José Antonio Caicedo Ortiz.
By: José Antonio Caicedo Ortiz. Professor of the Department of Intercultural Studies at the University of Cauca, Popayán.
I had contact with Arnoldo Palacios twice. The first was as an attendee at the V Jorge Isaacs International Symposium, within the framework of the XV Pacific International Book Fair at the Universidad del Valle. That October 21, 2009 was the launch of his second novel, Looking for my mother of Godbook published by this University and the Ministry of Culture.
For the first time I felt up close his moving smile and the enormous wisdom of his words, his freshness to serve young people eager to learn about his work. I was surprised by the infinite kindness towards people, the repeated gestures of affection for the strangers who approached him. I understood that only a great being can offer so much dignity in his smile and more wisdom in his words.
The endearing hug that day motivated me to revisit his first novel, The stars are black, which I had looked at when I was a student, by her in the nineties when it came into my hands through the circuit of the Afro student groups at Univalle. Irra’s story again made me remember many events from my childhood years in Tumaco, perhaps with more discernment, I recalled in my memory the vicissitudes of the pelaos who in those times wanted to cross the sea to reach Cali and other cities. In my case, return to the place of birth.
When you have a physical approach with a writer, his letters challenge us differently depending on how the encounter went, it is inevitable. When I opened the pages of the novel for the second time, I succumbed in the bowels of Irra, I saw my childhood reflected in the mirror of the past, in those times of anguish and distress when having bread in your mouth was quite a family feat.
Its characters, but especially the young man who did not find his star, meant an emotional reunion with what we want to leave behind. Only there could I understand that Irra continue to be the hundreds of boys, girls and young people who are born trying to escape the prophecies of poverty.
The second time that life bumped into me with Don Arnoldo was at the beginning of 2015, a few months before his death, I was already a university professor and had a little more knowledge about the master’s work. My friend Carlos Valderrama called me to tell me that he would visit him in Bogotá, since he was looking for first-hand information for his doctoral thesis. He generously asked me if he had any questions to ask the writer. Of course I had many, and above all an immense desire to talk to him. I told the compadre that I would accompany him to the highlands in search of my own Mother of God.
We left Cali for Bogotá on an intermunicipal bus. When the sky darkened, from the Cali terminal we “headed” towards Bogotá with our hearts in our hands and with uncontrolled emotion for the opportunity to speak up close with Don Arnoldo. A revealing encounter awaited us. At nine in the morning we arrived at the Quiroga neighborhood in the middle of the cold morning of the capital. Upon arriving at the house of his niece Sayly Duque, who opened the door for us with such courtesy, I knew immediately that I would attend an unforgettable day, because not only would I be lucky enough to see him again, but to hear his voice more close, in first person.
Upon entering the house, his niece told us to wait for him, that he would attend to us soon. In the middle of those minutes of waiting, her heart accelerated frantically, she didn’t know how, or how to start. She slowly left the back of the house in her wheelchair through a narrow corridor that connected to the living room. It was the image of a body worn down by the rush of years, but with a shining personality. The first thing that reconnected with me was his smile, an image that always accompanied him in public life, the best sign of welcome for what would be a conversation that lasted almost an entire day.
With all his disposition, he spoke to us with such freshness and warmth that I felt like I was with my grandfather again. He told us about his life in France, about his first trips from Cértegui to the cold Bogotá, his adventures in the harsh reality of Bogotazo when he was just a young man, about his adventures as an emancipation activist in the old world, about his encounters with the black intellectuals from the French colonies and the United States, in short, from so many experiences that fed their novels. And he also spoke to us about forgetting his work and his person, but always with the tranquility of a man who knew no grudges. I had read many of the things we talked about in interviews and articles, but hearing them from his own voice was like sitting next to a griot moderno, who is only asked to receive the infinite wisdom that rests in his memories. We had shared the intimacy of his world, his literary life and, above all, the tremendous humanity displayed in the generosity of his free, joyful and profound words.
Don Arnoldo is a great writer of the nation. His narrative revives the past and present of Chocó, the region of his literary inspirations. His characters captured the lives of a community that took him to the distant geographies where he traveled and lived. The novels, stories and essays that he wrote are the best testimony of his attachment to his race and his region. In them he reconstructed the most compact and profound portraits of Chocó, its history, its people and its tense relationship with the country. A regional notary, since his narrative continues to travel as perennial chronicles of a past time still in force.
In that long conversation, we had the privilege of “inheriting” some fragments of his prodigious memory broken down into testimonies of travel, transhumance and melancholy. Sitting with the enthusiasm of an apprentice in front of the master, I understood a little more about the life behind the writer, the vicissitudes of an intellectual project and the warmth of a man of letters whose smile was never erased by the oblivion of a country. There I understood that he was not only a writer, but one of the latest icons of Afro-Colombian intellectuality. Because yes, he was a black writer. Identifying his race does not place him in the “ghettoized” narrative that imagines him to be his essence, nor in the cosmic abstraction without any root. He was a writer, black, planetary between bushes and cities. Definitely, The Universal Man as well defined by the documentary directed by Andrés Morales, which reflects the intimate world of a cosmopolitan being.
At the farewell of a magical meeting he offered us his book when I started, signed in his own handwriting. From his old extended hand we receive the best gift of someone who is admired. “Here is the story of my first steps, my initial thoughts,” he told us.
And that was the last time I saw Don Arnoldo in person. Months later he left this world heading for immortality. Without the material presence of the Universal Man, there comes the race to keep his work and figure alive. Although today his name resonates in academic spaces, gatherings, research and posts on Facebook, it must be insisted that his novels and essays are still absent from university literary curricula.
I clearly remember his words in the tribute they paid him in 2009, when I saw him for the first time. They never stopped resonating in my conscience because he said them in the middle of a tribute in which the lights and applause easily cloud. “The best tribute that can be paid to a writer is for his works to be read. “I hope my novels are studied in literature programs.”
Words wrapped in honesty and gratitude, without giving up the legitimate claim, another sign of his greatness. Because Don Arnoldo’s biography is sagacious not only for winning the game against polio, overcoming racial prejudices with the love of his wife, but for being a great novelist, connecting a corner of the Pacific to literature in his letters. national.
With the memory of the words expressed in his tribute, I arrived at Guapi in 2014, when the Bachelor of Ethnoeducation reached where few programs bet. In a context of chronic vicissitudes, with adult students who were also mothers, wives, even grandmothers, fathers, teachers or workers in different occupations, they read The stars are black in one of my courses. The only copy I had, I lent it so they could read in groups, one per month until the five groups were completed. When the entire class had read the novel, the collective conclusion was forceful in the voice of one of the students. “Teacher, Irra is to them what Nieve is to us.”
I felt the same feeling I had when I read the novel for the first time. In these characters we return to the past when we have lived in similar situations. Although the characters’ experience was not that of the entire room, there were many things in common. Perhaps an image that is too simple to summarize a work, but perhaps the one that best illustrates the feelings of those of us who have seen Irra or Nieve rolling through dusty streets in our childhood or being a piece of them, before seeing them reflected in literary fiction.
May the year of his birth be a beautiful occasion for his novels to be studied as part of national literature, because when we “strip” Irra or Nieve of their ebony skins, we know that they are alive in a large part of deep Colombia. ; in all our lands of oblivion, in which boys and girls grow up without finding their inner light, nor finding their Mothers of God.
In his memory teacher, in the year that commemorates him.
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