NATION AND TERRITORY

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COLOMBIA IS PASSION









POINT OF VIEW OF TOMAS C DE MOSQUERA ABOUT PHYSICAL AND POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY ON NEW GRANADA - 1853





















































SOME TOPICS ABOUT CAUCA TERRITORY AND LANDSCAPE

Department of Cauca (Departamento del Cauca)
Location
Reference:Braendly de Buchely, Helvia et-al, MULTILINGUA APLICADA, Editorial Universidad del Cauca, Serie Estudios Aplicados

The Department of Cauca is located in the southwest of the Republic of Colombia. This Department is bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the West, in the north by the Department of Valle del Cauca, in the East by the Departments of Tolima, Huila and Caquetá, in the South by the Departments of Nariño and Putumayo.

Climate

Two mountain ranges traverse Cauca’s territory, one of the most rugged of the country. Nevertheless, it has beautiful valleys along the banks of the Cauca and Patia Rivers and the great jungle plain of the Pacific Zone. If you consider all of the above variety and add the influence of the Amazonian region, the Department of Cauca has all of the climatic diversity known to mankind. It includes the icy cold temperatures ofthe snowy peaks of the Puracé Volcano, or of the Coconucos and the Macizo Colombiano, and the warm valleys of Patia and the Pacific Coast.

Economy

The Department of Cauca’s economy is based mainly on agricultural production, especially on products such as pita fiber, sugar cane, panela cane (brown sugar), coffee, potatoes, corn, yucca (cassava),beans, tomatoes and asparagus. Livestock farming and its dairy and meat products are also important. Fish hatching has recently undergone outstanding development and has of late become a great success. One of the greatest forest preserves of the country can be found in the Pacific Coastal region. In the Naya region there are large deposits of gold and in the Bota Caucana region there are also oil deposits.

Description

The Department of Cauca has an approximate territorial area of30,493 Km2 and an estimated population of 1.2 million inhabitants. The capital of the Department is the city of Popayán. Two branches of the Andes, the Western and the Central mountain ranges, which run along the length of South America, cross this department. Furthermore, it is in Cauca’s territory that the interlacing of these two mountain ranges occurs. Together, they form the Macizo Colombia-no where the Magdalena, Cauca, Patia, and Caquetá rivers originate. The former two of these rivers are the most important waterways of Colombia. They cross the territory from south to north until the Cauca River eventually converges with the Magdalena River, which then flows out into the Caribbean Sea. Some of the other principal rivers in the Department are the Timbiquí, Guapi, Micai, Palo, Guachicono, and Quilcacé.

The Department of Cauca also encompasses 150 Kms of Pacific coastline that includes the islands of Gorgona and Gorgonilla, contributing to its great touristic appeal and its natural and cultural richness.

Due to its natural and cultural resources, its great diversity of beautiful landscapes, its fishing spots and its marvelously well-preserved national parks suited to observing its wonderful flora and fauna, Cauca is a department that greatly attracts tourists.

Cauca’s historical, architectural, archeological, religious, folkloric and ethnic diversity makes of this department a delightful place for a wide range of touristic activities.

Some 35% of the population is found in the Municipal Districts. Twenty of those have less than 5,000 inhabitants, showing the rural character of this department. In the central part of the department in which the municipalities of the Cauca and Patia valleys are located, population density ranges between 20 and 50 inhabitants per Km2. Those municipalities that have less than 20 inhabitants per Km2 are located in the Pacific valleys and in the Central mountain range. Cauca’s average altitude is approximately 3,000 meters above sea level and, as mentioned elsewhere, this department also has gold deposits.

The Pacific flank records 3.000 mm of average annual rainfall, which represents the water that flows into the Pacific Ocean and into the Cauca and Patia rivers.
Located in the center of the Department of Cauca is the Macizo Colombiano. The three most important mountain ranges of the country (Western, Central and Eastern Cordilleras)originate in the Macizo. The Amazonian Mountain base is located in the southeast of this territory. The base is characterized by broken landscapes and precipitation levels that can reach up to 6,000 mm annually which support an impressive diversity of Amazonian region forest vegetation. The bases of these soils, however, are poor.

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POPAYÁN
Location

This city is located 2º 27" latitude north and 76º 37" longitude west of the Greenwich Meridian. It is located 1,738 meters above sea leveland 676 Km south of Santafé de Bogotá, the Colombian capital. Popayán is also south of Santiago de Cali, capital of the Department of Valle del Cauca and the center of regional development, 136 km away. The Pan-American Highway that crosses one of the most varied and spectacular landscapes of Colombia connect Popayán with Cali and Pasto, which is the capital of the Department of Nariño.

ClimatePrecipitation: 2417 mm annually
Annual average temperature: 19º C.
Relative annual humidity: 74%
Pressure (mb): 1020

Description

Popayán was founded in 1537 by the Spanish Conqueror Sebastián de Belalcazar on the site of the indigenous town of the Cacique Payán. It is the capital city of the Department of Cauca in the Republic of Colombia, South America.

