Tolima pijao

La leyenda del dorado

Peasant story

Yes buddy, just like you hear it. In those days hunger made us twist our guts, and on moonless nights our taitas came down from the hill to get us food for us to eat. We also could not make bonfires, because if not those large metal birds shot fire from the sides, although the bad thing about it was biting our tongues and not screaming, so death would cover us forever with its black cloak, while the howls of the dogs informed us of the strangers who roamed the bush.

So I grew up and took my first steps in life. Sometimes hidden in the bushes, and other times in the half-abandoned farm surrounded by the taitas, the sisters, the chickens, the pigs, and an old horse gifted by the former owner of all those lands. When I could, I would go in the morning to the ravine that drowns out the crowing of the roosters and the whistling of the birds due to the thunder of the river at its mouth, to draw the water with the totuma from a hole in the sand; to drop it in a mucura and climb it up the hill on the head, so that my mother and my sisters could prepare the food. Having had a good breakfast in the quiet times, I would grab my notebook with the pencils, and I would throw in a lot of quimba, until I reached the school, with its mud walls lined with guaduas that formed a spacious room full of desks.

Ah! Compadrito Pancracio, we were like sixty students. I don't even remember. There we were the culicagados from the first to the fifth grade meeting with the teacher who took the hands of the guipas to teach them to delineate the tangles of the letters on the paper, while some of the children cried because they could not go to piss in the bush , or we would pick up in the weedy yard, surrounded by the dense mountain that miles ahead becomes a mountain range.

At recess we played to remove the asses to place them on the backs of our careless companions, and the would see shout; then the teacher would come handing out blows to the right and left with a rose stick that she had made us cut since the beginning of the year of study. On the way home we would fight because Bertilda kissed one of the boys, and not us, or because of some other thing. But since there was no time left in my house because I often went with my father to help cut the grass and cultivate the corn, soon after I went all dirty to another region where one day I got a wife.

Some years passed, and I already had a patron who owned the haciendas in the region, who gave me a piece of land and a ranch to live with the family made up of three guambitos baptized with the name of the saint of the day the stork, my wife, me, and the animals that we managed to gather with the few pennies saved in the course of a lifetime of effort. We no longer used the sperm, but the petromax lamps that we bought in the nearest town.

At that time the woman was jealous of me with the female of    Aniceto, because in addition to being very pretty, in the patron saint festivities she was almost always my partner in the patron saint dances, which made the godfather won't greet me, and she and I would make some scandals in front of the guambitos or friends, either while I was smoothing my pants with the charcoal iron, already at meal times, and even now that I have no love affairs with any other. But what are we going to do to him: The past, past, and don't think that I dragged the naguas to all women.

As for money, my pants pockets always remained empty, giving just what is necessary to live and dance hard at the parties that I tell you, well, look at me that I learned to wear shoes here in the city.

Of the children, the first, Martina de San Silverio, rendered accounts to my  god very early. The second, the caite José Onésimo, later. Wait I explain godfather. The violence was still raging, and we peasants did not know why they were killing people, and so we were forced to abandon the crops. That is how we began to feel hungry, so much that our guts were thrown away dry from how much we endured.

For this reason, I who have been an  a believer, tried by all means to find a way to support the family, resorting to the imagination that from time to time deceived me at night when I seemed to see tealights that glowed among the stubble; and very stealthily I would go to the place where I thought I saw them, and mark it with a stake or whatever else I could. The next morning, very early in the morning, we would go with Caite José to take a pick and shovel to the place I am telling you. Why will you say, or as it is said now. It happens that the ancients, our parents, great-great-grandparents and other dynasties, buried the gold they had in clay pots, to hide it from thieves. Much of that gold must still be around. After their death, the soul remained grieving, waiting for some lucky person to see the flickering tealights burn at night. Then one would dig for the deceased to rest, and the Christian to enjoy. Caite José accompanied me on many excavations, but luck was cast on its back for us. We never get anything.

The pockets were more bare than a newborn child god. The bosses of the region had decided on the cultivation of cotton since the machine to enter through the large door of the plantations. Thus they destroyed the banana crops, the guava trees, and all the support of the food of us ignorant people, to turn us into poorly paid wage earners, since the money was not even enough to buy the food that arrived in the nearest town on market days.

The hunger was terrible. The guambita, the oldest, I don't know, died without being able to remove the vice of eating dirt. Every time I remember, my soul hurts as if it had been yesterday.

