For Julio Cesar Uribe Hermoillo. Taken from El Gaurengue. https://miguarengue.blogspot.com/2023/01/negua-cesar-conto-ferrer-andres.html
120 years ago, on Monday, January 26, 1903, Alfonso Meluk Salge was born in Neguá. 1947. Four and a half years after Meluk, on June 21, 1907, also in Neguá, Diego Luis Córdoba would be born, another of the leaders of that process that put the first generations of Chocoano professionals on the intellectual and political scene of Colombia. , whose irruption in the institutional life of the country marked a milestone thanks to his evident intelligence and the novelty of his approaches; because they were the ones who introduced or reinforced contemporary and original debates on inequities based on class and race conditions, in a Colombian society where worker and socialist ideas stood out, and the first feminist demands.
When Meluk and Córdoba were born, at the beginning of the 20th century, Neguá -a corregimiento of the municipality of Quibdó which is accessed from the city downstream by the Atrato, entering through the mouth of the river of the same name, on the right bank- was El Dorado of Choco. More than half of the gold that left the Choco region to Colombia, the United States and Europe came from its mines, as had happened since the beginning of the Spanish colony in the region. The provinces of San Juan and Atrato, with Istmina and Quibdó as their representative populations, would be detached from Cauca Grande to convert them into the National Administration of Chocó, a political fact that inaugurates the construction of a modern institutional presence in the region and the heyday of Quibdó as the capital and city of reference for the world, in the same way that Neguá resonated for its enormous gold production since time immemorial.
At that time, there was practically no merchant or businessman in Quibdó who did not have something to do with Neguá. Some more or less, even if it was a small mine exploited by third parties natives of the population, all had something to do with that town that -in the middle of the jungle, on the banks of a torrential river, surrounded by ravines and waterfalls and of more and more rivers, bordering on hills, close to mountains, far enough from Quibdó to not have to worry about its problems, but close enough to get there soon if necessary-provided day by day, week by week, month by month. month, fat profits, which were reinvested in merchandise and new companies, which supported a city about which they knew more in Cartagena or New York than in Bogotá.
Also the fresh waters of that river, of those rivers, the woods and miracles of its mountains, the fruits of its orchards, the plane trees on its banks and the dignity of its families, were famous in Quibdó; from where weary and tough Spaniards, stubborn and gutsy Turks, Caucas and ambitious Caribs traveled in ranched canoes to turn around business and on the way they came across diligent barquetonas sent to take and bring things from Neguá from the steamships coming from Cartagena bound for Quibdó, which ended up there in the city’s leaks – hours before reaching the port – while the exchange with that prodigal village was finalized where gold seemed to be anything but finite.
Also in Neguá was born, on January 29, 1900, another intellectual of that prodigious generation of Chocoanos who transformed the history of the region during the first half of the 20th century: Andrés Fernando Villa, widely known by his writer and journalist pseudonym: Aristo Velarde; who worked for more than two decades at the Quibdó newspaper ABC, with whose founder, director and owner, Reinaldo Valencia Lozano, held a memorable controversy about the birthplace of the liberal patrician César Conto Ferrer, following an article published by Valencia Lozano, at the end of 1935, titled “Conto, quibdoseño”.
Dated December 27 and published by Reinaldo Valencia Lozano four days later, in edition 3111 of the ABC newspaper, under the title “More about César Conto”; Aristo Velarde expressed in a very well written letter his disagreement with Don Reinaldo’s point of view about the birthplace of Conto. “I just read in the ABC number a slight note about the birth of César Conto, entitled “Conto, quibdoseño”. I want to believe that you wrote that -as it is commonly said- for not leaving, because otherwise you would not explain to me the anemic argument with which your pen -vigorous for where Isaacs was born- now intends to snatch from Neguá the glory of having given Colombia one of the most illustrious sons and liberalism its eponymous defender”[1].
Between jokes and sarcasm, displaying his skills as a good contradictor and entertaining writer, Aristo Velarde makes it clear that César Conto was also born in Neguá, like him, and not in Quibdó. Just as, according to the details of his letter, the brothers Hugo and Raúl Ferrer Denis, Luis Felipe Díaz Perea, Alfonso, Armando and Emilio Meluk Salge are also Neguaseños, all of whom, plus César Conto, “opened their eyes in that sweet and sad town where my childhood wandered”, as Velarde writes, who ends his letter by reaffirming: “it is clear —once and for all— that I was born in Neguá, the land of Conto”.
Lost between the rubble of the world economic crises and the changes in the international market for precious metals, which influenced Andagoya and Condoto to establish themselves as the new Dorado in Chocó, the gold glory of Neguá began to wane from the second decade of the 20th century, until it was lost among sandstone and tinsel, overshadowed by the universal brilliance of platinum from the province of San Juan.
However, among the mists of its decline, born on its soil and sheltered by its mountains, lulled by its river and nourished by its jungle, two of its children were already shining before the intellectual and political face of Colombia: Alfonso Meluk Salge and Diego Luis Cordoba. Neguá was not, therefore, only gold.
[1] The complete letter from Aristo Velarde to Reinaldo Valencia can be read in El Guarengue, in memorable claimpublished on August 3, 2020:
https://miguarengue.blogspot.com/2020/08/reclamomemorable-quibdo-1925.html
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