By Julio Cesar Uribe Hermocillo. . . . Taken from El Guarengue.
The first governor of Chocó lasted in office for half a month. His name was Leonidas Pretelt Mendoza, he was a native of Magdalena and had come as National Mayor at the end of 1947, shortly before Law 13 of November 3 of that year converted the old Mayor’s Office that he had come to administer into a department. , whose institutional life had begun in January 1907, forty years before.
In compliance with the law, the national government of President Mariano Ospina Pérez had ordered that the institutional life of Chocó as a department should begin on January 15, 1948. This was formally communicated to Mayor Pretelt, through an official letter from the Minister of Justice and in charge of the Government office, José Antonio Montalvo, who also informed him of his appointment as Governor of the new department.[1] So, just as the quartermaster had changed rank, the quartermaster would too.
The news that the first governor of the Department was not a Chocoano inflamed spirits throughout the region, especially in Quibdó and Istmina. Likewise in Bogotá, among the heroes of Chocoanity who had made this political dream of regional autonomy possible, who made use of all their influences and once again combined their inter-party forces around the Chocoanist action, to achieve change in that ill-advised decision. And they did it.
On February 1, 1948, when Pretelt had only held office for 15 days, the President of the Republic appointed as Governor of Chocó who had just been consecrated as the father of Colombian labor law.[2] in his tenure as Minister of Labor, Hygiene and Social Welfare, for two consecutive years and in two different governments (that of Alfonso López Pumarejo and that of Alberto Lleras Camargo): Adán Arriaga Andrade, a native of Lloró, a town in Alto Atrato where This river receives the mighty waters of the Andágueda and that at that time was a corregimiento of the municipality of Quibdó. Arriaga Andrade was the first of the forty governors that the Department of Chocó had before the presidential appointment system was abolished and replaced by that of election by citizen vote.
Anyone could think -in honor of superstition- that the short term of Leonidas Pretelt Mendoza as governor was the omen of the situation in Chocó in the last ten years, a period in which it has had 13 governors, the balance of whose management is evidently insignificant. But, of course, it is not so. It is not a curse or a tragic fate. At that time they were freely appointed and removed. Now they are elected for periods determined by law, currently four years, which are only interrupted or suspended for reasons of an illegal nature.
During the two decades that elapsed between the creation of the department and the fire that devastated its capital, Quibdó, on October 26, 1966; some more, some less, the governors of Chocó and the municipal mayors -whose appointment was under their power- gave continuity to the founding idea of making Chocó a region in tune with the 20th century and oriented to the common good in all senses. But, other winds and ways of doing politics began to blow then and gain space in national and regional life. These winds, apparently, have not been the best. The ship of the Chocoan institutionality has done nothing but drift in recent decades, aimlessly, always on the verge of shipwreck, in a permanent state of penury and restlessness, with a rudder without a guide, with an engine without a propeller.
While Chocó continues adrift, with a female and male governor who served simultaneously for one day and -caricaturally- each one in their day has had to resort to locksmiths to violate the plates on the doors of the offices and gain access to them… , Quibdó continues with the highest unemployment rate in the country: 29.7%. And the San Francisco de Asís Departmental Hospital lives a new chapter of its prolonged, painful and unworthy agony, at the hands of its umpteenth inspector, who has just arrived in the city and -in an act of impudence, typical of all those who that lewd charge has arrived- he has just asked “the living forces of the Choco community in the territory to provide and align both human and economic efforts… to enable the second level medical health service in Chocó.”[3]
While Chocó drifts aimlessly, to the sway of the waves of greed and the disdain of its rulers, who -together with their voracious courtiers and their insatiable cliques- celebrate the creation of electoral fiefdom #31: the municipality of Belén de Bajirá; The Antioquia Departmental Assembly is working to revive -through legal means- the border conflict with Chocó and its dispute over this new municipality and its now famous corregimientos (Macondo, Blanquicet and Nuevo Oriente)[4]; territories included in the IGAC map that Luis Pérez called “chimbo, false, cheater”[5]. The same Luis Pérez under whose aegis that constellation of irregularities and violations of human rights called Operation Orión was carried out, in the commune 13 of Medellín; the same one that six years ago used the public resources of the Antioquia Governor’s Office to collect almost a million and a half signatures against the legal decisions that favored the Chocó in that border dispute, which he described as “an insult to the people of Antioquia ”[6]; the same one that was supported by a certain Fico Gutiérrez, who accused the IGAC that he “can move the fence to one side and to the other whenever he wants”[7]; another shameless one for whom Chocoanos more shameless than him have also voted.
