Vol. 2, Issue 2: CHANGING OF THE GUARD
One cohort prepares to disembark as others step forward to take the helm.
A note from the editors: As the CII-16 trailblazers close out their service in the coming weeks, the remaining cohorts are gaining traction, thanks to the groundwork their predecessors have laid as the first group to return to Colombia after the pandemic. This issue of OÍSTE features essays, poems, and other literary ponderings from volunteers in various stages of our service, from ramping up to reaching stride to winding down. Lorenzo and LaTesha from CII-16 have graciously handed the editing reins to Renée (CII-17), Ian and Annabel (CII-19). We have injected this issue with elements of our own personalities: a tradition we hope future editors will carry forward. After all, embracing change is a core requirement of success in the Peace Corps.
Smiling as I Close Out My Service
By Bobby Richards, Ciénega, Boyacá, CII-16
As June 28 less-so creeps and more-so hurdles toward me at the speed of light, I find myself smiling. Smiling for a number of different reasons.
Smiling because of the new people I will consider family for the rest of my life. Smiling because I’ve met and spent a lot of beautiful time with fellow Peace Corps volunteers, staff, and community members I will call friends for as long as they’ll let me. Smiling because I’ve met and spent a little bit more time with a particularly fun, competitive and inspiring fellow volunteer I get to leave Colombia with and call a partner as I step back into life in the U.S.
Smiling at my little treasure box of notes and drawings from students that I’ve accumulated. Smiling because I understand the majority (but definitely still not all) of the conversations I am part of in Spanish. Smiling at the lesson learned that a meeting or start time can be relative, but how you spend that time can leave you feeling like relatives. Smiling at the lessons learned when maybe, at the time, a smile was nowhere in sight. Smiling at the support system back home that was always there to remind me to get back up when I was down. Smiling at the support system in-country that was always there and did the heavy lifting. Smiling at the confirmation that the classroom is where I want to continue to learn, grow, teach and encourage.
Smiling because I’ll get to leave part of me in Boyacá, and bring a whole lot of Boyacá back with me. Smiling because after years of waiting through the pandemic, I am completing my service knowing that it was everything and way more than I could have hoped for. Smiling because it’s not over just yet. And smiling because whatever comes next, I’m proud of the person I’ve become during my time in Colombia.
Mini Crossword
By Ian Lane, Tenjo, Cundinamarca, CII-19
Follow this link for an interactive version of this bilingual puzzle.
Two Places to Love
By Barb Dennie, San José de Pare, Boyacá, CII-17
Two places to love To love two places
Going home Coming home
Say hello Say goodbye
Missing people Here when I’m there There when I’m here
Don’t forget me Trust me I’ll be back
My love For this place These people
It took time But now it’s ours Theirs and mine
On Homesickness
By Page Victoria Robinson, Riohacha, La Guajira, CII-18
I love living abroad, and there are many things about Colombia and Latin America that I prefer to the U.S. When living in the United States, I am often overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of fast moving cities, appointments, traffic, crowded parking lots, busy sidewalks and the constant feeling of falling behind. In the U.S., I am bogged down in comparison-culture. Am I working as hard as my friends? Is my job as impressive? Am I earning enough? Am I behind in my career? Or simply behind in life? I would summarize living in the U.S. as constantly feeling like you’re behind, while simultaneously always trying to convince the world you’ve already finished and, in fact, it was easy.
This is the culture I was excited to leave behind when I moved to Latin America in 2021. And the relief was instantaneous. A year and a half of living in Argentina taught me to slow down, relish moments with friends, find my identity outside my work, and take myself less seriously. It was an easy decision, therefore, when I received an invitation to Peace Corps Colombia and an opportunity to continue living abroad in Latin America. I have found Colombia to be a continuation of many of the things I loved about Argentina. There is an emphasis on family relationships, a joy of the little things, a desire to celebrate all of life’s many amazing moments and truly enjoy life, not just survive.
I didn’t expect homesickness to hit me during service. I had spent extended time away from home before, and while I had taken trips home during my time abroad, it had always been born of a reason: a graduation or Christmas, rather than homesickness. I figured that in the two years of service I would go home at some point, but I felt no rush and didn’t expect homesickness to be the reason I returned. How wrong I was.
I love living abroad, but … living abroad means that everything I do is 20% harder. Grocery shopping, asking for directions, talking to my roommate, ordering things online, doing laundry… And the list goes on.
