HERENCIA VIVA
This state with immense potential resources can still offer its inhabitants no other currency than: «If you live again tomorrow, you will have won a battle». Located in the northwest of South America between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, with its mountain ranges and virgin forest, the ancient New Granada of the Spanish conquerors is seeking its balance. To the north, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta rises to 5,775 metres. In the mountains, where the rock resembles the rubble of a devastated landscape, glacial lakes reflect only the sky. At the foot of the high mountains, geography collapses into lagoons by the delta of the Magdalena river on the Caribbean coast. All the landscapes of Latin America are here gathered: the austere and cold domain of the sierras, the beaches of the coast, the jungle amazonian, the great torrid plains of the east, Colonial cities slumbering under frayed clouds and large industrial agglomerations.
Colombians are not lacking in humor and never take themselves seriously as Doña MERCEDES recalls: “When God created Colombia, he combined it with gifts and benefits: warm and fertile plains, sharp mountains, dazzling shores. Then he buried precious metals in his basement. So, taken by the scruples of having too favoured this land, he wanted to correct his work and the Colombians' Peupla!”
Colombia is also a mosaic of forty-four million people. From this comes a diversity of traits: aquiline nose and proud of the conquerors Castilian, aristocrats of Iberian blood cultivating the Spanish heritage, riders of the Andes with slanted eyes, Indians of forests or mountains, dark «palenqueras» Descendants of African slaves dressed in colourful robes, barreling through the streets of Cartagena de Indias.
Colombian music is deeply imbued with Latin rhythms inherited from the slaves plucked off the African coast, such as those of the «cumbias» and «papayeras». Here the violent echoes of the drums «yorubas» and «marimbulas mandingo» are mixed. Then fly the haunting chanting of «bantu» polyphonies intended to awaken the spirits of the waters and the forest. From its multiple origins, it has kept an immoderate taste of carnivals and popular dances. The national folk dance company «Herencia Viva» makes its show and the fabulous wealth of its costumes. In summary, the Colombians are not at a contradiction, they who, even outside the carnival time, black or mixed, smear to resemble white.
According to Gabriel GARCIA MARQUEZ, Nobel prize winner in literature: «Illusion is not eaten but it nourishes». This fits perfectly with the group from Bogota, the capital, whose name alone tells of the place that this country occupies in South America.