Few urban communities in Colombia and in Latin America have as prominent a place in history as Popayán, a fascinating city that has suffered several strong earthquakes. This city also boasts important national figures, authors, politicians, artists, and poets.

Generalities

Some historians say that the name was taken from of the cacique of the region, whose name was Pioyá, pronounced Payánby the interpreters Yucatecos, to which they added the Mayan voice- quiche -” Pop” or great lord, to indicate his hierarchy Other say that it can come from the word PAMPAYAN, made up of two words: PAMAPA that means valley, place, step and YAN that which wants to say, river. That is to say river crossing passage, keeping in mind that by this valley the Cauca river runs.

The version of an ancient columnist assures that the word Popayán is derived from the autonomous American “guambía” dialect that breaks down this way: PO = two, PA = straw and YAN = village.That is to say, two villages of straw.

Popayán, which was founded in 1537 by the Spanish conqueror Sebastian de Belalcázar in the place before occupied by the indigenous town of the Cacique Payán, is the capital city of the Department of Cauca, in the Republic of Colombia, South America.

Few urban communities in Colombia and the Hispanic America have so much history content as Popayán does. Not only because of what its physical structure means - many times shaken and mistreated by telluric forces and even by man’s depredator action - but also because of the paradigmatic features that have always distinguished thepresence of its people in the national scenario.

The city of Popayán has been characterized to be traditional. In its tradition the different festivities and popular customs mingle evidencing its cultural wealth mainly expressed in celebrations such as: HolyWeek, Christmas and in the White and Black Carnival which iscarried out on January 5 and 6 during the Pubenza festivities.

Painters, musicians, writers, sculptors, poets and artisans inhabit the city of Popayán. The city has places where all these cultural activities can be carried out. It has exhibition rooms, auditoriums in different universities, theaters and other places where important annual events can be carried out. Some of these evens are “El Salón de Septiembre de Arte Visuales” (September Chamber for Visual Arts), “Festival Internacional de Poesía” (The International Poetry Festival), “Encuentro de Trios” and theater festivals. Temples, convents, statues and traditional streets keep the history of the city.

The historical center is par excellence the tourist area. Its architecture and its colonial art make of Popayán a very important city in the country and abroad. Its convents and churches reflect the colonial and republican influence, as well as wood carved work and the mural paintings. The art styles, schools and artists became anonymous because of the passing of time and of the painting layers demanded by the different epochs.

Different forms of handcraft elements made in Popayán which include ceramic crafts, wood carving, leather repoussage, gold work and cloth dolls been some of the more outstanding works by which the artisans have been distinguished for their creativity and industry. Nevertheless, as an economic activity it has lost importance, although it can be mentioned as a vital element in the local culture.

Another form of cultural “payanesa” expression is manifested in its typical gastronomy. They are distinguished the turnovers and “tamales de pipián”, “champus”, “ají de maní”, “aloja”, “sopa de masas”, “sopa detortillas” and the famous “Nochebuena payanesa”.

Architecture (Arquitectura)
Origins and layouts in Popayán
“Guide of the historical city”,
By Architec Germán Téllez Castañeda
(Colombian Culture Institute , 1996).

Cartagena and Mompox are cities of irregular layout, the same as Santa Fe de Bogotá, Tunja or Pamplona, but Popayán, in contrast, is a good example of “classic” geometric layout, according to the traditions of the south and center of Spain, is conformed by a reasonably orthogonal design of streets, more or less guided to the four cardinal points.

This village founded by Sebastian de Belalcázar near the Cauca river appears initially like a distribution of land properties around them a in Plaza (current Park of Caldas). This way of distribution carried out by the first Hispanic and Creole residents has been continued inthe decades and centuries following the colonial epoch. It is not difficult to suppose that the division in neighborhoods or “cuarteles” (fourth parts of the total population area) was made following the two main axes of the colonial layout: the current 6th avenue, in an approximate direction south-north, and the 5th street, nearly east-west.

The Roman custom of distribution practiced in cities and towns of the colonial province of Iberia, was simply the reflection of the order and military discipline required to establish the legions and civil foundations camps organized in similar areas and zones through crossing two axes, which were at the same time symbolic and real: the decumanum, was located in a central point where a great free space would be left that should be able to lodge all those that conformed the human group of settlers of Spain or, many centuries later, the districts of the New World.

What arrives from the West to the province of New Granada, is Belalcázar’s and his rough soldier’s urban memory which did not imply a sophisticated philosophical notion of ancient methodologies and secrets for urban layouts, but the deep memory of how the towns or cities from which they came from were conformed.

As an urban nucleus, Popayán doesn’t descend in a direct line from Mileto or another Greek city, but from the Roman colonial military foundations in Hispanic lands, formed by blocks defined by means of an orthogonal web of roads. The original subdivision of those square blocks in fourths (plots) and even the city itself, allowed the distribution of properties in a strict equivalence for all its possessors The same as many Andalusian, Castilians or Extremenian cities, Popayán grew slowly, prolonging its geometric layout till where its streets reached thesheers, hills, rivers, and creeks that framed the city.