The poison that controlled the cotton plague decimated the birds and wild animals of the field, poisoned the water of the rivers and forced the swollen fish to die on the banks of the rivers. For these reasons, many children died. Among them my caite José, my guámbito. I wanted to look for another region, but since we had the ranch, I worked from dawn to dusk picking up cotton during the day, and getting up early to fish for the only good thing that was achieved in the newly built dam on the side of the slope, to get the food that was scarce day by day.

 Imagine godfather, at that time the devil was doing his thing on the sidewalk, because the condemned man would appear at the least expected moment and scratch the peasants, or he would lose the women with the friends of the husbands peering into the very noses of one . In the days that I am telling you, after drinking some spirits to cheer myself up, I went fishing at the dam that I tell you. There he had the godfather of the lesser guambito, a tin boat with a powerful motor on board, which he used to pass people to the other side of the pond, either with food or with laborers who worked there.

 So the compadre lent me the boat and deep into the lagoon, bocachicos, nicuros, patalós fell on the hook, and I'm not saying more because he tastes his mouth. In the early morning of that day when I was leading the canoe back, I saw in the dark a guy who looked like the same devil they were talking about, or viruñas as I call him, who was walking with espadrilles between the mountains. My hair stood on end with fright, compadre. Immediately, I put my hand on the motor and lunged against the bundle that was on the water. The truth of the case, this guy was not the devil, but a Christian who fished at dawn, and who appeared dead floating in the middle of the logs.

The peons who were waiting with the compadre for my arrival heard the story and were the witnesses who blamed the death on the account of the guy who spoke to him, being arrested and sentenced to several years in prison. While he was paying for the broken dishes, the woman worked on the ranch of the compadre who owned the boat, to support the least of the guambitos.

Although there were several years in that situation, what more punishment than that of conscience, because ignorance makes us commit bestialities. Yes or no, godfather?

The poison that controlled the cotton plague decimated the birds and wild animals of the field, poisoned the water of the rivers and forced the swollen fish to die on the banks of the rivers. For these reasons, many children died. Among them my caite José, my guámbito. I wanted to look for another region, but since we had the ranch, I worked from dawn to dusk picking up cotton during the day, and getting up early to fish for the only good thing that was achieved in the newly built dam on the side of the slope, to get the food that was scarce day by day.

Imagine godfather, at that time the devil was doing his thing on the sidewalk, because the condemned man would appear at the least expected moment and scratch the peasants, or he would lose the women with the friends of the husbands peering into the very noses of one . In the days that I am telling you, after drinking some spirits to cheer myself up, I went fishing at the dam that I tell you. There he had the godfather of the lesser guambito, a tin boat with a powerful motor on board, which he used to pass people to the other side of the pond, either with food or with laborers who worked there.

So the compadre lent me the boat and deep into the lagoon, bocachicos, nicuros, patalós fell on the hook, and I'm not saying more because he tastes his mouth. In the early morning of that day when I was leading the canoe back, I saw in the dark a guy who looked like the same devil they were talking about, or viruñas as I call him, who was walking with espadrilles between the mountains. My hair stood on end with fright, compadre. Immediately, I put my hand on the motor and lunged against the bundle that was on the water. The truth of the case, this guy was not the devil, but a Christian who fished at dawn, and who appeared dead floating in the middle of the logs.

 The peons who were waiting with the compadre for my arrival heard the story and were the witnesses who blamed the death on the account of the guy who spoke to him, being arrested and sentenced to several years in prison. While he was paying for the broken dishes, the woman worked on the ranch of the compadre who owned the boat, to support the least of the guambitos.

Although there were several years in that situation, what more punishment than that of conscience, because ignorance makes us commit bestialities. Yes or no, godfather?

At my exit, we were worse. Fear was spread throughout the region visiting plot after plot, destroying everything in its path like locusts. To add insult to injury, the relatives of the deceased wanted to avenge him. The compadrito who always helped me gave us some pesos, and with that we came to Bogotá, paying for hiding places at any cost. The farm and everything that we had acquired there, they were as if we had never had them.

 Freezing cold, we got a room in a seedy hotel, which at night received unfaithful men with noisy women who stayed in neighboring rooms and would not let us sleep while we prayed. Notice compadre that violence forced us to civilize ourselves. And I who half read and write, who never got an ID or papers, I was forced to look for a job and work whatever it was. As my god does not abandon any good Christian we soon became friends with the owner of the hotel. A fat lady, already old. She proposed to my wife that she sweep and clean the rooms every day, which would earn her lunch and the daily rent for the room. We stayed there for several months, while by contract I made several deep ditches that helped me to learn a new trade.

