by Hector Abad
That opinion, however, was not unanimous. Some politicians and many lazy citizens preferred to live off rent, scratching their bellies. I was told that there were more legal and illegal miners every day conducting explorations in the vicinity of the town. A pernicious government had sold off the entire subsoil of the region at bargain prices and, ignoring any measures of environmental protection, had no qualms about turning over the earth and invading the land with machines and temporary mines. I was also told that some bureaucrats made agreements under the table with Canadian, South African, Chinese, and Colombian mining companies to allow them to dredge the riverbeds, pry under the crags, and tunnel into the mountains in search of signs of gold, silver, copper, uranium, whatever there might be. There was a quiet struggle going on between the town businessmen, habitual conquerors and predators, who saw easy money in royalties, in spite of the landscape, the water, and nature, and those who wanted to defend the land as it was, the natural wealth, and most of all the beauty, the beauty that is preserved and created by farming the countryside and protecting the woods and the land. I didn’t want to get more involved in the current situation than I should and I pretended to be a quiet tourist. I said my name was Joaquín Toro and that I’d been born in Titiribí. Although I was on the side of the environmentalists, what I was interested in at this moment was the past, the town’s foundation, and the early years of the twentieth century. I thought if I concentrated more on the dreams and efforts of the past, I could better defend the present, demonstrate that what had been achieved was no accident, but the fruit of the vision and work of thousands of people who had settled the town with healthy and genuine hopes a century and a half earlier.
While I was in the parish archives, at the History Center, or at Dr. Ojalvo’s house, I felt really good; when I walked along the trails and by the sides of the crystal-clear rivers, I felt really good; when I talked to the campesinos and young people, it was all very pleasant, and I encouraged them to keep fighting for the water, the trees, and the air. But the town, especially on the weekends, filled with commotion, with rude people, with incessant music at full volume, and arrogant people who thought they were more important because their truck was bigger, their horses more spirited, their farms more ostentatious. If I wanted to live here with Jon, I had to think it over very carefully. A place like La Oculta was one thing, hidden up in the hills, serene and silent, but being subjected to other people’s whims, to their noise and high-handedness was quite another.
There were several little internet cafés in town and I’d go into one or the other of them to talk to Jon on Skype and see him for a while. I told him good and bad things about the town, and Jon listened in silence, probably with even more doubts than I had about our plans. And there, in the internet cafés, or on my laptop with my 4G dongle, when it was working, in the hotel, I investigated things about the past. I wanted to know, for example, how long a technological innovation took to arrive in Jericó, a century ago. A good innovation such as safe drinking water or electric lighting, not a bad and dangerous one like mining with mercury, which contaminated the waters. I didn’t miss the darkness of the night, although I knew it was better for sleeping and seeing the stars, so I decided to accept electric lighting as something good.
In a few hours of searching I found tons of interesting information: on October 21, 1879, Thomas Alva Edison, in his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, “mounted one of his carbon-coated filaments in a glass tube and managed to get it to burn continuously for forty hours. On New Year’s Eve, he illuminated the main street of Menlo Park electrically as the first public proof of his invention.” Among the curious things I learned was that this invention saved the whale from extinction (for a substance in its skull – which was called spermaceti due to its resemblance to another white and viscous substance – was used to make the majority of candles people used to light their houses) and resulted in fewer house fires every year around the world. In 1881, during the display of electricity in Paris, the lightbulbs surprised everyone as the latest marvel. In 1882 the first electricity plant was built in New York; Rome and Venice built their own in 1886.
The new invention arrived in Medellín just twelve years later, on July 7, 1898. One of its most engaging chroniclers, Lisandro Ochoa, described it:
After intense work and huge setbacks, the long-awaited night arrived for the inauguration of the service of 150 arc lamps. Berrío Park and the adjacent streets were crowded with people; everyone came out of their houses overjoyed. From the smallest children to the oldest grandparents, everyone pressed into the mass of humanity that filled the park.
