1742 and all that...

Columbus Day is not really celebrated in Colombia, but in recognition of that fellow's efforts, I suppose something other than a Huge! Car! Sale! is in order. How about a history lesson?

My recently completed oil painting of Barichara.

This village, now called the City of Barichara, according to local history was established in 1742 by a catholic priest, Father Joseph Martin Padrilla and his son, Ayerbe. If any of you have watched the newest TV series of tales of perfidy, murder and mayhem, "The Borgias," then you will have learned that priests, cardinals and even popes of the early Catholic Church were producing children with or without papal consent. Perhaps once the world was more fully populated the Church decided to try and limit what their administrators were contributing.

Here is some of what else was going on in 1742: Charles Albert VII of Bavaria was elected Holy Roman Emperor in January. (For those of you who are little weak on history, this title was an elected one for the monarch who was ruling the central European union.) In April, Handel's 'Messiah' was presented in Dublin, Ireland for the first time, Frederick the Great (another emperor) of Prussia beat the Austrians in May (assuming this was some kind of a battle and not a soccer game), there was a fierce battle in June on Simon's Island in Georgia (USA) called "Battle of Bloody Marsh" when the Spaniards attacked the British to gain control of the areas north of St. Augustine, Florida (USA). Benjamin Franklin was busy inventing the Franklin Stove up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA), and then in July, Prussia and Austria signed a peace treaty. Faneuil Hall in Boston, Massachusetts (USA) opened up to the public, and in November Empress Elisabeth of Russia proclaimed her nephew, Peter of Holstein-Gottlorp her heir. Poor Peter would eventually become Emperor in 1762, but would only survive for six months when his wife Catharine succeeded him. (That's a story for another day.)

It turned out that an earlier Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the first king of Spain, back in the mid-1500's, was busy utilizing his explorers to find and conquest much of the Americas, from what is now Florida south through Central America and South America. He was proud of his Spanish territorial dominance, continuing what would become a four-century effort to colonize much of the world - starting in 1492 with Christoforo Colombus and ending in 1898 with the Spanish-American War.

Those early Spanish explorers came up the Magdalena River from the Caribbean and invaded the ancient Chibchas whose tribes had, according to many historians, lived here for at least 14,000 years. The combination of diseases brought by the Spaniards, along with their brutal assaults, resulted in the obliteration of many of the indigenous tribes, including the Guane. By 1586 they were either assimilated into Spanish colonies or decimated. There is a little village about 16 kilometers from Barichara by this name. Their early cultivation of cotton, pineapples and creation of pottery is still going on today.

Santa Barbara Capella is at the top of the pueblo.

Barichara was operational 454 years ago, after someone claimed to have seen an image of the Virgin in a stone and the chapel of Santa Barbara was built on the site where that vision occurred, completed in 1698.

The purported image is on display in the first left-hand alcove of the Cathedral. I think this is because the Cathedral can be more securely attended than the capella can. Thirty-five years later, in 1733, there was a request made by the Padrilla de la Parra family to have Barichara designated a parish.

Interior of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Conception of Barichara.

The establishment of a parish meant people would come and have both the rituals and protection of the church. Finally in 1751, the Archbishop of Santa Fe, Don Pedro Azua, issued the title of parish under the name "Our Lady of Conception of Barichara and the Martyr San Lorenzo." The main cathedral at the top of the plaza bears this name. Construction was started in 1760 and finished about 20 years later and then consecrated in 1785. The cupola above the altar bears both structural and visual similarities to that of St. Peter's in the Vatican.

Doctora Isabel stirring up the native soup, mute (mooty).

As we slide down this next week to the Festivals and Ferias, Oct. 12-15, locals are madly finishing up their floats, stocking up on guarapo (pronounced good-ah-poh and made from fermented panela/sugar cane), chicha (a fermented corn-based, syrupy drink) and another drink based on corn and rice called masato. I had my first taste of guarapo last week and immediately had a GI problem. My doctor friend insisted that a small sip was not enough to be the cause, but given that this stuff is often made from pond water with any number of parasites and other things, I am not convinced. But I am certain that that was my last 'sip' of that stuff.