This is how I started a new life, compadre Pancracio. Nobody knows how one's life is written on earth. For my part I was rigged in the hotel of the fat girl, reason for not looking for the appropriate place to put my head. So the days went by until the one in which the chubby girl began to sharpen my wife with her tongue, which she half understood between laughs and laughter. "What a woman, one has to look for a husband who answers by the house, earns money, and have it well" She promised that I would get a good job that would help us get by with the other sute we had. It is true that we peasants smell something against one, and we immediately burst. So it continued.

One fine day this guy appeared who according to the fat woman would help my wife get a good job, and with giggles, and painting little gold birds with all the flattery to which we are accustomed in the cities, he took her hand by the foot. The scandal was strong. My wife, who is a Tatacoa and she can't stand practical jokes, gave him a hit a blow to the evil born who takes advantage of these. It turns out, compadre, that this guy had a good business. He lived by picking up newly unpacked females from the field, to take them to work as prostitutes, and thus later throw throw them on the street. For us it was the endless beginning of life in the city occupying rooms full of filth in the different tenants where we have been.

I still remember compadre, the time I met a toilet the first day we arrived in Bogotá. We had gone with a friend more trained than us to visit some countrymen. I had a bad stomach while visiting. Luckily the owner of the house understood me and lent me the bathroom. How awful. It makes me sad to say it compadre. I confused the towel from drying my hands with what we now call toilet paper. The friend who sensed that something had happened took me out of the house and explained the details of the case. We were, but very, very, ignorant. One, what would he know that toilet paper was used here and all that  that we now call civilization. Those were other times, godfather.

The messenger of the gods

Zoratama could see in the stream the reflection of her slender body, with erect breasts and firm pubes, with her smooth brown skin caressed by the cold water that her deep breathing induced. He sensed the arrival of the messengers of the gods who threw lightning and flashes, spit fire from thickly bearded mouths, and rode unknown four-legged animals down the rugged jungle paths. He learned of them, thanks to the guardians of Zipa, his master and lord, future husband and companion, owner of the lives of his subjects; which also foreshadowed the punishment of Bochica, the god who roamed the mountains of water, plowed through the Magdalena river and crossed the Opon teaching the trades and morals to men.

Sensual woman, with caramel eyes, prominent cheekbones, hips accurate to her body, imposing as a goddess, she smoothed her black hair with her hands, while others covered her with blankets, and carried her raised to their hut. There they rubbed on her skin the orchids brought from many parts of the kingdom, special for the descendant of Chia who illuminates men, and accompanies the sun in the daily events of the sky. They dressed her in a gray-striped white blanket, adorned her with earrings, nose rings, pectorals, and gold bracelets, and on a wooden seat supported by two thick logs, they carried her on the shoulders of strong warriors to witness the festivities of the tribe. that celebrated the last triumph of Tisquesusa who climbed a mountain incline, while his faithful subordinates on the neighboring slopes awaited the favorable response of their God, who little by little lifted the veil, and illuminated the lagoon.

Then he, surrounded by his priests and in the middle of some rocks, appeared naked, covered in turpentine and gold. Later, he would enter the lagoon in a special raft followed by other canoes leaving the shores with the procession. Already in the center of the lake, the priests lit the sacred branches, and the smoke of the incense rose in the cold air. The great Zipa felt in his entrails the silence of the indigenous people who, on their knees and with their heads pressed to their thighs, their hands thrown against the vegetation and with their backs to him, waited for him to submerge in the sacred water. Then he would go out to preside over the parties.

The music of the fotutos and snails was heard by many suns of the kingdom, where the messengers of the gods had just disembarked from the mountains of water, who had just measured their strength against the sea monsters that for centuries lashed the caravels with their wings. of blizzards, and bodies of eddies. Their boss had offered their lives to the one true God, provided he led them to the mainland, without the swaying of the ships in the waves preventing him from seeing a new world. Cristóbulo who without being a warrior, demonstrated in the inns of the roads of his land the talent in the throw of the sword, the handling not only of the wild colts, but that of the women who went out in love with the male, who seduced them , and kidnapped them.

