By Lina Alonso
It is not prudent to go up the mountain on Sundays, let San Hernando say so, the one you see sitting there throwing away a tooth, tell him to tell you the whole story, he survived seven days lost in the middle of the moor after a Sunday when the park was just opened up , Seven days with nothing at all, and such cold, you can imagine that they are also here carraquiando , Hey, Hernando! , and Hernando who peeks out while hitting the rubber boots with the edge of the cemented stairs, one arm resting on the bahareque column and the other hidden under a four-cornered piece of wool; With each wave, with each tapping of the boots, shavings of mud flew out, the day, at that time, was made of a single soup of hail, wind and frost in about seven degrees that slapped us after going down the Pisimbalá hot springs .
San Hernando continues . The reason for not going up on Sundays? Looking at John, the editor of Voces, and Carlos, the simplest man tells us, What do people do in the towns on Sundays? Some get up early to mass, others take out the harvest to sell it in the plaza, do business, change, sell beasts or change their tack, repair or pick up clothes, wash trucks on the road, play In the parks, those who worked all week and have that day off take advantage and drink their beers, a lot of them, get drunk and come back riding their animals with their heads blown off, rather on Sundays everything is a flutter, the whole Important trade life moves that day. Well, I tell you that the same thing happens in the mountains: the spirits come out that go to make offerings, those who play, those who get drunk and do bad things, those who clean the floors, those who rearrange the animals that went where they did not It was, those who wash the water or twist the channel, everything, everything moves in the mountains on Sundays and that’s why I don’t go back there, because seven years ago when I got lost five days in the moor, it gave me for going up on a Sunday. Even recently, a group of traps asked me to help them with a guide and I told them that I would be glad to, when they told me the day I got off the bus, and indeed the road turned upside down and they got lost, but hey , they were seven, I was alone with my canchoso no more.
At this point, cooks, waiters, community members (indigenous people from the minga organized for collective work, such as guiding the interior of the Puracé National Natural Park) and children who were towing plastic dump trucks on the backs of dogs stopped their chores. , we were all eating the story of San Hernando who only had a chamizo in his hand with which he removed the remains of mud from the corner of his boots, cleared his throat and asked for another cup of aguapanela. And well, we were relieved to know that we were listening to this story on a holiday Monday.
San Hernando continues, Both of my parents are Nasa, father Coconuco and mother Nasa Paez , however my mother was the one who warned me and I didn’t listen to her, she did tell me once I got the job in the park, that with Be careful on Sundays, and well, that day in question, I just entered and went to look for the source of a stream with my little dog that someone abandoned in a chamizal, named it Roqui , and Roqui kept his oily and puffy fur until the day of today that continues to lick the heels of his wandering companion. Searching for the source of the sulfur stream and guessing the tracks of a chestnut, he went deeper and deeper until in a part of the forest, now a closed wasteland, he heard some barking, hunting is prohibited in all national parks in the country, and hearing a dog on a Sunday was a sign of a hunter, so he went following the barking to warn whoever carried the shotgun of the prohibition.
He walked and walked after the dog’s heartbeat and Roqui sniffed his steps, added to that he began to see the chestnut’s footprints more marked and for him it was important: he had never seen one in his life and this was the opportunity, however he came to a point where the road was completely closed, it was noon and it is known that inside the mountain it always gets dark later, that since there is no direct light entering and the forest preserves its closure, it is the darkness that has the most field between branches and nooks and crannies Hernando thought about turning back, but there was no path, there were no footprints, and the páramo terrain has the particularity of returning the weight of footprints to its place when walking through lichen soil, footsteps do not matter to the humid soil undoes them easily.
Thus, trying to find the way, the day went by, the temperature dropped and it began to rain as usual in these heights. What height? The one of about 2,500-4,000 meters . Cold, tired and without light, he began to collect himself in the nooks of the trees, let’s remember that the Celsius at these heights can reach minus two if we are well up, added to that hunger and wet clothes, link the elements for the disaster. Now in total darkness, Hernando spent the first night after spreading out the clothes, twisting them a little to get the water out, the following six days conditions were repeated, unknown routes, improbable paths, all the attempts, all the climbs, all the sucked fruits they were ending, the bones and their edges began to weaken, the bent knees no longer supported the weight of the endless hours, they crumbled like a cluster of stones with each step, until on the brink of dehydration, of exhaustion, Injuries and famine began to weaken, his body was exhausted, he could not find points of location, the mountain closed in, gaps opened up that led to gorges and not a cry or signal gave him light, Roqui was also slowing down . It was then that the whistle of a minga truck gave him an idea of where a road might be and he got down as best he could from a precipice, thus he found his way out, thus he found the end of his loss, however it took him months to recover, months to walk again and months to try to understand the route of his loss. The cold soaked his bones so much that they had to dedicate various rituals to him so that the humidity would leave him, his mother’s family helped him in this part of the recovery, San Hernando did not go up the mountain again on Sundays and that is why we met him a Monday.