Getting Away - Ubate/Sutatausa (Part 4)

Lake Fuquene on the way south to Ubate/Sutatausa

Sutatausa Church

The trip from Chiquinquirá to Ubate and then to Sutatausa should have taken a shorter time than it did. For reasons I could not comprehend, the driver was not driving as fast as the conditions would allow and so it took quite awhile to cover the kilometers.

By the time we arrived at the church it was beginning to get cloudy and while we were there it absolutely poured buckets.

The reason for coming here at all is that this church is the 'indoctrination' church, an early church used by the Catholics to encourage people, most particularly the natives, to join up. Located about a hour north of Bogota, this early church was settled by the Franciscans and Spaniards. The initial view of the church is one of marvel that the people of the late 1600's could produce such an edifice. But finding out the deeper and more sinister aspect of the methods of encouraging people to join this religion left me feeling very sad indeed.

Interior of the church; secret room is off to the right.

Part of the design of capturing the people when conquering their lands is maintaining control. But with limited troops, the Spaniards in the late 1500's and early 1600's used the Franciscan friars to encourage people to become indoctrinated as Catholics using that religion to control the population. What is more than a little horrible about this 'encouragement' is the realization that if someone said 'No, I don't think so," they were candidates for a visit to a room where they could be convinced. Underneath one of the side altars of this church there is a very small room. (You can see a very small door, like that of one for a cupboard, to the right of the fellow's head in the picture of the side altar below.) My guess is that most of the indigenous peoples were pretty small in stature, so the space didn't need to be very large. But it was too large for me to go inside. And that's just as well, because what if I couldn't have gotten out again?

Barely visible, there is a small latching door at right of guy's head.

It was literally a torture chamber to convince individuals to become Catholics. Not much bigger than an average bathroom and a good deal shorter in height, it houses an ancient wooden rack to pull a person's body parts apart. It has a very small window with bars on it, about the size of someone's head - certainly not large enough, even squeezing sideways to escape. Frankly all you'd have to do is show it to me and I'm such a coward, I'd join right up. And perhaps that was enough for plenty of others, too. The priests could have had someone in there screaming their head off, and even if they weren't doing anything to him/her, that would have gotten the rumors going and anyone for miles around would have probably made the decision to become a Catholic.

Original frescoes on main wall of church were recently uncovered.

My Spanish is rotten, I admit. But when I was hearing the others in the group talking about this, I thought I was really mis-interpeting everything. We walked around and looked at the ancient frescoes painted on the walls which have only recently been uncovered. We went to the church's museum to see all the old paintings of apostles and such like, robes, candle holders, communion cups and plates, and some other antiques of the early period of this church. Then the 'best' was saved for last. Anyone who wanted to could go into this room - if they could fit.

One of the members of our group was small enough and had a camera and did take a photo, but she hasn't sent it to me yet. If/when she does, I will post it. (She was able to get out and return home with us, in case you were wondering.)

Don Pedro, in red cap, points out our location on map.

I don't want to end this journey on such a sombre note, so here are some other shots taken during the weekend that didn't have any particular place to fit except to show you some interesting looking people, places or things. The woman in costume is wearing the traditional comunero garb of a black dress, white blouse with embroidered colored flowers, black shawl and the hat with a black band and red ties on her black pigtails.

The group is standing on a bas-relief map of Colombia at the Nacional University College in Velez and our leader, who was the inspiration for doing a "Route of the Comuneros," is Don Pedro, an historian from Bogota and Barichara. He is wearing the red cap and pointing out where we are at present in the Andes.

Rider needs help dismounting; horse may be pleased.

This was the shot in Puene Nacional that caused my anxiety to rise as I realized that most of the men riding were probably also drinking. This fellow trying to dismount in the first photo had been riding around and perhaps someone told him to get off or he tried to on his own. But clearly he wasn't able to manage and yet a short while later (see him trying to put his foot in the stirrup?) he tried to get on someone else's horse that was left standing. (The metal railing I mentioned that gave away can be seen in the upper left hand portion of the second photo.)

