Colombian Culture, Colombia Adoption and Raising Colombian Kids

Antonia Santos Plata was born in Charalá (in what is today the department of Santander) in 1785. While little is known of her early life, she came to the forefront in 1819 during the time of the Independence movement. She helped to organize guerrilla operations from her family home in El Hatillo, where she helped to provide supplies, direct counter-attacks, and encourage others to join them. She was part of a group known as the Guerrillas of Coromoro (approximately 40 people most of whom were her relatives that she herself had organized). The groups operations were designed to help Bolivar cross the Andes. Captain Pedro Agustín Vargas (of the Spanish army) arrived at El Hatillo and found Antonia Santos there with her 15 year old niece, Elena Santos. Together Antonia and Elna as well as their two slaves, Juan and Juana, were arrested and taken to Charalá on foot and imprisoned. She was sentenced to death by the Viceroy Juan Sámano and was executed on July 28, 1819. According ...

Consuelo Araujo Noguera was born in Valledupar, on August 1, 1940. She was the youngest of nine children and she had to leave school at the age of 14 to work and help pay for the education of her older brothers. She would later claim that this event actually helped her to develop and independent spirit and an ability to look beyond what was typically expected of women. For over 20 years, she wrote a regular column for the newspaper El Espectador. She also had a regular program on a Valledupar radio station. She was best known as a tireless promoter of local folklore, and particularly Vallenato. In 1968, Consuelo Araujo helped to found the Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata , which takes place in Valledupar every April. Her father, Santander Araujo, was a local leader of the Liberal Party, and her political connections eventually secured her the Colombian consulship in Sevilla, Spain from 1974-78, under the Liberal presidency of Alfonso Lopez Michelsen. She was also a prominent political...

Last year, in the week proceeding Mother's Day, I did a special on famous women of Colombia. This year, I am adding a few more names to the list. You can read about all of the women I have highlighted by clicking on the WOMEN label to the left. For today, the spotlight falls on a heroine from Antioquia -- Ana María Martínez de Nisser . Ana María was born in Sonsón , Antioquia , on December 6, 1812. Her father was a teacher in Sanson. Her early years were spent in school where she was an excellent student. Those who knew her have written that she was very bright and quick, and was able to speak fluent French as well as English. She was married in 1831 to a man from Sweden -- Pedro Nisser . Nisser was a gold dealer and businessman. Events in Colombia from 1839-1841 were not pleasant, the country experienced the first on many civil wars. This war was know as the Guerra de los Supremos (or Guerra de los Conventos ). Here is a brief explanation: The war started over, what else...

Yesterday, I got an question about whether or no there has ever been an Afrocolombian Miss Colombia. I am proud to say that YES there has been! Her name is Vanessa Alexandra Mendoza Bustos. She was Miss Choco and won Miss Colombia 2001. She represented Colombia at the Miss Universe pageant and won the award for best native costume. You can see her in her costume in this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pZcpYcs-Cc Born in the small village of Ungia as one of 16 children. Her father died when she was young and she was raised by her mother. Before becoming Miss Choco and then Miss Colombia, Mendoza was a model. Photo: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VanessaMendoza.jpg

I want to thank my husband for the following post: One of the defining characteristics of mainstream Colombians is that we want to be recognized as being NOT a 3rd World Country. Part of our interpretation of being a developed country is being part of something important and recognized globally. We feel that our participation in the Olympics, the World Cup or the Miss Universe Pageant for example, shows that we have earned a spot on the global stage. In the case of the Miss Universe or Miss World pageants, we feel that we are watching with the entire world. We assume that because the WORLD is represented in the pageant, that everyone around the world is as interested and consumed as we are by the event. This helps explain why our National Beauty Pageant is so important. It is about choosing the one person who will win it all at the global level -- bringing glory to the country. It all begins with the selection of the regional contestants. In every department, there are numerous beauty ...

In the area surrounding Tutazá (mentioned yesterday), there are many areas -- called veredas . A vereda is a small geographical region that usually has a collection of homes and farms in a rural area -- like a hamlet. One of those veredas is called Tuaté. It was there in a small adobe house with a red, tile roof that my father-in-law was born. His family made their living as potters, a tradition handed down from the orginal inhabitants of the area, and as a child he travelled all over Boyacá, Santander, and Cundinamarca with his father selling the pots and other things that his family made out of clay. Though he left his home at 14 and became successful at something other than pot making, his youngest sister, Isabel, remained and inherited the family home. There she continued the family business. However, her inginuity and creativity lead her to be recognized by a famous French potter -- Dauphine Scalbert. In 1994, Ms. Scalbert wrote an article about Tía Isabel and her pottery and tech...

Most people know the highly popular Shakira. You may even know that she is from Colombia, but fewer people are familiar with her rise to stardom, her music from the early years, her work with the children of Colombia, or her work promoting global access to education. Shakira was born in Barranquilla, Colombia, and started performing at a young age. By the time she was 14, she had recorded her first album. Actually, her first 2 albums had limited success in Colombia. But, in 1995, she released her first HIT album which was made in Colombia and promoted throughout Latin America. It was called Pies Descalzos (Barefeet). I can highly recommend it for anyone’s collection. You can purchase the whole album or your favorite songs here: http://www.amazon.com/Pies-Descalzos-Shakira/dp/B000002E5J If you want to get a flavor for the first album, here are a couple of videos from it –she was a lot more tame back in the mid-nineties. Pies Descalzos video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCjRwbToEY0 E...