Outdoor lighting – another chronicler tells us – had previously been supplied by petroleum lamps located on the four sides of the square. The new invention, it seems, provoked Marañas, local rogue, as he was directing his gaze at the wan and waning moon: “Now you’re really screwed, moon, go light our villages!”
Jericó, where the Ángel family lived, where I was now sleeping and reading about electric lights, was still illuminated only by the moon – when there was a moon and it wasn’t cloudy – or oil lamps mixed with petroleum, for almost another decade. The moon outside and candles within, as well as the glow from the wood fires. The world, the whole world, was a very dark place by night, until those early years of the twentieth century. But here too, thanks to the untiring work of Father Cadavid, an electric generator was installed, and Jericó saw the light on April 15, 1906, a quarter of a century after its invention in the United States. I also found the tale of that memorable day in the words of a local reporter. First to be lit up in Jericó was the church, not the streets, a very clear sign of who called the shots and who brought the miracles of God and science to town:
The night, although dry and calm, was dark. As the hands of the clock on the church struck seven, great crowds of people made their way to the temple, to the beautiful, artistic, spacious, and luxurious temple. Father Cadavid entered, followed by a mob of children, men, and women (my grandfather was among them, it was one of his first childhood memories). Out through the arches and windows came, like the first arrows of a battle, some notes that the expert hand of Don Daniel Salazar coaxed from the organ. Something grandiose and unexpected was about to happen.
Suddenly, the light of eighty lightbulbs melt the black darkness; the straight columns, the imposing arches, the multicolored windowpanes, the acanthus capitals, the tabernacle surge from the heart of the night, against the azure background, the simple draperies and flamboyant festoons of leaves and flowers. And the notes from the organ spill out of the temple, and the deep voices, and the cheerful shouts, and the moving tones of the Te Deum, enrapture all the souls and elevate the hearts. And there, at the front, eyes on the ground, haloed more by his modesty than by the light, humble and trembling, the author of that new creation: Father Cadavid!
It was such a great event that several people wrote about it. Here’s the speech that one of the notables of the day addressed to Father Cadavid, and, after praising him for bringing nocturnal light, he praised him for having endeavored to illuminate souls as well in his temperance campaign. For some years temperance was Jericó’s leaders’ favorite subject:
Not long ago, the axes of our laborers had broken through part of the primitive jungle and changed into fertile haciendas what had once been covered in thick underbrush; not many years ago, dens of wild animals were replaced by farmhouses and tilled land and a tiny village or hamlet, which occupied the center where we now have this flourishing city, when the parish was entrusted to your wise direction. Your voice, persuasive and eloquent, has thundered through the sacred cathedral against vice and corruption, achieving the triumph – almost exceptional in Antioquia – of ending cockfighting and all kinds of gambling here, where young men can get lost; your word has been abundant in the Temperance Society to demonstrate that alcoholism is an asp that destroys our capital and our reputation, that poisons our body and our soul, that turns us into useless an
d damaged members of society.
Among the members of the Temperance Society, according to the documents in the History Center, was José Antonio Ángel, our ancestor, his signature one of the first, as one of the town notables. The campaign against alcohol lasted years and maybe wasn’t a bad idea in a country so prone to drunkenness. These days that banner has been taken up by the evangelical churches and I have no doubt that’s one of the keys to their success. They’re fanatical and intolerant, in general, but they keep many from falling into one of the most widespread of Colombian vices. I enjoy a drink, I admit it, but I’m a terrible old hypocrite when I think of the general drunkenness of my compatriots. Which is why I read with certain pleasure the old signs that covered the town a century ago. In different locations in the plaza, on huge squares and long strips of white cloth, in big, black letters, legible from a block away, were warnings like these:
FOLLOW THE PATH THAT A TEMPERATE SOCIETY MARKS OUT, AND YOU SHALL FIND TRANQUILITY.
TEMPERANCE IS THE SLOGAN OF VIRTUOUS TOWNS.
INTEMPERANCE WILL BE THE STIGMA OF WICKED TOWNS.