'Borracho' means drunk and this fellow was...

A street in Chiquinquirá on a Sunday.

The last shot was taken as we were driving out of Chiquinquirá and I just pointed the camera as we passed a street or two... just to show what the edges of the city look like. There is a similarity to Mexico in that the houses and shops are brightly colored. But at least from what I saw from the van, the streets looked pretty clean and there was less trash piled up than what I have observed in other Colombian cities and villages.

I hope you have enjoyed this tour with me, although 'enjoy' is hardly the word to use for that last church visit. Right now I am working on a new oil painting and so my next trip is as yet unknown.
I have a few ideas up my sleeve for some other postings, and I look forward to your comments on this one.

Getting Away on Another Journey

Rainy season & derumbas - scary road conditions.

I barely got back to Barichara when it was time for my birthday and a trip planned to celebrate. The trip was with a small group driving south in the state of Santander to Puente Nacional for their fiesta, a visit to Vélez, and a short tour of Chiquinquirá (the city where the cathedral for the Virgin of Chiquinquira is located) then an even shorter tour - after a longer drive - to see one of the very first churches in Colombia in Ubate/Sutatausa, located in the state of Cundinamarca, making it about an hour north of Bogotá.

There is a lot of information to share and I took over 400 photos (I won't bore you with all of them here; you'll have to come for tea!) and so I think I will divide it up by location so you can enjoy it all at a slower pace than I did. This will mean several blogs in sequence instead of attempting to post it all in one. I will title the series "Getting Away" with Puente Nacional as Part One, Vélez as Part Two, Chiquinqierá as Part Three and Ubate/Sutatausa as Part Four.

Colombian girls are reputed to be very pretty...

Today I will just share some unrelated aspects of the trip which managed to get lumped together by virtue of driving in Colombia. The first aspect is that when one is traveling with a group, there is a kind of team and leadership dynamic that develops. The one who organized the trip is looked to for information, the driver of the bussetta (small van) is supposed to be responsive to the organizer and since seats are not assigned, and yelling "I get the window seat!" in Spanish has no effect whatsoever, it certainly pays to arrive on time. It was frustrating to try and get photos on the way, and the driver was not inclined to stop - ever - for something as silly as a photo op.

It's cold enough in Vélez for irises to grow well.

The second aspect is that it is important to realize that Colombia is divided up into six regions: Caribe (everything from the northernmost tip near Venezuela down to Caretgena on the Carribean Ocean), Andina (Andes - the interior portion bordered by the Rio Magdelena over to Venezuela), Cafetera (the coffee region from the other side of the Rio Magdelena over to the Pacific from Cali north), and Suroccidente, (a large region from Cali south on the Pacific to the border with Equador and over to the beginning of the flatlands at the base of the Andes on the eastern side), Llanos (plains and grass lands from the base of the Andes to the west and over to the Venezuelan border) and last, the Amazonia (that portion through which the Amazon River runs in the southernmost part of the country.)

I explored some of the Caribe region in 2009, live in the Andina region and still have four regions left to explore. The most recent trip was confined to the Andina region. This meant changes in elevation from 5,000 feet (where I live in Barichara) up to approximately 9,000 feet to Velez and back down to the valley of Laguna Fúquene (a lake shared with both the states of Boyaca and Curdinamarca) where the first church was established, which brought us down to about 2000 feet of elevation.

No way to know what happened to the driver.

Finally, the third aspect is that driving in Colombia is not like other parts of the world where two and three-lane highways are the norm. Colombian drivers make every one-lane highway into a two-lane by passing on curves and other apparently illegal conditions, depending on the truckers to let them pass and other drivers to slow down when approaching. Traffic delays are common, and so are road closures due to bridges or roads being washed out. Sometimes the travel is all good. Other times it is very bad - for someone.

We had mixed conditions of rain, sun and clouds. As the photos will show, most of the time we were able to enjoy sunshine. But this is the rainy season, so it is no surprise when the clouds become unglued and end up in our laps. I am grateful our trip was only delayed by a few events and none of them included us.

