Las Américas

Las Américas was an educational institution founded in the mid-eighties in a poor neighborhood in the city of Cali, Columbia, known as “El Guabal.” At first, this institution had served as a school in a small house taken on lease. Afterwards, the institution moved to another house that seemed to have been bought by the founder of this establishment. In order to improve the educational facilities, its owner decided to expand the physical structure of the house, turning it out into a building that could accommodate a larger number of students. By the mid-nineties, the institution experienced a financial crisis caused by the diversion of government resources, which were used in the development of the third and fourth floors of the building instead of the granting of scholarships for the students. Given this situation, “Las Américas” closed down, leaving a half-built structure that now seems to be a sign of uprooting, the lost, quality of life unstructured and broken... Currently the building is being auctioned off. Drawing from these half-finished, half-realized dreams, Rodriguez’s two works, also called “Las Americas,” serve to commemorate the building and it’s illustration of the types of corruptness, inequality and lack of opportunity in his native Columbia.