One hundred years of the Obrero neighborhood The cradle of Cali's musical and sports identity

Una mirada a la cuna del América y la salsa en Cali

Alex Escobar, that legendary player of America, coach Diego Umaña told him jokingly: "You don't look like the worker neighborhood".Alex doesn't know how to dance.

- I like the sauce and even bought a lot.Maybe that happened because since my illusion was playing football, being a professional player, my galladTomorrow I have to get up to train.I prioritized my career to what the neighborhood offered me.

Alex is the last great symbol of the worker, a neighborhood that this June 20 turns 100 years old.It was founded through Municipal Agreement No. 31 of June 20, 1919, and its first inhabitants were railroad workers, artisans, shoemakers, workers.With the implementation by the Council of the Tolerance Zone, prostitutes arrived.Thanks to the railroad and tolerance zone, the worker became the heart of Cali.

From its streets emerged from great dancers such as Édgar Fajardo, the 'Cachafaz', or Carlos Valencia, writers such as Umberto Valverde and Jotamario Arbeláez, one of the most important musical producers and collectors of salsa in the country, Humberto Corredor, soccer players like 'Shinola 'Aragon and Hernán Escobar, Alex's father.

The best thieves also came from the worker, and in his bars and dating houses the musical identity and dance of Cali were molded, although Alex Escobar insists that in his case, he did not receive the least of that inheritance to put it into practice in practice inThe tracks of the discos.

Thanks to his grandmothers were midwives, "and they didn't believe in hospitals," Alex was literally born in the worker.It happened on February 8, 1965, in race 11 b no.24 - 02.The house still exists.Aunts and relatives of Alex Escobar live there are still there.For something in the neighborhood they told them "the enough".

- We were many cousins.In that house of Bahareque and Guadua that was immense, it had about 8 rooms, we lived the penogues Escobar, the Vargas Escobar, the Escobar Gañán, that we were ourselves.The house had a channel where one could bathe when it rained.It was a very humble childhood but with a lot of love.

- I studied at the Argentine Republic School.There we had a little court and armed tournaments.We finished studying, and we went out for the court of the 25, which was the big court where I and other players raised.He had lunch at 3 or 4 in the afternoon.I did my homework and at night to play in the block.We learned the foundation against the walls, the edges of the platforms, avoiding energy posts, stopping the chest ball while a car came.That was my life in the worker, a neighborhood of much music and a lot of football.An American neighborhood.

It is said that in the Parque del Obrero the Foundation of America began, ‘the passion of a town’, in 1927.When Alex Escobar debuted in the team as a professional in the early 80.Not only because he was small, but also because, along with Anthony ‘El Pipa’ of Ávila, he was the youngest of the team.

Since then, great players have not emerged again in the neighborhood.Alex believes that this is due to certain traditions that have changed.

- People keep going to dance, the gatherings continue, the corners where football is discussed, but the generation has changed.Youth no longer plays in the streets, but does other things ...

***

The worker's park smells like Basuco and Marijuana.Also a glue.In their benches, lost eyes showArgentina.

In the park there is a police CAI, but the agents cannot do anything.The Constitutional Court knocked down the prohibition of drug and alcohol consumption in public space, so the park is also a meeting place for some elders who consume pure alcohol.They call them "the squeaks".

Next to them are mixed by Venezuelans who have migrated from their country.From the terminal they go to the neighborhood on foot for the free wifi in the park.Some sell sweets at traffic lights.Someone warned that there are Venezuelan girls who are being induced to prostitution.In the park there are also retirees and neighbors seeing the hours pass while they talk or take Mazamorra, and in the distance, from some watersries on race 10, ranchers are heard.

When traveling through the inner streets, houses converted into plastic factories, car spare parts, mattresses, motorcycle workshops are observed.From the family neighborhood that one day was there is little remains.From the rumba there are some homes and premises that could be called 'temples' that retain memory, defend what remains of the identity of the worker: the rattle, the Antillean splash, the Nelly Teka, the Salsa Museum of the orchestras photographer of the orchestras photographerand collector, Carlos Molina.

