honesty is the best policy." Now for our lack of responsibility, or even interest, honesty has become a death sentence for an honest journalist. What are we to tell our children and youth? Is our answer, "nothing?" Shall we say that raising our children in ignorance is for the best? (ignorance of what?)

                Rather than getting the backstory, we get now story at all. Unless it be the watered down fairy-tales some us have come to prefer. We have yet to get from the WWW that which we we had from a widely varied free press.

                There are "Parques de las Periodistas" in other Colombian cities. I know of such a Parque in, the capital city of Antioquia, Medellin.

                This park in the in the Candelaria section of Bogota has been dedicated to a good and careful journalist whom you man know as a famous modern novelist. That novelist is Gabriel Garcia Marques. He is an admirer of those who still practice journalism and has backed up his admiration with solid support.

                In Colombia one finds a good place to sleep and a little backstory.

                Thank you for reading.


                                                                        RCS