At home if I need a green pepper I know exactly where to buy it, how to get there and how much it will cost. I can jump in my car, arrive at the grocery store in 10 minutes, go immediately to the produce section, check out in a currency I understand at a self-checkout stand that I know how to operate, and be home before my cat notices my absence.
In Colombia, if I want a green pepper, I have to weigh the choice between walking to the grocery store closest to me — knowing they likely won’t have a green pepper given their produce cycles, depending on the day of the week — versus going to the farther grocery store — which will certainly have a green pepper — and sweating through my shirt. I must also remind myself how to say green pepper in Spanish in case I need to ask someone for help finding one. Once inside the store, I have to hope the price is reasonable, knowing the price would be cheaper at the outdoor market, but on the other hand, I might be charged more since I’m a foreigner. I check out in a currency with three times as many zeros as I’m accustomed to and then ride my bike 10 minutes home in the sweltering heat because I’m not allowed to ride a motorcycle and the taxi will, again, charge me a gringa fee.
Living abroad I live in a state of uncertainty: about how to do things, how much to pay, if I’m behaving correctly, or committing a cultural faux pas. Despite 20 years of studying Spanish, I am only ever 90% certain what someone is saying. As a result, I am constantly a little on edge and a bit overwhelmed. Everything is 20% harder.
When I go home to the U.S., it’s like my brain turns off. I am no longer exerting constant energy just to exist. I only need to use my brain to do things that genuinely require effort, like finding parking downtown. I don’t have to exert energy to communicate; I am perfectly understood every time I speak. I am eloquent and witty, kind and compassionate, silly yet serious. I know how to do everything I need to do on a daily basis; my brain is on auto-pilot.
So while I love living abroad, learning about a new culture and experiencing a different way of life, I am, for lack of a better word, tired.
So yes, I was homesick, and yes I was very excited to go home and turn my brain off. Yet while being home was rejuvenating, it was also exhausting. In our traditionally self-centered worldviews, I believe we often forget that while we are aging and moving ahead with our lives, so is the rest of the world. I remember coming home for summer break in college and being shocked to find that the neighborhood kids I used to babysit had continued to age and were no longer in kindergarten where I had left them. The same was true when I visited home during service. I had changed exponentially, and the life I left behind was not on pause. Siblings graduated and moved schools, friends got new jobs and started relationships, kittens grew far too quickly into cats, and parents adopted quirky new hobbies.
At home the world had shifted and the space I’d left behind had morphed to fill my absence. Everyone and everything was still there waiting for me, but different. This place was both home and not. Colombia was both home and not. It is a strangely disorienting feeling to have multiple homes and yet not feel completely at home in either. So while service has brought me a new home, it has also altered my sense of home forever.
If you want to read more about the experiences of Peace Corps volunteers serving around the world, check out Sticky Rice, a newsletter by Peace Corps Thailand volunteers that has been running since 1978.
Why is Class Canceled Today?
By Renée Alexander, Ciénega, Boyacá, CII-17
A reluctant Miss Chile competes in Ciénega's annual cow beauty pageant in 2023.
It is the final week of school before the mid-term break, and my co-teacher at the school is informing me that tomorrow's schedule is a bit up in the air, because he is not sure if we are using the 55-minute class schedule or the 50-minute schedule. Before he gets confirmation, a volunteer from another town texts to ask if my school’s teachers are joining the national strike that begins tomorrow. Right on cue, my school's WhatsApp thread starts buzzing as the teachers start organizing carpools to the march in Tunja. I text the other volunteer at my school: "It looks like a zero-minute class schedule for tomorrow."
One of the more confusing aspects of the Colombian school system is the frequent schedule changes and class cancellations, which more often than not happen at the last minute. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Community Economic Development, my part-time status at the school means that I don't always receive notice of these cancellations. I have lost count of the number of times I have arrived at school for the appointed class time, only to find the school completely deserted, or to learn that today's and yesterday's schedules had been swapped without my knowledge and today's class happened yesterday, without me.
After missing multiple classes during the first two quarters of the school year, I started keeping track of the cancellations. During the third quarter, seven of my eighteen scheduled 1-hour classes were canceled, and two were shortened by 15 minutes or more. During the fourth quarter, the class met for 10½ of the 18 hours of scheduled instruction time.
