OBRA ESCRITA

IN ENGLISH

HERE LIES BURIED JULIAN THE PATRON

(SHORT NOVEL)

Commentary and translation by

SHYAMA PRASAD GANGULY

(Jahawarlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India)

HERE LIES BURIED JULIÁN THE PATRON

Latin America is well known today for its serious literature. Its literary boom in the last three decades is a pointer in that direction. Most of its experiences an interdisciplinary concern for commitment and experiment, ethics and aesthetics. The critical attitude in the observation of reality quite palpably manifests the search for people's self-identity. In this quest, authors are experimenting with various forms. This narrative is the expression of one such quest by critically retrieving the real history of a small coastal village in Colombia emanating from the collective (oral) memory of its people. The retriever, author David Sanchez-Juliao, one of Latin America's outstanding young writers and presently Ambassador of that country in India, retells it to create a new level of awareness by organizing the chaotic reality, which unleashes due to the invading multinationals, into the coherent framework of a story-telling. It is full of meaning for all third-world cultures who have undergone the colonial experience.

This cassette-literature intends to transmit orally to other cultures what has been retrieved from the oral tradition of a particular people's history in Colombia. It is given out here as an abridged version of the original in Spanish published by "El Labrador" (Colombia) in 1989. The Indian Hispanist Theatre Director Shyama Prasad Ganguly has done the translation and narration in English.

TO OFELIA DE GÓMEZ

I have been told the story of how, when the Navy Base was commission in Coveñas, Doña Ofelia de Gómez was asked to confer a medal on an officer. This was intended as a great honor for her. In my opinion, it should have been the other way round because if any one ought to have been decorated it was Ofelia. As this did not happen then, the present author at least dedicates to her this story now.

D.S.J.

I shall remain within the folds of this hammock until I finish telling you the whole story of the lands of Coveñas, where I have seen all my progeny born and grow up, many of them children marked by the times this region has lived through. They were even baptized with names that the history of the land --a kind of a personal whim, you may say.

But let me go back to where I must, the beginning. Way back in time, in the first few days of this century, everything in the Gulf of Morrosquillo, from beginning to end, everything revolved around one name, Julián Patrón. I have never understood what a surname has to do with once future course of work in life, but I am intrigued that some one cold Patrón, could rise to become the owner of all the lands one could see from the top of a coconut tree. Well, as the century began Don Julián Patrón was already the owner of all the land stretching from El Frances, lying far beyond Tolú, coming up to half a league from the borders of San Antero -as you see- the whole stretch along the sea coast and then turning in at a right angle from the salty waters of the sea itself toward  the Palmito lands. To one who doesn't know the region, this names and distances don't really mean much. Let me put it this way so that you may understand. I have been on the move, on wheals, on foot and what not, on horse back for days on end, on trucks in open fields for hours at a stretch; nevertheless, in my eighty nine years of life I have yet to hear of a piece of land that in the year 1900 did not belong to Don Julián. Do you see what I mean?

Right from childhood, I grew up with the knowledge that the world belonged to Julián. And when in childhood dreams we wanted to imagine impossible things, as all children do, in our games, we pretended we came from such place on earth which Don Julián did not own, a place where there where two-headed horses and tiny trees from which even small dwarves could pluck fruit effortlessly, in order to feed a small pigeon who ruled the world from inside a small house in the middle of the forest. At times, we played other games too, but we liked most to escape from the domain of Don Julián in our dreams.

All that you see now -this roads, bridges, buildings, joints where sailors from other worlds come to have a good time- in those days, it was only a cattle-farm cold Coveñas. It consisted of fallow lands with grazing fields spreading as far as the eye could reach, and beyond these pastures, fields and herds of cattle, there were still other pastures, fields and cattle. And the rest was the sea. There was first, a bay of water, so still that the pelicans in their flight could see in them the reflection of the blue of the sky, of the white clouds and of the green from the trees which Don Julián left untouched so that the finest of his cattle could rest beneath them at midday. The still water surface of the bay, at times, seemed to be an extension of our universe, which appeared similar to the land beyond the sea, ending at some distant point of the earth from where, later, the ships arrived. Yes, in these lands, the ocean liners arrived long before the roads. Honestly, I am not joking. It may sound funny, but we, the people from Coveñas came to know of the gringos and the Englishmen before we knew of our own highland elite. Before the disorder of modernization begun with the advent of the foreigners, we still hadn't sang our National Anthem nor did we know that the Colombian flag had only three colors -gold, sea blue and

red, the color of blood.

Don Julián lived far from here, in Tolú. He was married to Doña Mercedes Pizarro, daughter of a rich tobacco-merchant from the city of Ovejas, situated in the Sabanas de Bolivar. He lived with her in a house which had ten rooms and four courtyards with their front facing the main square, overlooking the church. People who had seen it said that the house appear dignified, with solid walls, built by someone important. Its low roof and the great length made it look like a convent. After crossing trough the halls and the dining room, one walked out into a large shaded courtyard next to which was a portico which led to the garden where Don Julián use to lie in his hammock, giving orders to all the supervisors of his lands, drinking his usual strong coffee sweetened with country-sugar.

I had no idea of this thing about strong coffee and country-sugar until I saw it with my own eyes. Yes, I came to know Don Julián personally, and my acquaintance with him kept growing till hi died, although he was so vigorous and the violent that no one could ever know him really well. He came frequently to visit his farms in Coveñas. And he had a house here in a place he called La Hacienda of the Tip of the Mother of God, which we all ended up simply calling Mother of God. It was a huge house with cemented floors, palm-leaves walls whitewashed in quick lime with a simple slopping roof also maid of palm-leaves, located on the beach where the Coveñas Bay is born. The bay disappears at a distance of about two leagues, in the vicinity of what they call Rocky Point. The house still stands there, resisting the hot sun, still storing rain water in the tanks that Don Julián had made at a time when water pipes were still fairy tales dreams. They say that on nights when the moon is dim, the ghost of Don Julián appears there seated by the sea on his Viennese rocking chair usually sipping strong coffee.

I think Don Julián should be portrayed exactly as he was in actual life. A robust man not particularly tall, his legs bandied from so much horseriding, his olive colored skin that went well with his Turkish moustache, which was a deep ash color like the horse he rode. He had a royal nose and the eyes of an eagle, which became sharper whenever he gave orders or reprimanded his men. Once, somebody said that all he needed was a bowl on his head to look like a conqueror. If he weren't one, at least his forefathers were. Because, otherwise how else he could pile up such richness, so many cattle and so much land? You see, from what I have heard been whispered around, Don Julián possessed many farm lands, which he never liked because he thought they were too small, like San Jerónimo del Monte -a thousand three hundred acres, San José de las Animas -a thousand two hundred acres, Trementino -two thousand, and Macayepo which was only a thousand one hundred. But this one, I am telling you about, Coveñas, which he was very proud of, was about five thousand acres, much of which was good for coconut growing inspite of the mangrove swamps in the rear. Everything you see from Coveñas today, from the Amansaguapos creek up to the lake entrance called Mouth of the Mudhole use to be a beach, full of stubble, but planted with tall coconut trees so dense and thick that they became the home of the colored monkey and the tiger. Don Julián supplied most of the coconuts to the Islands of San Blas and to Panamá from these palm groves rather than from the trees he had in Tolú and El Francés. And I think, that is why he bought the five launches, which never ceased plying between the Gulf of Morrosquillo and Panamá carrying coconuts for sale in those places. The five launches were: La Coveñas, La Morrosquillo, La Amira, La Diamante and La Transacción. They used to set sail from the jetty of Tolú, which also belonged to him, stopping in front of the big house in Mother of God, and proceeding onwards, laden with coconuts. This was big business, which he liked much more than those worthless little estates of less than two thousand acres.

Don Julián rode a horse the entire day, all along those coconut beaches, each time he came from Tolú to Mother of God. At times he came alone without any companion, unconcerned about any danger on the way. The care takers of the groves saw him passing by on a honey colored horse which was made to trot on its hind legs while galloping with its front pair. It was a fine horse, and could continue the same speed all the way, making ten miles a day. He was seen one day coming from the same direction in the company of an English gentleman who looked as pink as a tangerine and tall and straight as the leaf of a corn plant, with leggings and riding suit and a pith helmet which he called a sun helmet. I remember his name well. How can I forget it. He was called Robert Cunningham Graham. Just to think of him now, after the experience of so many years, this Mr. Robert was responsible for everything, good or bad, that Coveñas and the Gulf of Morrosquillo have been through ever since he arrived here that fine morning in 1917, shortly after a world war which we came to know about through him, and also of another which would take place some years hence if a few things were not said right somewhere far away... in other places of the world.

I was then seventeen, growing at the speed of the century. I was born in one of the coconuts groves in Coveñitas on the banks of the bay where my father was one of Don Julián's care takers. There where five of us in the family, living in a one room hut built with wood from mangrove trees and coconut palm leafs for roofing the structure. Besides my father and mother, there where three children, all male. I was the oldest and helped my father look after the planting and plucking of the coconut whenever any of Don Julián's five launches arrived at the jetty of Mother of God on its way to the Islands of San Blas and Panamá. The coconuts had to be husked keeping intact the hard core. All of us, my mother as well, worked at peeling the coconuts with machetes and steel bars. Perhaps, the ease which I did the peeling with inspired Don Julián to take me to Mother of God as a domestic servant. Once, when I was barely ten years old, while passing the hut where we lived, riding his honey colored horse of the pleasant trots he saw me peeling coconuts with a machete. He must have noticed something special in how I did the de-husking. Seated on his horse, he entered trough the hut door and ordered my father to send me to his house the same day. Later, I understood why. The milk from the coconut was the most precious gift Don Julián offered to the many visitors he received at his house in Mother of God besides stew a friend shad fish which was his favorite dish. I became, from then on, the Star of Coconut Milk as he called me. Whenever he had visitors, whites and others from his own social standing, he called for me saying, "bring the Star here to me", and in the presence of all I would climb up to the top of the coconut tree like a real monkey. From there, I would throw the fruit down against the hard ground, and once the fibrous cover was broken I could peel them with my bare hands and teeth. I use the machete only to break open a hole into which Don Julián pushed a straw. He became so fond of me that, as I grew up, he let me go on working as a milker in the cattle yard. While I worked with him, I lived with my parents. Every evening, when work was over, I headed home walking to have my night meal, stopping at places on the long beach to play with the pelicans, running after crabs, and gathering figs and icaco fruit from the trees that grew among the stubble.

When Mr. Robert Cunningham Graham arrived, I was called in to perform the spectacle of plunking the coconuts in the presence of that tangerine-skinned English man. He had arrived with many important persons from Tolú, Palmito and Lorica. My feat in tree-climbing, coconut-plucking and peeling them with my bared hands and teeth allowed me to pry into the Mother of God house. That day, I offered to do the serving and to take portions of meat and fish, and also whiskey. That is how I came to know the actual reason for the presence of the tangerine-skinned English man, Mr. Robert.

That day, they talked about the price of cattle, the ideal variety for cross-breeding with Creole stock, and the ideal port-facility to bring in the products of a certain Packing House which the English men were going to set up in the region. Even to this day, when I am eighty-nine and my hearing, eyesight and even my memory have dimmed, I can perfectly recall what they talked about on that occasion, specially what the English man, Mr. Robert, said. I still remember it perhaps because that conversation was going to affect the rest of my life... our lives.

That night, it was said that the port of Coveñas was destined to acquire a name for it self. It was, so they said, located between two projecting rocks which extended into the sea which gave it the shape of a horse shoe. That protected it from winds from all sides except from the northerly direction, which blue only for a few weeks each year. Inspite of its good beaches, the water was deep near the shore. Beyond the tip of the small wooden jetty, eighty yards from the beach, the water was as deep as twenty meters. They also said that the beaches at the bay were sandy and mangrove swamps and the marshy area was a good two miles away, near Coveñitas. If the northerly winds were not blowing against the shore there were neither swelling tides, nor coral reefs that caused high waves. Moreover, fresh water was available in plenty near Coveñas, and the old well in Mother of God dug by the Spaniards before independence was at least five yards deep. Thus, everything showed how Coveñas was ideally suited to become a live stock-farming port.

And this was true. Because the jetty owned by Don Julián, measuring eighty meters in length, had been used in the past for shipping cattle from his farms. And to ship coconuts as well. It was a good jetty located on a good bay. So rewarding was the bay that whenever a cow strayed into the sea while loading, because the ship moved in the water, it swam up-shore effortlessly and the boys put it back in the line for loading. I remember my grandfather, who knew General Bolivar personally, telling me that cattle-shipping here was as old as the days of the pirates, buccaneers who got their supplies of meat, banana and salt from this bay as did a German submarine in the last war. I will tell you about that later.

The Englishman, Mr. Robert made a careful study of the cattle of this place, its pastures and water pools. Accompanied by Don Julián, his butler Anacleto Ramos and other cowboys, he went out for days on end in the direction of Palmito where he was well looked after. And before leaving for Lorica and Berástegui, having carefully examined one farm after another, he said that Don Julián's lands were ideal for growing Pará and Guinea grass. And this was really true. Never have I known another place to produce cattle of finer skin and color.

It was in those days, after Mr. Robert was gone, that I heard the speech given by a companion of his on the night Don Julián had offered them a dinner in which, I remember turkey meat and whisky were served. In fact I could have learned it by heart from the way Anacleto Ramos later repeated it several times word by word. I do not know how with only a butler's memory Anacleto Ramos could remember exactly something so long and beautiful. Not for nothing was he kept as butler by Don Julián in Mother of God. He was known for his memory; he knew the names of each one of the two thousand cows grazing in the fields, not counting, of course, the nursing calves... So, you can now see this for yourselves. The fact is that today, inspite of my years, I can repeat that speech without missing a comma, although I am not very sure what a comma is.