A few days ago the writer Umberto Valverde returned to these streets, and felt strange.The worker of his childhood, who has inspired several of his stories, concluded, no longer exists.That family neighborhood where people went to the theaters to watch Mexican films, where the Sonora Matancera and Pérez Prado were heard, where football was danced and played on Long Champ's courts, "a peeling", became a sectorCommercial with streets full of holes.The one now, says Valverde with nostalgia, is a deteriorated neighborhood where he felt insecure, especially after the joke made by one of his neighbors "old guard":

- Valverde, what are you doing in your neighborhood without bodyguards?

***

The story was told by Édgar Fajardo, ‘El Cachafaz’, the last dancer of the old guard of the generation of 40, for a chronicle published in Gaceta magazine.

Once, he said, there was a hand in hand of salsa dancers in a place known as Acapulco, in the tolerance zone of the Obrero neighborhood.It was so many people in the grill, said ‘El Cachafaz’, that some had no choice but to look from the door or windows while he danced with Alicia, his wife.

According to his calculations, he danced for an hour without stopping.It was when, by the mirrors of Acapulco, he saw the entrance of the black Sunday and Pedro ‘Cayayo’, “some acrobatics the veracos”.

They were, along with Carlos Valencia, the best to make scissors.There were also ‘Las Papito’, three dancers who remained in the area.Both ‘El Negro’ Domingo and Pedro ‘Cayayo’ went to the track and ‘El Cachafaz’ was forced to do the same, so was exhausted.He could not stay at his table, he said, because they were times when every Cali dancer had his fan, so being sitting was something that would never have forgiven him.

Once the duel began, Domingo and ‘Cayayo’ appealed to their entire repertoire: jumps, scissors, roulettes.At the moment when ‘El Cachafaz’ he suspected that he was being overcome, he risked with his last resort.Standing at the tip of his feet, he opened his hands back and slowly leaned to touch the floor with his back.

Then, in a jump and despite the fact that the legs were shaking, he returned to him while the people stopped at the tables to applaud and shout.With the anecdote, ‘El Cachafaz’ meant that in the worker, dance was a matter of honor.

- If one let himself win on the track, the woman took him.

Sitting in a coffee from the Granada neighborhood, with a red cap that says 'Sugar', the writer Umberto Valverde, who was born in the worker in 1947, (he lived in a house located in front of the Rialto Theater) insists that Cali's musical tasteAnd the way in which the caleños dance was grown there, in the bars and brothels of the neighborhood.

The cinema played a fundamental role.Valverde remembers that the Rialto, where he once worked selling sweets, was the only Cali -free theater.The screen was a wall.

As were years when there was still a high illiteracy rate, worker residents preferred Mexican films, who did not need subtitles.It was, above all, ‘Rumberas Cine.

The way they danced in those films, says Umberto, was an example for the dancers of the worker.The reference points were the divas of Mexican cinema: María Antonieta Pons, Meche Barba, Amalia Aguilar, Ninón Sevilla and Rosa Carmina.Or Mambo dancers like ‘springs’.The radio was also a precursor to the musical taste of the worker and Cali.Valverde explains that between 1935 and 1940, the caleños discovered their musical taste for the night program of the CMQ, Radio Progreso and Radio Habana, from Cuba, where the successes of the Matamoros trio, Ignacio Piñeiro, the Riverside and Beny Moré Moré Orchestra.

- And, years ago, the 78 rpm records were brought from the United States and entered from Buenaventura to Cali, first by rail to the El Hoyo neighborhood train station.Then the albums began to arrive thanks to the sailors who went to the tolerance zone.When the council decides to create this area, dozens of bars are born, all with names taken from Cuban music.There was only Cuban music, and the caleña, popular, and some bourgeois people were going to dance.It was when the Caleño dance was born: copied and adapted from Mexican cinema.

Valverde danced in a place that had to be in revolver: crab.On the second floor there was a brothel.

On Sundays could be seen at the share parties.Some neighbor made their home available, a fee was paid, and danced early to 8:00 at night.It was still a time when the children or obeyed the schedules that were imposed in the house, or attached to the consequences.

As Valverde was a neighbor of Faustino Abadía, a central America headed by Adolfo Pedernera, he went with him to the team's training.In that America that was runner -up in 1969 Juan Vairo also played, an Argentine who was River Plate myth.