I wondered if I was the only one who was having this experience. So, I asked my fellow volunteers how frequently their classes were canceled, and why. I am both pleased and horrified to report that I am not alone. I have included below a partial list of the reasons our classes have been canceled.
Maintenance issues that must be addressed, such as:
Fumigation of the school after students brought in a big box of roaches, which they set free in the classroom
A collapsed roof that has still not been repaired after four months; now it is the rainy season, so we can't have class
The power line to the school was severed several weeks ago, but school was only canceled today so it could be repaired
The annual cleaning and painting of the school, using free labor from students, who are instructed to arrive in old clothes instead of school uniforms
The flooding of several classrooms due to a burst pipe
Special events that are not always accounted for in the school calendar released at the beginning of the year
Some of these days require extensive preparation beforehand, including student practice sessions, the creation of elaborate decorations, and cleaning and set-up for the event itself, causing several or all the students to miss class. Others result in students being sent home abruptly after lunch while the teachers attend a catered celebration off-campus. These special events include, but are certainly not limited to:
Family Day
English Day
Language Day
English Song Festival
School Anniversary
International Women’s Day
International Men’s Day
Student’s Day
Teacher’s Day
Teacher’s Day Celebration (hosted by the school)
Teacher’s Day Celebration (hosted by the mayor)
Teacher’s Day Celebration (hosted by the Department of Education)
Intramural Sportsball Tournaments
Intermural Sportsball Tournaments
Standardized Test Prep
Report Card Day
Monthly Teacher Planning Meeting
Random reasons, such as:
A counterpart wants a coffee break
The principal calls all the teachers into the office for impromptu ice cream sundaes
A teacher has an interview or is out sick, so her students are told to stay home for the day
The students are coordinating their beer sales schedule for the upcoming cow beauty pageant
The principal calls an assembly to chastise the student body for not polishing their shoes, or for wearing the wrong school uniform, or to remind them of the importance of making their beds each morning
The PE teacher is hosting a full day of aerobics classes for teachers and staff
The intramural sportsball game, which was scheduled for one hour, lasts for three because no one accounted for the flag-raising ceremony, the actual game time, the possibility of overtime, or the time needed for students to walk to and from the stadium
The principal decides the teachers deserve the day off tomorrow, but calls it “mandatory in-service teacher training” to keep it a secret from the Department of Education
The cafeteria workers' contract isn't finalized, so afternoon classes are canceled so students can eat lunch at home
School-wide dance rehearsal for an upcoming community event
Despite all the schedule changes and class cancellations, nearly all of the students somehow manage to get their work done, pass their standardized tests, develop impressive and elaborate projects, and maintain an upbeat attitude. And the teachers miraculously manage to maintain their sanity while completing the curriculum in about half the time they were allotted to do so.
It is truly impressive.
As a self-described micromanager and control freak, the constant disruptions feel frustrating and chaotic. I am trying desperately, and with marginal success, to relax and go with the flow. I am of the belief that each Peace Corps volunteer will be uniquely challenged by a cultural norm in their host country that chafes against some core characteristic of their personality. Apparently, my challenge is letting go of the need to know, and to plan for, what will happen today, tomorrow, and next week. I am confident that the ability to just chill out will serve me well, if and when I finally acquire it.
Curious about Colombian history? Read Magdalena, River of Dreams by Wade Davis. Presented through an explorer's lens as he navigates the country's mightiest river, Davis' epic meander through the Spanish conquest, devastating natural disasters, and decades of violent conflict reveals the country's indomitable spirit.
Reflections on Schooling at Home and Afar
By Janine Chouinard, Villapinzón, Cundinamarca, CII-19
"There are only three institutions from which Americans are allowed no escape: prisons, mental hospitals, and schools."
Carla Shalaby's words of wis-doom from Troublemakers weigh heavily on my mind as I strive to cultivate a sense of curiosity and wonder as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English in Colombia.
Whether in the United States or Colombia, schools should be — and often can be — filled with joy, wonder, creativity, and curiosity. At the same time, schools in the U.S. are often sites of tragedy. These tragedies range from gun violence and school resource officers who police students of color to moments of harm that students face throughout the school day. A teacher’s rigid expectations of what it looks like to behave. Adults who struggle to understand how a student’s home situation affects their behavior at school. The relentless expectations of standardized testing.
What does it mean, then, to find joy — and create joy — in a school system that can be so hostile to students? What does it mean to actually teach content while still cultivating a sense of curiosity and wonder? Does Shalaby’s quote apply to my work as an educator in Villapinzón, a place where I am a complete cultural outsider?