Anyway, the speech given in that occasion went like this: "You Sir", said the speaker to Mister Robert Cunningham Graham, "embody the fulfillment of our hopes. England sent its legions here one day to shed their blood for the sake of our liberty under the glorious command of our great Liberator. We feel that a subtle sympathy exists between our two countries. It spreads through our seas, crossing the mountains, overcoming all obstacles and ensures a harmonious rhythm in the heart between  the  two  distant  lands. The Company Packing-House, which England is going to set up here, will pave the way for a closer mutual esteem between our people. Our fertile and abundant tropical soil will produce copious fruits with the entry of capital... of British capital. I can see clearly how the Old World with its experience of centuries is going to intervene in assisting a young member of its fraternity introduced in the family of nations by the illustrious man from Genoa. England, the torch of liberty, a small island mounted as a jewel in the tempestuous seas of the North and one which achieved greatness owing to the valour of its sons and its willful creation of a tradition of wise men and liberal statesmen, will come to our help with her counseling... and her capital. Our hearts are virgin and our virgin soil will respond fervently and generously. Long live England and victory to the alliance. From the highest summit of the Andes, the great Liberator's spirit is watching us here at Coveñas. Bear in mind what I have said. And now as a Colombian, I give my hand of friendship and welcome to a man like Mister Robert Cunningham who will do everything to tie, even more firmly, the political, economic and cultural bonds that have always existed between London and Tolú, between the English channel and the Gulf of Morrosquillo. Long live the liberator!"

These were the words uttered by the speaker that day, and they were like a premonition.

Yes, soon afterwards, when I was back monkey-climbing for coconuts, Don Julián returned on horseback in the company of some friends to join others who had already come either by the launch from Cartagena or on horseback from Lorica. They were speaking like the local people and even laughing in the same manner, but they were dressed like Mister Robert and even discussed the same thing, the Packing-House. Don Julián took them to inspect the jetty and visit the cattle-farms and talked to them about the same things he had spoken of with the Englishman only a few days before. But this time there were no speeches; it seemed there was no need for any because these people were less concerned about sentimental or emotional things than about concrete monetary matters. I also served during their dinner, taking the tray and whisky around. Many things came to my ears but as I never had the memory of Anacleto Ramos, not then nor now, I can only remember that amidst a mild sea and soft winds they spoke that night about so many millions of pesos that I wondered whether there could be so many in the whole world. Yes, I remember well the imprint of their high status and the lineage of the families they came from: the Vélez Daníes, the Piñerez from Cartagena and the Martínez from Cartagena and Lorica. There were a few of them. Later I came to know that they and Don Julián, who put up the lands and the jetty, would together hold fifty per cent of the ownership of the Packing-House Company. The other fifty per cent, I was told, was to belong to in the United States by the gringo and British partners.

Soon after that meeting, it all happened.

One fine morning, Don Julián returned from Tolú along the beach in the company of fifty men, all on horseback. But these men looked very different from those who had come on the earlier two occasions. These people were in rags like us, carrying tools and implements including pick-axes and shovels of a kind we had never seen before. We were told that a lot of work was soon to be done in the construction of the Packing-House and not even all hands together available in Coveñas, Coveñitas, Cispata and San Antero would suffice. We felt very happy, and why not? For a moment we even thought we would not have to remain full-time workers of Don Julián, but only part-time, to the extent of fifty per cent, while working for the Packing-House. The control of the other half at least, we felt, would thus rest with the gringos.

At last, progress had arrived in our region. And the first thing that progress brought was women. Work was yet to commence in the felling of trees, leveling the port, and cleaning the pits and the basin so that the first ship could arrive, as Don Julián had told us. But, in the meantime the first place for loiterers had already come up at the horseshoe crossing leading to Cispata. It was owned by a few men from Antioch who brought along a few pretty girls who looked like the ones we used to see on the calendars advertising anti-tuberculosis syrup, gifted each year to Don Julián by the Medical Laboratories and which Anacleto Ramos used to hang on the kitchen wall of the Mother of God house on the first of January every year. But we were told, these girls were deceptive because what they sipped in the small glasses was water and not liquor, as they would have their clients believe, feigning to be drunk, especially on pay-days when everything was priced double by the Antioch gang on the pretext of the music they provided with a group of six men playing guitars, Indian drums and Creole clarinets made of corn stalks. Prices rose, enmeshed in the tangle of that music and phony liquor. But anyway... that was what progress meant!

Finally, the ships came. There were so many at the same time. That day, as we saw the huge houses, floating on the sea beyond the bay, approaching us, emitting smoke through a few long chimneys pointing at the sky, all work was suspended and even these Antioch calendar-girls rushed towards the dock, their eyes bulging in disbelief.

The first things they brought out were the implements needed to build a landing pier fit for the desired pace of progress. Once the poles, iron bars, hooks, hammers and the mixers were put on the beach some hefty beer-colored white men, with sea blue eyes and porcupine-like hair, began working with incredible energy. We would have been happy only to watch them work, but that was not possible. Within a week the new pier was ready. Before retiring to their ship that night, the men who made it filled the Antioch house to the brim, and paid the women some greenish American pesos which they said were the same as ours except that they could be used anywhere in the world. That day was the first time I saw a dollar, when five gringos asked me to bring down ten milk-filled coconuts. I sold them for double the price Anacleto Ramos charged, as per the orders of Don Julián, and the gringos paid me the amount without any fuss. Later I came to know that after they had arrived all prices had gone up and the calendar-girls not only collected their payment in green bills, almost double for a dance, but also knew how to greet them and say good-bye in English.

When the pier was ready, many things were taken out of the ships, the same ships which had surprised us at the beginning and others which were still on the high seas. They brought railway tracks for a train to run between the first large pickets up to half a mile inside the buildings were to come up for the slaughter-house, the wine cellar and the refrigeration works of the Packing-House. They used closed wagons and wheeled platforms to shift the materials in cases and boxes which, at first, it seemed would continue arriving endlessly. When I saw that they meant business, and that progress had really come, I begged Anacleto Ramos not to confine me to milking anymore, which he agreed to without a fuss; in fact he felt happy, provided I came back for the coconut feat whenever there were guests and Don Julián required my services. I enlisted myself in the Packing-House labor force. I was taken on as a helper for masonry work although I didn't even know what a mason's trowel was. But that didn't matter. The great wind of progress blew so strong that everyone who came found work, whatever it was. In fact, there was a shortage of hands. I still remember the faces of my old parents when I went back to the house in the coconut palm-groves of Coveñas carrying three broken asbestos sheets and half a bag of leftover cement, already caking from use during the construction, which an engineer from Canada had let me take home. "We are going to have a cement house", I said to them. As I entered I saw three more asbestos sheets lying on the side of the three-stone fireplace and quite a few used tiles, which my brothers had brought from the Packing-House construction site where they also worked.

It was during those days that I came to know Donatila, my wife, who died three years ago, of a lung problem. Don Julián had let us erect our own home, we built it behind the coconut palms, which my father looked after, near the mangrove swamp at the back. Very soon, with the wages of the three brothers, we could build a small two-room house with a thatched roof, adobe walls and a kitchen with a cement and tile floor and an asbestos poultry-shed. We had a big courtyard which we leveled, filled with the tropical hibiscus and bougainvillea, some shaddock plants and fifteen papaya trees. I think Donatila was very impressed with these things when one day she passed by smiling with her friends, clad in a black wrapper which matched well with the cayenne flower, red as fire, stuck behind her ear. When, a few days later, I took her out to dance to the sextet's music and asked her to marry me, she asked, "We shall live in that mangrove house, shall we?" I told her "Of course, only there ", to which her response was clear. With the shine of a palm-leaf in her eyes she said, "Then, yes." Later, as man and wife I teased her so many times in life saying, "I can't forget, you loved the house more than you loved me". She used to smile. The fact is, we were married within a year of our meeting and a priest came to solemnize it, holding a Mass at the Packing-House.

By the time Donatila and I were married, the Packing-House was ready. And as the construction preceded I didn't even realize I had become a skilled mason, although I had always worked as a helper. Because, while the construction lasted, I mean, while progress was on its way, there was a lot of work to be done. But hardly had progress arrived when things changed. The employers started laying off workers, which worried one and all, especially the Antioch gang of calendar-girls. Fortunately for me, I was assigned to the Maintenance Office because of my skill with coconuts.  The climbing up and down to get the coconut for its milk caught the eyes of those gentlemen too, and when the time for laying-off came they said, "The Star cannot be asked to go, otherwise we will die of thirst!" In any case, I was not unduly worried; even if I was to leave I knew Don Julián would let me return to the milking work. Although he was no longer the owner of the lands of Mother of God and Coveñas, which now belonged to the Packing-House, he still had a percentage share in them. Yes, the lands and the cattle were the main possessions in the Company. They were like the flow of blood in all things, like the sap that money carries within itself. All of Don Julián's lands around this place improved. First, the terrain was cleared, then the tractors removed all the shrubbery, then the ploughing and raking was done and finally a special pasture-grass, brought in sacks with English markings, was sown. And in a few months time, as the rains came, from the earth sprouted an intense green color which dazzled us so much that we had to screen our eyes with our hands to see properly. In such pasture-lands, unknown before, the best cattle were left to graze, cattle brought from far away in the very ships that brought progress. Someone told me once that in the intended markets for our products there was little demand for Colombian meat, and the way it was cut. The Cebú, Creole as well as the Romosinuano variety which were products of the new cross-breeds had very hard muscles and, besides, the butchers here did the chopping as carelessly as the clatter of the coconut, to use a local expression. This explained why cattle of other stocks had to be brought in, and also skilled butchers. No, no, please don't laugh. For that is exactly how the Herfords and the Shorthorns appeared. So did other breeds which performed well in what they were supposed to do. In the stretch running between Coveñas and Berástegui, about thirty five thousand heads of cattle flourished by the time the Packing-House was about to commence operations.

On a certain Sunday I took Donatila out to show her the constructions of progress as a reward for bearing me a child within a few months of marriage. We lived as I promised in the house in the mangroves. I was the only married child in the family, so all agreed to let us have one room to ourselves at night while my parents and brothers slept in the other. As it is customary with newly married women, Donatila used to lend her mother-in-law a helping hand in the kitchen and in washing the hole family's linen. I had never seen Donatila so happy before as she was on that Sunday. In fact, she had good reason to be so. The jetty we had known since childhood was a sort of half-hearted cattle-farm and now, almost within the span of our marriage, it had become something of a dream, a children's fairy tale, like the ones our grandfather used to tell us about castles, kings and chocolate chambers. Now, almost a port and busy every moment, loading long-chimney ships, it looked like a giant centipede bathing in the sea from whose loins ran the railway tracks up to the main buildings standing beyond the steel fences and gardens which had been pruned electrically, and from where coconut trees rose so high that even I wouldn't have been able to climb them. The main building was a vast mass of red stone brought from the United States. It had four stories, one on top of the other and each crowned with sloping roofs. Inside, there were the offices with tables, typewriters, calculators, telephones and telegraph equipment which connected Coveñas to the rest of the world with the same speed as a high-pitched human voice travelling across the vast expanse of the pasture-lands. Flanking the offices, in the interior of the highest tower-house, where there were the slaughter house, the cellar and the refrigerators from which the workers took out sacks of ice and carried them home to chill pineapple juice or grated country sugar. One of Anacleto's relatives, who had been working as a secretary on Don Julian's recommendation, told Donatila and me that the slaughter house was large enough to take five hundred animals daily and the cold storage had place for six thousand heads of beef and thirty thousand heads of mutton.

But that is not the end of the story. What lay behind the stone buildings was even more beautiful! An asphalt road rose towards a moderate ridge which Don Julián had used earlier as a shaded place for animals. And there, they built quarters for the so-called technical staff, the bosses' quarters. Built on Company's orders, in a row on the ridge, overlooking the distant sea, they were two-story wooden houses with big windows and a stairway, each with balustrades leading to the second floor. The wood used was white and knotted, brought from Canada by the builders in the first few ships that came. It was pinewood from Canada. We, the people from Coveñas were permitted to visit and see those marvels only on Sundays. That is why it was a Sunday when I took Donatila for a visit. In the afternoon, on our way back home, we saw the workers' quarters nearer the beach, farther away from the main complex. I told Donatila this was how workers in the rich countries of the world lived. Donatila could hardly believe her eyes when, glancing into those houses, to her utter surprise she saw how they were full of good facilities, more than many of the rich people we knew had. They were almost better off than Don Julián in Mother of God. This was really true and, besides, the Packing-House Company had built clubs, restaurants and hospitals where I imagine they were allowed to go. They had access to water, sewage and electricity which even Don Julián himself did not enjoy in his house in Tolú.

On that Sunday night, back home when we described the many beautiful things we had seen, I remember my father telling us, "All that glitters is not gold". And in the long run he turned out to be right. The Packing-House, inspite of the golden promises it held out, was a non-starter. Nobody knew why... none of us, I mean. Because, from what transpired at the higher levels, where they knew everything, word spread that all of us would be out of work very soon. The Colombian partners accused the gringo partners of bad administration and apathy; news came from the United States that Colombian meat had very high duties levied on it and that Argentinean meat was cheaper. The fact is that, no sooner was everything in shape for a good beginning, and hardly had a ship or two been loaded, when meat started piling up in the refrigerators and the cattle were getting too old for slaughter, forcing them to be taken out on foot to the far away markets of Montería, Medellín and Cartagena. During those days, when nothing seemed to move, Donatila started her labor pains; she felt so ill and I was so nervous that in a great hurry, I carried her to the Company hospital. There, thanks to a gringo doctor, the child was born without any problems. Donatila, still in pain and perspiring in her bed, asked me, "Can you suggest a name?" And I replied "Yes, Packing-José". Everyone, including the doctor, smiled at my suggestion but the truth is that I wanted this name. Quietly, I had decided on it a few months before.