- I loaded the briefcase to Vairo.I had so much confidence, that while he trained he left me a gold medal that River had given him - says Umberto, who was also a neighbor of another Glory of America from the 30s and 40s: Dimas Gómez.

- That was the panorama of that time.Cali was the worker.We were not going any other part.My city was none other than the neighborhood.If I went to the center, the Zamoraco passage, because my mother was a seamstress and I took him lunch.Until Cayzedo's square knew.From there to there not.And what I am, American, salsa, writer, I owe it to the worker.I am a privileged.Thanks to the neighborhood that gave me the gift of music, I became the biographer, from the perspective Caleña, by Celia Cruz, the most important singer in the history of Latin American music.That didn't give me anyone.I owe it to the worker.

***

Claudia Patricia Saenz also says that what she is today - Community leader, president of the worker's Community Action Board - owes it to the neighborhood.It was in these streets, says Claudia, where trade unionism was consolidated in Cali.

In the neighborhood, Ignacio Torres and Julio Rincón lived, two of the most important union leaders in the country, who schedu.Claudia's childhood house in the worker, in fact, was the headquarters of the Federation of Workers, which was later transformed into Cut: Unitary Central of Workers.

- Since that time the vocation of working for people was born in me.

Claudia, for three years, has been working along with other neighbors and members of the JAC to celebrate the Centenary of the worker.Beyond parties and commemorations, what is intended is to recover the neighborhood of deterioration.

Each Ministry of the Mayor's Office is committed to a project.Infrastructure, for example, you must cover the gaps, transit to demarcate the streets, dagma and other entities to recover the park, with the Ministry of Culture, murals will be painted.The objective is to keep the memory and identity of the old heart of Cali, whose 100 years, is expected, guarantee that these ads are not just promise.

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— Luis Fernando Chaim Fri May 20 12:56:40 +0000 2011

People Swing, la banda musical del Obrero

Milan is late for the essay of the Band School, he is five years old, despite the eager.If it weren't because it's Thursday, it's 7:30 at night and we are at the Social Integration Center of the Obrero neighborhood, I would say goes to Mass on Sunday."How is my boy?" Marisol asks, Apapacho Rico and take the drumsticks.Milan runs with that giggle for the trial.

Danis is rapid, got off a taxi and arrives accelerated.In the background a piano, a trombone and a bonga."Land of beautiful and beautiful women," they suggest singing to her. ".Marisol greets her Rapidito, both enter a school hall full of musical instruments and piper pepper records.

Danis is a 15 -year -old peeled, high, weak, elegant, with clearly coppery skin, black eyes and perfect crews;She greets musicians raising the chin.He stops in front of the microphone and begins to chant and dance with that step ‘Vacansit’ of the peeled in Verbena: “The caleñas are like the flowers, which dressed go from a thousand colors”.

In the kitchen of this Darlenis and Zuley school they prepare the food.Those aunts picara laughter and grid hands look like laughter."" Do you stay to eat? "Ask.How to say no to a rice with chicken and freshly made beans."They never deliver their loves, if they are not corresponded," continues the song.

Marisol puts a nurse hat and helps them serve.

Una cuna de músicos

One day the uncles told Marisol: "Mari, you have the gift of singing and we want him to make the tributes to his uncle Piper pepper", and there everything began.

But the People Swing Foundation is many more than that.For Primary Professor Marisol Castro Molina and deputy director of the departmental band, Juan Roberto Vargas, music is an excuse to form people.

The formula has three steps: the little ones enter the school band learning the grammar of music;Then they go to the folk group and finally to the orchestra, a process that has been in the social initiative and three as a foundation for 7 years.

“With People Swing Candela, we tribured my uncle Piper Pepper.Now you can say that we are the cradle of neighborhood musicians.We form trainers and if it is with the worker's people we know that everything will work, ”says Marisol.

He says that Omar Roberto Vargas, deputy director of the departmental band, is the father and musical director of the process.Today 38 peeled are part of the project and they in turn nourish the orchestra, are between 5 and 23 years;Milan and Danis are part of them.

“The worker is a neighborhood that retains the musical culture of the Antillean and Cuban sauce in Cali but it is also a sector where theft, drugs and prostitution and children also see that they also see that.That is why we are joy to give them the possibility of choosing the path of art and music, ”says Marisol.