 After traveling through all the courts of the European kings in search of help for his long-awaited adventure, he finally achieved glory in the recognition of his peers. Not in vain did he come from far away, from that lavish universe of the Olympian Gods, who defended their protégé in all the mishaps of life, while playing in the abodes of heaven with the passions of men in wars. Thus they wove their tunics with the threads of blood and the hatred accumulated in their history. Demigod condemned to be human and immortal was banished by the owners of life and death to live in the company of wars and conquests, due to which his victories came to us as legends. Very soon the gods fell away and he took up the sword, the cross and the horse. He traveled the world in pursuit of these untamed lands, to possess them in the name of his deity. It was enough only to enchant his soldiers, rewarding all those who obeyed his orders, or inflexible punishing -even with death- those who did not comply with them. Without the above, he could not cross the country of snows, which as a door blocked his way through floating gardens, to “The Golden”.

From the limits of that enchanted region came the great river to its mouth forming foamy waves with the salty water. A deafening noise produced by the air against the leaves of the ceiba and myrtle trees silenced the shouting of the monkeys, the chirping of the birds with colorful feathers, and the roar of the animals in the jungle. The world he never imagined, much like that of a sensual woman, haunted him. To drive away the jaguar that came from night to night for one of his soldiers or untamed horses, he celebrated his fictitious death surrounded by the whining and comrades in arms, but not before ordering that the fire with logs not extinguish it, while the fireflies fluttered around him.

 The new days arrived accompanied by the squawking of chattering birds, the fluttering of herons, inclement rains, suffocating heat, and the attacks of fierce Indians who received them with poisonous stakes. Then the arrows rained down from the skies on the bodies of his faithful followers and many of the quadrupeds died in the mud, or in the jaws of alligators. Thus the river became interminable while he heard the echo of other divinities on the cliffs through which he imagined a woman calling   many moons on the way, with the encrypted sounds of the cry of the natives hidden in the jungle. She sensed that another man wanted her for himself.

Tisquesusa was preparing her marriage after defeating Hunza with the mere ostentation of her command, and in compromise with the sorcerer Sugamuxi, who knew about all the entanglements of power. Peace was sealed with offerings. Children brought from the eastern plains were slain. One of them received the arrows of the entire Zipa tribe. To another, he sliced ​​open the chest with a sharp stone, and drew out his beating heart as all the rocks in the realm were stained red. Something magical fell into the hands of Zoratama that cut his fingers, splintered into many pieces, and so he could see his face reflected in all those pieces of quartz, as if they were stealing his soul. The mysteries of the recent messengers of the gods bewitched her. He saw them come out of the vegetation in bloom with new species. He felt them gallop on his chest ascending from the mountain range to the plain amid the battle of the Zipa's vassals against the glitter of armor, the neighing of horses, and fire-breathing weapons. The hero appeared on the back of his horse. He humiliated the Zipa through the body of an indigenous crashed against the earth. Zoratama, in love with Cristóbulo gave birth to a child. The "Chroniclers of the Indies" say that the victor traveled to the eastern plains where we still see him wandering maddened by the fever of love, and deceived by the mirage of glory.   Zoratama threw herself into the lagoon, perhaps disappointed to be the goddess of a new race. Many other stories like this were woven into the daily life of their descendants. This is confirmed by historians.

The labyrinth

I don't know if you remember the history of the minotaur in Greek culture. I am often confused, as many assume that I should be in hell. They are confusions. Mephistopheles lives in the underworld, and in heaven we are as in the story of the Antioquia writer Tomás Carrasquilla: "On the right hand of God the father." In the labyrinth, man walks through inscrutable corridors and corridors with no possibility of escaping from the Greek myth, as if by some guilt of love or low passions, he was condemned to die under the splint of the bull man. And in hell, as Dante Alighieri says in the Divine Comedy, those who wanted them to be there are doomed. And they probably deserve it. But there are also others, as in my case, they felt like I should go to hell. This is how for years I ended up in hell, not by my decision, but on their behalf. Of course, for those who do not understand, I was the one who got into that labyrinth that I often confuse with that of the minotaur, or that of hell where bad Christians inevitably end up purging their felonies. Of course, with repentance, everyone can end up in heaven. Raise your eyes and you will see them there.

I do not remember since when, but the only certain thing is that I ended up in unfortunate hell, and as if I had committed a vileness for years and years I was in the middle of mysterious torments, abstracted from reality, while the stooge who helped such sinister torture they wanted the angel of death to take me to hell. We always justify things. And it's not that I believe myself a saint. Like all mortals, we often insist on believing that we are the culprits, and that is when those who should be, justify. They frolic in Eden. They are the farces we are all used to. They put on their masks and hide their envies, their rages, their concealed anger, their ambitions, and like comparsas they howl from the four winds that the unfortunate man is condemned to live in ignominy. They yawn and their ambitions run out.