A Visit to Guapotá

The view from Marylandia, a Catholic retreat in Guapota.

I first heard about Guapota (pronounced whoa-poh-tah) only a few days before the trip was taking place. A busload of people from Barichara were going to visit the priest who was formerly in Barichara, Fr. Leonardo.

Eglise of Guapota with park below.

According to Fr. Leonardo, Guapota was established about 200 years ago and the church was built about the same time. The front portion of the church needed replacement, so it is not the same age as the rest of it. Built with local stone and brick, what I noticed first is the arches throughout the church and the priest's residence. The church is high on the hill overlooking the village, with a park in front, and some lovely old trees preserved to give dense shade from the hot sun.

The beautiful arches inside the church
 are created with local
stone and brick. Simple but really lovely.

We were blessed with a lovely sunny day, at least until after 5, when the clouds began to look threatening, but it never rained. That was a good thing because the road to Guapota is under construction after serious water damage earlier and more rain would have meant some serious travel challenges for our bus. The workers are installing drainage ditches and eventually the road will be re-paved, but right now it is a mix of paved and unpaved roadway.

Coffee beans are spread out on the sidewalk
to dry and once dried are bagged up (see the
bags behind the metal fence) and sent off
to be roasted. Then shipped worldwide.

This is not just a 'one-horse' town, but this was one of
the several I saw; few mules even though this is Juan
Valdez coffee-raising country.

You can learn more about this village from their website if you want to visit Guapota.  (It is written in Spanish, but if you go on Google you can get it translated.) Located southwest of Socorro just off the road to Oiba (and Bogota) and about half an hour's drive in from that highway, the major industries here are the production of sugar cane, cacao (cocoa for chocolate), and coffee. We saw a lot of coffee beans drying in the sunshine.

As it was also the week before voting for various state and local candidates (voting takes place on Sunday, Oct. 30 in Colombia to avoid losing workers from their tasks, it seems) there was a lot of loud music from each of the candidate's offices or vehicles reverberating off the stone streets and walls.

Some of the research I did about the village shows a population of less than 1,000 people, but I am not sure of that information. There is a new hospital, a home for the grandmothers and grandfathers to be cared for, and there is transportation service between Socorro and Guapota several times during the morning and afternoon. Clearly with only one road in and out of Guapota and a strong police presence, outsiders are noticed immediately. But typical Colombian hospitality is still in evidence and it makes a nice day trip.

Another view toward the Andes in Guapota.

Rain today, rain yesterday, rain tomorrow?

The rainy season has started. It was supposed to start on Monday the 7th of March, but it really started on Thursday, the 17th. Just kidding... I think. In any case, it has rained every day and every night for the past nine days or nights. Well, this is hard to explain. Some days it starts raining in the afternoon. So that would mean that it rained during the day. At other times it starts raining after dark, which makes it a night rain. But on those days that it started during the day and went on into the night, sometimes all night long, that would mean it was a rain that covered days and nights. Did I clear that up?

The mist or clouds rolled in and obscured the rising sun.
But as the sun gets higher in the sky, it heats up the cloud
and soon it will evaporate and become one with the others.

In the mornings, (but not every morning) when I go and sit to watch the sun come up, sometimes it is bright and sunny for about half an hour and then suddenly the clouds drift along and obliterate everything, making it look like a foggy day. Then there is a chill in the air and my tea tastes especially delightful. I wrap up in a small blanket and listen to the birds and wait for the clouds to lift.

According to my local observers, the rainy season this year is expected to last until June, possibly until July. It doesn't rain ALL the time, but enough that one expects to get rained upon at any point during the day.

Today I went with the village doctor to see a friend who has kittens. The idea was that I might be persuaded to take one. So I went and looked and am pondering the idea.