The place chosen for the foundation of Popayán, besides having abundant water and good surrounding lands, had a smoothly beautiful and evocative landscape, which made the Spaniards remember the places of the mountainous county of central Andalusia or the south of Castile.

The reticule of the streets of Popayán was not a forced imposition on the chosen land, but a soft and tight adjustment to the land and the surrounding landscape, folding the streets to their existent differences and creating slight deviations when it was necessary. The city is another of those discreet and smaller successes of city-planning that populated the Spanish empire in the New World.

At the end of the XVIII century the blocks of the town were not more than fifty and were a continuation of the original grid based on the Main Plaza, that is to say, an expansion of hardly some forty blocks in something more than two hundred years. The leisurely growth of Popayán favored the formal and environmental harmony that today offers its downtown area.

Rarely the cities that present an express and extensive development have been able to maintain the delicate volumetric balance and the fragile space scale that characterized their beginnings. In the case of Popayán, the original nature of the city wasn’t completely lost because the colonial part of the city was not displaced by the modern city when the colonial one became destroyed by an earthquake.

Popayán was founded in a highly seismic and volcanic risk region; it has been partly and repeatedly destroyed because of the earthquakes. The most intense of these earthquakes were those of 1736 and 1983. In both occasions it was necessary to concentrate resources and efforts, not in the city’s expansion but in the reconstruction of those buildings that were destroyed or damaged.

Until the first half of the XVIII century the urban configuration of the city followed socio-economic parameters strictly determined by the colonial historical process. The farmers and the prosperous merchants of the region built a limited number of “high and low” houses (of one or two floors), and of great built area.

These people presumably represented the aristocratic social class, clearly descending of Spaniards – no matter their ancestors were humble peasants or small bourgeois; their houses were differentiated from the humblest residences of artisans, of some workers and those of the more modest merchants. Few neo – Grenadine (Related to Granada in Spain)cities reflected as faithfully as Popayán, their urban configuration and in their architectural ordination, the social hierarchy and the difference of the social classes of their inhabitants.

It should be accepted, with reserves and exceptions, that the appearance of the city and therefore, its urban character as it reaches the beginnings of the XX century, is due mainly to the city-planning and architectural overlapping. This was carried out during the second half of the XIX century over what was possible to rebuild from the second third of the XVIII century till the end of the colonial period. What distinguishes Popayán among other cities of colonial origin in Colombia is the city-planning and architectural hybridization caused accidentally by seismic movements. These could not erase its urban layout, but they were able to alter its volume and the traditional character of its architecture.

The tendency derived from the above-mentioned was emphasizing the existing urban formal harmony, minimizing differences among facades and balancing their regular appearance. The facades similarity didn’t disappear completely, and the basic principles in the whole colonial city were conserved. In Popayán “unanimity is not synonymous of uniformity”.

History of Popayán (Historia de Popayán)
Author: Diego Castrillón Arboleda

Popayán is a city of big charms, beauty, conflicts and setbacks. Through all the epochs its history and the character of its inhabitants has been marked by this fate, confirmed by its economic cultural and political past, and the magnificence of its religious expressions. The opening of new roads impelled, displaced and, still, appeased the opulence and the splendid beauty of this district; the scars of its beautiful architecture; the political shocks in which its warriors were committed and the physic commotions arisen in its own land fluctuate from the gentle harmony of its country side, to the torrential versatility of its seasons; a coincident tri-ethnical culture converge with those of the pre-Columbian currents that inhabited the continent: the Quechua, together with the caravans of Spanish conquerors that entered to the valley through the South, another from the North, and a third one from the Caribbean sea through the Magdalena river were belatedly attracted by the ferocity and the bewitchment of the region.

The natives that faced the first Spanish conquerors Juan de Ampudia and Pedro de Añasco, who arrived at the end of 1535 sent by Sebastian de Belalcazar to the region, were naked semi-nomads and hunters with incipient corn agriculture.

These natives were refugees who lived in caves and huts or flaky conditioned trees, they came from Tierradentro, the country of the” nenga”, daubed and using feathers tied to their forehead with lianas. The aborigines escaped toward the North, pointing out the path that led them to a plentiful river of turbulent and sour waters of sulfurousscent that came down the mountain range and ran through the valley toward the North. This river was baptized by the Yanaconas with the Quechuaname of “Cauca”. These same Spaniards, before continuing their triptoward the North, installed a camp in the outskirts which they named Villa de Ampudia.

Guided by the cross his lieutenants planted in the summit of the highest hill of the region - as they had agreed upon when they were in Quito– Captain Sebastian de Belalcázar arrived, coming from Quazábara where he was fighting a battle against an aboriginal confederation of approximately four thousand natives. In this place he remained a short time while recovering, and planning an expedition toward the Occident in charge of Juan de Ladrilleros who would try to look for a route to the Sea of the South, from where he entered inland to Peru with Don Francisco Pizarro. Belalcazar ordered Francisco García deTobar to find a route to the Caribbean Sea through the eastern mountain range, to return to Spain to request the King the right togovern the regions he was discovering.

