Carrera 5 / Barrio La Macarena

On one side of Carrera 5 rises Tower A of the Torres del Parque residential complex; on the other, the facades of restaurants and galleries stretch along the street. City documents long classified this site as residential, although taverns, bars, and discos were already operating along the opposite sidewalk. Only the roadway lies between the apartments and these establishments.

Carrera 5 runs along La Macarena's western boundary. The name became established for the neighborhood when, in the nineteen fifties, the company Inversiones Bogotá began new residential development here. According to a widespread local explanation, it was named after the Virgin of Macarena—a Sevillian image of the Virgin Mary whom bullfighters revered as their patron saint. The connection was suggested by the nearby Santamaría bullring.

Restaurants and galleries arrived later. The shift began in November nineteen ninety-two in the apartment of Aurora Pachón de Reyna, a resident of Tower A in the Torres del Parque complex. Aurora sought to make the authorities stop issuing licenses to nightlife venues opposite her home. During one street shootout, a bullet pierced her bedroom window, struck the ceiling and wall, and fell onto the bed. Aurora was on vacation, so no one was in the room.

She had owned this apartment since nineteen seventy-four. It was on the second floor, with windows looking directly onto Carrera 5. Over the years, taverns, bars, and discos had opened on the western sidewalk, although city documents still classified the site as residential. The authorities had already denied licenses to several establishments, yet they continued admitting customers. When Aurora returned home, she did not immediately replace the shattered pane or repair the marks on the walls. She attached the bullet's exact path to her complaint and reported that she kept the piece of lead found in the bed.

She filed a tutela—an urgent legal complaint used in Colombia to protect fundamental human rights. Two courts denied her claim: the judges concluded that it concerned the neighborhood's general safety and that the connection between the nightlife venues and the shot had not been sufficiently proven. Aurora took the case to the Constitutional Court of Colombia.

On March eleventh, nineteen ninety-four, the court overturned both denials. The judges found that the authorities' inaction had threatened Aurora's personal integrity in her own home. They ordered unlicensed establishments to be closed and instructed the authorities not to issue or renew permits for those whose activities conflicted with the neighborhood's residential designation. The owners of the former bars lost the possibility of legalizing their customary operating format.

One decision did not automatically bring restaurants here. By then, some of the old establishments had already run their course. But after the ban on the former licenses, bars and dens began giving way to restaurants and art galleries. By two thousand two, three new galleries had opened here in just seven months, and a city newspaper was already calling Carrera 5 the road of art.

Aurora's address survives in the court case: Carrera 5, number twenty-six–fifty-seven. It is the second floor of Tower A across the street; today's strip of restaurants and galleries begins in the same block where the bullet ended its path in her bed.