A few afternoons ago I called a Colombian friend who I had been with for a long time he did not speak. While we talked he heard the cry of a child, he was uncontrollable, I asked him why he was crying and he told me that he wanted to ride lions.
Another person would be confused by that answer, but he didn’t even give me cold or hot, I know that there is no born in Colón municipality who has not mounted the lions that guard the statue of Christopher Columbus in the central park of the city.
The conversation shifted to the grandson, the one who was crying. He tells me that before the covid he took him to ride on the lions, but Now with the pandemic, it suspended that activity, although in the park there are not so many people and life goes by calmly, but no one knows where the danger may lie, and he added: the virus does not forgives. I agreed with him.
On one occasion, a public official from Colón, it seems that with power of decision, he ordered to withdraw the lions, according to the voice of the people. I know says that the manager argued that these beasts had nothing to do with with the history of the city, so they were of more.
There was so much the discontent of the population and the complaints to different instances that had to be put back in place at four guardians. So, to make it look like a job from maintenance and not arbitrariness, each piece received a process of cleanliness and shine that was out of tune with the statue of the Admiral, to the that did not benefit.
The theme made us remember an anecdote from the Guajiricantor: «Che» Carballo, a peasant poet from that city. The remembered story carries a so-called bad word, but that’s how it was published in the supplement cultural Yumurí, from the Girón newspaper.
I am not one of obscene words, but in this case it carries it. “Che” Carballo used to say that one day he was passing through the park, very close to the statue of Columbus, and he heard a slight hiss, as if they were calling, he looked everywhere and saw no one, he continued on his way and he heard the same sound again, he began to worry, not knowing the why.
He had not advanced a few steps and the hiss reached his ears again, but this time he discovered that they came from Colón, who with his finger raised he told him to come closer, to give him a complaint. Surprised he obeyed. He raised «Che» Carballo that Columbus, between offended and sad, told him: Did you see what they did to me? They took the lions, cleaned them and They shone and they didn’t even wipe my c …… That’s how witty was the Colombian Guajiricantor, “Che” Carballo.
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