Joy to be a passenger, after a certain time and sorry for the delay I suppose it is not so strange anymore, of such a mother ship! So huge I envy you, feeling involved in wonderful floating visions produced by the Popocatepetl I envy you.
My landing, however, I think was absolutely earthly. So earthly that still my planned stay, as you know, was of less time – I continue on the central Andean mountain range that hosted my last, I think, ravings of one that was already fictional youth. I don’t know what kind of resistance produced delightful memories in this advanced age that, here, continues to delight.
Yes, although I don’t know if it’s easy or hard to imagine from your Mexican geography, I’m in Medellin Bustling Medellin of Colombia. Of course, not Extremadura, that tiny Spanish enclave, as Extremoduro would say, in the land of conquerors. Medellín, at the time of Pablo Escobar, recalls the Spanish news.
Now after successive variations and permutations of afternoons, evenings and early morning hours in bars or neighborhoods with its inhabitants, I can certify that “the most dangerous city in the world”. This, they also told me in their writing books like Juan José Hoyos, Darío Jaramillo, Fernando Vallejo or, simply, Jorge Franco.
“Medellín, my city, was going crazy, had fallen seduced by a hallucination, we all fell confused by the illusion of money, drugs and power, and when the symptoms of dementia appeared, there was very little we could do for ourselves A different explosion shook our bones and cornered us, almost daily.
To me I was overwhelmed by double anxiety: a lost grandfather and two dead friends at gunpoint. And the permanent threat of being me, or someone dear, the next victim of the Russian roulette that Medellin had become. ”
But let’s not panic. Although the voices of fear still persist, the voices of Álvaro Mutis, that of the hanged man from Cocora, that of the old miner who starved to death on the beach inexplicably covered by bright banana leaves.
The bones of women found in the gorge of La Osa that of the ghost that lives in the oven of the trapiche; although still let’s not panic. Since the death of narcoapóstol Pablo on December 2, 1993, urban dynamics have changed at the same demonic working pace with which every living creature in this valley talks about the talk. Compared to the rhythm of other large Colombian cities such as Cali, Cartagena, Barranquilla or, even Bogotá, the capital, vertiginously.