Belalcázar followed the Cauca river bed and in April 1536 and reached the expeditions of Juan de Ampudia in Jamundí. Joining their forces they both continued to the North along the fertile valley of the great river. In the place where today the city of Anserma is located Belalcázar received a message from Gaspar de Espinosa, the message said that Conqueror Francisco Pizarro, who suspected Belalcazar’s separatists intentions removed him of his position of Governor of Quito. Without hesitating, Belalcázar undertook his return through Cartago. In Jamundí he left a crew in control of Lieutenant Miguel Muñoz with the order of founding the city of Cali. Later he arrived to the Villa de Ampudia in December 1536, where he found that his commissioners had already returned. Captain Juan de Ladrilleros received him with a negative report, because he could not find the way to get to the Sea. There, Francisco García de Tobar told him about the Coconucos and Paletará indigenous groups, who said there was a big river running from the other slope of the mountain range toward the North where there was an abandoned culture of stone idols lost in the foothill of a third mountain range. He said he named this place San Agustín.

Sensing that this was the yearned route for completing his plans, Belalcázar ordered his Lieutenant Juan de Ampudia, to stay there to transfer the village he had named as Villa de Ampudia to the foot of the hill where they had placed the before mentioned cross. The place he assigned was reclined in the mountain range and halfway of the valley of the Cauca river, of the Southern sea, of the Caribbean Sea, and of the Kingdom of Peru, to found a city that was to be called Popayán where he planned to install the headquarters of his domains, if his Majesty the King granted them to him.

The name was assumed from that of the cacique of the region of Pioyá which was pronounced Payán by the Yucatecos to which they added the Mayan voice -quiche-” Pop” or great Master, to indicate his hierarchy.

Fifteen days later, on January 13, 1537, Juan de Ampudia carried out Belalcázar’s official order of founding Popayán, dedicating it to Our Lady of the Rest, as he was ordered.

Earthquakes

In 1564 a fearful earthquake moved to the region and destroyed everything that was built until then except the temple of the Ermita which became Cathedral pro tempore in substitution of the regular one which had to be demolished. Nevertheless, of its ruins a new impulse, a creative energy arose, the first convents were built and there construction of the second cathedral with tile and brick began.

In February 1736, another earthquake occurred which shook Popayán so much or more violently than the one of 1564. Although seriously damaged, only some houses of more consistency such as the temple of La Ermita, La Torre del Reloj (the Watch Tower), part of the already built monasteries and the Seminario de la Compañía subsisted. Immediately the reconstruction began directed by the Town Council and partly financed by the Marquesa de San Miguel de la Vega and the opulent farmers that were succeeded by the commentators, whose off springs were educated in the Seminar of Popayán. Some of them traveled to Europe to complete their education, married ladies of the European nobility and carried out signal and powerful positions first in the Court and later in Popayan. The cultural conception and the level of life assumed by these youngsters, together with the socioeconomic structure of the moment in the Government of Popayán, and the enormous resources they brought from abroad resulted in the beautiful domestic architecture of the city.

The reconstruction was delayed until the end of the XVII century, due to the serial earthquakes that succeeded that of 1736, which forced to demolish some constructions they had built initially. So, frequent catastrophes woke up a panic feeling in the spirit of the payaneses. But Popayán came out ahead and during the decade of the1980’s it became a remarkable intermediate city of Colombia, growing as acity of cultural and tourist high-level.

A new earthquake on March 3l, 1983 hit Popayán again. The nationa land international solidarity came in its help. The city conserved its political, managerial, and the cultural identity of its best days, as it is shown by the restoration of its colonial architecture and the reconstruction of all its collapsed houses and buildings. 32 new neighborhoods appeared (a marginal city to the historical one), partly integrated by families who emigrated to Popayán prior to the earthquake, which had grouped stacked in the small constructions of the suburbs. The reconstruction was carried out together with the recovery of the economy and the dynamics of the city. Three scarce years were needed to place the foundations for the city’s development.

Today Popayán is a city with 300 thousand inhabitants, citizens who are proud of their past and their experiences. The payaneses are hospitable people who feel sure of its destiny. These inhabitants are incorporated to modern life through their foreign and native youngsters that converge in schools and in the best Colombian universities that began to settled down in the city’s wide large houses soon after the earthquake. They came attracted by Popayán’s environmental and historical resources appropriate for the academic formation and by its facilities for the institutional managerial handling

Popayán and its surroundings are attractive to national and international visitors because it is a district of specially fertile lands having all the climates and altitudes due to a topography formed by mountain ranges that converge in the Colombian Andean knot (Macizo Colombiano). Highlands and valleys, thermal waters everywhere and powerful telluric and hydrographic resources generators of energy can be found few hours far from Popayán. All this together with a geographical environment where tropical fruits and fauna proliferate along with a varied richness unexploded mineral reserves like gold, petroleum, copper, antimony, sulfur, bauxite, marble, lime, and coal,timber forests, tourist forests and the Pacific Ocean in the East.