FROM THE PARK
The most important part of Puracé, Hernando and the gaisers bubbling sulfur water remains: their place in the country and in political history as a territory of struggle and resistance. We searched for the Puracé to find the volcanic language, to understand how the Minguera organization works in economic activities of community support after having spent entire decades sustaining itself in the exploitation of sulfur, and that now with tourism in charge of the same CRIC, has maintained the flame of community self-management, has strengthened it to obtain what the land itself and the family ask for. Under this premise we found Germán, a Coconuco indigenous man who guided us in his trade as a changlero , a guide for the Nasa community. We met him after leaving Popayán at six in the morning. Getting there is quite simple, there is even the alternative route that takes Timbío, Rosas, La Sierra and Pancitará to Valencia south of Popayán, rather there are good routes, and within the same city some tourism agencies are organized within the hostels and it is the same patojos who make the bridge with the chagleros , choosing between contracting the services of a local tourism to a tourism promoted by the center of the country undoubtedly changes the income of money in the place, and also the capacity for self-management and self-determination of the territory for its economic purposes, after all, it is Cauca that knows its land, owner of its history, joint owner of its geography. baqueanos and colectivos of the places that offer in their plans?
After registering those who would enter the PNN Puracé at the CRIC booth, we continued to the San Antonio waterfall, whose fall and smell allowed us to guess its sulfur origin, it was the Vinagre River falling from more than 30 meters high and the The reason for the sulfurous smell and its turquoise color corresponds to the location: we are on the Coconuco volcanic complex that includes the Puracé, Piocollo , Quriquinga , Calambas , Paletera, Quintin , Los Charcas, Manchagara , Pan de Azucar and Pucara peaks. Of all these volcanoes, the only active ones are the Puracé, and the Sotará and their rivers leave the bowels of the white beds, the acidity of the sulfur ends everything, that is, with the possibility of vegetation on the bed of the bodies of water, the waterfall reflected a little that whitish naturalness in the language of its cliff, the smell filled everything, the fog and the dew did not allow us to see the entire mountain at that time, it was still early, if it was a busy road between paths , the movement was barely noticeable by a pair of hairy mules chewing air.
Declared by UNESCO as a Biosphere Reserve in 1979, the Puracé National Natural Park had the nickname until 1975, and from there, from the “Mountain of Fire”, the Magdalena, Cauca, Patía and Caquetá, the tutelary rivers, are born. of Colombia, and along with them another 30 lagoons that feed the Colombian massif in this part. Entering the trail that led us to the first booth, a town hall booth, we prepared the gear to go up to the San Juan Hot Springs and the Andean forest betrayed another edge of its beauty on its margins: the number of orchids that hung, currently There are 200 species of them that guard the Park and together with them pumas, ocelots, soche deer and condors make this cathedral another reason for the communities that live in its bowels to preserve the Park inch by inch, and on the other hand neither There are few reservations that have this responsibility, it is the Coconuco , Guachicono , Poblazón, Quintana, Totoró, Polindara , Guambiano and Yanacona who are with the baton of command here.
VINEGAR FUMES
The first sulfur mine in the country, discovered in 1948 by the engineer Manuel María Mosquera Wallis, who stumbled upon it while drawing the roads in the area, operated for seven decades until 2018, and was the economic support of this region for entire years. Of course, to the detriment of the territory, the health of the people and the monopolized economy, however, during this time schools, hospitals and jobs attached to the service of the mine kept the community afloat, later with the resolution of a Conpes , was that the mine closed, not only to diversify the productive base of the region, but also due to the international drop in sulfur prices in the 1990s and the economic opening that allowed the massive importation of the product, one that serves as a fertilizer, but also in the manufacture of gunpowder, laxatives, matches and insecticides, one that was displaced in the country by petrochemical sulfur, crude residue.
We saw little of this mine, we guess less, from the Hot Springs we went down to the Bedón Waterfall before going up to the viewpoint of the Andulbio Lagoon , where Germán himself clarified that most of the current changleros were miners or are the sons of miners, that is to say, we were before the first generations leaders of a tourist economy and not extractivist.
Crossing the Valley of the Frailejones, the devil got into the truck. Every miner has his story with the devil and along the way Germán began to tell us a few, his father had seen him once at the end of the day, many of his companions too, he was a common presence, but not for that reason quiet among the community, when we finished the tour of the Pisimbalá pools we walked the path that previously connected some terraces built in stone so that people could camp and even make bonfires within the same area, at that point we were joined by two more changleros sons of parents buried by dynamite in the “El vinagre” mine whose fumes continue to leave stories today. Along the mossy road, followed by the cold air that was climbing through our nostrils at four in the afternoon, they said that many miners did not go to work at night because of rumors that the devil was loose, or that they had to pay a certain amount. tribute to the dark so that it would illuminate possible veins, Lucifer being himself: light and darkness and nobody sees the darkness better than the miners, however there is something that catches my attention and it is the figure of the legs as a kind of punishment for those who do not offer it, Taussig jumps then for whom “the devil is a symbol that adequately reflects the condition of alienation that peasants experience, when they are transmuted into free workers, and it is in the terms of that conflictive experience, where it anchors the interpretation and criticism by pre-capitalist fetishism, of commodity fetishism.” that is to say, the devil justifies the death of all the miners for the favor of having given them light on the veins that they had to exploit and the agreement to permit the mountain that they were going to dynamit, the sulfur from Puracé loaded dozens of bodies in its grams and the indigenous community is full of these stories.
Returning to the volcano, I have to clarify that we did not go up. The crater is the eye of fire that looks at the sky and that is why looking for the Puracé is looking for a celestial language, but igneous, with sulfur traces of hot waters, paramuna and retrechera vegetation, we did not reach it, much less its skirts , the meteorological alert continued for the sector, the fumaroles speak, the Ruíz spoke in wisps of smoke and we only made out the distant Puracé.
