OT: An inspiring gentleman

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I thought this was worth passing along...

 

 

 

Dave

 

 

 

" Outside of the dog, a book is a man's best friend. And inside the dog it is

too dark to read. "

~ G. Marx

 

 

 

 

 

Academic turns city into a social experiment

Mayor Mockus of Bogotá and his spectacularly applied theory

By María Cristina Caballero

Special to the Harvard News Office

 

Antanas Mockus had just resigned from the top job of Colombian National

University. A mathematician and philosopher, Mockus looked around for

another big challenge and found it: to be in charge of, as he describes it,

" a 6.5 million person classroom. "

 

Mockus, who had no political experience, ran for mayor of Bogotá. He was

successful mainly because people in Colombia's capital city saw him as an

honest guy. With an educator's inventiveness, Mockus turned Bogotá into a

social experiment just as the city was choked with violence, lawless

traffic, corruption, and gangs of street children who mugged and stole. It

was a city perceived by some to be on the verge of chaos.

 

People were desperate for a change, for a moral leader of some sort. The

eccentric Mockus, who communicates through symbols, humor, and metaphors,

filled the role. When many hated the disordered and disorderly city of

Bogotá, he wore a Superman costume and acted as a superhero called

" Supercitizen. " People laughed at Mockus' antics, but the laughter began to

break the ice of their extreme skepticism.

 

Mockus, who finished his second term as mayor this past January, recently

came to Harvard for two weeks as a visiting fellow at the Kennedy School's

Institute of Politics to share lessons about civic engagement with students

and faculty.

 

" We found Mayor Mockus' presentation intensely interesting, " said Adams

Professor Jane Mansbidge of the Kennedy School, who invited Mockus to speak

in her " Democracy From Theory to Practice " class. " Our reading had focused

on the standard material incentive-based systems for reducing corruption. He

focused on changing hearts and minds - not through preaching but through

artistically creative strategies that employed the power of individual and

community disapproval. He also spoke openly of his own failings, not

suggesting that he was more moral than anyone else. He is a most engaging,

almost pixieish math professor, not a stuffy 'mayor' at all. The students

were enchanted, as was I. "

 

A theatrical teacher

 

The slim, bearded, 51-year-old former mayor explained himself thus: " What

really moves me to do things that other people consider original is my

passion to teach. " He has long been known for theatrical displays to gain

people's attention and, then, to make them think. Mockus, the only son of a

Lithuanian artist, burst onto the Colombian political scene in 1993 when,

faced with a rowdy auditorium of the school of arts' students, he dropped

his pants and mooned them to gain quiet. The gesture, he said at the time,

should be understood " as a part of the resources which an artist can use. "

He resigned as rector, the top job of Colombian National University, and

soon decided to run for mayor.

 

The fact that he was seen as an unusual leader gave the new mayor the

opportunity to try extraordinary things, such as hiring 420 mimes to control

traffic in Bogotá's chaotic and dangerous streets. He launched a " Night for

Women " and asked the city's men to stay home in the evening and care for the

children; 700,000 women went out on the first of three nights that Mockus

dedicated to them. When there was a water shortage, Mockus appeared on TV

programs taking a shower and turning off the water as he soaped, asking his

fellow citizens to do the same. In just two months people were using 14

percent less water, a savings that increased when people realized how much

money they were also saving because of economic incentives approved by

Mockus; water use is now 40 percent less than before the shortage.

 

" The distribution of knowledge is the key contemporary task, " Mockus said.

" Knowledge empowers people. If people know the rules, and are sensitized by

art, humor, and creativity, they are much more likely to accept change. "

Mockus taught vivid lessons with these tools. One time, he asked citizens to

put their power to use with 350,000 " thumbs-up " and " thumbs-down " cards that

his office distributed to the populace. The cards were meant to approve or

disapprove of other citizens' behavior; it was a device that many people

actively - and peacefully - used in the streets.

 

He also asked people to pay 10 percent extra in voluntary taxes. To the

surprise of many, 63,000 people voluntarily paid the extra taxes. A dramatic

indicator of the shift in the attitude of " Bogotanos " during Mockus' tenure

is that, in 2002, the city collected more than three times the revenues it

had garnered in 1990. Another Mockus inspiration was to ask people to call

his office if they found a kind and honest taxi driver; 150 people called

and the mayor organized a meeting with all those good taxi drivers, who

advised him about how to improve the behavior of mean taxi drivers.