In its 450 years

In 1987 a book named “Popayán 450 years” was published to commemorate the anniversary of the foundation of the city. Distinguished citizens collaborated with interesting articles; among the collaborators was Gustavo Wilches Chaux who in that issue gave us to know a map whose original manuscript was in the Maritime Museum of Greenwich. This map is dated in 1650 and includes the signature of the English cartographer Nicholas Comberford.

Journalist Wilches Chaux points out that this map was made to inform the navigators on the ports existing at both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, to the North of the equatorial zone. He adds that the map is fruitful in names of islands and littoral cities, but little or anything says about the inland of the continents. The cartographer Camberford just points out with big red or black letters the names with which the regions located in this part of the world were known. On what today is Colombia, for example, the map deploys a great red sign with the name of the vast territory located to the North of Peru named «POPAIANA».”

“Popayán turned 113 years old when Mr. Comberford drew in England his map of ports for merchants’ use, explorers, adventurers and pirates, he baptized «POPAIANA» the New Kingdom of Granada, or what some cartographers of Drake simply included under the name of «West Indias», highlighting only what today are the cities of Riohacha and Cartagena.”

Silvia town

Silvia is a small town 60 Km from Popayán. Is the center of the Guambiano Indigenous region, but these natives don’t live in Silvia. They have small villages in which they live that are located high in the mountain. The villages are called Pueblito, La Campana, Guambía and Caciques.

Tuesday is the market day. The Indigenous come to Silvia to sell fruits, vegetables and handcrafts. During this day Silvia’s market is the most interesting colorful Indigenous gathering in Colombia. They use the traditional dress and woman use hand - woven garments and an incredible collection of necklaces. The Indigenous arrive to the market place in chivas (typical buses).

In Silvia town you can find the Museo de Artesanías del Mundo in the Casa Turística which is located in the Carrera 2 No. 14 – 39.The local guide will show the tourist souvenirs from all over the world.

GUAPI TOWN (PUEBLO DE GUAPI)

The Village of the Concession of Guapi whose accepted foundation date is that of December 8, 1772, was born by the initiative of the Spanish Don Manuel Valverde, is the head town of the vast municipality of Guapi, located southwest of Popayán few kilometers far from the Pacific Ocean. Its first inhabitants were the “ GUAPEES” Indians who were first decimated violently and later on eliminated entirety when this town was colonized, where some archaeological vestiges have been found.

Nowadays the urban population of the municipality of Guapi ascends up to 52.000 inhabitants approximately, number in growing increase due to their enormous economic and commercial attraction for many neighbors, towns and near villages of the coast side of the Cauca and Nariño Departments.

Totoró
Generalities

The Municipality is divided in five jurisdictions, Gabriel López, Portachuelo, Polindara, Jebalá, Faniquitá and Novirao. This Municipality includes two zones: The indigenous area and the peasant one. The indigenous area includes the following reservations: Totoró, Polindara, Paniquitá, Novirao and Jebalá. This regional altitude is of 2.570 meters above sea level; in their mean point, it has an average temperature of 14°C and an annual fluvial precipitation of 2000 mm.
The municipality is watered by two main rivers, El Cofre and Palacé rivers whose tributaries are the Aguas Vivas, Victoria, Paravoz, Molino, Burrera, Chuscales, Manzanal, Aguas Saladas and Agua Bonita rivers; their territory harbors the Lagoon of Calvache, located in Gabriel López jurisdiction, it should also be stand out the thermal waters of Chuscales in the jurisdiction having the same name and Aguas Saladas in Salado Blanco jurisdiction.

This municipality is located in the left riverbank of the Central mountain range in the slope of the Cauca river, there the Páramo de las Delicias, Cortero, Guanacas and Roca del Gallinazo can be found; the hills ofthe Palisada, Cornetero, Alto del Paramillo and Laguneta are located, and the Gabriel López level ground, the wavy lands of Novirao, Paniquitá and the narrow valley of the Cofre river are included too.

From La Tetilla to Seguengue (de La Tetilla a Seguengue)
El Liberal, May 1998, 13 page 8A

Author: Alvaro José Negret

Last Sunday, one of those Sundays when you do not have any thing to do, my family and I decided to go as far as La Tetilla, even the dog was included in the outing. With sandwiches, juice, cookies and some apples in a basket, we took the road on the way to the old country farm of Morinda.

We passed by Santa Rosa, a quiet locality where many years ago, in my childhood, I spent my summer vacation in the town’s school with the family of doctor Valdenebro.

The difference between that time and now is seen in the landscape. The myrtle and jigüa forest has become green grass of pangola and the guava trees were substituted by homemade vegetable gardens. Nowadays there are more houses at the way side but the church next to the cemetery remains identical, without one single flower and always closed.

Arrays of Pomorrosos with filamentous yellow flowers are used as alive fences in both sides of the road, and the guama trees full of volute fruits shade the traditional coffee plantations of Arabic variety.