A DRUNK IS SOCIETY’S SCANDAL.
A TEMPERATE CITIZEN IS A GUARANTEE FOR SOCIETY.
At the banquet offered to celebrate the arrival of electric light, only one glass of sweet wine was served, as a blessing. As a token of gratitude, they gave Father Cadavid a painting by Francisco Antonio Cano, the best painter in Antioquia at the time, having studied in Italy, and a good portraitist: it was a picture of his mother, María Luisa González de Cadavid, donated by the señoritas of the Association of the Daughters of Mary. Among them were several of Don José Antonio’s daughters, and his wife, Merceditas Mejía, Mamaditas. And when they turned on the lights, the chroniclers related, in spite of the happiness and the celebrations, five days later there was not a single drunk in Jericó.
The governor of Antioquia, Gabriel Mejía, had sent a message brimming with enthusiasm that said: “The doors of the liquor store are not open, and even if they were, the people would not flock there in search of abominable poison, father of madness and crime.” And in fact, according to what others recorded, “no liquor was imbibed; there were horse races, prizes, trays of honey, allowable games and theater, and thousands of pretexts for taking a drink, but no one did, because Jericó stuck to its word of honor. Jericó will not be like Sodom and Gomorrah, nor will it be buried by an earthquake like San Francisco.”
A few years later an earthquake toppled the temple raised with such effort. Then they designed another church, much uglier than the previous one, if rather more solid, and today the plaza is nothing but a parade of canteens and drunks, but anyway, I better not say anything because I drink too and sometimes I think that life is so hard that only with a certain amount of alcohol can we bear it. If not, it’s impossible to explain the success of this drug, which is greater than that of all religions.
In any case, when electricity arrived in Jericó, more than a century ago, the town had more inhabitants than it does today; the theater was open and running; there was a musical ensemble and a literary magazine; despite the sanctimoniousness of those years, the citizens associated with each other in pursuit of common goals. The first years of the new century had been like a fresh start and everyone dreamed of a beautiful future and had sincere intentions to forget about their grievances. There were common ideals and any number of people anxious to fulfill them. Everything seemed like marvelous promises, for the War of a Thousand Days had just ended and there was optimism and desire for forgiveness and reconciliation. There was, as is cyclical in my country, an illusion of perpetual peace, of peace at last, of a new era when brothers would stop killing each other. The economic crisis would not take long to arrive, nor would the mid-century Violencia, and later all kinds of plagues all together: drug trafficking, guerrillas, paramilitaries. With the turn of another new century, there are once again yearnings for peace and progress in the air. Could I live here with Jon, in a town with fewer inhabitants than a century ago? Well, I didn’t come here hoping Jericó might resemble New York, which would be impossible and absurd. If I came to live in this town I would be looking for something different: the peace of a simple life, the contrast of a country life to our life in the big city, and most of all to be close to my little personal paradise, which I shared with my sisters, La Oculta. I’d give violin classes to children, help to found a new ensemble, perhaps a string quartet. I’ve said so to Jon, but he’s always answered with evasion and delays. “Calm down, Toño, take it easy,” those are his slogans.
I rented a jeep with a driver to take me to the farm along the old route by way of La Mama and Palermo. It had rained and it was almost impassable, but we managed to get there after driving for an hour and a half, with a few brief stops to look at the majestic gorge of the River Cauca. I arrived just as Pilar and Alberto were getting ready to sit down to lunch. They had a sancocho waiting for me. A sancocho, I thought, like the one that had welcomed the first settlers to the area, a century and a half before. They had made it in the traditional way, on a wood fire, even though we’d had electricity at La Oculta since the 1970s, in spite of its remoteness. I remembered the Peltón turbine my grandfather installed on the stream, that he’d only turn on for a few hours, before we went to bed. Its monotonous noise, the pale, dim, flickering light. It was a long path back in time, but I didn’t really know what my path was, our path ahead. We’ve never done anything important in the Ángel family, nothing very glorious. Neither have the people of Jericó. No invention that has improved the world came from the inhabitants of our pretty town. The most we can boast is the local shoulder bag, the carriel and a few verses and novels by two writers with the last name Mejía: Manuel and Dolly. I looked at my simplified carriel, a leather satchel I can wear diagonally across my chest to carry my things, notepads, wallet, books, notes. My grandfather always carried a pistol in his as well, just in case. At least I don’t need to carry a pistol anymore, and that consoled me.