 

Yet Mockus doesn't like to be called a leader. " There is a tendency to be

dependent on individual leaders, " he said. " To me, it is important to

develop collective leadership. I don't like to get credit for all that we

achieved. Millions of people contributed to the results that we achieved ...

I like more egalitarian relationships. I especially like to orient people to

learn. "

 

Taking a moral stand

 

Still, there were times when Mockus felt he needed to impose his will, such

as when he demanded that every bar and entertainment place close at 1 a.m.

with the goal of diminishing drinking and violence.

 

Most important to Mockus was his campaign about the importance and

sacredness of life. " In a society where human life has lost value, " he said,

" there cannot be a higher priority than re-establishing respect for life as

the main right and duty of citizens. " Mockus sees the reduction of homicides

from 80 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1993 to 22 per 100,000 inhabitants in

2003 as a major achievement, noting also that traffic fatalities dropped by

more than half in the same time period, from an average of 1,300 per year to

about 600. Contributing to this success was the mayor's inspired decision to

paint stars on the spots where pedestrians (1,500 of them) had been killed

in traffic accidents. " Saving a single life justifies the effort, " Mockus

said.

 

The former mayor had to address many fronts simultaneously. In his struggle

against corruption, he closed down the transit police because many of those

2,000 members were notoriously bribable. When he assumed power, many city

positions were distributed according to council members' recommendations. " I

stopped that, and some called me an anti-patronage fundamentalist, " Mockus

said. He remembers that when he handed a text explaining his goals of

transparency to one key council member, the council member first smiled, but

later resigned.

 

Mockus was a constant presence in the media, promoting his civic campaigns.

" My messages about the importance of protecting children from being burned

with fireworks, protecting children from domestic violence, and the

sacredness of life reached many, including the children, " he said.

 

Once the mother of a 3-year-old girl called his office to say that meeting

Mockus was her daughter's only birthday wish. But the meeting also revealed,

said Mockus, that Colombian society has a long way to go. During the visit,

the mother told him: " When I am going to hit her, she runs to the telephone

and says that she is going to call Mockus. She doesn't even know how to dial

a number, but obviously she thinks that you would protect her. " Mockus, who

has two daughters himself, was shocked at the woman's nonchalance about

striking her daughter.

 

There is almost always a civics lesson behind Mockus' antics. Florence

Thomas, a feminist and a professor at Colombian National University, pointed

out to Mockus that in Bogotá women were afraid to go out at night. " We were

looking for what would be the best image of a safe city, and I realized that

if you see streets with many women you feel safer, " Mockus explained. So he

asked men to stay home and suggested that both sexes should take advantage

of the " Night for Women " to reflect on women's role in society. About

700,000 women went out, flocking to free, open-air concerts. They flooded

into bars that offered women-only drink specials and strolled down a central

boulevard that had been converted into a pedestrian zone.

 

To avoid legal challenges, the mayor stated 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.

About 200,000 men went out that night, some of them angrily calling Mockus a

" clown " in TV interviews. But most men graciously embraced Mockus' campaign.

In the lower-middle-class neighborhood of San Cristobal, women marched

through the streets to celebrate their night. When they saw a man staying at

home, carrying a baby, or taking care of children, the women stopped and

applauded. That night the police commander was a woman, and 1,500 women

police were in charge of Bogotá's security.

 

A bigger classroom?

 

Mockus noted that his administrations were enlightened by academic concepts,

including the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Douglass North, who has

investigated the tension between formal and informal rules and how economic

development is restrained when those rules clash; and Jürgen Habermas' work

on how dialogue creates social capital. Mockus also mentions Socrates, who

said that if people understood well, they probably would not act in the

wrong way.

 

Mockus—a sterling example of the current vogue in Latin America for

" anti-politicians " —says that transforming Bogotá's people and their sense of

civic culture was the key to solving many of the city's problems. He is

looking forward to returning to the classroom at Colombian National

University after a sabbatical year. But Mockus is also considering the

possibility of launching a presidential campaign—and perhaps being in charge

of a 42 million student classroom.

 

See full original article with photos at: HYPERLINK

" http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.11/01-mockus.html " http://www.ne

ws.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.11/01-mockus.html

 

 

 

 

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