A half an hour later we reach the foothill of that wonderful mass of bluish basalt. We arrived together with the small bus that leaves from the Bolívar neighborhood in Popayán, one that takes and brings peasants from the regions of La Tetilla, Las Mercedes, San Rafael and those who live near the place where the Saté river empties its waters into the Palacé river.

Beginning to climb

People rested sitting in the wide corridors of the store of Mrs. Cleotilde, where early in the morning empanadas of pipián begin to be fried and blood sausages of a strange iridescent color spark in the shortening. There were orchard banana clusters and cruel clusters of hens tied by the feet waiting to be transported to the city.

We took the road toward the small rock mountain and began to walk among an infinity of terrestrial orange color orchids that villagers call Fifirifí. In Latin the experts denominate them Epidendrum, which means that this orchids live on the trunks of trees.

The pink Anguchos were also flowering; some say that their flowers covered with sugar are a stupendous poison for cockroaches. We climbed the wall where some years ago the exploitation with dynamite destroyed some of the flanks of the deposit of Diabase.

In a short time, we were in the summit of La Tetilla, which is like a nose of the valley of Pubén. This rock of igneous origin, formed by the cooling of the spills of lava in the bottom of the ocean more than 70 million years ago, is a common formation in several places of the Department of Cauca and they are frequently exploited as material for highways basement.

From above the rock we observed Cauca’s river course and the canyon of the Palacé river, where multiple peasant houses are connected by an intricate net of reddish paths. On the narrow pass of the rock several holes of guacas37 are appreciated; they were dug with care on the hard stone, perhaps for some cacique that deserved that strategic place as sepulcher. From the top of the rock a beautiful view of Popayan’s level ground located between the central and western mountain ranges can be seen. Large cultivated pine forests have substituted the original land covering and erosion scars spoil the view in all directions.

El Rosario

Almost leaning on the mountain range, we discovered the church and the roofs of the houses of the town of El Rosario, one of the biggest towns of the neighboring municipality of Cajibío.

I told my fellows I have not gone to El Rosario for several years, and almost automatically we decided to undertake the travel. We descended of La Tetilla under the delicious sun of ten in the morning and several partridges flew afraid pursued by our dog Mamarracho.

We drove down to the old bridge on the Palacé river and stopped by the guava trees full of tasty and fragrant pink pulp fruits. On a black stone on the river side a solitary peasant with a long bamboo cane waited patiently for the bite of an incautious zabaleta . From his old haversack he took out whitish worms to thread them in the fishhook and throw the thread to the foam crawling the river current. A peasant girl of black eyes stopped by our car to ask us to take her as far as the cruise of La Florida. She carried a small handbag with school books; she explained us that she was going the agricultural school of Cajibío, where she lived in a rented room; she said she had to pay six thousand monthly pesos for rent. She told us that on weekends she went to her parents home located in the locality named Culebriao and that she had to walk four hours to get to the school; she told us the problem was that with the mire of the road her shoes got too dirty.

We took the road that passes by the western side of the place where the waters of the Palacé and Guangubío rivers divide, and continue driving until we arrived to the disproportionate yellow church of El Rosario that contrasts with the humility of the bahareque and zinc roofs houses common in the town. Most of the houses have an interior patio where the ladies cultivate beautiful gardens. In the backside of these houses there is a wide vegetable garden and fruit trees to whose shade coffee plants for domestic consumption can be found.

African tulips

The parish priest with a very good will, carried out a reforestation program along the main street of the town, but unfortunately the chosen trees were African tulips. One of the species of exotic trees introduced in Colombia some decades ago, which have the disastrous particularity of poisoning the insects that try to pollinate their flowers.

In a place like El Rosario, where the economy rotates around agricultural products, especially coffee, the decrease of bees and other pollinating insects could bring serious consequences for coffee production. We conversed with the residents on the urgent necessity of substituting those trees by other regional native species such asoaks, jigüas and gargantillos.

After visiting the main store of the town, where it is possible to buy provisions, medicines, clothes and even a horse saddle, we continue the trip in direction to the bridge that crosses the Cauca river located in the last portion of the Julumito river canyon, before arriving to the reservoir of La Salvajina.

The great, foamy and cloudy Cauca river, after receiving the waters of the Molino river that crosses the city of Popayán, tries as the Patía river does, to cross the Western mountain range and spill itself in the Pacific Ocean. However, the solidity of the basalt, forces it to go North carrying out a longer course until reaching the basin of the Caribbean sea.

The road descends zigzagging on the walls of the cliff and passes by the localities of Mata Tigre and Piedras Negras. In the last mentioned, the chiva parked on the center of the road picked up an enormous panela shipment.

On the carboniferous ravine

We observed the beautiful landscape while the rude driver of the chiva decided to leave us pass. In front of us we discover the pretty town of Seguengue, hung on the carboniferous ravine that forms the river having the same name. We saw the bituminous large stains that drain from the mountain entrances of the tunnels of coal exploitation and the drays in which the smutty miners go deep into the bowels of the earth. Farther, on the mountain range, we could recognize the town of Dinde and the road that takes to the enigmatic population of Ortega.