When Packing-José was about a year old, the Company he took his name from had left Coveñas for good. I still remember how, after a few years when he was able to speak his first phrases, he asked me if he was an orphan. I told him, no, as both Donatila and I were still alive. And, how innocently he reacted saying, "But Packing is dead...!" Coming to think of it, I felt the little boy was right. All of us felt orphaned when the port and the ships through which Progress came were used to carry it away. However, the gringos took away fewer things than they had brought. They took away the indispensable things and let us keep the stone buildings, the workers' quarters, the wooden mansions of the technical staff, the fences, the imported coco-palms, the waterpipes, the hospital, the electricity station, the cellar, the refrigerators, the poultry-yards and the railway lines; the outer shell of everything remained with the inner essence missing, as the tools and implements which could actually run and operate all those ghostly dreams of a promising future were gone.

The Antioch men went back with their calendar-girls. The fifty men who appeared on horseback with Don Julián from the coastal stretch also left. But we, who had always lived here and were born here and gave our love to this land, rich or poor, only we stayed back. Our hearts were broken but we stayed on. In any case, Don Julián was going to come back as the Boss. And now, after this short-lived dream, we knew he would not abandon us. Whatever happened, I still knew how to milk and how to pluck coconuts for his guests and I had also learned something of masonry... And, with my family I had built a small house which was so beautiful that Donatila had finally decided to become mine.

A whole lifetime elapsed between the time the Packing House departed; leaving its installations behind to be put to use again. Yes, many, many years. Of course, the buildings remained where they were. There were always people looking after the four-story stone tower-houses of the ashaped roofs and also the Canadian pine-houses. Watchmen also guarded the skeletal frames of the club house, the empty buildings of the hospital and the houses in the workers area. The pier did not need any watchman; the sea stood guard over it... and the fishermen and others like us who visited the end of the jetty with our fish-hooks, catching seafood which had become scarce ever since the dollars had gone.

I must insist, a whole life-time passed until signs of life reappeared in this place. In the meanwhile, you know, Packing-José grew and Donatila and I turned quite old without ever realizing it. Packing-José went through the same experiences as I did in the first twenty years of life. He started walking when he was thirteen months old and could talk a month later. He played with tops and water-balls when he was five, and by the time he was six he could tell tales of the jungle dwarfs and of the pigeon-queen of the forest; he could also tell the story of the Canadian, American and the English people who were responsible for his unusual name. When he was seven he could ride horses and climb coconut trees as easily as I once did. He couldn't be baptized by Don Julián, despite my efforts, because the great Boss was almost never seen after the failure of the Packing-House venture, as if brought low by the grief of a failed dream. Only Julián junior came here now and then from Tolú, where he still lives. He must be my age, perhaps even older. By the time traces of a beard appeared on Packing-José's chin and he was dating girls at the beach and occasionally drinking rum, we heard one day that Don Julián, had died in Panama of gall-bladder and urinary problems. The body, embalmed by a specialist from the Panama Canal Zone, was brought to Coveñas in one of his favorite launches. The commotion as the ship touched port was greater than it would have been if he had landed alive. People from the surrounding areas showered a rain of wild flowers on the lead coffin and joined in a procession up to the main hall at Mother of God. There, below the portraits of his ancestors, he lay resting for the night, next to a silver statue of Christ, to be buried the following day in the back garden of the big beach-house.

Here lies Julián, a few meters away from the coconut-palms at Mother of God where, you know, I had so often climbed up and down fetching milk-filled coconuts for him and his guests. But everything went on as if he were still around, as if he might turn up now and then to visit his Coveñas farms and the big house at Mother of God. I remember telling Packing-José, "Don't be surprised if the spirit of Don Julián one of these days asks you to pluck a few coconuts for him. He could even appear with his guests." But he never came back. Those who did were his son, sons-in-law and his widow Doña Merce, whom I had seen only from a distance because she never liked coconuts as much as Don Julián. And I was just a milker in the cattle yard...

When he was quite grown up, Packing-José one day told Donatila and me that during a dance he had come to know a girl whom he loved madly. This meant he was going to marry her soon. Donatila asked him that night, "Does she wear a cayenne flower in her hair?" He answered, "Yes, as red as fire!" So we had to begin making arrangements as we knew he would leave soon. There was only one problem. Packing-José had no job and neither had I.

One day, I just felt that Packing-José would find work. First an enormous balloon appeared, floating in the air near the Coveñas sea. Everybody became panicky, but a person coming from Tolú told us it was a guided balloon inflated with a special gas and that within it sat soldiers patrolling the coasts from Panama to Venezuela, fearing a possible German attack. The same person also told us that the second world war, which Mister Robert Cunningham Graham had talked of a long while ago, had broken out in Europe. Now, that his prophecy was coming true, he was not alive to see it, dying who knows where in some distant land. The guided balloons kept going past, during the day and even at night, until we got used to them; all of us would go out to the beach to wave to the watchful soldiers. Another person who came from Tolú however informed us that no one was sure whether war had actually broken out. More probably, the outbreak was around the corner. Owing to talk of a war and the big balloons floating by, we were not surprised to find a launch full of gringos appearing on the shore one day, similar to those who had left when Packing-José had just begun crawling about on all fours. They landed and toured the abandoned installations, from the stone buildings to the pine house, the workers' quarters and the big house at Mother of God. The same evening they went around the fallow-lands, saw the dykes and talked to many local inhabitants, trying to find out how many would be available for work. They left before sunset but returned after two days in a seaplane and our folk followed it beyond the mangrove swamps. We could scarcely believe that an aluminum bird with a propeller was able to descend onto the sea so smoothly, sliding along on two metal canoes. It was towed like a launch up to the end of the pier. A woman and a number of men, all gringos except for her, stepped out of it. She was Doña Merce Boss, the widow of Don Julián. Quite certain that all of them would have their midday meal at Mother of God, I walked up to the place to pluck coconuts for everyone. It was there that I learned what was happening and saw how right I had been in my prediction that Packing-José and I would very soon be working again.

Doña Merce was going to sign, maybe she had already signed, some papers which authorized another American company to make use of the installations built earlier by the Packing-House. It was called the South American Gulf Oil Company and it did business in oil. Coveñas' port was to be used as a port for the shipment of oil that the gringos were drawing out in Catatumbo. The product would be brought to this place through pipes spread across the whole country like an enormous serpent of metal. Then it would be pumped into the ships which, depending on the size of the vessel, would either be berthed at the pier itself or would be loaded many miles out at sea through an underwater oil pipe.

Actually, the oil pipe-line was already on its way. Otherwise we couldn't see why those ships overnight unloaded furniture, food, machines and men to occupy the whole complex. This was nothing new for those of us who had seen the arrival of the Packing-House and knew its history from Mister Robert's first visit until the last ship departed. But, for those like Packing-José, who had not witnessed the earlier story of progress, everything appeared a fantasy, as it had seemed to us the first time.

One day, we woke up early and Donatila prepared a sumptuous breakfast with yucca and cottage cheese and then we went to join the line at the staff recruiting office. My parents were dead and gone and so was Don Julián's butler, Anacleto Ramos. My brothers were now married and had more children than Donatila and I. We had decided to say "no" to any more children after Packing-José, perhaps in protest against the idea of progress, which was now coming back again. Donatila and I lived in the same old house of my parents where the tiled flooring had now developed cracks and palm leaves had replaced the asbestos of the hen-house.  My brothers, however, had now built their own dwellings on the other side of the hen-house so that the whole family could live near each other.

The day we joined the line at the recruiting office we saw how the whole camp-complex had come back to life again. A magic hand had come, cleaned and white-washed everything, mowed to long grass, given the walls a new look, polished the floors, washed the pavements repaired the pier and even partially painted the trees white with lime. The whole place got back its enchanting, pure and neat aura that reminded one of the Packing-House days. Gringos of all shades, whether clean, bathed or dusty, pink or tangerine, showed up again in the offices and Gringo women could be seen everywhere on the streets and paths around the quarters and offices with their colorful dresses and faultless teeth. But, most importantly, there were jobs. For example, I showed them my knowledge of masonry and was hired to work at the airport they were planning to build near the camp-complex on the small plateau overlooking the Canadian pine houses where the technical staff and bosses stayed. Although the runway was not going to be made of concrete, but of gravel, a mason was nevertheless needed for things like the setting and placing of milestones and building the concrete parking platform. Packing-José, to tell you the unfortunate truth, was caught lying because although he did what I told him, saying he was a mason, he failed the test. But this didn't mean he had no work. He got an even better job than mine. He was made the gardener of the staff quarters where I also joined him as a mason when work at the airport was over.

The arrival of the first airplane was more exciting than the seaplane in which Doña Merce had come on the day signing of the papers. That a plane could land on the sea did not mean anything special to us but that it could do so on land was like a fairy-tale. These planes, were four to five times larger than the seaplane and their tires were five times as big as those of the cars which plied the pier and were used by the gringos to go to their offices and homes and to carry materials and items of furniture. The world had advanced a great deal in twenty years, because the progress it brought this time looked like, shall we say, real progress: cars, trucks, electricity, telephones, DC-3 planes with a seating capacity of up to twenty and cargo up to five tons. I actually felt happy with so many things coming, not only for the chance to work but because it was proof for all the young people like Packing-José, who never believed us, that somewhere far away so many wonders were happening.

As I was telling you, I worked as a mason in the new houses for the technical staff. These were now built not with Canadian pinewood but with stone, concrete and wood in an area facing the earlier Packing-House complex. I remember, we built a circular hall later, at the end of the row of houses, and a few other things in the vicinity, in the American style. The architects brought plans from the United States so that, except for a few things here and there, all the houses were uniform: a long porch covered with a metal screen, a front sitting-space strewn with tropical furniture where hammocks could also be hung a big dining room and three spacious rooms besides a kitchen, bathroom and storeroom. No railings nor double-lock doors were used as in those days nobody stole and, besides, the whole camp-complex was well guarded. This added to the sense of freedom which became rare in the houses built later. Moreover, such neatness and orderliness, clean and well-colored surroundings made fresh breathing a pleasant experience. The air also seemed to have been brought from... from the United States.

Sometime later I was assigned to do the repair work on the sidewalks. The repairs done at the hospital, on the water tanks and the floors of the electricity station used up all the available cement (of the stronger American variety). This cement had to take the weight of a shipload of machines meant to bring life to the whole camp site and its surroundings. They weighed thousands of tons, so heavy that the pier almost collapsed on unloading. Once this work was over, I was moved to the office buildings which had developed cracks with time, and were so full of cobwebs at each corner. Worst affected were those near the five-story tower which housed the cutting machines,  the cellars and the refrigerators and other belongings of the Packing-House. All the cork material, raw cotton and tinned meat left behind by the Packing Company, now rotten, had to be thrown into the sea as no one wanted to take it home, except of course, as a souvenir. We did however help in disposing of as junk many of the still unpacked machines left behind in the last minute hurry by the earlier Company.

The pipeline begun in 1937 was about to reach us. And, everyone predicted a rain of dollars in our region as soon as it arrived. How we wished this too would come true! For a long time we had craved dollars. Just to think that Packing-José hadn't even seen what one looked like... And inspite of his ignorance he was to be the first to think of marriage among all the cousins. The others, more practical, decided to wait and see how things worked out. In those days, the airplane used to land only once every eight days. So, many of the Company's staff came inland along the Magdalena river-route up to Magangué; from there they came to Tolú in cars, from there taking the regular ferry service run by the Company between the two points. In one such ferry, a priest once arrived unexpectedly and when Packing-José heard about it he made his way to him together with Trinidad. The priest married them without any questions whatsoever.

Trinidad had her labor pains eight months and three weeks later in the beginning of 1939. Packing-José had proved himself. He had acted at the right moment... or had he been with her before he should? The fact remains that on the very day the pipeline reached Coveñas my first grandchild also arrived, a very pretty big girl with large eyes like Donatila, and resembling in disposition her grandfather. We couldn't quite figure out which of the two events caused more fanfare in the camp complex - the birth of my grandchild or the arrival of the pipeline. Whichever it was, there was a double celebration and the village people, workers, gringos, office hands, all went first to the hospital to see the new born baby and then to the pumping station to see how the gigantic metal serpent made its way from Coveñas to Catatumbo across half the country. At that very spot, Champagne bottles were uncorked, and also at the hospital. That night a get-together was organized at the technical staff club with an orchestra playing and hot peacock meat for food. At the hospital we drank champagne to celebrate the birth of María SAGOC. Yes that's how Packing-José wanted to call her, María Sagoc, the acronym for the South American Gulf Oil Company, as a sign of honor to the Company which arrived as a savior of the region. No one objected; in fact all agreed. Even I, said "yes" as I realized that Packing-José was called Packing-José for a reason.

Many persons from the United States, all high ranking officials of the SAGOC, had come to witness the first shipment of oil. The first ship, named Nueva Granada by its owner, the Texas Petroleum Company, in honor of Colombia, was on its way. But when they began pumping the crude into the huge aluminum storage tanks erected alongside the road to San Antero, the pumps started getting overheated. There was a high bend at Pelagorro near El Carmen de Bolivar and experts said that this bend was the highest passage in the world, for an oil pipeline, rising up to five thousand feet. The pumps were run at top speed, but with no result. While this was happening the Nueva Granada appeared over the horizon. The technical staff grew worried because three more ships were reported to be following the Nueva Granada. Many experts and technical hands were brought in by air and many more came by water, but no  one could understand what was happening. it was an engineer who finally hit upon the idea that there were air-pockets inside the pipeline which obstructed the oil from rising to the height of 5000 feet at Pelagorro. He suggested that the pipes be drilled into, stage by stage. The air-pockets were finally found somewhere between the mountain base and 3000 feet. Once cleared, the oil began flowing without any problem.

