The metro in Bogotá is feeling and emotion

Regardless of the technical and legal discussions about the Bogotá Metro, whether it is underground or elevated, there is a broad conclusion: The Metro is feeling and emotion. Its construction is a cry.

And just as patriotism or nationalism unites people, the construction of the Metro will do the same, it will unite the citizens of Bogotá in favor of its construction, promptly and without further delay.

The Metro is generating something that Bogotá lacks but that tends to emerge in critical or calamitous situations: solidarity among people in favor of a commitment to the city, which in this case is to help solve the oppressive mobility problem. Of course, it is also true, there is a minority segment of the population that asks for rectification and underground Metro.

The cause of the ¡Metro Ya! -we must remember Petro- arouses spontaneous adherence because it is mediated by feeling. There is a pro-Metro citizen sentiment.

Byung-Chul Han writes that feelings are basically empathy and empathy generates the Metro. It also forms a community around something, in this case, that the presidential idea of ​​making it underground does not block it.

And from there – from Petro’s untimely wishes – a narrative, a drama is being written: The fact that there is no Metro in Bogotá. And then the mayor Claudia López emerges as the savior of the Metro, with a story that generates feelings and arouses emotions at the same time. Feelings, Chul Han says, are the driving forces within dramas. And not building the Metro or delaying it in time, or making it more expensive or subjecting it to more and great technical and legal risks for wanting to make it underground as Petro wants, is a drama for the city.

And the drama can be translated into indignation and indignation is an emotion and emotions generate movements that in this case can be translated into political and electoral support for the defenders of the ¡Metro Ya! cause. and electorally bury, in October, those who defend, in the campaign for mayor of Bogotá, the opposite position. The one from the underground.

For the same reason, the prudent and convenient thing for the president and his candidates for mayor of Bogotá, so that they do no more harm to Gustavo Bolívar, is for his government to retract because the political-electoral cost is better now than the overwhelming defeat on election day in October.

Finally, President Petro is giving an extemporaneous discussion given that the Bogotá Metro has already been tendered, contracted and is underway; And with his statements, he has created a mess that is translating into distrust of his government, precisely the one that he needs so much.