Calle 10 Nº 36-28, Barrio Panamericano
Tels: 315 700 40 02

Presentation

Once the first meeting of Disoñadores was over, in 1996, we took on the task of keeping alive the ties of friendship and complicity that were woven among those who had attended that appointment in the South. The immense joy of those days challenged us to new encounters. Friends now of a project without a name, we returned to the places where dreams come to life. This dispersion became a new call and, as if attracted again by the cold air of La Cocha, in May of 1998 we returned to the lowest moors of the world.

New and old companions arrived to give way to imagination and ideas. The memories and the evidences beat that day. They returned from Cali the Molina, the Murgueitio, the Zangen and the Naranjo and, to each new embrace between old friends, the heads were raised looking for other eyes that each one missed. Of Palmira the poets with the smile who only know how to write the faces of poets; of Anzá, Urabá, Manizales and Medellín the whispers and the loud voices of the paisas joined unmistakable at the time of the census. From the Sierra Nevada and the Peruvian Andes, coppery faces and black hair presented their names, now forever dreamers: Leonor and Grimaldo. They came from the top of our mountains.

A troop of memories rode through the halls. Juan, Gonzalo, Sonia and Arturo cleared the doubts of the newcomers, and Eduardo crashed his hands and raised a toast to rid himself of his Uruguayan humor. Then, with a song of nostalgia, the first tears of Edvalda were translated, which let some of the water she lacks in the northeast of her Brazilian land shoot through her eyes.

They arrived in their boat traveling through the waves of La Cocha, Conchita, Jaime, Efren, Ignacio, Gloria, Eusberto, Cecilia and all the peasants of this patch of life; They gave us their houses, their joy, their wisdom. Manfred landed suddenly as brought by the powerful Thor of Scandinavia and, beside him, sweet, with the taste of chili, Gaby discovered this frantic brotherhood.

Diana with the story in her words seemed infected between the laughs of Marco Raúl and the labyrinths of Gustavo, while clota with his humor of the Pacific always put the note of ingenuity. So the meetings happened. But an emptiness defeated the search: Mario would no longer be the first to speak, nor the first to laugh. His death left us alone. We were together and alone. That murder against Mario, Elsa, and Carlos returned us to the country that called us, did not answer the importance of the appointment, hurried us to get down to work.

The task was arduous and at the same time enjoyed. The central theme of this call was to put our feet on the ground and we set out with delivery of lovers. We listened to the most moving experiences and the most heartbreaking analyzes: at the same time, life and death showed us hope and returned us to the blood that this piece of the world manages so profusely.

Manuel Serna told us about a new Santander on the path that won peace and lost the war. Carlos, on behalf of the Paez people and their five centuries of struggle and dignity, showed us that whoever does not lose his memory, does not lose the future. Alfredo reminded us of who is the business of war and where rifles point when peace is talked about.

The mixture of practice with theory, of youth with experience and of professionals with whom they accumulate knowledge from their daily life, has been tracing us a difficult but necessarily passable path: what is in these pages is a sheet of route where the multiple paths lead to respect as a basis of tolerance and the magic of difference to give color to the days.

The talks that are collected here are, in some cases, the transcription of the interventions and, in others, the texts that were prepared on that occasion. Nobody will leave this reading without having taken a step already in the third millennium and without making their eyes penetrate what they deserve to see the next generations.

Mauricio Beltrán Quintero