María Sagoc grew up at the same pace as the camp complex. She was under the medical care of child specialists at the SAGOC hospital itself; She could mingle well in the fun and frolic organized regularly for the children in the open space adjoining the red stone tower with its a frame roof. She received her first Christmas gifts there. She saw them fall from the sky. Actually, each year, the gringos used to put up a huge Christmas tree in the open space, loading it with surprise gifts and bright adornments. María often drank the Company's chlorine treated water, white and pure, from the special taps. She was vaccinated properly and started attending the primary school run by the Company once Packing-José came into the good grades of the bosses and was allowed to live in the workers colony with his family. He now had a fridge, electricity and a gas oven. We used to visit his house situated in the central part of the workers colony and had our meals there ever so of ten. His house was only a block away from the Community Hall. There we saw for the first time what a wonder the talking pictures was, which was shown with a twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays. On other days, the same machine was used at the technical staff club on the ridge, up there with all the pretty houses. We were shown Mexican and Argentinean films which had no subtitles, possibly because most of the workers didn't know how to read and neither did the local inhabitants, who were also allowed free admission. The medical and health services were also free. But, we had no access to the Department Stores. There were just two of them, a small one meant for the workers, where one generally found goods produced within the country and the other which sold so many delightfully rare items shipped from the United States for the families of the technical staff. But as I said, thanks to the trust and affection Packing-José enjoyed from his bosses, he could treat us all to glorious imported eatable stuff at the Sunday lunches we had from time to time at his house. And thanks to the sailors as well ...

Yes, the sailors. As time went by and María-Sagoc passed to the higher grades in the school, the whole region gradually became familiar to the sailors coming from all around the world because the port became busier each day. Two things brought our folk closer to the sailors: the barter of goods and women. Every time a ship touched port at the dock itself or at the underwater terminal, the local inhabitants went up to sell their locally made delicacies like coconut rolls, country sugar sweetmeats, fried fish, banana slices, fruit juice and other handmade crafts items like haversacks of guava fiber, arched hats, triple-tipped sandals, machete cases... all of which were given in exchange for pistachio-boxes, fig rolls, packets of potato chips, scotch whisky and cherry wine. The whisky was also sold at what I still called the Calendar-girls parlors in deference to the anti-consumptive syrup advertised by the Medical Company. The gringos themselves took their drinks at the parlor, paying double the amount in value for what they could have got in sweetmeats and haversacks. So many of these parlors had popped up at a place called the Fools Beach, in front of a sad-looking and decrepit village called The Future, a name - I mean, future - it actually didn't possess. A large gang of young people, used to come around those corners whenever the ships arrived, which was almost every day. The parlors were soon full of gringos and the girls very soon learnt to speak English from habitual practice and the boys too, during the other services they offered to the sailors like, for example, the famous horse riding on the beach. Soon, the gringos were riding horses all over, carrying their wallets in the front pockets of their trousers, for a rumor soon spread that the local boys had a knack in picking pockets from behind, as they also mounted the horse on the pretext of controlling the reins. Nevertheless, they acquired a skill in languages, some speaking English, some Danish, others Italian and a few French, according to their clientele. So high was the excitement of the gringos as they moved around with the girls from the best Cabaret house, Pecker Hole of the Fools Beach, that at times they stayed on sleeping after a two-day drinking bout and the ships left without them. When that happened, they had to wait for a month and a half till the same ship returned . So they sauntered around doing all sorts of things, mainly teasing girls, who got carried away by the magic of their green eyes. in one such pair of eyes the destiny of poor little María-Sagoc got entangled.

Packing-José had four children from his only wife. Yet, somehow it was María-Sagoc who became my favorite inspite of the bad time she had with the sailor. I remember that day, when she was still a child and I took her out to see the highway. The Company had decided to open up Coveñas to the outside and let it join the march to progress. Until then Tolú was approachable either by the sea-launches under SAGOC management or on horseback by the old route along which Don-Julián, used to visit his farms. But the Company brought their machines one day and made a highway cross the coconut beach. They also built a bridge on Mouth of Swamp - the lake entrance - with steel pipes and solid wood, transporting their personnel in buses. At the same time, from the place called The Future towards this side, they sent machines to help make an airport in Lorica. Actually, they did not want to make the highways, but since they had to get up to Lorica they cut through the old horseshoe path which the Lorica people used to call the "Royal Road". When María-Sagoc was just ten years old, Coveñas found itself well connected to the rest of the world by sea, air and land, as well as by telephone and telegraph.

Yes, I must tell you this. One of the houses Packing-José looked after, including their gardening, at the technical staff quarter complex, belonged to Franky Arbouin, son of a Jamaican who had built the Customs House earlier on in Barranquilla in 1919. Franky Arbouin was in charge of the Company's communications. He had his office in the redstone tower and could handle the Morse code and the telephones with his eyes shut. He is as tall and straight as a palm tree. Yes, he is alive and you can talk to him if you wish. He has a saintly face, and looks rather like Don Quixote of La Mancha, who used to fight against the windmills, as María-Sagoc read in school. His hidden eyes look strange but that is misleading. Once you speak to him you know how exceptionally warm and smiling a person he is. Packing-José used to say, his smiling manner was evident even in the telegraph signals. He is quite familiar with the history of this place. If you happen to speak to him, ask him to tell you the story of the British captain who died when his ship came into Coveñas bay to load oil. Imagine what confusion it caused for the Company. But Franky Arbouin sent a message immediately to the ship owners in England who in turn got in touch with the captain's widow. The message came back that she didn't want the body to be sent back to the family but instead be given a sea-burial according to his long felt desire. However, by the time the widow's message came, the ship had left with oil on board. A full month had to go by for the ship to do the return journey. So, the SAGOC sent for a lead-coffin in which the embalmed body was kept. I still do not know why they placed the box on top of the roof of that stone-tower building. There it remained in the sun and the rain until the ship came back and the sea-burial ceremony was organized. People say that at night they see a ghost whose shining presence pervades the highest palm-leaves around; I am, of course, not so sure. I wonder if it is the British captain's soul that glitters or perchance that of Don Julián?

When Maria-Sagoc was fifteen, Packing-José organized a get-together at his house. She was studying in a high school run without approval in a village called Guayabal next to the camp-complex, situated a little to this side of the road to Coveñitas. This village had grown gradually from a cluster of only seven straw-huts when SAGOC had just arrived. That was the village where Hector García lived. He had a daughter and she caused much stir since the day she was born. People say, the day she appeared on this earth,    a star shone in the sky and its rays fell on their house. So beautiful was the child with her sweet-melon-skin and blue-green eyes, the color of the sea. On the day we celebrated María-Sagoc's sixteenth birthday this little creature also came, carried in arms. I also remember, the best gift my grandchild had was brought by Don Enrique Gómez. Don Enrique was a high official of the Company who lived with his wife in the technical staff quarters. They were not gringos, not by any stretch. He was originally from Santander and she from the Cauca Valley. On one of their trips to Cali they had bought a teddy-bear, big and good-looking. María-Sagoc preserve it carefully in her room for many years. The couple loved Packing-José and they loved me too. Actually, Don Enrique and Doña Ofelia are a very special kind of people.

If Franky Arbouin resembled Don Quixote from the outside, according to María-Sagoc the Gómez couple are so from the inside. Well, to tell you the truth, while Don Enrique worked in SAGOC as the second or third man in command, he and his wife also worked hard to put Coveñas in close contact with the people of the nearby cities. With them, began the idea of going all the way to Lorica for shopping. Just imagine what an adventure it was to go shopping in Lorica in those days! To begin with, the jeep tires had to move on thick circulating chains (many such jeeps had been brought to the area after the war). Also, one had to carry a bag full of five and ten cent coins. Naturally, the short-cut they called the "main-road" to Lorica was only a simple road that passed through a number of enclosed fallow-fields. Whenever the caretakers' or supervisors' children heard the noise of the vehicles, they used to run up to pull at the doors, expecting a shower of coins. There were rivulets on the way, difficult approaches with mud and water, and stony ground, and by the time people reached Lorica they were covered in dust. Yet, inspite of everything, it was the Gómez people who made so many others come up to Coveñas, like Don Félix Manzur, José Miguel Amín, Eugenio Sánchez, Francisco Jattin, Don Juan de León, Manolín, Pedro Nel, Roberto Martínez and the rest of the people from Lorica who soon discovered the beauty of the beaches of Coveñitas, so much so that Captain Carlos H. Julián decided to come over and stay here for good with his wife May, who was the sister of Senator Ramon Martinez Vallejo.

Enrique Gómez and his wife Doña Ofelia are responsible for everything that Coveñas has. I have no doubt whatsoever about that. If you so desire, go and find out for yourself. They still live there near the beach in front of the sea. One night, when María-Sagoc was still a small girl, Doña Ofelia (who could tell you the story better herself)saw lights flickering from a German submarine. A full scale war was on, the second I suppose, and so, not only could one see coastguard balloons going across our skies from Panama to Venezuela but the Colombian army units also patrolled the area with their toy-like guns. Another night, Doña Ofelia opened her windows for something and against the background of a sharp light from the sea she saw many colored umbrellas and Roman Candles. During the war, the whole complex-site had to go through what the Americans called "black-out", which meant, total darkness. At seven in the evening the lights went out. One could only switch on the bulbs inside the house with the curtains and the additional black plastic double-curtains drawn. This was obviously to evade visibility, because this place was full of oil and American personnel.

Well, as I was telling you, Doña Ofelia opened the windows and saw the lights. And what she saw was true. Actually, we had come to know that a German submarine was plying along the coast of the Gulf of Morosquillo trying to obtain supplies. People say that the Germans used to surface to buy rice, meat, vegetables and salt. At that time, Don Enrique was the Shipping Agent. This was before he was raised to the post of Camp Superintendent. While still an Agent, his wife Doña Ofelia tried to convince Alejo García to sell her a parcel of land in the palm-groves of the Coveñas beach so that she and her husband could build a small beach-house there. Alejo García, who lived in Tolú, was married to Doña Virginia Boss, one of the daughters of Don Julián, and he had inherited the coconut palms stretching from the rivulet of Amansaguapos up o Rocky Point. The lands falling between this rivulet and the jetty belonged to Mrs. Leonor Patron Navarro, wife of the doctor Horacio Navarro whose son Horacio Junior is also a doctor, now practicing in Tolú. So insistent were the Gómez couple, especially Doña Ofelia, that Alejo García finally did sell her one of his plots which was large enough for two houses. In the meanwhile, a campaign had gained ground to have a church erected in the camp complex. Doña Ofelia and Don Enrique built their first house near the Coveñas Beach and next to it they developed an enormous farm, full of palm trees and bahareque-palms, which they called "El Caney"(The Orchard). Their house was called "Chamberí" ("Glitter House", "The Spangles", "Sequins and Feathers") Coveñas never ceased to be the land of palm-trees and we stayed on as usual a little further away between the mangroves that grew in the marshy area beyond the coconut trees and the dead woods. We were never bothered as Doña Virginia Boss seldom said anything to us, perhaps to honor her father's wishes. It so happened that the first person to be entrusted by Doña Ofelia with the masonry work of her Coveñas house was me. The plan of her house was the same as the one used for the technical staff-quarters in the camp complex. We finished building it in three months, working hard and steady. And, when my work was over, Packing-José took over to do the gardening.

During those days, something unfortunate happened to María-Sagoc. This had to do with the Danish sailor who overslept on the Fools Beach after drinking heavy at a cabaret and his ship left without him. This dangerous man lurked around in Coveñas one full month at the Company's expense. And he ended up killing his sadness, dating my granddaughter under the mango trees, a little short of The Future. María-Sagoc soon left home. She didn't show up at school either. But after we had looked for her everywhere she appeared finally one day and gave us the news; she was a virgin no more. I can't help recalling the hit-song which ran something like "the sailor-man can never marry". And she knew it best. Having made her the usual promises, "my life is yours for ever" and what not, the Danish seaman sailed away and she remained confined to the house, away from school as well, brooding most of the time about her tummy. One day, gazing at the bay with lost eyes, her heart somewhere far away, she said to all of us, "I am going to have a girl and I'll call her María Star of the Sea". All of us kept quiet. In fact, I thought she was right. Knowing that the Dane would never return, the newborn, girl or whatever, was going to be the child of María and the sea. Packing-José did not want to go on living, but like all parents he ended up forgiving her.

María Star of the Sea, my first great grandchild, was born the day Packing-José and I had started work, building another house in Coveñas. Alejo García, husband of Don Julián's daughter, Mrs. Virginia Patrón Pizzaro, had given away another plot on the beach to Mister Arthur Larsen, the first Chief of the Coveñas camp-complex. Mister Arthur Larsen decided to build a house there and so did Mister Irvin Charles Killer who replaced Mister Larsen when he left. There, in those houses, I worked as a mason while Packing-José did the gardening, taking time off from his job at the camp complex. Later, others like Mister Ramson and Mister Arbouin also built their houses there. They were recreational resorts, only five to seven minutes away from their homes in the higher altitudes of the camp-complex. Packing-José knew them all, much better than I did.

We knew of them from what Packing-José told us when we visited his place, where we made sure we ate fresh bread straight from the oven prepared by a woman called Dawn, the wife of Pacheco the grocer. Packing-José told us many details about the lives of the gringos living in the complex like, for example, how they enjoyed themselves and what they ate. The couple who liked him most were naturally the Gómezes, Doña Ofelia and Don Enrique, two gringos quite unlike the other gringos in the camp complex. Come to think of it, Packing-José was just a gardener, yet he looked healthier each day because he ate dinner at the Gómezes and had his morning meals at Arbouin's. The Killer family gave him lunch at times and their children Irving Charles, Robert and Kathy were thrilled piggy-back riding on him in the courtyard of their house while their parents rested after lunch. (Between you and me, you know, Packing-José once explained the Spanish equivalent of the English word Killer. Can you imagine such a surname for a peace-loving person like Mister Killer! Well, that's life.) Of all the Killer children, only Catica - that's how we used to call little Kathy - was born in Colombia, in Coveñas to be precise. She also died in this very country. She was born in this country because her mother Doña Muriel, in her last days of pregnancy, could not catch the Company's outgoing flight as planned, due to premature labor pains and so Mister Killer had to take her to the camp hospital where both María-Sagoc and María Star of the Sea had been born earlier. Some years later the child, not even an adolescent, died in a plane accident, on a return flight from the United States. The whole camp complex felt shaken at the news of the accident. In fact, the whole region was left in a state of shock because, in a day or two, it would have been Christmas-eve and the children were expecting gifts to fall from the Xmas tree of SAGOC. Poor Kathy never could imagine she was to be born and then to die also on this very land.

