RETURN TO DIBULLA, PART 2
Abby Wasserman
As we approach the Dibulla turnoff, Lilibet tells me that when paramilitaries tried to establish a base in town, they were rebuffed. "We don’t want you here" apparently is all it took to bar their entry. It seems fantastic. If Dibulla could bar paramilitaries, avoid the kidnappings and murders that have plagued La Guajira, why couldn’t other communities do the same? It’s a vexing question and there’s no way I’ll find the answer in a three-hour visit.
Nine years ago when my site partner Howard returned to La Guajira, his driver refused to turn into Dibulla. Now we rapidly cover the six kilometers on a paved road. The landscape is altered: hectares of plantain trees have been cut down and burned. Carlos says the landowner will cultivate rice, diverting water from the Dibulla River to flood his fields. Water levels in Sierran rivers, including the Dibulla, are low due to siphoning off by cocaine producers in the mountains. The rivers are weakened by the time they empty into the ocean, so the strong saline tides push their way further inland.
As though in a dream the new Dibulla comes into view, and as if summoned by magic, Rubiela Raggonessi appears on a tiled porch. At Lili’s command Armando stops the car and we get out.
Rubiela, born long after I left Dibulla, is a surprise. Her father, Camilo, was my closest associate. Half-Italian, a Dibulla native, he was a quiet, transformative force and universally respected. He knew everyone’s story. An optimistic realist, he chaired a shifting, loose-limbed junta, working for change without expecting it. It meant everything to have such an ally.
Camilo’s wife at that time, Gertrudes, was an Italian who never embraced her life in Colombia. I spent hours in their enclosed garden talking with them and Father Bernardino de l’Aguila, the young Italian priest. Though we sparred constantly, the Padre and I liked each other. He was skeptical about community development and asserted that the people of Dibulla would never change. He didn’t actively oppose my work and sometimes helped, but kept a light and mocking distance.
Rubiela, the child of a second wife, is a proud, handsome, reserved woman with cat eyes. She has a leadership role in the community and is waiting for the midday bus; she has an official meeting in Riohacha.
Dibulleros
were resistant to working together—there were too many ancient grievances among the families—and cynical about regional government and politicians. They’d suffered more than their share of broken promises and half-finished official projects. Their lethargy was born of disappointment and the easy existence on the coast. The river provided water, the climate was warm with ample seasonal rainfall; a simple adobe house with a dirt floor and hammocks provided comfort; and fish, fruit, and root vegetables were abundant. The elementary school was run by a kind and generous teacher whom everyone loved. A small police force resided in a building of its own, and the electric plant’s generator once had worked and might again.On the other hand, sanitation and medical care were abysmal. Everyone had intestinal parasites which sometimes were fatal, and tetanus was a constant danger. The diet was monotonous, mostly fried food. One cow was slaughtered each week, and the meat sold out before noon. Sometimes a pig went under the knife, sometimes a chicken, but they were seldom offered for sale to the public. Many families owned chickens, we’d call them free-range; they fattened on worms and cockroaches and eventually were killed for
sancocho, a chicken stew with plantain, yucca and potato—universal celebration fare. There were outhouses but no trash collection; garbage was tossed into empty lots and rotted there, foraged by roaming dogs and pigs. An "auxiliary nurse" took care of minor wounds and maladies, but any serious case was sent to Riohacha, where nuns and a single doctor ran a small hospital. If you needed urgent care in Dibulla after the morning buses left, you were out of luck. The baby next door was born with difficulty breathing and died the same day. There was a lot of drinking and that led to violence. In some circles there, if a member of your family had been killed, you were justified seeking revenge on some member of the killer’s family. In that Hatfield-McCoy code, there were no innocents.I have brought photos, mostly of children from the ’60s. As people come by—word travels fast that the
gringa has returned—they identify them. One is of Juana Bueno, who because of her senility was called Juana la loca. Two grey-haired granddaughters and a great-grandson are pleased to see her photo. Juana used to arrive at my house in the morning, march through to the patio, take out a propane stove, tin can, and oatmeal from her bundle, demand water from my outdoor faucet and hunker down to cook her breakfast. She would eat, wash out the can, pack her belongings and without a word take her leave.Distinguished, portly Nicolás Redondo turns up to greet me. Only 18 when I arrived in Dibulla in 1964, he is now a prominent citizen, director of the
colegio. We are mutually delighted and keep patting each other’s shoulder. He urges me to return to stay again. He says Dibulla still needs me, that yes, there has been progress, but there’s much more to be done.We drive a few blocks to my old house. Only the color is different.