EVA
I keep in touch with some of my Ángel cousins in Medellín. I always tell them they were right to sell their share of this blasted farm, that at least they didn’t get kidnapped by guerrillas or have to pay off the paramilitaries or live out their lives fighting with their siblings. Among our cousins there are rich and poor, successes and failures, decent people and not so decent ones. That’s the way all families are. A few of them are businessmen; others are cattle farmers, and some have even bought much bigger properties in far-flung parts of Colombia. One of our cousins is a big landholder on the coast. Another is poor, but decent, and doesn’t let anyone know. There was a distant cousin who was sent to jail in the United States, for money laundering; with his dirty money he bought several haciendas around Jericó, but he couldn’t even see them or enjoy them, his wife is enjoying them, an old, frivolous, vain, uncultured woman who was a model in her youth and is now a surgical model (six kilos of silicon and botox in her body), and their children, who are as untrustworthy as their father. In the same family things go like that, like in the tango: some are born under a lucky star and others are ill-starred.
Our grandfather Josué, for example, always talked about his father’s brother, David Ángel, who had inherited the same amount of land as his brother, and was relatively well-off, comfortable. And he was a good man, generous in town, kindhearted at home, a friend to his friends and lover of his wife and seven children. Early in the century, in 1912 or ’13, on a hacienda he had near La Oculta, La Lorena, he had a heart attack at the age of thirty-nine. His wife and his children, who were all still small, were not able to run the hacienda. La Lorena, two years after David’s death, was already what was known as a “widow’s farm,” that is, a piece of land covered in weeds where the woods were beginning to take back what was once an open and well-managed farm. When the coffee plants don’t get fertilized or weeded and no one combats infestations, harvests are reduced and pastures disappear. On the abandoned fields calves don�
�t fatten, and the farm can’t support as many cattle. Sooner or later the widow has to sell the deteriorated, devalued land. And then raise her children and feed them as best she can, with that money, for five or ten years. Then the money runs out, and she sells the house in town; they move into a smaller one. When the oldest son turns sixteen, he’s not going to start working as the boss of his father’s farm, but as a laborer. And the same thing happens to the second son. The eldest daughter gets married early and badly, in order to get away from the worries of her mother’s home, and has many more children than she can feed. And thus, the whole family goes downhill. That was the poor branch of the Ángel family, as my grandfather put it, who he helped as much as he could, when he could.
And in my generation it’s not much different. There are servants, artists, tramps, hardline leftists and extreme right-wingers, Tories and Liberals, everything. People tend to think that everything is the fault of other people’s wickedness, or bad blood, or bad upbringing, or lack of education, but sometimes the bad times begin with just a moment of bad luck, a heart attack or a fall from a horse. But I don’t want to make excuses for men. If I’d been killed by Los Músicos when they came to kill me, if I hadn’t known how to swim well and hadn’t had the luck to escape, now Benjamín would probably not receive a peso of my share of the inheritance, and my brother and sister would have had to hand over the farm for whatever was offered, with their sister dead in a hammock, full of holes like a colander, disfigured by bullets or chopped up by a chainsaw. Luck and evil; effort and merit and luck; luck and goodness; drought or floods. Nobody should boast of what they have or feel ashamed of what they don’t have: the chain of events, the wheel of fortune, everything is so difficult to define and to know. Ideologies and religions teach us indignation or resignation: point out the guilty: capital, sinners, laziness, alcohol, envy, greed. There is something to that; but there is also a lot of luck, plain and simple good or bad fortune.