My own student experiences in K-12 schools in the U.S. were mostly positive; I attended a well-resourced public school district in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a wealthy suburb of Detroit. As a white student from an upper-class family, the school district catered to students like me. Even so, I wasn’t immune to the stress that standardized tests produced or the harsh eyes of a teacher wondering if my skirt was too short for the school’s dress code.
As an educator in the U.S., I grappled constantly with how the expectations of a school environment can affect my students, including expectations that I created and reinforced as a teacher. The daily choices I made as an individual educator have the power to break cycles of systemic harm or reinforce them. Will I allow students to turn in homework late without penalty? Will I even give homework? If I don’t give homework in the name of creating a more equitable environment, am I shorting students on a learning opportunity? In the short time I’ve spent as a teacher, I have far more questions than answers.
Arriving in the Colombian public system brings about a new round of questions on what it means to be a foreigner in a completely new context in a different culture. As a total outsider, I was interested to see what kind of school environment I would find in Villapinzón. I’ve found that my students are like young people everywhere, even as they face challenges unique to a rural context. Students here are engaged, curious, and eager to learn about their world, while also bored at times by uninspiring lessons and trapped by rules that can feel overwhelming. (Confession: I’ve certainly produced my fair share of boring lessons. Sometimes a grammar rule resists being turned into an exercise that sparks joy.)
My students in Villapinzón are surprised to hear that in most public schools in the U.S., students are not required to wear uniforms. They express longing to wear whatever they want to school. On the other hand, I’ve been delighted that all students at my school, from kindergarten to eleventh grade, enjoy a daily 40-minute break, during which they can generally roam the school grounds with their friends and do what they please, unlike most secondary schools in the U.S.
However, the large, tall, and rather spikey-looking locked fence that surrounds the school can conjure up Shalaby’s image of a prison. Whenever you want to leave the school, you’re supposed to walk to the doorman’s gate for him to unlock the door at the entrance. As I walk up to the school from my house after running home to eat a snack or plan a lesson, I often see a skinny student slip through the wide bars of the fence to retrieve a ball that escaped during a brief, fierce soccer match. This reminds me that youth everywhere push the boundaries of school rules.
Beyond learning content, one of the most important goals of education is allowing students the space to develop as people. The most valuable moments in the classroom for me are moments of human connection. The young people who attend school are students, yes, but they’re also people developing their hopes, their dreams, and their understanding of what it means to move through the world as an individual. My favorite moments occur after class, when a student asks me to listen to and translate the lyrics to a (theoretically) English screamo punk song, or when a seventh grader sits next to me in an attempt to teach me impossible trabalenguas, or tongue-twisters. They remind me how lucky I am to work with young people as I continue wrestling with what it means to be an educator, at home and in Villapinzón. After a quick look around the schoolyard during descanso or passing time, I know that young people everywhere will continue to find ways to express themselves, in spite of real and metaphorical school walls.
Enjoying the OÍSTE newsletter? We also recommend Jim Damico's Wandering the World blog. Damico is a current Peace Corps Armenia volunteer who previously served in Thailand, Mongolia, and Nepal. In addition to sharing his stories and those of other volunteers, his blog is full of great advice for prospective and current volunteers.
No Backyards
By Barb Dennie, San José de Pare, Boyacá, CII-17
We have no backyards To sit or to play in We don’t have tall fences To hide ourselves within
We have soccer balls And quiet streets too Our parks and our canchas Where I can meet you
We take a long stroll Through the town side by side And greet los vecinos “Buenas noches” “Good night”
Tomamos café En la tranquilidad Construyendo juntos La comunidad
Tal vez es mejor Estar sin un jardín Porque somos familia En el fin
Curious about Colombia's coffee farming culture in the Andes? Check out Tinto y Cultura, an in-depth exploration by CII-17 volunteer (and Barb's site mate in San José de Pare), Fernando Garcia Corrales.
A is for… Always Carry a Stick
By Annabel Hofmann, Ubaté, Cundinamarca, CII-19
This first lesson is one that I, unfortunately, had to learn the hard way. Let me save you the trouble.
I’d signed up for the Chicamocha Canyon Race, a marathon in the department of Santander, and was clocking a lot of miles on the running shoes. Sundays were usually my long run days, and this particular Sunday was no different. I got myself all ready to go and headed out the door, stoked for an 18-mile run. through some veredas that I loved for their gorgeous scenery and, more importantly, their flat terrain, which can be hard to find in the Andes.