This primary teacher knows the risks, advantages and disadvantages of the neighborhood and its streets;She has lived it, she knows that sometimes just sow the musical seed to harvest an opportunity.

“We participate in the musical activities of the neighborhood, we work hand in hand with the Community Action Board that helps us a lot and we present ourselves with the orchestra, the school band, the seedbeds.We are from the celebrations of the ‘Mother's Day’ to the Melómanos meetings ”.

Marisol adds: "More than a tribute to my uncle Piper, what we are looking for is to leave a legacy and a life project that gives opportunities".

When the school or the orchestra sounds, the son sits, the guaguancó, the start in saucers such as' La Loma de la Cruz ',' Looking for you ',' Shadow of a past ',' La Guagua ',' The summer returns',' In memory of the dead ',' events'.

"Walking they go on the sidewalks, widening they carry their waist ...".

Un mejor reflejo del Obrero

Tirantas in their pants, hair and white beard, red shirt, good -inchone figure, grandfather's voice, children sit around them.This is Professor Omar Roberto Vargas, musical nerve of this process.

He says that this year there is a lot of integration of Venezuelan migrant children in the seedbed, "almost half, that has an advantage and that is that in Venezuela the musical training has more development than here, they are noticeable in the rhythm, the grammar".

For Professor Omar, the children of the seedbed are an improved reflection of what is the Obrero neighborhood.

“We are also working on the feeding of these boys-here is where the community dining room enters where Darleni and Estela support-", explains the musician, who adds that at the beginning of the training process the children were taken size and all show aprogress in your weight.

And concludes: “With the Foundation we want to recover the musical memory of the Obrero neighborhood and that is the sauce.These children are my other family, my other children, they with all their limitations bring me sweets and chocolates and I know that we are taking these boys the fear of the street and the distrustful look ”.

In the background ... the caleñas are like Gardenias, the simple ones are like the roses ... ".

Una rumba que dura cien años

From Barrio Obrero at 15, a step is singing short I was on foot, little by little, I dumped on foot and how good and how rich it is to the labor neighborhood at 15 a step is

When ‘Chamaco’ Rivera sang next to the orchestra of Willie Rosario this success in 1970 did not refer to the Caleño neighborhood where the footballer Alex Escobar was born, much less than the race populated with spare parts of spare parts by which the buses of mine sur.He dealt with the neighborhood where Dominicans live the most in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the transport stop of that capital.

However, these referents are not a pretext so that in the courses of the center of Cali people stop believing that melody or that the bodies are not on the track to dance it.Even less when it is Monday and, being just four in the afternoon, women wear vaporous fabric dresses and heels, while the lords wear Terlenka pants, dacron shirts and white leather shoes.

Mondays in the worker are ‘Zapatero Monday’.These are the days when, since the time of yesteryear, it was popularized that the shoemakers of the city rested and, then, there was no other place where to find them but it was in the gerile dancing.As the rumba was good, this excuse stuck retired, taxi drivers, lawyers and doctors to curtail the taverns.A tradition that became vice in the neighborhood.

That rite is repeated for nine years in the ninth race with twenty -three street.In that corner is the dash Antillean, a dancer where at three in the afternoon the speakers begin to vibrate with the voices of Ismael Miranda, Celia Cruz, Daniel Santos, Johnny Pacheco.There, although most of the tables begin the reserved day, there are no complication to enter and ask for a beer in the bar.

Miguel Ángel Giraldo, who forty -eight years ago began in the world of grilles with the musical splash, says that those who go to their business is because "they know how to hit the floor", because it is the pensioners and dancers of old guard whomore they show their skills on the track.Rumba calls them.So much, that many of them make the prior to the danzón from one or two in the afternoon in the block of the front sitting in seats, drinking beer and eating fritanga or sausages.It is the ‘Combo yesterday’.

One of the clients of the site is Fabio Bonilla, a retiree who has been shines the cafés tiles from the drizz's track for eight years.Sitting in one of the red armchairs, in the middle of a sea of portraits of artists who adorn all the walls of the bar, he explains that in that corner of the La Rumba neighborhood it is good for the music of yesteryear, a scarce melody that only puts in thatFacade house painted as if it were the Flag of Puerto Rico.In that corner, as the rumba is long shot, from time to time there is also one or another bolero, a pasodoble, a tango or a meringue.

