Ciao pescao, Cartagena de Indias!

At the end of the walking tour of centro historico in Cartagena, I said hasta luego. The guide said, “Hey guys, come here. You know hasta luego? Instead of that say, “Ciao pescao” (pronounced “chow pess cow”.) He guaranteed that we would get quite a reaction when we used it. So I said it to the two guides at the end of the afternoon tour of Getsemani, and they howled with laughter, saying “Did you hear what she just said? Wow! I can’t believe she knows that, how’d you learn that?” They were so surprised and elated that I used a local dialect.

During that second tour, I also learned a local word for “my best friend” but I will not write it because it is a rude word in other places!

Both tours by Free Walking Tours Cartagena were fun and informative. In the morning, Edgar led us through the historic center of Cartegena, through the story of the founding of the city of Cartegena by the Spanish, the building of the city walls and the fortress to defend against attacks by pirates such as Francis Drake and Vernon, to independence from Spain in 1811. It is a history of conquest, pirates, slavery and independence.

First of all, it is Cartagena de Indias, not Cartagena. The name comes from Cartagena in Spain which came from shortening Carthage Nueva (new city) which came from Carthage (meaning city) in Tunisia,

The city of Cartagena de Indias was officially founded by Don Pedro Heredia from Spain after he destroyed the existing settlement of Calamari in 1533. This was followed by stealing all the gold and importing slaves for the mines. The indigenous people continued their resistance and ran away, like the slaves who escaped and found Palenque, yet another interesting place to visit! Had I done the tour before picking a hotel, I would not have stayed in a hotel with his name!

Though the history within the walled city is of course of the Spanish as conquerors, it is also of the Spanish as slave importers and owners.

One exception is Father Claver who came from Spain and is considered the founder of Human Rights in the Americas for his work in helping the slaves and recognizing them as equals, as demonstrated in this sculpture. He was canonized for his human rights work.

 

 

Many slaves also escaped and formed the town of Palenque in the 1600s, known as the first free town in the Americas. After independence, the women from Palenque, the palenqueras, started coming into town to sell their fruit and vegetables from the baskets on their heads, the first time this had happened..  Fast forward to tourists wanting to have their photos taken with the colourfully dressed palenqueras and the palenqueras realized that they made more money from tips than from selling fruit and vegetables. And suddenly, they don’t want to sell the fruit anymore because they make more money from the photos! The baskets got smaller and the fruit became very expensive, so as not to sell the fruit!

Eventually, we came to Plaza de la Aduana Plaza de Ralph Nunez, credited with writing the Colombia constitution. Unfortunately, very few people know it as Plaza de Aduanas – Customs Plaza because that’s where the goods entered the city and paid customs!

Information from that tour tied in nicely with the afternoon tour of Getsemani, where we stood on the exact sport where independence was declared. And it continued with the history of Getsemani being poor to now being a trendy area. We talked about the effects of gentrification on the locals in Getsemani, rising prices and the efforts to improve the barrio for the locals through community efforts. One such effort is the hosting of 2 mural art festivals, with the first in  2013.

 

As I was the only English speaker who showed up, I joined the Spanish-speaking group. Luckily, the English-speaking guide tagged along to translate for me. Even better, he turned out to be a neighbourhood leader so he shared all sorts of local lore. Well, not just with me. Sometimes I would hear, “Chris, Chris come here” and sometimes it would be “Chris, Pamela, Luis, come here. I have to tell you something!” And then he proceeded to tell a story about the murals, or how they moved the drug dealers out of a street and turned the street into a tourist attraction with umbrellas – without conflict or violence. The solution, as he said.

He showed me the house where he lived and told me his history as his wife brought out juice from a local fruit (I forgot the name!) for all of us to try.

It was an eventful day with a lot of information, most of which I still have to digest and write down!

Yet tomorrow I leave to go to Santa Marta and beyond!  But maybe I will return to Cartagena, and so I say “Ciao Pescao, Cartegena!”