I was running along, admiring the scenery when I came upon three dogs in the path. This is not unusual, as pretty much wherever you go in Colombia there tend to be dogs roaming around. One of them was a bulldog that I had met on this route before. About two weeks ago, my friend and I were out biking, and he chased us for a little while until we left him in our dust. So I didn’t think much of it.
I continued on my run, approaching the dogs. As I passed them, the bulldog began to follow me. I turned around and made the "psht" noise and shook my hand at him, as the locals teach you to do. The dog backed off, and I thought I was good to continue on my run. However, just as I turned my back to keep going, the bulldog charged at me and bit me right in the nalga. I turned around just in time to watch its teeth sink into my skin - an image that is now burned into my brain forever.
Luckily, after biting me, the dog seemed to lose all interest; he released me from his jaws and went to hang out with his two buddies who were barking off to the side. I could have sworn they were laughing at me.
At that moment, so many thoughts were going through my head. Principal among them being: “Dammit I only made it four miles, can I finish the run and then figure this out?” Then I remembered a conversation I had with some fellow volunteers about how shitty it would be to die of rabies. So I walked myself the four miles home, called the Peace Corps medical team, and arranged my visit to Tunja for the rabies vaccines.
Because we, as Peace Corps volunteers, can only receive vaccines from agency-approved doctors, I couldn’t just go to the local hospital. I would have to meet the Peace Corps doctor at the office in Tunja: four hours and two long bus rides away from my site. The rabies vaccine is a two-shot series that must be administered three days apart (a fact I didn’t think I would ever need to know). Thankfully, the Peace Corps determined there was no point in me traveling to and from Tunja twice in one week. So, they set me up in a hotel, giving me a few days to myself to explore the city.
After the whole ordeal was over, I had a week-long vacation in Tunja to show for it, as well as several tooth shaped holes in my leg and some serious PTSD. I was never scared of dogs before, but now anytime one comes near me, tears threaten to spill out of my eyes. This happened in early April, almost two months ago, and I still haven’t gotten over it. The other thing I took away from this experience, though, was learning to always carry a stick.
Now, whenever I see a dog in the path ahead of me, I stoop down and pick up the first stick or rock that I can find. I also often slow down to a walk to pass — hoping to look less intimidating or at least less enticing. I hate that I feel this way about an animal — distrustful and willing to threaten it with violence — but “once bitten, twice shy” they do say.
So, I hope you always remember, “A is for Always Carry a Stick…or a rock, or a slingshot, or a taser,” and I hope you never have to experience the canines of a canine sinking into your skin.
Now hopefully it’s someone else’s turn to decide what B is for.
Colombian hot chocolate is a lot more labor intensive than what we are used to in the U.S. It is also a lot more delicious! Annabel explains the 8-hour process on her blog, Annabel Adventures.
The Anthem of Hastamorir
By Lorenzo Boni Beadle, Cucaita, Boyacá, CII-16
"The joke," said Cresencio — Cresencio, the goatherd, who always spoke with the sagacious dignity and unrepentant impishness of one who insisted, with total conviction in himself, on being called Cacique over Don or any other such honorific, and whose typically reserved acquaintance I had begun to enjoy by chance during the errant perambulations demanded of me by the Andean landscape — "The joke," he said, "cannot be properly appreciated without understanding the downfall of the clan Hastamorir, a dynasty of which I am the last and final son, and whose legend I will proceed to relate to you now."
I. The War of the Poems
Beneath the altitudinous bickering of the Houses Cybo and Ceva-Grimaldi and Spinola and Doria and Fieschi and a dozen others, one could observe the bourgeois excitement of that enterprising Genoese stock with its effluence of male heirs honed on the Mediterranean and readied for the Spanish ports, which disgorged the carracks and caravels that would devour the Indies. In this way, della Croce would become the House Cruz and, likewise, the mercantile Hastamori would reinvent themselves in Valencia and propel the family's providential twin scions into the ranks of la Empresa del Levante captained by Pizarro, de Almagro, and Luque, such that they might attain for themselves the titles and acclaim reserved to the Genoese nobility whose fashions had long been their foremost object of desire.