To return to Packing-José, he used to get lunch at the house of Mister Ramsoy, a gringo married to Doña Elsa who was from Sincelejo.    She used to prepare a stew of local meat-potato roots with American cheese and the mint-like bleo leaf which, according to my son, always left him licking his fingers. Ramsoy was in charge of the machines and equipment. One of these fell on him one day somewhere inside the camp complex, and he lost a hand in the accident. But, inspite of this, his hands reached out, so to say, because he, was quite friendly with my son. Like the Killer children, his son Hans also liked piggyback-riding on the gardener's back. The Ramsoys lived near the last curve de sac, where the street ended. On the same street also lived the camp doctor and the Port Captain who were changed quite often by their employers the Colombian Government. Oh yes! there was another person, a fellow from Montería called Jerry Giraldo whose actual name is Carlos. He was in charge of the farm and the cattle which the Company had bought along with everything else from Don Julián, Boss.

María Star of the Sea my great grandchild, began growing up in the atmosphere of the camp-complex like her mother María-Sagoc had in her childhood. When she was six and about to go to school she chose her own godmother. "My choice is Carmen Sierra, the Secretary of the Chief of the Complex", she said to us one day when we were seated together at the table. Carmen was the soul of the SAGOC offices. People said she was everybody's right hand, even Ramsoy's. I don't know why she took such a liking to the child but I know that there was no dearth of American toffees in the house of Packing-José thanks to Carmen who, every time she passed that way with Washington Romero, her boyfriend and later her husband, brought her packets of different varieties of them - American, European - and sometimes sugar-plums bought at Leon's shop in Lorica.

Lorica became as accessible as Tolú was earlier by launch. During Rojas Pinilla's rule, new roads were made and the earlier pathways, impassable in winter, soon turned into graveled highways so wide that four trucks could move along side by side. On the one hand, Lorica was now only a half hour's distance from Coveñas and it took only an hour from there to reach Monteria. From there one could go to any part of the country one wished. On the other hand, the old approach to Tolú through the beach improved, the road from there to Sincelejo had pavements now. It became possible therefore to go from Coveñas to Cartagena in just a few hours. And the time came when my eyes would wonder ceaselessly at the speeding trucks, buses, jeeps and so many kinds of colorful vehicles carrying strange people of different skins colors, and I realized, even told Donatila, that my years had slipped away gradually. Though progress had moved in little by little, we were still living in the same old house of ours, perhaps better in some ways but we still had no lights, no telephone, no water and no medical aid. There was the radio of course, on which the Montería and Sincelejo stations could be tuned in this was before the Radio Progress of Cordoba appeared in Lorica. As far as work went, something or the other was at least always available but such jobs were ill-paid. Masons remained masons, they worked to survive. Coveñas was broken up into plots of twenty by a hundred meters upped the mangrove swamp. Through people in Lorica who had acquired such plots, news spread to many others in Montería. So the Dereixes, the D'Ambrossios, the Giraldos, the Vegas and the Ramírez family and others appeared on the scene, buying plots to build houses with the help of contractors brought from outside and buying materials elsewhere. Their houses looked more beautiful and were bigger than the ones built earlier by the gringos. By the time

María Star of the Sea was ten years old, all of Alejo García's plot had been sold out, starting from the creek of Amansaguapos up to the Rocky Point, and in the buying spree there came people from, Bogotá and Antioquia. Each and everyone started building beach houses; so did the politicians from the Capital who always came in Colombian Airforce planes with their families and servants to spend their vacations. They always waited for the same planes to pick them up from the Company's airport for their return to Bogota. Each time they left they looked tanned like shrimps compared to their appearance on arrival when their skins seemed white and bleached like guava-worms.

It's true that work was available but actually many people from other places also came looking for jobs. So it was back to square one. Anyway, a single mason cannot be ten masons at the same time; one has only two hands for mixing, plastering, plumbing and stone-laying. The small village of Guayabal, where Don Héctor García lived, went on expanding all along the main road and filled up with people from all over. Canteens and "to-let" spaces used for some not very holy purposes came up on a new road facing the mangroves behind the newly built vacation-resorts, leaving access to the sea-beach exclusively for the house owners. These were the same beaches where Don Julián, once rode fifty years ago on his honey colored horse, all alone, speaking only to the pelicans and the coconuts. From Rocky Stone onwards too, it became quite a mess, spreading up to the blonde girl's fish-frying joint just a little short of the Lake Entrance Bridge. The Future village near the mango trees, which lead to San Antero and Lorica and where the gringo Dane had abused Maria-Sagoc's trust, also expanded almost to the sea, where many small houses sprang up. All of them, like the ones here, had their private water tanks, cisterns, and even generators, as nothing was provided by the government, neither for the rich nor for poor people like us.

It was later that the controls came. When María Star of the Sea was about fifteen, one day she came with a piece of bad news. She told us that SAGOC's tenure would also be ending soon. I think they had a thirty-year contract with the government for the use of the port for shipping oil and for the pipeline. This was the last year. And so, they would soon leave. Just imagine what a commotion the news cause here. But for me, there was no panic; I was soon going to be seventy; but I hope you will understand, after all that I have told you, why only one anxiety rose in my mind right here, lying in this hammock where I am about to conclude telling you the story of my life. The anxiety was, "What name to give to the son or daughter of our María Star of the Sea?"

And do you know what name we gave him? Do you really want me to tell you? He was named Army-Manuel for he was a boy.

SAGOC left. They dismantled all their installations, the same as Packing-House had done fifty years before. This time I had no tears to shed when the trucks, planes and ships took away everything. No tears, believe me. Because what was SAGOC for us still remained. I was here, little Kathy Killer who lies buried is here; the ship-captain who was lowered into the waters of the Gulf of Morosquillo according to his wishes is here; and also the rest of those who stayed on. Yes, neither Doña Ofelia Gómez, nor Don Enrique Gómez, and not even Franky Arbouin left; many others like Washington Romero and Carmen, his wife, too stayed back. They helped in the packing jobs and, perhaps tearfully, bade everybody good-bye at the airport, at the seaport and those leaving by trucks at their doorsteps, but finally they turned towards Coveñas. And here they settled in "Glitter House" and in "The Cherry Orchard", in their own houses where, in the surrounding gardens which Packing-José looked after, they still have a Spanish cannon and an anchor from the last century. They stayed back, and what's worthier, they sweated hard to get us electricity although inspite of their efforts running water is still far off even as I am telling you all this.

When SAGOC had gone, for sometime no one knew what to do with the installations at the port and the jetty. One day we, heard something that horrified us. They were thinking of using the whole place as a summer resort for the National Congress. Just imagine! Here of all places, and in these insecure houses! It would mean converting all this into a Party place with a capital "P". But very soon we were told that this was only a rumor. The installations were actually going to be used as a Naval Base for the National Armed Forces, the Marines. This is what gave me the idea for the name of my great great grandson, Army-Manuel.

A few years passed, but only a few, and we again saw trucks, buses, ships, airplanes, helicopters and many people coming; almost all of them were, however, men in uniform. The Naval Base of Cartagena, the biggest in the country, was being decentralized. Coveñas was going to be utilized for the purpose. It was quite easy for the National Armed Forces to fit into the place. The senior officials installed themselves in the technical staff quarters of the Company; the Junior officials with their families went to the workers's quarters, and for the soldiers's barracks were built similar to poultry-sheds near the tall red brick buildings constructed during the Packing-House time. The clubs were already there and they were turned into casinos, the department stores into Super Markets and the Church remained the Church. The gardens which were once pruned by Packing-José were   filled with iron parallel-bars, multiple stairs, obstacles and metal wheels. These were things the soldiers needed for their exercise, that would keep them fit to fight. For the first time, they put wiring around the whole camp as is done for a big poultry-yard, and armed troops were placed at the entry and exit. Work was again available of course, a little bit for everyone but nothing permanent. For a little while, there was even a lot of work in masonry, gardening, washing, vending fruits as well as maize roll confections. So all of us, including María Star of the Sea had something to do, especially since the wives of the senior officials liked the delicacies of the region. María-Sagoc was an expert in these items and María Star of the Sea had learned the secrets from her. At times, whatever remained unsold in the Naval Base could be disposed off in Lorica or Coveñas or even in Tolú. Travelling was no longer a problem. Ever since Rojas Pinilla had helped build the gravel and stone roads, each successive government followed it up with new coatings. It was then easy to go to different places on the black asphalt road along which the buses also ran every half an hour. Places like San Antero, Lorica, Cereté and Montería appeared only a step away. The same was true for the other route which Don Julián, used for his journey on horseback, as well as for Tolú, Tolú Viejo and Sincelejo. On the other hand, there was not bit of space available between Coveñas and Tolú to build anything. The years rolled by and the beaches acquired more and more beautiful beach houses which still belonged to people from outside, who came and stayed here for a short while only during the Christmas break or in July or at New Year's.

The road behind the houses overlooking the beach became crowded with dance rooms, apartments, pizza houses, lunch counters, beer corners and small shops selling smuggled goods, where people on vacation came to buy what is seldom available in the interior... I mean, contraband goods which are spreading like wildfire every day in this whole region inspite of the presence of the Naval Base. Our small house was located on this second road which runs parallel to the frontyards of the well-to-do people. It stands on the same piece of land which so many years ago Don Julián, let us use, thanks to my experience in plucking coconuts for his guests. The humble house is still there, now with two walls made of proper building material, but still without running water, electricity, a telephone and many other things. With good friends, old friends around we can at least take care of ourselves in times of need. We can still go to Doña Ofelia Gómez, to Franky Arbouin or to Washington and Carmen Romero who are the only ones here to remind us of SAGOC. These people learned to love our land and decided to live here for ever in houses built on the plots that were either sold or gifted by Doña Virginia Boss, also called Doña Vire.

As the place began swelling with people and things became more complicated, María Star of the Sea also grew up. This time it was María Star of the Sea who surprised us. Her mama had watched her grow up playing in the courtyard with toy animals, tops and dolls. Time flew by and one fine morning María-Sagoc noticed the gentle bulges of the breasts of her daughter who was still in her adolescence. She knew she had to be careful. Such havoc was being wrought by the three or four thousand soldiers from the Naval Base almost every day! I did warn her. But one slight negligent act and the damage was done! She had to be locked in one afternoon, sobbing of course, till she confessed everything to her mama, which is what generally happens. What's worse, she did not tell us who the father was. Nor could María-Sagoc, having once let him go, find the soldier who disappeared inspite of pursuing him. In short, the whole thing was a mess. And what then? What else besides taking to the hammock from where I am telling you this story. From here, I awaited the birth of my great great granddaughter. But no, it was a great great grandson, a handsome boy with the looks and build of a dandy. He was named Army-Manuel.

Army-Manuel is almost as big as a man now. Growing with the times, he is my biggest pride among all my great great grand-children because he has also learned to be a mason. You see, even at four, I remember, how he liked making sand-houses on the beach. You should have seen the way he used to make them, they were so perfect! When the first signs of my rheumatic pains appeared, almost fifteen years ago, I could still go down to the beach with him. You know why? Well, to be his playmate. I had no compulsion to work, as food and clothing didn't worry me. What a progeny, you can imagine! He would say, "this one is for papa," and "this one for grandpa" and "this other one for great grandpa". And "the last one for the great great grandpa". And for him I was all these people! Frankly, if anyone has really occupied a place in my life it's this Army-Manuel, not only because he wanted to be a mason from childhood but because... if only you saw him climbing the coconut trees! If only Don Julián, had seen him plucking and breaking coconuts! He is the true copy of his great grandfather. He loves me, you know, and listens to what I say, though masonry is so changed now; well, everything is so changed, why masonry alone?

For example, you see, Army-Manuel goes to work as a mason just about a mile from the big house of Don Julián at Mother of God which still stands on the beach reminding us of him. At that place just short of the Base, there are storage tanks and the office premises of ECOPETROL, ESSO and MOBIL, and beyond that point one can see a green and white building very near the sea. It's called the Mensuration Office for oil-products and belongs to the Colombian Occidental Company nicknamed the OXY. Imagine, how different things are today! Everything is handled from the center of this two-story building, which has a wine-cellar at the back: installations, the whole budget and the entire staff, everything that earlier, in Mister Killer's times was managed from the camp complex. The OXY company is associated with ECOPETROL in using Coveñas as a passage for the oil extracted at Caño-Limon in the Arauca region somewhere in the interior of the country. OXY has to look after the whole work. Can you now, by any chance, see any camp complex, jetty, ship or any such activity? None at all. Today, they do the job so easily using the latest know-how that we, who knew SAGOC from so Close, find it frightening. The oil pipeline which they started laying here in 1985 originates at Arauca, cutting across, should I say, one thousand eight hundred farms. An advocate called Fernando Mayorga had to settle the arrangement with the farm-owners individually, and that too within a year! I guess the same reasons which the tangerine-looking Englishman Mister Robert Cunnigham Graham gave for preferring Coveñas as port of shipment in 1917 have now led OXY to make this decision. I do not know if Fernando Mayorga had a hand in this, but I know for sure that he arranged the sale of seven small houses, which obstructed the passage of the pipeline at the precise spot where it would come out near the sea after crossing the highway. It was no problem worth the name, with six of the farm-owners. But you would laugh at loud if you knew why exactly a hue and cry was raised by the remaining owner of the house of ill repute, which was located where those Antioch calendar-girls once lived during the Packing-House days. Yes, yes, this is something you can't beat! What happened was, the owner of  the house of ill repute not only wanted to charge for the land and property value but also for the loss of future profits, as he put it. It was Army-Manuel who told me about this. He also told me that it was the OXY advocate again who sat down with the ugly pimp (they called him cabrón "old goat", the pimp) to estimate the number of times and the number of clients the girls went with after their meals, and the number of whisky bottles, consumed and meals eaten. And what came of it? Again, Army-Manuel - who else - told me that the pimp's demands had to be met because it was a thousand times costlier to have the pipeline stalled.