While the Chocoano leaders continue to cultivate a kind of small and regional and silly homeland of their own, where the innocuousness of politics is a distinctive sign and in which personal interest and clientele weigh and matter more than the common good and regional development; the current governor of the insatiable neighbor Antioquia lives watered, like purslane on the beach, promoting works of his private, regional and partisan interest in the Chocoano territory, as if it were his jurisdiction. This is the case of a trick consisting of building a tunnel between Bolívar, a municipality in southwestern Antioquia, and El Carmen de Atrato, a municipality in Chocó where the El Roble Mine is located, the only copper mine currently in operation in Colombia. It was originally owned by his family, which retains 10% of the property and in whose name are the mining titles that give life to the exploitation.[8]
It is clear the interest of this member of a wealthy family, owner of multiple businesses in various fields, including mining, of which always – even in the times when they boasted of being liberal for their ownership of the newspaper El Mundo, from Medellín – have derived juicy profits. And said interest is promoted under the cover of a monstrosity -obviously legal, like all professional political tricks- called the RAP of the two seasa legal figure by virtue of which Chocó and Antioquia were associated, in the same way that Simón el bobito and his pastry chef could have done.
Today, as every May 1st, local and regional authorities, including the military and police, will prostrate themselves before the monument to the memory of Diego Luis Córdoba, located in the southwestern corner of Quibdó Centennial Park, after the solemn mass in the San Francisco de Asís Cathedral; to commemorate -with occasional speeches- the political deeds and commemorate a new anniversary of the death -in Mexico, in 1964- of who has been considered a beacon of the race and father of the department, as can be read in the inscription of the monument, located under the bust of Diego Luis. [9]
Doubly sullied, due to its façade turned into an open-air canteen and its progressive deterioration -as notable as that of the entire Centennial Park and the sunset boardwalk on the banks of the Atrato-; the monument to Diego Luis Córdoba comes to be a kind of allegory of the state of public institutions in Chocó. “…and to think that once upon a time we had a coat with which to cover our nakedness, until we strayed without vigor or kingdom, along paths where there is no light or path; and, attracted like serpents by the rattle of the tambourines, we crawl increasingly pale, with nothing vivifying, waiting, always waiting, that in other skies, other gods, they assemble the raft in which this race floats without risk, while their scars heal. burns exposed to sirimiri from water” [10].
“What the devil!… If these things make you want to cry.” [11]
[1] Edgar Hidalgo T. WHAT DO YOU KNOW? OF THE CHOCÓ? What do you know about Leonidas Pretelt Mendoza? He crashed 7 days. Edition No. 462. Quibdó, July 16 to 22, 2004. In:
[2] Time. Adam Arriaga Andrade. June 10, 1995. In:
[3] García Úsuga, Nelson Orlando, Special Agent Inspector New ESE San Francisco de Asís Departmental Hospital in Quibdó Chocó. Release. April 28, 2023.
[4] Laura Rosa Jimenez Valencia. The cards that Antioquia is ‘playing’ to ‘recover’ Belén de Bajirá. El Tiempo, April 26, 2023.
[5] Luis Pérez describes the Igac map with Bajirá in Chocó as “chimbo”. The Colombian, June 11, 2019.
[6] John David Lopez. Luis Pérez agreed to popular consultations with mayors of Turbo and Mutatá. El Tiempo, June 11, 2017. In:
[7] “The most affected are the inhabitants of Belén de Bajirá”: Federico Gutiérrez. June 12, 2017 – Telemedellín.
[8] Regarding the relationship of Aníbal Gaviria and his family with the El Roble mine, in El Carmen de Atrato, the following publications can be seen:
In El Armadillo: Vanessa Restrepo. The governor’s mine: Aníbal Gaviria’s undeclared interests in Chocó. April 25, 2023.
[9] Diego Luis Córdoba was born in Neguá on July 21, 1907 and died in Mexico City on May 1, 1964, when he was serving as Ambassador of Colombia.
[10] Fallen Licona, Charles Arthur. Gloss strolled under the fire and rain. 1st edition, November 1982. Lealon Publishing House. Pages 98-99.
[11] Luis Carlos “El tuerto” López. Environment.