Of the two brothers, Teófilo Hastamori appeared the most promising, his prodigious mind fattened on the faux-anthropological melodrama of Cortes' letters to the Emperor Charles V, the didactic social order of Thomas More's Utopia, and the fantastical chivalric romances of Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, Ruy Páez de Ribera, Feliciano de Silva, and their many contemporaries. By all accounts he was a brilliant and widely-admired polymath. Through his studies in Rome he became a young member of the Università dei Pittori, Miniatori e Ricamatori. Several paintings he produced in Santa Marta would be described as “proto-cuzqueñas” by Antonio Palomino and one of his sketches, La Garza En Vuelo, now exhibited at el Museo de Arte del Tolima, would become a popular icon deployed by student protesters throughout the 20th century. His mastery of la verdadera destreza would have placed him among the ranks of the greatest Spanish fencers of the era. A collection of his aphorisms, posthumously titled The Ten-Thousand Waves, can be found in every used book shop in the country, and his correspondence with Bartolomé Arrazola, on botanical matters, would become of great interest to eminent naturalists such as Henry Walter Bates or Major Brabazon-Plank. His sculpted likeness stood atop a column in front of la Iglesia de las Aguas between the years of 1850 and 1968. Hideyuki Matsumiya's The Gyre, documenting the thin narrative strands enlacing the Pacific's two great coasts, wrote, in typical euphemism subdued by elegance, that Teófilo "had perished among the paroxysms of exotic pleasure afforded to him by the unplucked environs." Yukio Mishima called him a "fallen evening star."
However, the decline of the Hastamorir would not involve any progeny of Teófilo, for, like Arrazola, he would vanish into the unknown profundities of the American jungles, and thus, his brother, the severe Horacio, would become the family's true and inescapable patriarch. In later centuries, when their social infirmity would become more visible, the Hastamorir would lament the loss of the unique genius borne by Teófilo, and his disappearance would come to be perceived as the first and greatest of the calamities that would plunge the family along its ruinous arc. Some would speculate, that, perhaps, rather than perishing in the Amazon, he had established a branch of the family guided by careful breeding and composed of the most wonderful talents and which, when the moment was ripe, would return to depose the ersatz Hastamorir from their decaying perch in Santafé de Bogotá and initiate a marvelous golden age of art and invention.
The precise character of Teófilo's passing has been lost, though it is certain that it was only through Horacio's abstinence and incuriosity that the Hastamorir would survive and, at first, flourish as merchants and nobles attached to the fabulous names of Pizarro and then De Quesada, Sepulgio-Malaganzo, De Lainza, Girrote, De Cavillante, and Rendón. Horacio, whose fortune was a matter of dullardry and disinterest in the marvelous unknown, obtained the nickname “El Pieto,” more so from the mockery of his peers than any recognition of his devotion. Indeed, he had found himself a follower of one of those peculiar sects that could sprout and then flourish before withering all on their own, far from underneath the Church's reaching shade. Horacio, until the day of his death, believed the Earth was a hollow disk containing infinitesimally thin sheets of papyrus upon each of which was written one letter of the ineffable name of God — a theological commitment he maintained even in the face of ridicule and a growing Church presence in the Americas.
But this is mere family folklore: the referential canon that sons would employ to denounce fathers as the world shifted beneath their feet. The proper tale begins with Cecilio Hastamorir, comfortably situated in Santafé de Bogotá and well-respected by the Granadine intelligentsia of the 1840s and 50s. Cecilio was an active citizen of the Hispanoamerican republic of letters, and he penned numerous essays and missives discussing the constitutional concerns that assayed the Republic — ever careful, however, not to decisively tilt toward one side or the other, which caused his detractors to view him as cowardly. And while he was the most prolific author of the Hastamorir, an early biographer noted that his true attention was fixed on capturing the passions of Ecolástica Fernández Spínola de la Cerda, with whom he was madly in love.
Ecolástica, while a regular of Bogotá parlors, was by all accounts wholly disengaged from the political debates through which Cecilio had built his reputation, an unfortunate mismatch that compelled Cecilio to turn toward poetry, Ecolástica’s preferred medium and subject (being an accomplished poet herself). It was under these circumstances that Cecilio penned Canto Patriótico, an ode to the martyrs of the Battle of Boyacá, which he hoped would both capture the attention of polemicists — for its claim to rise above constitutional considerations in favor of national pride — and, more importantly, Ecolástica whom he hoped would descry that the nation for which he expressed his adoration was merely a metaphor for herself. And yet, while Ecolástica was a patriot and a poet, it would not be Cecilio's poetry with which she would become enraptured.
