Bogota’s Homemakers Go to Town for Evening

Enticed by the promise of salsa concerts, cheap cocktails and male strippers, the women of Bogota left the kids--and the men--at home Friday night.

In decreeing a “Night Without Men,” Bogota’s zany philosopher-mayor, Antanas Mockus, in effect turned over the Colombian capital to women for an evening of all-female frolicking, while asking the men to see to diapers and dirty dishes.

On a more sober note, Mockus said that both sexes should take advantage of the evening to reflect on women’s role in society.

“Here behind me is the scene of the signing of [Colombian] independence,” Mockus said from his downtown office, gesturing toward a regal oil painting featuring men in jodhpurs and vests. “There isn’t a single woman!” he exclaimed. “Let’s not forget half of humanity.”

Judging by Friday night’s festivities, however, Bogota’s demoiselles had a different kind of independence in mind.

Braving the night chill, women flocked to free open-air concerts, one by an all-female salsa band. They flooded into bars that were offering women-only drink specials and strolled down a central boulevard that had been converted into a pedestrian zone just for them.

Two clubs advertised male striptease acts in honor of the occasion.

“It’s spectacular!” said Ana Lucia Uribe, a 35-year-old mother of two, as she sipped an orange cocktail and watched a man in tight jeans gyrating on a platform nearby. “A lot of housewives can’t enjoy these places. It’s a chance to dress up and get out of your routine.”

To avoid legal challenges, Mayor Mockus stressed that the men’s curfew was strictly voluntary. Men who simply couldn’t bear to stay indoors during the six-hour restriction were asked to carry self-styled “safe conduct” passes explaining why they opposed it.

And those violating the norm didn’t risk any sanction, Mockus said with a smile--”other than the comments they will receive from women.”

And of course, some men couldn’t resist the temptation to venture out. Sitting on a bar stool in a cramped club Friday night, 22-year-old architect Juan Carlos Suarez held a cold beer, not a safe-conduct pass.

“I agree with Mockus’ doctrine, but it won’t work,” he said. “The one sex can’t live without the other. It’s against the laws of nature.”

Most of the men on the streets Friday appeared to be younger males who were out on the prowl--mindful of the fact that they had a lot less competition. As such, Mockus’ experiment might be called a limited success, at best.

Although critics characterized the move as frivolous, many residents said they expected nothing less from their mayor--a former professor of logic who accidentally entered public life when he was filmed lowering his pants and turning his backside to a group of protesting students.

During an earlier mayoral term, he raised eyebrows by hiring mimes to poke fun at reckless drivers. Then he got married in a lion cage.

But there is almost always a civics lesson behind Mockus’ antics, and Friday night was no exception. While women partied, police tallied barroom brawls and armed arrests, compiling information that is expected to show a striking reduction in street crime when women are out alone.

“Women are much less likely to turn to weapons than men,” Mockus said. ‘I want for us men to look at our own lack of responsibility in a more critical fashion.”

Shopkeeper Luz Marina Martinez, 39, said she didn’t need a “Night Without Men” to reflect on which is the more responsible sex. Waving across a glass counter full of cookies and lollipops, she explained: “If there’s a man working here, and a woman arrives in a miniskirt with a false coin, he’ll say, ‘This money is good!’ They get off track.

“We have more inner strength, more character.”

Referring to Colombia’s decades-old civil war, which claims thousands of civilian lives every year, she added, “I would say we [women] have the capacity to fix this country.”

Others said they felt excluded by Mockus’ experiment. “I’m a single mother, and my duty is to be with my son,” 25-year-old Elisabeht Diaz said before the event. “For those of us who don’t have a husband, it’s not fair. I don’t have anyone to leave him with.”

A recent poll published in the daily El Tiempo showed that, despite such criticism, most of the habitants of this mountainside city like the idea of having a “Night Without Men.” Nearly half the men participating in the survey supported the measure. Only 8% of the 600 men and women interviewed said it would be detrimental to relations between the sexes.

“They’ll miss the men,” checkout clerk John Torres, 24, said with a grin. Torres was scheduled to work today and thus planned to stay in Friday evening.

Then, as he reflected further, his brow furrowed. “If I didn’t have to work, I would go out,” he said. “It would be very, very interesting to see what they do when we’re not there.”