For some time now, the people of Cali have been sailing in the stormy sea that they have had to cross, imitating Rimbaud’s drunken ship and not the locomotive that at the beginning of the last century they put to drag progress from Buenaventura to La Pintada.
For some reason that historians will have to find out, Cali lost its character as the capital of the south-west of the country and the leading, business and geopolitical mission to lead the entire human conglomerate of old Caldas to Nariño from the Valley, was left stranded in the dying lounges of social clubs or in the languid headlines of the news.
These days, when the damage to the economy of many factories in Cali that are supplied by the route from Pasto to Popayán has been strongly felt, they did not even lead a boorish solution and not half measures to satisfy contractors, but rather refused to admit that, since the post-Panama ships no longer arrive at Buenaventura, much of the raw material that is manufactured in the Valluna factories reaches the Ecuadorian ports and is brought by land from the neighboring country.
Of course, no one is talking about demanding that the Port Society or the national government knock down the Bocana bar so that large ships can enter the port again. On the contrary, they still insist on the absurdity of making a single-lane road between Mulaló and Loboguerrero instead of turning the other narrow road from Yumbo to Mediacanoa into a dual carriageway so that it connects with the highway that goes to Buenaventura from Buga.
Obviously they have not been concerned about the impact that the fall of the Alambrado bridge causes on many businesses in the Valley, much less recognize that those 37 kilometers between La Paila and Armenia must be dual carriageways and that the owners of the Autopista del Café have to finance their construction because the poor oligarchs of Manizales just want to continue throwing money away at an impossible airport. It is not then an exaggeration to say that Cali navigates without a compass.
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