When returning, in the afternoon, we took again the road of La Capilla, where numerous families pertaining to the Páez ethnic group settled and suffered the catastrophe of the avalanche of the Páez river in Tierradentro.

Flocks of small and white herons flew about on the guaduales as we enter in the cold shade of extensive cultivations of pines and eucalyptuses. Then we passed by the beautiful large farm house named San José, now owned by the enterprise Cartón de Colombia. Some minutes later we arrived to the Venta de Cajibío town, where the ruins of the old train station and tracts of the Pacific railroad can be seen. This station of typical French architecture, was the forceful stopping place, forty years ago, for the purchasing the hot pandebono that the local ladies baked for selling to the train travelers. At the end of the afternoon orange red glows illuminated the plain of Popayán and on the horizon stood out the candid Tetilla.

Upstream Rio Palo (Rio Palo arriba)
Author: Alvaro José Negret
The Liberal, October 3 1997

The eastern region of the Department of Cauca, located between the geographical Valley of Cauca and the Nevado del Huila in the central mountain range, keeps extraordinary histories, rich natural resources and surprising natural landscapes.

That mountainous area of the Department, inhabited during immemorial times by the aboriginal nation of the Páez group, constitutes the origin of all the hydric sources that supply the current urban centers of the North of the Department of Cauca, and the numerous industries settled in that region, that are covered by the Law 218, well-known as Law Páez.

Since the first days of the American conquest, according to the news records of Brother Pedro Simón, that beautiful region was recognized because of its difficult access and because of the opposition of the natives that inhabited the high mountain of the Pijaos ethnical group exercised towards the intruders.

Paeces and Toribíos

Apparently the name of Pijao or Pixao pertained to a confederation of indigenous groups that united efforts to contain the occupation and the subjection to the Spaniards in the XVI century. That confederation was probably constituted by the following indigenous groups: Paeces, Toribíos, Tálagas, Aviramas, Yalcones, Putimaes, Guanacas,Calocitos and Timanaes whose ferocity and warring spirit was only the answer to the supposed need of subjecting some “cannibal barbarians that did not accept the Spanish civilizing institutions, neitherthe Christian redeeming message.”

In this war the Pijaos carried out numerous actions during which many towns and advanced positions founded by the Spaniards were destroyed, among those are San Sebastian de la Plata, totally destroyed in 1573 by the Cacique Calambás, and six years later the city of Caloto.

Of these fights in which conquerors Juan de Ampudia, Pedro de Añasco, García de Tobar and Domingo Lozano were killed, the myths of the Cacica Gaitana, Calarcá and Don Baltasar arose. Only Pascual de Andagoya, after his arrival to Cali, undertook the conquest of the region called Apirama with 150 soldiers, 60 horses and numerous harquebuses with which he was able to conquer the natives.
Even in this century the Paeces have shown the courage and their love to freedom, in the voice of both Quintín Lame and Pio Collo who clamored defiant for their legitimate rights.

Around the river

Some days ago we had the opportunity to visit the before mentioned region, specifically the area that includes the hydrographic basin of El Palo river. Our purpose was the evaluation of the condition of the natural ecosystems and the vegetable covering that protects the water springs of this important tributary of the Cauca river. We took the asphalted road that from Santander de Quilichao drives to Caloto, crossing the splendid plains of the old farms called San Ignacio and Japio, sprinkled of guaduales in whose borders enormous and hunchback cebúes pastured. Half hour later suddenly the gray colonial roofs of Caloto and the old white houses with orchards with lemon trees with a scent to orange blossom and soursops (Annona muricata) replete of fruits appeared. The central plaza invited to rest under the fresh shade of its palms and rain trees (Saman).

At the other side of the park the typically páez little church glittered, it as many other in this region has been declared cultural patrimony of the nation. In the interior of the wide atrium the image of the Niña María stands out; her long hair confers her a child appearance and we used our visit to ask her for a miracle.

We took again the powdery road toward the East and saw on the foothills of the mountain range, the recent establishments of the paeces indigenous group who came from Tierradentro. They arrived there little after a terrible avalanche destroyed a great part of their territory.

Beautiful landscape

The road goes up and down through small hills that allow to see the immensity of the geographical Valle del Cauca. Sugar cane sown land extending until one looses its view, whose productivity necessarily depends on the waters that come from the mountain range, can be seen. We arrived to the town of El Palo after crossing the bridge on the river of the same name. One century ago the Palo river was navigable until Puerto Tejada, where the dock for loading ships coming from Cali was located and from where they returned with enormous shipments of banana, yucca, cocoa and tropical fruits. From the doors of their houses the inhabitants of the town fished sabaletas, rabicoloradas, bagres and barbudos. Now it is hardly a creek because of the dramatic deforestation lengthwise the hydrographic basin.