In the same year that Cecilio would wade into versemaking, Rafael Núñez would pen Himno Patriótico, a now-famous poem dedicated to Cartagena, which was widely acclaimed. It was this work that Ecolástica championed, according to the letters she left behind. Núñez had already distinguished himself in practical matters, including politics and journalism, and would become the first president of Colombia in 1886. While Cecilio wallowed in Núñez' wake, he found his romance likewise besieged by the charismatic overtures of the playwright Fortino de Ciruela, whose sociability and artistic inclinations Cecilio could not match.
Cecilio was eloquent and innocent: fluent in the tricky details of political compromise, yet uncomfortable with the anarchy of love and war. A bitter contemporary, after losing a lengthy debate in the pages of a major newspaper, said of him that, "he loved, but could not be loved; he sought peace, but was no general." When Ecolástica became betrothed to Fortino, having never acknowledged Canto Patriótico or Cecilio's other poetic works, he was beside himself with grief and, within a year, had killed himself at the age of 29. On the headstone of his grave is inscribed an excerpt from the third article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, as translated by Antonio Nariño, a personal hero: "No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation." Cecilio died young, but would be survived by his brother, the inelegant master of an emerald mine, who would father three sons and thus ensure that the Hastamorir would survive for yet another generation.
***
By now, the late evening had descended upon us, and the sunset-lit clouds, cast in their eerie, alien forms, sat perched on the lip of the valley, one of them bestowed an eye by the red light of a radio tower.
“The clouds,” pronounced Cresencio, “are life-forms: the microbes in the ice crystals that compose them form a sort of composite being; this was demonstrated in a treatise written by the doctor José Gregorio Hernández in 1898.”
"I think I've seen his devotees' posters in Tunja," I said.
He waved his hand: "That is a church for magicians and predators, largely ignorant of the good doctor's substantive work. I bring him up only because, by coincidence, we now enter the era in which he began his blessed work."
II. The War of the Compositions
Refugio Hastamorir, like his uncle, was well-respected in Colombian high society. Alongside a rotating cast of painters, novelists, architects, philosophers, sculptors, and, most fatefully, composers, he counted among his close compatriots the editor and newsman Silvino P. Ramirez, whose periodical La Linterna maintained tremendous circulation from Patagonia to Sonora and who was often compared to William Randolph Hearst; and the freedman intellectual Abraham Wilford, who had invented the modern arepa, engineered the locks on the Panama Canal, and devised an airship that moved under the motive power of a trio of cyclists, all of which resulted in his dubious epithet, "el Negro Virtuoso."
Drawing deeply from the family coffers, Refugio hosted an extravagant ball every year, an event that became necessary to attend for Bogotá's elite, yet which was designed, like his uncle's poetry, as a pretext to court a magnificent woman. Celestina Rocabertí Sarmiento Enríquez de Córdoba y Figueroa was, perhaps, the most sought-after heiress in the country, and her foremost interests lay in theater, ballet, and opera. It was these passions that compelled Refugio to begin frantically studying the arts of composition, such that he might produce a masterpiece that could, in turn, convince Celestina of his worth. Refugio's most notable work, produced after feverish years spent under intensive tutelage, was to be an anthem for the nation of Colombia, employing the words of Núñez' own Himno Patriótico. In turn, he found his diligence matched, and, most certainly, exceeded by the frenetic labor of the composer Oreste Síndici.
Oreste, having worked for many years on an identical project, had outmaneuvered Refugio's own nationalist bid, not through any scheming, nor through his greater education, nor through the application of his substantial experience, but rather through political fortune that saw his work noticed by Núñez, now president, thus resulting in its elevation to national significance. It was Oreste's anthem that Celestina would go on to admire, even, reportedly, insisting to Refugio that it be performed at his ball in 1888. Refugio would renounce composition altogether, burning all the copies of his works. Only a fragment of his anthem remains preserved in the archives of el Museo Nacional. Like his uncle, Refugio became despondent.
Soon enough Celestina was totally beyond his reach, perhaps thanks to the influence of her closest friend, Cesaria de Granadilla, who had always despised Refugio and whom Refugio had no chance of outflanking. It was this same Cesaria who was so close to Celestina that the two often slept in the same bed, this same Cesaria whose amorous correspondences with Celestina have been published and republished for their wit and passion, and this same Cesaria who ultimately facilitated Celestina's escape from her family and from Colombia, traveling to Europe where the two would live together between Paris and Milan. Refugio would never marry, and he would perish of pneumonia in the following years. His younger brother — the elder having died in the War of the Schools — would sire two sons and thus ensure that the Hastamorir would survive for yet another generation.
