May God Bless this Business

22 artists are summoned to perform a quick action in downtown Bogotá. Yellow vinyl letters are distributed among them and pasted on their black shirts and the group heads for Bolivar Square, the political center of our country, where we can find the National Congress, the City Hall, the National Justice Palace and the Primate Cathedral. The group climbs the stairs of National Congress and lines up to form the sentence “Dios bendiga este negocio” (May God bless this business). This is a very popular expression nationwide, and is usually found in stickers and stores, or as an introductory phrase on religious posters. This phrase embodies the spirit of a conservative nation where white descendants of former regents built a post-independence national project, excluding the heterogeneous reality of a nation yet to find its identity. The intervention pretends to stimulate the activation of political thought at a historical juncture, when more 80 congressman are currently being investigated by national courts, accused of sponsoring and being part of illegal far-right paramilitary structures in Colombia, showing the alarming penetration of the mafia in national government.