ICONOCLAST EVENING ICONOCLAST EVENING
By: BEATRIZ VANEGAS ATHIES
A truth has been confirmed by numerous media sources, and literary-read the novel "Grudge" Oscar Collazos, for example. Cartagena is the epitome of elitism and exclusion in Colombia. In The Heroic has been difficult to shake the mark of racism and the depths that underlie social classes that are neglected, but they are needed.
The walled city is a ghetto that comes imposing to verify it. And right there, there was the Hay Festival. Everything is beautiful in the ancient city is eternally makeup thanks to their status as heritage of humanity. Even the wind and sun are volunteers there, weather event does not happen in the real and raw Cartagena. Eolo's legacy continues to blow and the god Helios inherited dosing intensity, because we need to actresses, actors, writers, musicians, politicians, businessmen, women, swanky, tourists from many parts, not sweat much, in such a way Confirming the beauty displayed in print and television. Is this Cartagena Hay Festival, a huge staging of drivers, craft vendors, salsa restaurants, soneros, serenatero going from table to table offering three songs vallenatos or three boleros, for ten thousand dollars the enthusiastic tourist. Like he was one with the sly smile of Rudolf Hommes Alma shaking hands with a smile Guillermoprieto or caustic and full of Salman Rushdie, walking fast to get to a talk.
old Cartagena, contrasts and confirmations vacuous: if you know some celebrity, was enough to see who was dressed in trousers, shirts and blouses in white or cream, Indian fabric, very light. One would think that in any appear when the director announced, lights, camera ... my intuition tells me that disguise themselves as Caribbean, although the argument for this uniform clothing, heat is inclement ...
With this scenery, Saturday January 29 at 7: 30 pm, Teatro Heredia Pedro would be the stage for the biologist and writer Fernando Vallejo, severs the idols of Catholicism. The name of your conference could not be more provocative: The Crimes of Christianity. The line to get to see and hear almost three blocks bordered. Many feared to miss the show, although they had the desired ballot. Once inside, we walk the carpet central to a thin man, somewhat stooped, gray hair, blue dress, with a folder under your armpit and followed by a strong texture character and a shaved head who served as assistant to the writer, even though the organization must Festival, was the scene conditioning even in the smallest detail.
Absolute silence. Vallejo sat sideways on the stage, that is, the public saw only half body and half his face to the creator. He began to read in a voice slightly dysphonic and the look of someone who knows by heart the speech will offer.
Heredia Theater, filled. The most diverse human profiles were there. With Over the minutes and categorical theories of Vallejo, the auditorium would be decanted. The heat begin to rise with each dart thrown right in the center of Christian dogma. Fans of the ladies waved good Cartagena unstoppable: they were paying dearly desire to be fashionable to attend the Hay Festival conversatorio how presaged media presence. Murmured, crossed themselves. When Vallejo reached the twenty-minute conference, about fifteen people had left the site. But the theater was still awash, but not the curiosity of many, who, feeling offended remained drowning in what they considered an affront.
That night, Fernando Vallejo offered a masterly example of his wisdom. He documented historical overview, mentioning one by one the many priests, popes, bishops, archbishops who were allied with Adolf Hitler to consummate the Jewish genocide. Listed and narrated with names and precise dates which members of the Catholic Church openly prayed for the Fuhrer, how the bishops of Bavaria celebrated Mass in thanksgiving every time Hitler was saved from an attack, and offered data and stories of members prelates contributors CCS economically.
with the same rigor and investigative reporting on the list of bishops who belonged to the German Army, dressing each data with humor and irreverence country that, while not wishing to recognize, he comes to his accent and his sayings. In such a way that the Attorney General and the President of Colombia, there were unharmed. When first sent him to read his novel The Whore of Babylon: "Buy it, so be pirated, in Medellín it sold half a dozen avocados" and the second called "the man that we have for President, illuminated by the Holy Spirit. " Vallejo
confronted with arguments and members of the public strongly, with aggression and ignorance instigated to stop reading and talk, knowing the methodology of a speech, respect for a speaker to his audience when has prepared his speech.
The only one who had no fear of that night in Cartagena, was the iconoclast Fernando Vallejo. The audience was silent when declared "The Catholic Church, Orthodox, Protestant, are the greatest curse of mankind, followed by Islam, the followers of Muhammad who pray facing Mecca crouching, and looking at her ass in the air to Jerusalem "... but that same audience laughed when questioned Colombian political status.
the end, one of the organizers gave him a red rose is used to give to the writers at the Hay Festival. No lack of isolated voices protested this act of kindness to the writer. He smiled shyly and protect the flower, leaving her in the same glass of water to quench their thirst in the nearly seventy minutes of lecture. With the writer claimed innocence out where it entered, but someone in the crowd warned the organizers to guide him in the dressing room.
A output, they branded it sacrilegious and heretical, queuing for Fernando Vallejo will dedicate one of his books.