In the splash it is difficult to sit down, says old guard dancer Harold Zapata.“The one that comes is because he likes the real blow, the Antillean music is for the dancer dancer.Here is the essence of Caleño dance, nothing is stereotyped but there is only inspiration;So, if the piano sounds, people play the piano with their feet.Here the steps of others are not copied, ”says this dancer that they call‘ brush ’, because by the agite of his feet it seems to give brushstrokes while the pachanga sounds.

***

While Cali is always a city that perspires rumba, it is hard to believe that there are places where you can have lunch dancing.

On race 10 with 22nd Street, in a house painted red America, in the early 2000s Nelly Parra sold coffee, scrambled eggs and bread to the rumberos who left the dancers of Juanchito directly to their bakery in search of killing the guayaboor follow the party.Because if something was not missing in that little place were the voices of the Sonora Matancera, Pepito Arvelo, Tito Gómez, Pedro Vargas.

Nelly, a woman from Pitalito, Huila, who the space was so small that people danced on the platform.But that does not matter, in the worker the dance is a mood.From one moment to another, customers began to ask for more beer than red and, although Nelly did not sound a lot to get into a rumba business, he had no choice but to expand the place together with the house next to him.

The name could not be another: Nellyteka, a fusion of his name with the new essence of the site, the music of Viejo Library.And although there was a time when he opened every day at six in the morning and closed at three in the next day, today the schedule is limited until one in the morning.Of course, the most brave day to go dance and listen to music is still on Monday.

To that Esquinallegan, since the doors open to one in the afternoon, men and women carrying the carné of the mayor's office or a security company;Others arrive with briefcases that leave behind the bar to accommodate at a table to drink beer or brandy.Cr crispects usually leave the bar to pass the drink.

There who puts the music is Simón García, better known as ‘Glass of Milk’, a discompos.In a small room and surrounded by more than five thousand Elepés, during the afternoons and nights program, Boleros, Chachachá, Foxtrot, Son, Porro.

“Before more Cuban music sounded, but now you have to put people of everything.The people of the neighborhood almost does not come or rumbea, it is the clients from other decali and foreigners who keep the party in the worker alive, ”says‘ Glass of milk ’Connastalgia.

The rumba in that neighborhood is different from that of all Cali, says Dedier Londoño, a business administrator and singer who visits the bar of the Nellyteka every Monday."To the dancers of the worker people do not come to conquer or get drunk, but to what it is: listen to good music and dance with those who know," he says.

***

It is enough to walk on 22A Street to find that, between the ten and eleven races, there are two neighboring temples: the Jesús Obrero parish and the rattle.

The latter has summons believers for fifty -five years and those who do not believe in anything.There the religion revolves around more than fifteen thousand elepés and compact discs that stop the city with the delirium produced by the voices of Rufino, Goyeneche, Corsini, Juarez and the greatest of all: Gardel, whose portrait stands outin black and white on the walls.

The preservator of that miracle is Jaime Parra, a manizalite who inherited the place after his brother Clímaco died.It was precisely Clímaco who transformed the one that was originally a barn into a tavern.One that changed the sosos Sundays for the neighborhood rumba.

Jaime says that there are nights of ten clients like others in which more than one hundred and fifty people go to dance.

Inside that colored house evoking Caminito Street, in Buenos Aires, the owner of the music is Leyda Santa, Jaime's couple, who after the bar of this place crammed with paintings and portraits of artists is responsible for varying songs from yesteryearWith Argentine ranchera.Follow a tango.Then, a milonga, a waltz or a bolero.From time to time, a son or something Caribbean.

Leyda clarifies that the site is not an oldoteca.He says that his cultural roots is Argentine music, music to listen."This is for megames," says the discomanous, while checking on a shelf which of the pasta discs that are inside their packaging with borders coated with green, blue and yellow ribbons, it will be the next one in Sonar.

The color is everywhere: on the orange and green walls, in the Christmas lights and the lanterns of the walls, in the Mexican garlands that hang between the beams, in the serpentine bandoneones who want happy birthday to one of the three womenfrom table seven.Because regardless of whether there are ten or one hundred fifty who dance, in the worker the rumba does not stop.