When finally those plots had been taken over and the girls had to look for other pastures for their post-meal work, Army-Manuel began working on the construction of the Mensuration House. The pipeline passed from there and entered the sea underwater to a distance of eighteen miles, where the OXY has a huge tanker vessel, or mothership, which is called The Tanker. The ship is so big and stationary that it can hold up to two million barrels, which is ten days output at Caño-Limon. The underwater position of the pipeline from the Mensuration Office onwards was laid by a French company contracted for the purpose jointly by OXY and ECOPETROL. I used to tell Army-Manuel, "We were spared the French because had you been a great great granddaughter instead of a great great grandson, by now a little Frenchy would have come into our house." And he used to laugh. He laughed because he was already a little excited about a big dame from The Future. "A good future awaits you (his mother used to say); at sixteen you are already hooked." And he also laughed. But he had to work. Actually, as far as work is concerned, he is no less than his great grandfather. If only you saw how they like him in the Company. He is hired there as the plant mason because they need him continually for this or that at the pipeline and at the Mensuration Office. He has already learned how to drive. When the Company chauffeurs are away and the big bosses come down from Bogota, he is summoned to the drive of their beautiful new jeep which is high and big, a Japanese one. I think it was his skill with the jeep which had Facunda, his girlfriend, go so crazy for him. And the very next day, after one such spree, Army-Manuel was able to taste his honeymoon delight in advance. Yes, you know she is pregnant, just imagine! "Get married", I told him one day and he responded "That is no more the fashion, great-Grandpa". I spoke to him again "Okay, but at least give him my name if it is a boy or call him Donatila if it is a girl." If only you saw the way he looked at me, highly strung - the way I looked in my youth. And he said to me:

"No, great-Grandpa, let it be a he or she. I will call the child OXY de Jesus."

"Oh, boy!" I exclaimed; "How much like me you are!"

Juancho, The Bird-Hunter    (Short story)

“All genuine passion only thinks of itself”.

            Stendhal

Don´t tell me that to hunt birds is not a vice. It´s a vice, and a malignant one at that. There are wholesome vices, too. But this particular one has reached the limit. To see somebody selling his life cheap as my son Juancho does, runnig after the whims of a bird cannot but make you angry. There are things an old man does not fully undestand even racking his brains for the truth. Children make you brood over like this. Even more so if they are born with a passion that only thinks of itself.

Of all my four children Juancho was the only one who came to be bogged down with strange bewilderments. He was the only one who in his childhood gave a clear picture of what he would become as an adult. The fixed directions of a life or a passion can´t be twisted even by hammering over the blazing flames, I would say. It looks as if everything were determined form above the way it should be. That´s Juancho´s case, poor little thing.

All my other children worked out roughly till they found their way. Not so with Juancho.

Adalberto the eldest, was born for the mountains. I guess the one who comes first is the one who remains attached to the house and the parent´s miseries. I must admit that had he not lent a hand glazing, cleaning, burning and planting in this piece of mountain I inherited from my father, either we would be dead by now or one of the wealthy neighbours would have bought the land from us. But he has laboured himself dead working as a real man. All this while Adalberto has been my right hand man in the hard work and the consolation for his mother´s tears. This boy has a great fellow-feeling. He is going to get married. Well, he´s on his way to burdening himself with a woman, rather than jumping from bed to bed and having to register illegitimate children.

On the contrary, the girl, Adalgisa, the second child, could end up on the wrong road, I think. Nothing to say so far though she is doing fine. But I myself and my wife fear the idea that she could slip and fall. God forbid. Even though she is responsible and works at Lorica in the residence of a white family, it could happen that the people´s corruption sneaks into her soul, and then you had it. She is, again, very responsible, but Satan waits. On the day Evil lets her know that in a while in bed she could get as much money as a month´s honest work, she would be in danger of parting the door with someone else inside. I don´t think she´d do it, because she is well-behaved, but who knows?

HERE

Pablito, the youngest, younger to Juancho, does not have a standing yet, no line of conduct. He learnt how to walk a few years ago. I keep an eye on him. Guessing the steps he is going to take in future. So far I have hoped he´d become a doctor. He plays the doctor game. The poor boy thinks doctors are made at rural schools. He doesn´t know I have him there while the time comes for him to take the axe; at least, I say, he can be a farmer who can write his own name without struggling with the spelling. There is no money to pay for more than the three year courses they teach around here. No money and no brains, as far as I can judge when I see him reasoning out with other boys. However, in his case too, let´s see what happens.

Nobody is perfect in this world. That´s why, with all the staggering along and gettin stuck, my therr children will get trough. They might not be something special. It would be too much to ask that they hadn´t a weak side. God would have no good reason to gieve me something exceptional.

But Juancho is something different. He is my headche, my great trouble. To have chosen bird-hunting as a profession is like playing the blind man´s buff with life. To hunt birds doesn´t give any money, is not exciting, nor does it amount to something positive in the long run. I think that the girls when courted by a bird-hunter would think that what he really does is to run away from the hard work of the mountains. That´s why every bird-hunter ends up as an old bachelor with plenty of cages. Just imagine, a bird-hunter! Such cases are very unusual around here, it had to happen to me.

As the father with this problem, besides scratching one´s head about whar can be done. Now not even a complaint can be made to Juancho. When the sujects is put even sideways, his eyes get bloodshot, his hair stands erect and he starts defending his occupation. To hunt birds, damn it! Soon he´s going to be eighteen and hasn´t considered so far that killing is evil. One of these days it´s going to destroy me and his mother.

It takes to have a soul of a caller to ovelook the disasters brought about by dedicating the best years of one´s life ot hunt birds. The caller is the bird a hunter uses as a bait inside the trap to appeal with his songs to the fellings of the free birds flying around. The caller is an evel bird. Other birds less revengeful would refuse to sing if they knew his song would be harmful to his fellow birds. That´s how the caller is. And my son Juancho is doing the same with that profession of his: harming himself as well as others.

I´ve arrived at my own conclusions. Bird-hunging is a vice. Nothing but a vice. No ne will chage my mind about it.

Look, a bird-hunter, be he my son or anybody else with the same vice, gets up always early with the coolness of the morning and the usual rooster´s songs. Takes a bath in the yard with buckets of cold water, standing in front of the caller that sings at dawn. He eats his breakfast quietly. Sitting with the cage on the table, he feeds the bird and packs some food to take with him to the mountains. At  nine o´clock he gets on his way whistling towards the main road. There he waits for the bus in tha shade of a leafy tree. Then he takes the bus, pays the driver for his ticket, sits at the back on the long seat meant for the bird-hunters: six boys each holding a cage on his legs. I´ve seen it myself when I go by bus. The six boys talk among themselves about callers, birds, different kinds of bird-seeds and about bird-feeding places. The birds talk too from cage to cage in the languaje of their songs. After the bus runs for half an hour, the bird-hunters leave their places in the bus and get down one by oneat different stops: one over her, another further down the road, still another far beyond. From the side of the road, they walk for half an hour more into the wilds. They search for the bird-feeding places they were told about the niht before at a bird-hunters´meetin. That´s another thing about them: they only talk and walk about with people suffering from the same vice.

On arriving at the shop he was searching for, the bird-hunter hangs the cage as a trap from a low branch of a leafy tree and sits down waiting, close to the trunk of a tree nearby. A bit later, the prisioner bird, feeling the sting of loneliness, is inspired to sing in a way better than never. It si on those occasions that the soul of the bird-hunter jumps with joy wanting to scape from the body, wanting to have feet to run across the country over the fresh grass still wet with the morning dew. It would give anything fir a couple of wings to be able to fly and master from above the different hues of greens in the grass, groves and meadows. That´s all they do, damn it!

At times, bang! You can hear mingled with the breeze sound of the side door of the cage-trap sliding sown. The bird-hunter then calls his soul roaming about the weeds and hills, and upon having it back into his body gets up and goes to check... and, yes: there is a bird inside. This is a bird inside. This happens sometimes. On those occasions the caller finds the inside of the wired trap too narrow to contain its joy; Even then, it jumps from one cross-bar to the other in the cage, takes a dive into the little pot containing water, catches hold of the thin wired bars wanting to stretch them open and fly away. All this while his recently trapped companion warbles confusedly the song of its new fate! But the condition of the bird-hunter is more like the caller´s. Life has turned him into a half bird-man slowly so he beings whistling too.

This only happens sometimes. I insist. At each feeding place, the caller and the bird-hunter have a great common enemy; the old stager it is a bird with much knowledge about traps and callers. It is a second rounder bird, with a lot of experience. Trapped once earlier, it might have one day found the cage unlocked. Or perhaps it got out stealthily while the food was being placed inside its cage and flew away. Once this happens to a bird, it never gets trapped again. Never. This much can be said without any fear of doubt: The existence of the old stager is what makes a science of bird-hunting. A rebellious science at that. The old stager is the headache of the bird hunters. Their bugbear, their Juancho. It hides among the thickness of the wilds in the feeding places when the caller sings its sweet song in the solicitude of the cage. Whenever an inexperienced little bird flies close to the cage temped to peck the birdseeds on the trap, the old stager calls it: psst, come here, it says. Warbling it tells what awaits it. No time to waste. The fresh little bird flies away utterly terrified, singing in a flute tone along its flight. Then the old stager in a sustained flight under the cage pecks the seeds. So it feeds itself and thus defends its friends.

No one can deny that due to the old stager the bird-hunter succeeds in catching a bird only once in a while. If it happens to be a canary, the smile it has when in its cage it enters the house for the first time lights up the entire house. Even the cabinets get lighted. The mingled warbles of the caller and the captured bird make the flowers of the courtyard even more joyful. The night of a day when he´s got a prey is most delighful for a bird-hunter. He does not sleep after the ceremony of shifting cages takes place. Gets up every half an hour to feed the new bird and sprinkle it with mouthful shots of sweetened water. He wants it to look fatter and its feathers more shiny at the next morning market. At down he takes the way to town to negociate his trophy. Then comes back after lunch with an empty cage and, according to him, pockets full of money. But upon holding the accounts correctly it´s seen that the money he spends in the buses and the birdseeds is twice as much as he gets for the bird in the market. And that without adding the time the whole thing takes. As far as I can see and not to use a bad word, this is called to face life with the tail.

That´s what my son messes about with. Bird-hunting is his profession. He goes about the world blinded by a stubbornness which sticks on to him. Beyond his claims about birds and traps he has no understanding for warnings and no inclination to follow advice. He says he´s happy with what he´s doing. The damned things is that when I am no more he might find himself harassed by hunger. I don´t know how he is going to face life.

I remember there was a time when I had the hope that he would get well on the right track amidst his crazy ways. I was infected by joy the day when he told me to take it easy, to be patient. Who knows, he said, he might trap a trupial. A trupial is a bird that easily fetches in the market money enough to eat during four months or even more. I got so excited with the idea that he´d come home with such an expensive bird that for a time I was the one to encourage him. Juancho, I used to tell him, get up early and go to hunt birds.

And such is life, that idea came true. There was a party at home. Maria, my wife, got into the kitchen and cooked the most glorius coconut rice with raisins I ever had in my life. Adalberto, Adalgisa, Pablito and myself, took out the trucks and word clothes dept aside to wear for the procession of the 16 of July, the Virgin of Carmen´s day, or in the visits paid by the Member of Parliament, Mr. Romero. All the neighbours came to enjoy the colors of the feathers, the trumpet-like warbles, the looks of a doctor, and the affectedness of a white person of the most pretty trupial ever came down from heaven. In the night, when all had left and only the family was at home, we made calculations about all we´d buy after Juancho had sold it.

Next day, I got up very early to see the cage and what did I see? The door open, the cage empty, and not even a trace of the bird...

“Juancho, m´boy, come here.” I called him. “And the bird?”.

He had set it free and told me shamelessly:

“I let it fly away, father. It was too beatiful a bird to spend its life in a cage. Don´t worry, father. I´ll catch another one.”

“Oh, Juancho, m´boy: what am I going to do with you!”

(January 1974)

“INTERNATIONAL DULCINEA PRIZE OF LITERATURE, 2000”, GRANTED BY “CULTURAL ACTION MIGUEL DE CERVANTES” OF BARCELONA, SPAIN, TO DAVID SANCHEZ JULIAO

THE RED SNAPPER  (Short story)

         Magdalena Santiago lives --continues to live-- of buying, cleaning and scaling fishes on the shore. She gets up with the first ardours of the dawn and leaves to the port to await for the return of the fishermen. There she sings, invariably, day after day at identical hour, the same song. It is a sweet merry tune of African air whose lyrics, she ignores it, have origins in the old Spanish ballads: King who knows/ how to count/ and how to sing/ tell me, tell me/ tell me, King/ how many waves/ to ocean swings. That liturgy is maybe, besides an order of her portion of denied blood, the expression of her unfulfilled dream of being literate one day. Because, on the contrary of the king of the refrain, Magdalena doesn’t know how to read neither knows how to count. But she has a special gift: when she has sung, without counting them, ten times the refrain, points out in the horizon the return of the first canoes. Magdalena anything knows about numbers or letters, but singing grants her a sharp and correct handling of time. 

         That one is not the only gift she possesses. She also loads very clear in her mind that, buying the fishes to the port price and selling them in town door to door, money is always more than enough at home. Magdalena calls "the miracle of life" to that elementary abstraction, as of impure logarithms. In spite of attending to that miracle day by day, she says not to understand anything but she understands everything. For example, she is six children's mother of three different fathers; and not knowing with the years where the parents have ended after the abandonment, she calls herself  "triple widow of dead alive". Her children, already grown, work there in Tolú or in other towns of the Caribbean coast in marginal form: loading bundles or selling trinkets to the tourists of the beach, today; cooking in a wealthy family's home tomorrow; then, perhaps... 

