A Changing of the Art on Calle 26

A healthy food mural across from Parque del Renacimiento, by Lesivo.

If there's one thing we know, it's that Bogotá has too many parks, police, soup kitchens and schoolbooks - and that's why the city is spending public money painting street art where there already is great street art.

Here are the old murals on Calle 26, sponsored by the city between about the Cementerio Central and the Universidad Nacional.

Street art is great, but Calle 26 had lots of it already.

Why not paint somewhere else, where there isn't great art already?

An indigenous woman, painted by a Peruvian graffiti crew.

A jaguar, icon of Colombia's wildlife, and a coal miner, by Toxicomano. 

The image of the coal miner, incidentally, comes from a famous photo of a West Virginian miner who died young from black lung disease. The mural, by Toxicomano, declared that 'Water is worth more than gold.' Illegal gold mines have destroyed innumerable rivers and poisoned many people, particularly on Colombia's Pacific Coast.

The assassinated comedian Jaime Garzon, dressed as a maid, by MAL.

'Land, peace and bread.' A tribute to the 1917 Russian Revolution.

A woman and child, a few blocks from the Universidad Nacional, by a graffiti crew from Lima, Peru.

Suffering? But she's smiling! A bent over woman appeared to be communing with nature, also by a Peruvian crew.

And now they're going, going, gone....

If they were determined to spend the city's budget on more murals, then why not paint empty walls, of which Bogotá has many???

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours