Greetings from Mykanos.
As I write this, but hopefully not as you read it, we are enduring a ‘Paro Nacional’, or national strike, here in Colombia.
It started as a protest against the new tax regime proposed by the Government, which was an attempt to raise money to fund the shortages caused by the pandemic. However, the senators and congressmen decided the hard pressed taxpayers of Colombia, who have endured some of the world’s longest lockdowns and so many of whom have been plunged below the poverty level, should shoulder the burden whilst the politicians continue to enjoy the vastly overgenerous salaries and conditions they believe is their right.
The initial protest was organized by Unions, students and various left leaning causes, but it soon became apparent that support was much larger than the usual suspects. There was bad behaviour by the hard cases, including the destruction of public transport and private property and theft and looting, and heavy-handed violent overreaction by the police.
The government said it was the narcos and the former (and current dissident) guerilla groups behind it, while the protesters said it was the government suppressing free speech and attacking its own citizens. For some days anarchy ruled and death and injury occurred, on both sides. Roads were blocked, cities and towns isolated, commerce and transport halted. Food and fuel was running out, medical supplies, including oxygen, were running out, and the Covid vaccination programme was suspended through lack of vaccine.
It was only a small minority, on each side, causing trouble. The vast majority of both populace and police played their roles peacefully, but inevitably the bad behaviour got the headlines and the lurid TV coverage.
In Anserma, vehicles were neither allowed in nor out, with barriers at both ends of the town, and trucks blocking through traffic on the bypass. Fuel supplies were exhausted. The shops were either closed or had empty shelves, panic buying being the order of the day, and restocking was impossible.
We are not townspeople, just simple ‘campesinos’, so we had a certain amount of independence.
Worried about running out of garlic, we drove up the mountain behind us to the little town of Risaralda, there being no roadblocks between us and there. In Risaralda we found almost all the shops open including the small D1 supermarket. D1 is a Colombian chain of discount stores not dissimilar to Lidl. It seemed well stocked at first glance, but being in a Paro of which nobody knows the duration, people were obviously trying to avoid running out of necessities. Toilet paper, red onions, cat food and rice were noticeable by their absence. However there was lots of wine and plenty of extra virgin olive oil available. Being different has its benefits.
For petrol we went through Risaralda and drove down the other side of the mountain until we reached Arauca, a lively little town on the Rio Cauca, one of the major rivers of Colombia. A bridge crosses the Cauca at this point and the town has grown up around one end of the bridge. Most of the houses are pretty much impromptu, stacked up next to and above each other, creeping up the very steep slope that rises from the river. The only flat bit is very narrow and accommodates the road, shops and town plaza, which sports a large, widely spreading tree of some antiquity.
I always worry that, one of these days, heavy rains will wash the entire town, or at least very many of its houses, into the swiftly flowing Rio Cauca.
Arauca always feels a bit like I imagine the Wild West to have been: lots of life out and about; men with hats; boys without shirts; cars and jeeps edging past each other on a narrow street constricted by parked vehicles or stands selling snacks; drunks weaving in and out of the passers by, and on and off the pavement; bars and cantinas; a cacophony of at least five different sources of music all playing at maximum volume; personal services seemingly readily available in many doorways or on corners; and a plethora of locals with penetrating stares focused on any unfamiliar face or vehicle.
The service station was unimpeded by the Paro and was getting two tanker loads of petrol a day. We topped up our tank and had two jerry cans filled to fuel our ‘guadañas’ (mower/strimmer), as our ‘guadañeros’ (the boys who cut the grass and weeds) couldn’t find fuel in Anserma. At the service station, a boy on a motorcycle was ahead of us and he had a cardboard carton on his luggage rack containing empty two litre plastic soft drink bottles, which were being filled with petrol. It looked like a disaster waiting to happen.
The worry about Arauca washing away in heavy rain is not as fanciful as it sounds; it almost happened to Rancho Grande.
On the night of Saturday, April 10, a violent storm struck our neighbourhood, with driving wind and torrential rain. Adriano and I were here at Mykanos, marvelling at the theatrics. Two kilometres up the road, at Rancho Grande, it was more horror disaster film than theatrical effects. The mountain side, of which about a third accommodates Rancho Grande, was ravaged causing small landslides in places and a major mudslide powered by supercharged streams that, instead of supplying water to Rancho, inundated the house and processing plants, took out the side of a two story building, and raised the ground level by more than a metre.
Adriano’s mother, who was in residence at Rancho, was evacuated to town, in her pyjamas, by the ‘bomberos’ (firemen). She stayed with our friend Jorge Ivan for two nights before joining us here.
Rancho Grande was a real mess and the only saving grace, apart from not losing anybody and the house of Julian (Adriano’s right hand man) and his wife Gina being above the level of impact, was that we were between ‘cosechas’ (harvests) and did not have coffee stored or needing to be processed.
The earth movers, both mechanical and human, started work on Monday and after a few days most of the deposited residue and a lot of debris had been removed, and the road up to the ‘tolva’ (the hopper into which coffee cherries are tipped so that they can travel down into the processors) cleared, it having been completely buried by a landslide.
Water and mud were drained, sluiced, mopped and swept from the house, and off the terraces, but there is still much earth, gravel and detritus disfiguring the driveway and courtyards as earth moving equipment is still busy trying to secure mountainsides and roads even more critical than our situation at Rancho. At one stage those in the Town Hall were worried that half the mountain was going to come down, and many houses were evacuated.
It depressed Adriano greatly but we are of the belief that every problem is an opportunity and that this near disaster gives us the chance and the motivation to make changes that we might otherwise put off, but will be of great benefit. I will explain a bit more about that in the next letter.
At the moment we just need to get through the Paro. Overall things are relatively peaceful. Vehicles are no longer being attacked and destroyed and commercial cargoes are not being pillaged. Roadblocks are still in place but the strike committee and Government are talking and essential supplies are being let through. Negotiations continue.
On Saturday the protestors blocking Anserma said that country people would be allowed into town to buy supplies and sell their produce. Adriano and Julian went up in the jeep to take some coffee to the Co-Op. They were stopped at the barrier. A large, fat man was in charge of the roadblock. Julian, who was behind the wheel, was a bit nervous. Adriano said he would do the talking. He explained that he had a small farm and needed to go the Co-Op to sell the few bags of coffee in the back so that he could pay the workers who were waiting for the week’s wages.
“Ha, Zamudio,” he said, “as if you needed to sell coffee to pay your workers. Go on through.”
As they drove on to the Co-Op, in the glossy metallic pink painted jeep, with ‘The Pink Boy’ emblazoned across the top of the windscreen, Julian was laughing, Adriano mystified.
“I’ve never seen this man before. How did he know who I was?”
Love from him and me,
Barry