This is the last of the Mother's Day stuff. Today, I would like to focus on a singer and a song. On April 16, 2009, Public Radio International's program, The World , featured Colombian born singer/songwriter Marta Gomez. She sings a more folkloric type music and has a beautiful, lyrical voice. Her latest CD is entitled " Musiquita ". You can hear the program and some of her music at the following link. http://www.theworld.org/node/25790 One of the songs featured in the report is a wonderful song about the average Colombian woman. These are the women that make the country work. The song is called " Manos de Mujeres " -- Women's Hands. Here are the lyrics: Mano fuerte va barriendo, pone leña en el fogón -- A strong hand sweeps and puts wood on the fire Mano firme cuando escribe una carta de amor -- A firm hand writes love letters Manos que tejen haciendo nudos -- Hands that knit making knots Manos que rezan, manos que dan -- Hands that pray, hands that g...

Today, I want to honor the millions of Colombian mothers who never achieve fame. Their pictures will never appear in a museum. There are no statues of them. They seem, apparently, to leave no footprint in the world. Their lives pass practically unnoticed as they diligently fulfill their roles as mothers. One such woman is the author of many of our recipes -- Abuelita Carmen. Abuelita Carmen was born in a very small village in Boyacá. She was the youngest of 9 children -- the only surviving girl. Her mother's husband had abandoned the family, and Visabuela Brigida -- who didn't have the best parenting skills -- was doing the best she could to raise her children on a small plot of land where she raised beans, corn, potatoes, and arracacha. Abuelita Carmen lost a brother to the Violencia in Colombia, and she watched as most of her older brothers left the village to find their fortune in other places (Bogotá, Mesitas del Colegio, Sogamoso). Abuelita Carmen loved to go to school, un...

Though Georgina Fletcher is considered a Colombian heroine, she was actually born in Spain. However, she spent almost her entire life in Bogotá. She was a writer, artist, and educator. In 1924, she was chosen as the Colombian representative to the International League of Iberian and Hispanic American Women ( Liga Internacional de Mujeres Ibéricas e Hispanoamericanas ) and to the Crusade of Spanish Women ( Cruzada de Mujeres Españolas ). After attending the international meetings of these two groups, she organized a Colombian association of the League. She went on to participate in the Second Pan American Women's Conference ( Conferencia Panamericana de Mujeres ) which was held in Lima, Peru (1924). In addition, she attended other International Women's conferences and was in correspondence with other Latin American suffragists and feminists. She tirelessly spoke out for women's rights, though little of what she said found an accepting audience and most politicians were vehe...

María de los Ángeles Cano Márquez , known as the La Flor del Trabajo (the Flower of Work), was born in Medellín in 1887. She grew up exposed to very liberal, if not radical, thoughts from her childhood. María Cano was greatly influenced by the feminist authors of her day ( Agustini , Storni , Ibarbourou & Mistral). In 1923, she helped write El Correo Liberal (The Liberal Mail). Then, together with María Eastman and Fita Uribe, she tried to start a Colombian feminist literary movement. She, herself, helped to found the Cyrano magazine in 1921 -- her effort to bring access to literature to the masses, and particularly to lower class workers. Most of the magazine's authors were political dissidents, sympathetic to the Russian Revolution. In 1924, her efforts to bring literature to the people included establishing a Public Library -- known as the Biblioteca Municipal. At the library, she offered to teach the illiterate to read. The more common people she met, t...

Soledad Acosta de Samper is considered Colombia's most important female writer of the 19th Century. She was born in Bogotá in 1833 -- the only child of colonel Joaquín Acosta y Pérez de Guzmán, a patriot in during the Colombian War for Independence, and Caorlina Kemble Rou -- a Scottish woman. From her youth, she was exposed to different countries, languages and ideals. At 12, she left Bogotá to spend a year with her maternal grandmother in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. A year later, she moved with her parents to Paris, where the family lived for four years. While in Paris, she accompanied her father to many literary and scientific meetings -- an opportunity which helped her form many progressive opinions. She returned to Colombia at the age of 17, and at the age of 22, she married José María Samper Agudelo in 1855. Three years later, she returned with her husband to Paris, where she began to publish under various pseudonyms. Then, she became a foreign correspondent for the "t...

Policarpa Salavarrieta Ríos is without a doubt the most famous, the most popular, and the most beloved Colombian heroine of all time. Her name is associated with the great heroes of the Colombian war of Independence and would easily come to the mind of any Colombian when asked about female heroines of Colombia. Policarpa was born somewhere between 1793 and 1796, in Guaduas, Cundinamarca, Colombia. The exact date she was born is unknown and actually so is the place, though her siblings were born in Guaduas. In reality, even her exact name is unknown -- her father called her Polonia, her friends Georgina Apolinar, and some even just Pola. However, it is under the name Policarpa that she became famous and so that is the name that has stuck. She was born, the fifth of nine children, to an upper class family that lived comfortably. (Today her home in Guaduas is a museum -- Casa Museo Policarpa Salavarrieta.) In the early 1800's, the family moved to Bogotá. There they suffered a family ...