The owners aren’t home and I’m just as glad not to have my memories of its interior jolted. It was one of the best houses in town; now most of them are stucco and tile. The streets are paved for the most part and there are running water and electricity. Across the street at a particularly handsome blue and yellow house we encounter a young woman with a baby. She identifies her family in my photo book; her house is built where their adobe and palm house stood. I almost blurt, "And
that one, that tall, unsmiling young man standing next to your mother, shot my friend Cárdenas."Midway through my time in Dibulla Cárdenas came from the interior to take the post of
corregidor (sheriff or peace-keeper). Young, handsome, educated, he fell in love with a Dibulla girl whom he planned to marry. One night he encountered my neighbor, drunk and brandishing a gun. He confiscated the weapon but returned it a few days later, and within 24 hours the young man, his macho insulted, ambushed Cárdenas and fled into the Sierra.
Comadre Ida and my goddaughter Clea
I want to say that Cárdenas was a good man who cared about Dibulla and that his death was a tragedy, that her uncle was a
sinverguenza (without shame), that my friend Chave’s heart was broken, that I sat with her beside the body part of one night in a house cleared of furniture. I say none of this. Why burden her with old griefs?We visit Olimpia Coronado de Moreu, who with her husband Wilson owned a bus, general store, and the movie theater (now boarded up) where I used to watch U.S. westerns. They were first citizens of Dibulla but kept aloof from community development efforts. She’s in her eighties now, her face softer and more friendly than I remember. Wilson has died. Her daughter invites us in for coffee, but we decline. A cup of
tinto would require slowing down to Dibulla time, a luxury we don’t have.I’m sweating profusely. My Mexican cotton dress sticks to my back. It doesn’t catch the breeze like the long, bat-wing Guajiran manta. In mestizo society the Wayuu Indians were considered inferiors. I had a few mantas made, and when I wore them I stood with the Wayuu in a small way that gave me satisfaction but probably compromised my status in Dibulla.
Now, at last, we walk up the street to Ida Campo’s house. This is the heart of my visit. Ida speaks in the fastest, clipped-consonant Costeñan Spanish of anyone I know and is the hardest to understand. Looking around her neat tiled parlor I remember the mud house she lived in, the dirt floor she swept clean with a broom. I recall her father’s wake, my first wake, the shock of seeing people drinking, eating and dancing around the corpse laid out on a table.
Ida keeps repeating, "
Comadre, you’ve come." She doesn’t ask how I could stay away for so many years or why I didn’t write. My goddaughter Clea, almost my height, holds onto my arm. My eyes strain to see Ana, and slowly, from the shadows, she comes forward, a plump baby on her hip. We embrace and I begin to cry. I loved Ana the most, yet after a year with me I made her move home after she stole money from my mochila. The money was returned and I still saw her, but it was never the same.Ana is thin with finely etched wrinkles. Her voice is low and husky and she’s missing teeth. Yet she still looks like the little girl Ana. "I cried so when you left," she says. "Why didn’t you take me with you?" This is a surprise; was the subject even broached back then? Would I have taken her if asked? No. I married Bill Rayman, had children, moved around the world. Peace Corps was a two-year detour in the life I was meant to live. Or so I thought.
The baby is Ana’s granddaughter, one of two she cares for while her daughter attends school in Santa Marta. The highway has made an enormous difference but not, perhaps, for Ana. I ask, "How has your life been?" Ana lowers her head. "
He sufrido" ("I have suffered"), she says.