Afterwards, she had to stop and see a patient who was elderly and not doing well. I agreed to drive her to the home and wait. It turned out that the home was also the local bar and while I was waiting I was approached by the owner with a beer in hand wondering if I wanted a 'cervaza' (beer) while I sat there. He was eager to talk, but if I was having problems understanding Spanish with a sober conversationalist, I was totally challenged by one who was already drunk.

Feeling like the lad holding the reins of the horse and carriage while the doctor was making house calls, I patiently waited for her return, fending off the eager talker and noting that the rules of privacy (HIIPA) in the U.S. are not anything like what happens here. Everyone's health or issues are discussed throughout the town and it is expected that everyone knows pretty much everything about all the other people living here - local or otherwise.

That is NOT a walking leaf, it is an even larger version
of the same kind of BUG I presented awhile ago - I feel
that the rain is helping these critters to grow... or some-
thing is... if  you try to pluck them off to move them,
they grab onto you with a fierce and scary strength!!

There was a revival at the Catholic Church earlier in the week. Apparently there was also an exorcism in the middle of it, and some young woman was cleansed of the devils beleaguering her. When I went to get a pedicure at the 'salon,' this morning, the whole revival and the thrilling activities connected to it were being heatedly discussed, including by a young man in a POLICIA uniform who was getting a manicure. (Men do that here quite unashamedly.) I didn't understand everything that was being talked about, but the facial expressions clued me in that they didn't really like what was going on in the church.

We are about to enter the Holy Week; the sacred time before Easter morning. Everyone is getting more than a little anxious and the city is expected to be filled with tourists and escapees from other parts of Colombia. The choral group has suffered a few losses due to restaurant schedules but the few stalwart voices remaining (me being one of them) are pushing on to prepare for our concert during that week. Stay tuned for more exciting news from the northern Andes!

The Cathedral at Barichara

Today we attended our first "city" social event, a graduation of the niece of our host's partner from elementary school to high school. This "Promotion de 2009" took place in the cathedral because all the schools are under the aegis of the Catholic Church in this country and because this is also the largest building in the 'pueblo' where all the families can gather. The first part of the event was a mass with communion, which was not the organized process found in the U.S. People simply got up as they felt like it and walked to the front of the church, received communion and ambled back, talking to family and friends as they worked their way back to their seats in the rugged benches called "pews" in English, but I don't know the word in Spanish.

The roof of the church is built exactly the same way the roof on a rammed earth house is built, with cane and horse manure. Very insulating factor... see if you can see the cane on the photo looking up the aisle to the entrance which includes a large portion of the roof from the inside.

Then, after the mass, four flags were brought and placed below the alter. Finally, after we listened to four recorded songs (one was the national anthem for Colombia, one was the song for the State of Santander, one for the town of Barichara and one for the school) only after that could the actual graduation ceremony begin. (I admit I looked at my watch and we were already over an hour sitting on those hard benches.)

But we still had to listen to the welcoming address by the school's principal, the valedictorian address, the awards to teachers who had been ten years or more in the school, and then awards to outstanding students. One young lady was recognized for being the highest scorer on the Colombian version of SAT's in the entire country - and she is from this small town. Great amount of applause for that. Due to my limited Spanish, I was needing translation to understand what all the excitement was about.

What surprises me is that as simply as these folks live - many do NOT have running water OR electricity, they do have cell phones and their clothes are crisp, clean and sparkling white. If you saw some of the living conditions, you might be as amazed as I am at this observation. Our dinner conversation last night focused on the fact that in the U.S. being in poverty (without these essentials of water and electricity) is considered shameful and there is a sense that because, for whatever the reason, those individuals are 'less than' those who have more. This is definitely not the case here. There is no shame for poverty - perhaps because for many, living on the land, that is all they have known. Also, there is no expectation that the State or the Government will be bailing them out. They live by their wits and creativity and are proud. It is an important lesson that is lost on those who live on welfare in the U.S. and elsewhere.

We often have a young fellow from another 'finca' coming to charge up his cell phone because we have electricity. Usually we have running water, but the pressure is often debatable. Sometimes, because it has been terribly dry here, they ration the water and we have to go without it for a day or two. Challenging!