It’s strange to consider that the Colombian city of Leticia connects overland to the Peruvian capital of Lima by road and river, but to reach its own capital in Bogota a flight is necessary; just as it was in 1952 and for Ernesto Guevara & Alberto Granado on their journey through the Americas.
In a playfully grandiose but deadly serious speech, on his 24th birthday, volunteering as a doctor in a remote Amazon leprosy colony not far from where the above photo was taken, Guevara declared the borders of Latin America a fiction. Nowhere does that feel more apparent than in the Amazon, where an eternity of jungle and trees creates its own place very much distinct from any line-drawing of the colonial period and the end of it.
My updates have thinned-out for a number of reasons, some forced and others chosen, and that I shan’t trouble to fully recount here. My own bicycle I have left in Lima, resolving that it wasn’t worth having that bicycle with me for a few hundred remaining kilometres of asphalt to the small Peruvian river city of Pucallpa. Thereafter — as it was for Guevara — I knew my travel would consist of boats into the roadless Amazon, and flights out of it. One would expect that not cycling a hundred kilometres a day would free-up more time for writing, but perhaps the opposite has been true; losing the rhythms of a day on the bike has taken with it perhaps some of my writing rhythm, or at least the rhythm of external communication that I’d formed across months on the road.
Events in Palestine continue to weigh heavy on the journey, oppressing our every aspiration for humanity, and with it the purpose that literature and writing has always held in human society. The genocide-enablers of the US and European governments, and their continuing lies and distortion of the English language on behalf of the Israeli genocide in Palestine, can also have the toxic effect of rendering an alphabet and its words meaningless, and fulfilling their intention of spreading cynicism and despair.
The main reason to continue persevering, to demanding truth over lies, is the bravery, eloquence and determination with which Palestinians are continuing to do just that. It is, moreover, a reality that everything will worsen for everyone unless we demand honesty in official communication, and are able to insist on a world in which words hold meaning.
This is very much the approach I am taking to my writing on the road, and I do frequently still feel inspired by that work, but it has been hard to find space to also write here. Offline, I continue to go about the task of reforming a year of notepads into a coherent manuscript ready for the submission that will eventually find its way to you as a book: The Cycle Diaries.
The boats I took into the Amazon —entirely disconnected from the world outside of my river view floating by for days on end—gave ample time for reflection on all of this and more.
Those boats took me to Colombia, which I should say proved to be one of the most inspiring and hopeful countries in this trip. After electing their first ever socialist (or even left-leaning) President, in the form of Gustavo Petro, Colombia is now setting about pension and labour reforms, and Petro has also steered Colombia towards the forefront of the global movement for Palestine. Having rightly and boldly said that Palestine is humanity, and Palestine will not die because humanity cannot die, Petro walked-the-walk to accompany his talk, and Colombia has ceased exporting coal to the Israelis (Colombia is one of the world’s largest coal producers, and the Israelis a significant importer).
It was striking not just to see the Bogota streets adorned with murals and graffiti in support of Palestine, but to know that sentiment on the streets is backed at governmental level. As the Israeli embassy this week closed in Ireland, it is clear that it is precisely this meeting of popular sentiment and government policy that is the goal, and that must be demanded of the corrupted, counterfeit politicians who currently lead most all of the North American and European states.
The pleasant surprise at Petro’s conviction this last year has been all the more heartening because I am in Latin America to research the myth or truth of the so-called “Pink Tide”; Latin American countries that have been said to be turning leftwards, even if not the full red of communism. While Lula in Brazil is regarded as becoming more friendly with the US than was previously the case, and Gabriel Boric in Chile is regarded by most I spoke with as disappointing, Petro continues to inspire a degree of hope, and it’s regrettable that he has not yet captured the political imagination or consciousness of Europe and North America (precisely, one might speculate, because he seems far more likely to be the real deal).
I have very little travel more left ahead of me, and in all honesty little energy left for more of it either! This route through Latin America has covered some 10,000km; a number that always sounded about right, even if I wasn’t sure of its accuracy. I now add to it some thousands of kilometres by boat, and I am consistently stunned at how much information I have taken in and how much I think I might have learned, even if both things have the effect of prompting more questions as much as any certainty.
I know that my road ends in Mexico City, where a socialist government, much like Colombia, continues to arouse the ire of western politicians and media, while disaffected USians, particularly the young, now reverse longstanding migratory trends in seeking out a better life in Mexico, rather than the US.
I’m looking forward to sitting down more consistently with my writing again, seeing what form these changes are leaving in Mexico, and will let you know what I find out.
Until then, I wish everyone a good end to the year, and a good start to the next one.
Thanks as always for reading, supporting, and for the patience with this most recent update from the road.
Great to read you again Julian, I was missing your updates! Take care