We went on driving by the left side and up the river edge; the road became difficult because of the strong slope and the many holes and stones that were necessary to avoid. We observed several hanging bridges, of simple arches, elaborated in guadua by the natives; real art works on which the peasants continue transporting the local products from one side to the other.

We let the road that takes to the prosperous town of Toribío where Father Antonio, a catholic priest, continues on with his enormous work of creating the CECIDIC, an institution that will become almost an indigenous university. We continued driving through the road that leads to the town of Tacueyó, where the market on this Sunday, as always, was exiting at about ten in the morning. The street was full of white tents to whose shade glittered hundred of stuffs and clothes for sale.

The boisterous and old motor machine that transforms the sugar into cottons of attractive colors was also functioning. There were fruit spiled on the floor and shabby trucks loaded with fragrant bocachicos brought from the Magdalena river. We saw how they elaborated those very strange ice creams made in a copper large shallow pan (helados de paila) in whose borders the sugary cream becomes crystallized, while it rotates on a nest of ice. We walked fast through all the sections of the market and we continue our trip in direction to the mountains. We passed silently on that sad region where hundreds of young guerilla boys were sacrificed by their own boss. We arrived to the high area of wax palms, the highest palms of the world and the symbolic national tree, that formerly were harvested scratching with the loin of a knife the white bluish wax of its shafts.

Wax palms

Pearly wax so sheer as the Brazilian carnauba is, that in colonial times was used to make things waterproof and polish the handmade leather things. Don Arcesio Chamizo, neighbor of the place and one of the men that cleared off the wooded land of those mountains in the30’s, explained to us that the existence of so many palms in the pasture ground herdsmen was due to the lack of people interested in cutting them because the fiber of these trees deteriorates the edge of the axes and machetes. He also told us that many years ago, bears which had marks on their faces, climbed the trunks up to the top of the leaves to extract with the teeth the tender and sweet palm heart.

According to Don Arcesio in the place were found flocks of parakeets of yellow ears that fed on of the oily palm seeds. This beautiful parrot species, resembling to that of the macaws, are in way of extinction, and nowadays they are nearly unknown, only a survivor small group is now known in the Andes of the republic of Ecuador.
Snowy mountain of Huila.

Finally, before crowning the summit of the mountain range, we entered in the humid foggy woods of the Andean forests, where the clouds melt as they cover step by step the mountain foliage. The car stopped before an enormous landslide that corked the road and, from this place, we had to continue with our backpacks on the shoulders until the place where an enormous antenna located there by the Civil Aeronautics was found. In front of us, as by magic, the magnificent Snowy mountain of Huila became cleared of the deep clouds that covered it. A fantastic mass of snow of 6.5 Km of length and 2 km wide, and whose pick gets up above 5.600 meters above sea level.

Later we saw glaciers descending almost until touching the arboreal vegetation and the caps of ice reflecting the intense blue of the sky. In the surroundings we recognized the existence of two very different frailejon (speletia grandiflora) species, one of them of big flowers resembling those of the sunflowers even in their golden color. On the trunks of the trees several orchids of beautiful flowers, in delicate scents and bright colors could be seen.

Three hours later we saw the beautiful lagoon of Paez in whose banks we raised our camping tents to spend the night. The wind whistled making the surface of the lagoon twitch. According to Mrs. Fermelina Calambás, a native born there, the whistling sound was made by the” Mother of Water” who made the waves crackle when hitting the black rocks because of us that were intruders in that place.

Mrs. Fermelina, who was in charge of cooking for us, surprised us with a boiling cuchuco soup made up of potatoes, corn, ullucos, cubios and whole cabbages. While we ate in the dark kitchen of the bahareque (wall of cane plastered with mud and chopped straw) house she told us that after the avalanche of the Paez river, many people passed by carrying shovels and picks in search of what was left of the town named Ireland. This small town had become an important market center of poppy latex and during weekends the buyers transported enormous sums of money in pita fiber sacks.

Accidentally the day of the avalanche an important meeting of traffickers, who came from the Departments of Valle, Tolima, Huila and Antioquia, was been carried out there. As it seems many millions of pesos were buried in the mud. Now, in the town of Ireland only holes remind everywhere, and packs of hungry dogs devour everything they find in their step. While Mrs Fermelina was telling us the story, the smoke of the vent made scarce the atmosphere and made us cry for an instant.
At dawn, in the other side of the lagoon, two indigenous fishermen rushed their fishing lines into the freezing water with their fishhooks full of worms and near them six ducklings swam serene in the fog that rose from the surface. We bought them some rainbow trouts for breakfast and then we left towards the inhospitable moor of Santo Domingo.

We climbed again till the summit of the mountain range, crossing laurel forests where flocks of blue colored wild pigeons flew about. From the highest place we turned back and we began to descent along the nascent water stream of the Palo river. A group of small brooks of dark waters, almost black, were produced by the slow water dripping of the moors. These brooks turned into the Santo Domingo river and later, before reaching the Valley Department, it becomes the Palo river.

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