***
By now, we could see the stars, fiercely illuminated by the permissive rural darkness.
"We used to have more, you know," said Cresencio, "before the agreement with the IMF."
"More stars?" I asked.
"Yes," and he had already moved on to the next affair.
III. The War of the Decrees
Osvaldo Hastamorir would establish the familial tradition that would see his descendants pursue political careers in the Chamber of Representatives, where the Hastamorir would be a constant presence until the late 1970s. Perhapsinspired by his great-uncle Cecilio, Osvaldo was deeply committed to upholding human rights after the Thousand Days' War, believing that the nation at last stood on the precipice of a perpetual internal peace that would be guaranteed by the wisdom of lawmakers like himself. In this capacity he sought to represent and protect minorities, a commitment emblematized by his passionate advocacy for the country's small but notable Sephardic Jewry. Later in his life he cast himself as an anti-zionist, basing his convictions on a fringe anthropological theory that claimed the Jewish people were descended from the first and most ancient civilization in the Americas, having found themselves in the Holy Land only by crossing the Atlantic on Phoenician trade vessels, and thus that they ought return not to the Levant but instead to their rightful homeland in the Amazon.
Meanwhile, in the time since the death of Refugio, Oreste's composition had fragmented into a dozen adaptations, extensions, elaborations, and derivations, many of which were themselves quite popular, making it difficult for the country to truly claim that there was a single, true national anthem. It was this issue that would be litigated in the Congress, and to which Osvaldo found himself inescapably attracted. There was no doubt that the name of the Hastamorir had shed some of its historical weight, and Osvaldo was desperate to regain the family's crumbling position by simultaneously building a devoted constituency and crafting key decisions that might define the inchoate nation for generations. It was his most fervent hope that, with the right choices, he might restore the family's reputation and, more importantly, discover the opportunity to propose to Faustina Amador María Ricaurte Dávila Arboleda Enríquez de Heredia y Torres, whose nobility, grace, and education made her most attractive to him.
However, Osvaldo's efforts would be in vain: Sergio Burbano exceeded his proficiency in rhetoric, belonged to a more expansive faction, and was able to bring forward the proposal that would ultimately become la Ley 33 del 28 de octubre de 1920, a law establishing, once and for all, the national anthem of Colombia. The victory of Sergio's initiative, borne of expediency and coincidence, proved humiliating to Osvaldo, who would lose his next election and opt to retire and become a minor, if not incompetent, scholar of Latin American nationalism.
It was Sergio's anthem that would go on to be deemed the second most beautiful in the world after La Marseillaise, and for the rest of his life Osvaldo would shut off the radio whenever he heard its opening chords. He produced a voluminous body of notes outlining the way that an anthem ought to complement the national identity, and how the particularities of melody might undermine or make fragile the collective. These writings, of course, viciously denounced Sergio's efforts as based on political convenience as opposed to analytical rigor.
Unlike his predecessors, however, he would not live to see Faustina be taken from him by some rival: in 1938 she would be killed as a Republican volunteer in the Spanish Civil War while fighting against a brigade captained by the infamous war criminal José de Feijoa. Osvaldo himself would die of cancer in January 1948, months before el Bogotazo, thus preventing him from seeing the Republic once again descend into conflict. Osvaldo's brother, a disgraced priest, would have a single son and thus ensure that the Hastamorir would survive for yet another generation.
***
"In truth," said Cresencio, speaking with an unusual deliberation, "Teófilo could be cruel to his lessers and was rather given to impractical flights of fancy; Horacio was prudent, frugal, and an abolitionist in the vein of Bartolomé de las Casas; Cecilio could not see beyond his self-importance to understand the constitutional exigencies of the time; his brother, while no great orator or essayist, diligently managed the family's assets. Our prodigies were only men, and their soft-spoken siblings were only men."
He paused, peering across the night-washed mountainside, and then continued:
"And who am I but another man, identical to any other? The path was never lost: everything in the world is precisely the same, and that is, perhaps, the most amusing joke of them all."
These were the last words I heard spoken by Cresencio Hastamorir.