         Magdalena, however, sustains she is happy; although from the days the cinematograph arrived to Tolú, at times neither herself believes it. The night she went to watch a movie for the first time, remembers, she began to suspect --without been able to turn reasons into suspicions-- that the meridian of  happiness passed through daily life. Then, <<Very easy --she frequently says--:  I stopped going to the cinema and... that was it. I lived happy again>>. Also, what else she should want? --she wonders in her hammock at night. She knows a job, she produces enough money to eat, she keeps each husband's serene love memories in each bed --of the second one, on a table--, she is loved by her children and estimmed by the fishermen and the people in the neighborhood. And most important: none of her daughters has become a hooker, and none of her sons has ever  been in jail.

<<They are very close >>, she comments: <<Each one of them is able to take the bread off the mouth to be given to the other one>>. And she evoids to remain in the surface, when she adds: << God willing they be never rich; because little money, avoids troubles; lots of money, bring them >>. And ends saying:  << May God want them never go to the cinema >>. 

         Magdalena lives --continues to live there, even after the incident-- in a street baptized by town's people as " Bocagrande " ("Bigmouth Street"). Its actual official name has to do with a hero of the Independence, Francisco De Paula Santander. But the unoccupied of the square have changed it for a more sounder one, because in that street the neighbors quarrel daily in insults that are shouted from sidewalk to sidewalk, with sentences loaded with double meanings and curses.  

* * *

In the same street of " Bocagrande ", door followed to Magdalena's, a wealthy woman who hated fishermen and resellers lived once. It is not strange that these things happen in Latin America, since in their small towns princes and beggars cohabit, rich and poor live on the same street, in a constant boil of life that above all the rich ones deny to enjoy. In these towns, the modern residential neighborhoods never had future, because they didn't take time in becoming, of so tedious, in a hall of death. 

         That neighbor --that of the incident-- hated Magdalena, in reason perhaps of what the socialist teacher of the public school called "Marxism the other way around"; that is to say, the scorn of those of up for those of below. The neighbor, however, loved the humble neighborhood's happiness, but she always wanted its torrent of life boiled, not there but in the residential neighborhood of the outskirts she one day moved to, until she got bored... because of the lack of life. When she returned to live to the old neighborhood, she continued making life impossible to Magdalena: she often shifted a few inches the garden's fence, she ordered the maids to drain the kitchen's sink toward the neighboring patio, and she took out in voice to the sun certain dirty cloths --comments-- that Magdalena preferred to wash at home; as that of the triple widowhood of dead alive, the six children of three different husbands; and the poverty and the wrong to dress, thinks that Magdalena carried on her shoulders with inadvertent dignity.   

           The insolent neighbor is really a widow, and she has three married sons whose women wish her the death to inherit the country property she has bought in the best lands of Sinú. Today, in the later times to the incident, the country property is managed at distance, by means of mail offices and phone calls. Because the one that was the neighbor of Magdalena, is now a very rich woman; and she no longer lives in the street of  “Bocagrande” in Tolú, but to many leagues of distance, in a sector of the same name that it is part of the beautiful Cartagena of Indias. Even so, living far, two of the three daughter-in-laws have tried to poison her, two of her male children don't visit her, one of them doesn't  address her a single word --neither at least over the telephone --and the third, the minor, doesn't allow her to see the grandsons on Sundays. 

         And everything, through the blame of Magdalena; at least that comments people. Magdalena is extremely careful in this respect; she has never said that is certain, but neither she has denied it. She limits herself, oh yes, to tell the story with a touch of satisfaction: 

One day --this is the story--, while scaling fishes in the steps of the port, she saw that something shone among the thick yellow of the red snapper’s eggcup. It was a not very common shine, as of stars in the sky, emitted by a small pebble of refined edges. Magdalena had never seen one in her life, but for what she had always listened, she was sure that the pebble was not such but a diamond. She thought immediately of her children going to the cinema, in her daughters-in-law trying to poison her, in her various husbands returning to her one by one or the three at the time, but all of them with the same fake face of regret; she thought of herself, light and unsteady, living the death of a residential neighborhood and buying fish at the door to her fellow fish-retaillers; and she thought, the most serious, in not being able to see her grandsons on Sundays. In that instant she made the decision of giving the red snapper away. 

         Somebody, she tells, had offered to buy the fish in the port. 

         <<It is not for the sale >>, Magdalena said she had said, <<I have reserved it for somebody very special >>. 

         She entered the neighbor's house in the moment the woman discussed with the three daughter-in-laws on what thing to prepare for lunch. 

         << Forgive if I interrupt >>, Magdalena says she entered saying, << but today's fishing has been excellent and I have remembered all you with love. I have brought you this beautiful red snapper so that you all can enjoy it in the sacred peace of the family >>.. 

THE TELESCOPE 

Once a woman loved a sailor. One day the sailor left her to go out to sea... for years. The woman then bought a telescope and sat down to watch and gaze at the ocean,  waiting for her man. Time passed. The woman learned about the flavor of the wait and about the colors of nostalgia and she loved both things. Then, unexpectedly, one day the sailor returned and this time the two loved each other as crazy, for three months. They broke the bed and unraveled the hammock. But then one beautiful day the man awakened in the morning and found the woman installed on the terrace, looking to the horizon through the telescope. "What do you look for?“ the man asked, and the woman responded: "You."

THE TOAST FOR PEACE

When the general suspected that the war was lost, he ordered a captain to submerge in the sea, among the rocks of the cliff, some treasured spoils of war; and also placed orders for the use of  six divers and two guardians. During a moonless night, the captain conducted the operation. After submerging and anchoring the hidden coffers, he then ordered the guardians to shoot the divers. The captain himself died a few days later in a strange plane crash with no survivors, just one hour before the good news of the end of the war reached the encampment. One of the guardians was with him in the plane. The other guardian, an older man, had always lived in a humble field house inherited from his parents, a distance of two days walking from the front. At the house, his wife and children waited for him. And when the guardian arrived there was such great emotion and joy over his return that the family forgot to mention that the previous day an official had brought a gift for him. This was a bottle that contained the wine which that same night would poison the whole family, because, amid the joy, all had refused to believe that, already in time of peace, someone, in the humble field house, could end up dying from war.

THE OLD WOMAN WHO WAITED (Version in English)

Somebody told me the history in Vienna. I can´t recall who, but I remember the place. It was in a dark and cold basement where a group of dancers and musicians from the Caribbean -- all immigrants -- played and danced at nights for a diverse public: expatriated Latin Americans and Austrian workers who somehow arrived, actually coming to this place more for the cheap prices than for the food and the music of the Third World.

Today I understand why the story was told. We talked with several musicians at the table about two types of solitude: that of the Latin Americans in a racist community, and that of the Europeans in an efficient society drained of human flavor. Then -- I remember-- we spoke about Lucho, who had never returned to the place because he was already a rich heir and had married an exuberant blond hairstyler from Salzburg.

This is the history of Lucho. He had come from Colombia to work as sweeper in an office building in Viena. One day, while crossing a street, he saw that an automobile had hit an old lady and drove off in a hit-and-run. Somebody reported the accident from a public  phone and had been told that an ambulance was on the way. Lucho, the immigrant, with frank naturalness, did what he would have done in his small town of Risaralda in Colombia. He helped the old lady to compose herself. She had not been seriously injured and had no apparent fracture. Lucho gave her some words of comfort: "Calm, grandma, take it easy. I will take you to your place". And he did that. The old woman lived alone in an apartment two blocks away. She had never married and had no children or any other living relatives. Thus she requested that Lucho continue visiting her until she was completely recovered. Lucho not only began to pay a daily visit to the lady but also acquired the custom of buying -- with the old lady’s money, of course -- flowers for the bedroom and food for the kitchen. Many times he cooked for the old lady and on several occasions he took her out for fresh air and a walk in the park. One year later the old lady died, and Lucho was the only person who threw two roses and shoveled soil onto the casket in that burial for which only the priest and he attended.

The following day Lucho received a call from a lawyer regarding the will: everything was bequeathed to Lucho, with clear instructions that not one cent should go to the State that never even sent the ambulance on time.

Viena, 1992

ORAL TRADITION, WRITTEN WORD AND COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS IN COLOMBIAN LITERATURE

(Speech given at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Oct. 3. 2002)

It is a great honor for this Colombian author to have been invited to deliver this speech at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, we have entitled “Oral tradition, written word and communication systems in Colombian literature”. I wish to thank professor John Benson and Seidy Benson, as well as the College of Arts and Sciences and the Departments of English and Foreign Languages and Literatures for making possible this kind encounter with you all.

            At the very outset of my intervention let me begin by saying that America, which of course consists of the North as well as the South of the so called The Americas, is a new Continent. And as such, it has to some extent served as a “guinea pig” for many things. As you well know, in this year 2002, we are getting ready to complete 510 years of existence as a mestizo continent. To this Continent, the written word –in the way we understand it today--arrived at the dawn of October 12, 1492, when Christopher Columbus wrote in his logbook: “...an today, with the first rays of light, we saw land”.

            Please note, dear friends, what a great privilege for the Latin Americans, and particularly for the Spanish speaking people of that sub-Continent: to be able to point out the actual sentence, a concrete day and the exact hour in which our written literature marks its beginning. Isn’t that a glorious thing?

            I was born a few miles from the place where Columbus wrote this sentence. Now, five hundred and ten years after such a thing occurred, this author comes here after having spent three years in India as the ambassador of his country in that nation. I found it a great coincidence, because when Columbus wrote that sentence (I insist: the first one ever conceived in our written literature, he was convinced that he had found India.

            But what was there... in that land, in the Caribbean and the rest of de Latin American sub-Continent, before the arrival of the Conquistadores and before Columbus inaugurated the written literature? The answer is simple: there was the word, the gesture, the intonation; and there were the spoken silence, and no alphabets... but only some codices and some ideogrammes.  This does not imply that American “Indians” were barbarians. On the contrary. It is axiomatic to say the Mayans were already handling the concept of zero, which at their time was not even known to the Romans. It is axiomatic. And although the Aztecs never got to conceive the wheel as a tool to built the Pyramides, the use of this element was more than common in toys for children. History is always surprising and paradoxical.   

            But paradoxical or not, everything in America (from north to south) looked as if destroyed by the Conqueror, by the invader. Even the “Indian” heritage of oral tradition. The Invader wanted to destroy temples, cultures, modes of life and thought, cities, and what was more painful: he wanted to destroy the word, and even the silence. But he couldn’t complete his mission. Temples are where they were, and the pyramids of Mexico still exist, the sacred gold remains in The Golden Museum of Bogota, stones remain erected and threatening in Machchu Pichu, Copan, Pachacamac.  And there lies intact the word, now in a different language: Spanish, but with Indian and black soul. And there rests the silence: that of the mother tongues, both, Indian and African, because the slaves captured and brought from Africa also apported the silence to the construction of our language. Their case is as painful as that of the original inhabitant of our Continent: they were mixed up like cattle once they were forced to come, so that they could not understand each other, so that not even two of them could use their original language to communicate. Thus, in order to communicate among themselves, they had necessarily to learn the master’s language and reduce their own tongues to silence.

            Now, 510 year later, we are in the Spanish speaking Latin America another thing: a mestizo (mixbreed) nation, owner of one language but also owner of several painful silences. We speak an alien language which is now our own. The orality subsists but also subsists the silences One can feel how they are right there. Because, as the American Indians refused to surrender his soul, and as they were condemned to illiteracy by the always present social inequity, the practice of his oral tradition became synonymous with his rebellion, with the reaffirmation of self-identity, and with the resurrection of his past in the form of myths, stories, tales and legends. I wonder what role did such aim of rebellion played in the freedom struggles against Spain, and what all that meant in the battlefields of the sixties and the seventies... and in some of the revindicating  struggles of today... with exceptions of course.

            From the inception of Independence, Latin America, in terms of communication of its thought, is divided into two worlds: the world of the word spoken by the common folks, those condemned to illiteracy I mentioned before, and the world of the word written by the so called enlightened of the ruling class, amongst who there are many exceptions: writers, social workers and scientists who ad made an option for expressing the history and the suffering of the common people.  Since then, two languages were formed: one spoken and the other written. One that is tributary of the academies both of Spain and the respective countries and the other that feels free to fulfill the vacums of the official language with terms, phrases and words of their own invention that matches to reality better than those imported and imposed by those academies.   

            In the process of the formation of Latin American nationality, and with the passing of the years until today, the elites became more enlightened (in our own universities or in the United States or Europe) and the common people continued communicating in the oral form, keeping alive the tradition... and transmitting it further on.

            After the first half of the present century, around 1960, the intellectuals of Latin American, those who had made their option, decided for obvious reasons to look back carefully at their history and re-evaluate their identity as Latin Americans. Amongst all the traditions that we all wanted to recuperate and re-evaluate in order to understand ourselves better, the oral tradition occupied one of the most important places.

            We were always conscious that the written literary genres to which we had access were alien to us, despite the use we had so far made of them: the fable, the poetry, the novel, short the story, etc. From the folds of this awareness was born what we consider the first genuinely Latin American genre that allowed us to recuperate all the rebellious element embeded in the orality of the Amerindian and of all those compatriots condemned to not have a second opportunity of earth. This genre was named as “Testimonio”. These “testimonies” were stories based on actual facts, which showed the real face of Latin America: its conflicts, its frustrations, its dreams; in short its history. Even an international prize was instituted in one of our countries to honor the genre. I am talking about the  CASA DE LAS AMERICAS AWARD FOR TESTIMONIES which is still actively inforced.

            In this written genre of the testimony, the retrieval of the oral tradition, of orality, is one of the fundamental ingredient. The genre is fully devoted to retrieving orality, in of course a written form, to highlight its value, its dimensions, and its dissemination.

