Julio César Uribe Hermocillo
By Julio César Uribe Hermocillo. Taken from El Guarengue.
Last May 1 marked 60 years since the death of the Afro-Chocoano politician and intellectual Diego Luis Córdoba, in Mexico City, where at that time he served as Ambassador of Colombia.
Diego Luis is part of a brilliant and revolutionary generation of Chocoans who – during the first half of the 20th century – brought to the national stage the reality of Chocó as a region worthy of attention, beyond the plundering of its natural wealth; and introduced – in association with their Pacific and Caribbean counterparts,[1] in national politics and in academic and intellectual circles – novel debates on the relationship between race and class as a factor of exclusion of the black societies of Colombia, such as the Chocoana, to which Rogerio Velásquez[2]one of the most notable precursors of black studies in the social and human sciences of the country, called blackness[3].
On foot and on the back of a mule, along a road that was just beginning to wind between mountains and jungles of the Western Cordillera, from Chocó to Antioquia, and that even today has not finished becoming a highway; and navigating the Atrato River on the boats that connected Quibdó with the Sinú, with Cartagena, with the Caribbean and with the world; This commendable generation traveled from their land to that distant Colombia that, many times, had nothing more than its name as a homeland. Jorge and Reinaldo Valencia Lozano, born in 1890 and 1895; Sergio Abadía Arango, born in 1895; Eliseo Arango, Osías Lozano Quintana and Ricardo Echeverry Ferrer, born in 1900; Dionisio Echeverry Ferrer, born in 1901; Alfonso Meluk Salge, born in 1903; Ramón Mosquera Rivas, born in 1905; Diego Luis Córdoba, Manuel Mosquera Garcés and Adán Arriaga Andrade, born in 1907; Gabriel Meluk Aluma, born 1908; Demetrio Valdés Ortiz, born in 1909; Daniel Valois Arce, born in 1910; Cousin Guerrero Córdoba, born in 1911; Ramón Lozano Garcés, born in 1913; Aureliano Perea Aluma, born in 1915; among other advances and pioneers, they not only mobilized for Chocó – then the National Intendance – to reach departmental status, but also to prevent less than a decade after being created the department from being distributed by the dictatorship of Rojas Pinilla among its neighbors. Antioqueños, Vallunos and Caldenses, who had inspired that despicable government initiative.
This generation is also responsible for the expansion and universalization of public education, a historic work that had begun since the time of the National Intendancy of Chocó and that, in a literally revolutionary action for the time, included the first groups of women. black from Chocó.[4] “I promise the Chocoan mothers that soon we will exchange their daughters’ aprons for teacher’s diplomas.”[5]proclaimed Diego Luis, in 1932, when he was only 25 years old and aspired to political control of the Municipal Council of Quibdó[6]. His radical defense of the right to education as a means of social advancement and intellectual, racial and regional recognition was decisive for the universalization of primary and secondary education in Chocó at that time; as well as for the pedagogical training of teachers and the access of young people from the region to public universities in the interior of the country.
Only 57 years old at the time of his death, Diego Luis Córdoba left behind a political and intellectual feat that contributed significantly to the dissemination of modern liberal thought in Colombia and to the creation of a regional project, together with his countrymen and contemporaries in the Chocoanist generation of the first half of the 20th century. Although the title of Father of the Department of Chocó is shared by Diego Luis with his companions of generation and struggles, his recognition as an educator and lighthouse of the race is not undeserved, as also stated in the monument to his memory in the Centennial Park of Quibdó, capital of Chocó, whose public university regional bears his name.
From the late 1950s and well into the 1970s, in many corners of Baudó, Atrato and San Juan, it was common for a framed portrait of Diego Luis Córdoba to preside over the large rooms of the peasant houses of black people. of towns, villages, hamlets and villages of Chocó, along with portraits of absent children or deceased parents. Symbolically, as if it were a record for the official printed history, it was usual for the walls of those rooms to be covered, upholstered, with unfolded pages of old newspapers of the time, which covered the cracks of the boards or the palm at the same time as They functioned as peculiar decoration.
Whatever is said, in times of social networks in which anyone claims the right to disqualify or misrepresent even figures of his intellectual, political and historical stature, Diego Luis Córdoba is one of the champions of Colombian democracy, of the socialist and liberal ideas that fueled it in the first decades of the 20th century; and – consequently – of the defense of the class interests of the workers (he founded the CTC together with Gerardo Molina), their fundamental rights to decent work, education, health, rest… Likewise, Diego Luis is one of the precursors of the introduction into the discourse and into the national political debate of the vindication of the racial and ethnic identity of the black communities of Chocó and Colombia; and the connection between socialist ideas and the racial question.
However, and regarding the purposes of recognition of Afro-Colombian history that the commemorations of the month of May in Colombia bring with them; It should be noted that the life and work of Diego Luis Córdoba on Wikipedia[7] It is summarized in a scant half page, made up of 3 paragraphs, 220 words and 1,355 characters, of an erratic and imprecise text that is not even enough for a school assignment. And there is not much difference from what is written on that high-traffic website about Diego Luis’s comrades of generation and struggles, with the exception of the text about Manuel Mosquera Garcés, one of whose great-granddaughters, a historian, was in charge of writing it. worthy and justified[8]. Perhaps the members of the Academy of History of Chocó or the Technological University of Chocó named after Diego Luis could fill these unforgivable gaps in the so-called information age; as a contribution to the commemoration of Afro-Colombian Day, whose celebration today is possible thanks to the paths opened by Diego Luis and his generation.
Diego Luis Córdoba and all the other members of the Chocoanista generation of the mid-twentieth century form a substantial part of what Francisco Javier Flórez Bolívar has called “the intellectual and political vanguard of the nation” and occupy a place in the “history of black intellectuality.” and mulatto in Colombia. They are, without a doubt, the Generation of Dignity. A generation of Chocoan intellectuals whose intellectual and political career deserves to be more studied and disseminated. A generation that made dignity its emblem, its fight, its ideal. Getting to know them would be, among others, a good way to celebrate Afro-Colombian identity.
[1] The masterful work of Francisco Javier Flórez Bolívar: The intellectual and political vanguard of the nation. History of a black and mulatto intellectuality in Colombia, 1877-1947, is a complete treatise on this topic. Editorial Planeta Colombiana SA, 1st edition, March 2023, 383 pp.
[2] PUBLICATIONS OF THE GUARENGUE ABOUT ROGERIO VELÁSQUEZ MURILLO:
Vacation readings. The day of La Ola In Tumaco and The miracle of San Buenaventura. 2 texts by Rogerio Velásquez.
When history makes its August. A few anniversaries… “from our history, gentleman.”
Remembering Rogerio Velásquez.
In the footsteps of blackness.
[3] See about it: In the footsteps of blackness, by Germán Patiño. Prologue to the “Selected Essays”, by Rogerio Velásquez (Mincultura, 2010).
[4] A breaking latest news of this feat can be read in El Guarengue on March 8, 2021, in: From excluded to pioneers. Women and education in Chocó.
[5] Caicedo Mena, Miguel. Solid pillars of Chocoan education. May 1992, Lealon Publishing House. 75 pp. Page 29.
[6] Pisano, Pietro. (Black) women in the Cordoba ideology: education as a means of social improvement. Taken from:
[8] See in El Guarengue, The great-granddaughter of Manuel Mosquera Garcés:
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