While I was in that hell, they came out as witches and tried to make me stay in that outburst forever. Their covert little voices and conspiracies were much like Dante's. And now that I breathe a little the air that we all breathe, I still see them thinking about how to take me back to that labyrinth. Everything is unreal there, and whoever takes advantage of whatever it is to satisfy their appetites. It is a state of mind, in which, if we are careless, we die without realizing why. It may seem that we committed scoundrels, but no. Only the infernal know it. They are the demons. They are the ones who instigate and justify their felonies to savor the ignominy, and they do not know or understand that as mortals they are condemned to live their own hell, since they will live on hatred and resentment.

They will not be happy. This is how the sweat in the labyrinth that can be in the depths of the earth or the sea, will make us believe that we are happy satisfying our irrational appetites. The mortals like the gods of the Greeks, we believe that we have everything, when in reality we are passengers in this world. Be careful not to get caught up in such terrible chaos. They are dangerous. Its shadows are of passions and banalities. Do not be confused because the paraphernalia will be waiting. They are like the Pharisees. They live on vain passions. They don't mind confusing anyone with their tongues. They are nefarious and deadly.

Return from death

From the sky, cities were seen as huge swarms of cells that glowed and darkened permanently. The shadows advance or retreat to the swaying of the winds that seemed to accommodate the new circumstances. The shadow of death had left us. The struggle of science, doing research with its thousands of eyes in the depths of living beings, and listening in the different forms that it presented, they could never defeat it. It didn't matter that they cornered her momentarily. She multiplied because she needed her shadow to hover over all of us. Some despised her and amused themselves by calling her at the wrong time. Yet she was rushing to do her duty. He quickly organized his abode. Then came the rigidity of the body, and very soon the worms merged with it into a new being that was integrated into nature. He patiently spun the decomposition of one life, transforming it into another, until it became part of the matter from which it had been germinated. He enjoyed all of this. I can't remember it very well, but I know that for millennia we fled from his presence, that presence that was a shadow that mourned our hearts, stealing the heat from our bodies without asking our permission. Now we were mired in sadness. His absence seemed definitive. It all started in a casual way. We prepared giant bonfires in order to celebrate the ephemeris of the colonization of outer space that we believed to be unique. And it was not so. We lived in one of the many spaces that exist everywhere. We discovered that our space was more restricted than we expected. There were many manifestations of matter by which time transformed it at speeds almost impossible to quantify. Time absorbed us in infinity of labyrinths not previously inhabited by matter or life. It was nothing. In one of those spaces while we are organizing the commemorations that I am telling you, death left us. As simple as that. We knew this because the solar system seemed to have been anchored in the center of the universe. The sunlight was static. Its fire cooled and the night stretched out to make us forget the calendar that we patiently built for centuries with the help of the constellations and the Gods. As the wrinkles in the earth were not enough to cover each one of our bodies, we had to paint them with saliva, to remember that a lot of time passed in our surroundings. We were ancient, just beginning to conquer the world. Our insights they changed each other upside down and we could see them through our shadows that stretched and shrunk, identical to that of cities as we tried to remember the world we live in. Finally, we decided to forget about death. A shadow appeared in the sky. We had found another space and another death in another time. The cities took on another grayish hue and the concrete shadows blur the new shadow that was growing. At dawn, a new summer shone in our eyes. Only then could we verify that the memories surfaced and the shadow spread throughout all our pores. Death returned in another way. We had to invent a new calendar.

Fishing for Pisces

Everyone knows that the first forms of life appeared at the bottom of the ocean, and then populated the earth's surface. It is no coincidence that most of our bodies are made up of water, and that without it none of the living beings that we know can exist. Furthermore, who can assert against the fact that, just as man has wanted to fly, he has also wanted to live at the bottom of the sea. At least we all want to know that liquid and majestic mass that moves on the surface of the earth. Now, you may wonder why I am telling you this story. It happens that it is about many insatiable fishermen who wade through rivers and seas in search of fortunes. In the sea I have seen the scientific advance used to satisfy the human appetite. In return, I never tire of observing the sky and counting the stars that make up the constellation Pisces. I don't need nets or lures for fish. I dive into the ocean in the dead of night and find the fish in the starlight scales that shine in the sky. I feel the happiness when caressing the fire of each one of them, while the others leave their nets to the swaying of the waves. When you manage to get the fish that I am telling you, and you can tell the wrinkles of the history of life and of man, I will tell you why I look at the sky next. Only in this way, I rediscover the image of Pisces.