       Hohever, in our literature, there are spaces where this testimonial orality is interwoven and juxtaposed with the traditional genre of the novel. This is quite evident as you all surely know in “Pedro Paramo” by Juan Rulfo, in “The kingdom of this world” by Alejo Carpentier, as wall as in “ “One hundred years of solitude” by  Garcia Marquez, in “Huasipungo” by Jorge Icaza, in  many works by Ernesto Cardenal, Miguel Angel Asturias, Arguedas, Zapata Olivella and many other renowned authors. 

            But in this attempt for retrieval and revaluation of orality, what happens to the intonation, to the voice patterns, the accents, the natural flavors of speech?

            Latin American writers, anthropologists, sociologists, social scientists of today have attempted to answer to this problem by taking advantage of technological advances of Humanity. This is how I myself started since 1973 writing narratives in an attempt to retrieve the oral heritage of the Continent. These are histories specifically meant to be recorded on cassettes and Long Playing records, at that time, and later on in CD’s, in such a way that the “essence” of the oral finds expression as authentically as possible.

  The intention was not that known as the audio recording of texts written to be read. That had already been done. I want to be clear: these were texts conceived from the very beginning of its process to be recorded in the voice of its author so that he could have listeners instead of readers. Therefore, it extension was not measured in pages but in time and more important: in waves of humor or suspense.

            Success was immediate... and surprising. Even I myself, the ‘guilty’, was surprised. I did not hope that from the first to the last production we reached a category the record companies use to call in Spanish “Ventas millonarias”, what is to say “Millionaire selling”. And it clearly means that many copies of my albums, cassettes and CD´s were sold out, that I got very little money and that companies got millions of pesos.  Record companies in Latin America are a little more corrupted than governments, so it will give you an idea. However, this fact did not frustrated me: I was not interested in money but in the success of the experiment... which has achieved such a level of popularity that even the most prestigious universities of The United States invite me very often that talk about this experiment in popular literature before the most enlighten scholars and the more intelligent students. Do you see how paradoxical History is?

       One of the most remarkable paradoxes of the experiment has been that, in terms of selling and diffusion, this type of ‘cassette literature’ has started to compete with the most successful pop artists. Many of them singing stars of the ‘vallenato’, a Colombian three-ethnical rhythm whose most representative singer, Carlos Vives, has recently been awarded a Grammy Prize. And yet more paradoxical is the fact that, when professor John Benson was to buy in Bogota the CD´s containing this stories for his courses in Western Michigan University, he had to go to “one of those places where they sell vallenatos” and not to the secular book store... where they are, of course, also sold.

            To elaborate these stories I have used a method called “Critical retrieval and systematic devolution of historical knowledge acquired by grass roots”. Professor and renowned sociologist Orlando Fals Borda has designed this methodology. Is consists in a recovering of reality under the scope of a critical lens, to elaborate it and to take it back to the grass roots so that they can re appropriate their own experiences at a new level of understanding. This practice would allow them se see the trees and the forest jointly

            One of these stories, cruel, heartless, exempt of humor, but deeply realistic and written in a language of popular domain, is entitled. “Why do you take me to the hospital en canoe, father?”. This is, briefly, the plot: a son has been wounded by the Police while attempting to take possession of a landlord’s piece of land. The father decides to take to his son to the hospital in a canoe instead of in an ambulance. The father obviously wants to descend with his son in front of the port’s marketplace, in the most crowded hour of the maketday, and “kill two birds with one stone” as he says: to allectionate his son and to let people know what the Police has done to the kid. It is more than clear the father does not agree with what his son has done, but does not agree either with what the Police has done to him. So he wants to punish both, Police and boy, by taking his son from the marketplace to the plaza, and afterwards to the studios of the local radio station (so the fact can be broadcast as the breaking news) and later on to the Mayor’s office to complain before de first authority and finally, at last, to the hospital.

             The story pretends to be, at least that was the author’s wish, a metaphor related to land tenure reality in Latin America and specially in Colombia. . It is obvious, of course, that to insert oneself in such an activity in today’s Colombia may result a little dangerous for your ‘health’. If things are not managed correctly, the author can be taken to the grave in a canoe, father. 

LITERATURE IN TIMES OF CONFLICT: THE CHALLENGES OF WRITING IN TODAY’S COLOMBIA

By Colombian writer  David  Sánchez  Juliao

(Speech given at Florida International University, Miami, Oct 17^th, 2002)

It is a great honor for this Colombian author to have been invited to deliver this talk at Florida International University, Miami, we have entitled “Literature in times of conflict: the challenge of been a writer in Colombia”. I wish to thank professor Eduardo Gamarra of the  Latin American and Caribbean Center of F.I.U, and to Liesl B. Picard for making possible this kind encounter with you all.

            At the very outset of my intervention let me begin by saying that America, which of course consists of the North as well as the South of the so called The Americas, is a new Continent. And as such, it has to some extent served as a “guinea pig” for many things. As you well know, in this year 2002, we are getting ready to complete 510 years of existence as a mestizo continent. To this Continent, the written word –in the way we understand it today--arrived at the dawn of October 12, 1492, when Christopher Columbus wrote in his logbook: “... today, with the first rays of light, we saw land”.

            Please note, dear friends, what a great privilege for the Latin Americans, and particularly for the Spanish speaking people of that sub-Continent: to be able to point out the actual sentence, a concrete day and the exact hour in which our written literature marks its beginning. Isn’t that a glorious thing?

            I am actually delivering this talk a few miles from the place where Columbus wrote this sentence. Now, five hundred and ten years after such a thing occurred, this author comes here after having spent three years in India as the ambassador of his country in that nation. I found it a great coincidence, because when Columbus wrote that sentence (I insist: the first one ever conceived in our written literature, he was convinced that he had found India.

            But what was there... in that land, in the Caribbean and the rest of de Latin American sub-Continent, before the arrival of the Conquistadores and before Columbus inaugurated the written literature? The answer is simple: there was the word, the gesture, the intonation; and there were the spoken silence, and no alphabets... but only some codices and some ideogrammes.  This does not imply that American “Indians” were barbarians. On the contrary. It is axiomatic to say the Mayans were already handling the concept of zero, which at their time was not even known to the Romans. It is axiomatic. And although the Aztecs never got to conceive the wheel as a tool to build the Pyramids, the use of this element was more than common in toys for children. History is always surprising and paradoxical.   

            But paradoxical or not, everything in America (from north to south) was a target for destruction by the Conqueror, by the invader. Even the “Indian” heritage of oral tradition. The Invader wanted to destroy temples, cultures, modes of life and thought, cities, and what was more painful: he wanted to destroy the word, and even the silence. But he couldn’t complete his mission. Temples are where they were, and the pyramids of Mexico still exist, the sacred gold remains in The Golden Museum of Bogota, stones remain erected and threatening in Machchu Pichu, Copan, Tikal, Chichen Itza, Pachacamac.  And there lies intact the word, now in a different language: Spanish, but with Indian and black soul. And there rests the silence: that of the mother tongues, both, Indian and African, because the slaves captured and brought from Africa also brought the silence to the construction of our language. Their case is as painful as that of the original inhabitant of our Continent: they were mixed up like cattle once they were forced to come, so that they could not understand each other, so that not even two of them could use their original language to communicate. Thus, in order to communicate among themselves, they had necessarily to learn the master’s language and reduce their own tongues to silence.

            Now, 510 year later, we are in the Spanish speaking Latin America another thing: a mestizo (mixbreed) nation, owner of one language but also owner of several painful silences. We speak an alien language  which is now our own. The orality subsists but the silences also subsists. One can feel how they are right there. Because, as the American Indians refused to surrender his soul, and as he was condemned to illiteracy by the always present social inequity, the practice of his oral tradition became synonymous with his rebellion. Also with the reaffirmation of self-identity, and with the resurrection of his past in the form of myths, stories, tales and legends. I wonder what role did such rebellion played in the freedom struggles against Spain, and what all that meant in the battlefields of the sixties and the seventies... and in some of the vindicating struggles of today... with exceptions of course.

            From the inception of Independence, Latin America, in terms of communication of its thought, is divided into two worlds: the world of the word spoken by the common folks, those condemned to illiteracy I mentioned before, and the world of the word written by the so called enlightened of the ruling class, amongst whom there are many exceptions: writers, social workers and scientists who have developed an option for expressing the history and the suffering of the common people.  Since then, two languages were formed: one spoken and the other written. One that is tributary of the academies both of Spain and the respective countries and the other that feels free to fulfill the vacuums of the official language with terms, phrases and words of their own invention that matches to reality better than those imported and imposed by those academies.   

            In the process of the formation of Latin American nationality, and with the passing of the years until today, the elite became more enlightened (in our own universities or in the United States or Europe) and the common people continued communicating in the oral form, keeping alive the tradition... and transmitting it further on.

            After the first half of the present century, around 1960, the intellectuals of Latin American, those who had created their option, decided for obvious reasons to look back carefully at their history. This, to re-evaluate their identity as Latin Americans. Amongst all the traditions that we all wanted to recuperate and re-evaluate in order to understand ourselves better, the oral tradition occupied one of the most important places.

We were always conscious that the written literary genres to which we had access were alien to us, despite the use we had so far made of them: the fable, the poetry, the novel, the short story, etc. From the folds of this awareness was born what we consider the first genuinely Latin American genre. It allowed us to recuperate all the rebellious element embodied in the orality of the Amerindian and of all those compatriots condemned to not have a second opportunity of earth. This genre was named as “Testimonio”. These “testimonies” were stories based on actual facts, which showed the real face of Latin America: its conflicts, its frustrations, its dreams; in short its history.

            In this written genre of the testimony, the retrieval of the oral tradition, of orality, is one of the fundamental ingredients. The genre is fully devoted to retrieving orality, in of course a written form, to highlight its value, its dimensions, and its dissemination.

            However, in our literature, there are spaces where this testimonial orality is interwoven and juxtaposed with the traditional genre of the novel. This is quite evident as you all surely know in “Pedro Paramo” by Juan Rulfo, in “The Kingdom of this World” by Alejo Carpentier, as wall as in “ “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by  Garcia Marquez, in “Huasipungo” by Jorge Icaza, in  many works by Ernesto Cardenal, Miguel Angel Asturias, Arguedas, Zapata Olivella and many other renowned authors. 

            But in this attempt for retrieval and revaluation of orality, what happens to the intonation, to the voice patterns, the accents, the natural flavors of speech?

            Latin American writers, anthropologists, sociologists, social scientists of today have attempted to answer this problem by taking advantage of technological advances of Humanity. This is how I myself started in 1973 writing narratives in an attempt to retrieve the oral heritage of the Continent. These are stories specifically meant to be recorded on cassettes and Long Playing records, at that time, and later on in CD’s, in such a way that the “essence” of the oral finds expression as authentically as possible.

The intention was not simply to record texts already written. That had already been done. I want to be clear: these were texts conceived from the very beginning of the process to be recorded in the voice of its author so that he could have listeners instead of readers. Therefore, the extension was not measured in pages but in time and more important: in waves of humor or suspense.

            Success was immediate... and surprising. Even I myself, the ‘guilty’, was surprised. I did not expect that from the first to the last production would reach reached a category the record companies use to call in Spanish “Ventas millonarias”, that is to say “Millionaire selling”. And it clearly means that many copies of my albums, cassettes and CD´s were sold out, that I got very little money and that companies got millions of pesos.  Record companies in Latin America are a little more corrupted than governments, so that will give you an idea. However, this fact did not frustrate me: I was not interested in money but in the success of the experiment... which has achieved such a level of popularity that even the most prestigious universities of The United States invite me very often to talk about this experiment in popular literature before the most enlightened scholars and the most intelligent students. Do you see how paradoxical History is?

One of the most remarkable paradoxes of the experiment has been that, in terms of selling and diffusion, this type of ‘cassette literature’ has started to compete with the most successful pop artists, many of them singing stars of the ‘vallenato’, a Colombian tri-ethnical rhythm whose most representative singer, Carlos Vives, has recently been awarded a Grammy Prize. And yet more paradoxical is the fact that, when professor John Benson was to buy in Bogota the CD´s containing these stories for his course on my works in Western Michigan University, and professor Toebaldo Nortiega for his in Trent University of Canada, also on my works, they had to go to “one of those places where they sell vallenatos” and not to the secular book store... where they are, of course, also sold.

            To elaborate these stories I have used a method called “Critical retrieval and systematic devolution of historical knowledge acquired by grass roots”. Professor and Colombian renowned sociologist Orlando Fals Borda has designed this methodology. It basically consists in a recovering of reality under the scope of a critical lens, to elaborate it and to take it back to the grass roots so that they can re appropriate their own experiences at a new level of understanding. This practice would allow them to see the trees and the forest jointly

One of these stories, cruel, heartless, exempt of humor, but deeply realistic and written in a language of popular domain, is entitled. “Why are you taking me to the hospital in a canoe, father?”. This is, briefly, the plot: a son has been wounded by the Police while attempting to take possession of a landlord’s piece of land. The father decides to take to his son to the hospital in a canoe instead of in an ambulance. The father obviously wants to descend with his son in front of the port’s marketplace, in the most crowded hour of the market day, and “kill two birds with one stone” as he says: to teach his son a lesson and to let people know what the Police have done to the kid. It is more than clear the father does not agree with what his son has done, but does not agree either with what the Police have done to him. So he wants to punish both, Police and boy, by taking his son from the marketplace to the plaza, and afterwards to the studios of the local radio station (so the fact can be broadcast as the breaking news) and later on to the Mayor’s office to complain before de first authority and finally, at last, to the hospital.

             The story pretends to be, at least that was the author’s wish, a metaphor related to land tenure reality in Latin America and specially in Colombia. . It is obvious, of course, that to insert oneself in such a literary and political activity in today’s Colombia may result a little dangerous for your ‘health’. If things are not managed correctly, the author can be taken to the grave in a canoe, father.