The Two Dons of Usenda
Usenda, Colombia
3,787 miles from San Francisco
Traveling by vehicle grips the interest.
Hands clutching the wheel. Subtle pedal pressures regulating velocity. Eyes trained on the road, attempting in vain to avoid the distractions of passers by. This is what we know and expect from life on the road, but the occurrences that we have not been able to foresee are the ones that have most opened our eyes.
More likely than not, only if traveling by car would you stumble upon the town of Usenda in southwestern Colombia. Only if you’ve arrived via car would you find Usenda by padding through several miles of mud-soaked cow pastures. Only through the incremental nature of a journey by car would you come to meet Don Emilio and Don Germán who, out of respect for how far you’ve come by car, offer you several swigs of Caucano (a strong local elixir made from sugar cane) and the pleasure of their company. And, perhaps, only by car would you feel a swelling of pride that you’ve made it this far, to Usenda.
When driving from Cartagena towards the Ecuadorian border, it is likely that a route will eventually pass through or near the the city of Popoyán. Ours certainly did, and the search for a decent place to camp led us to a large property in the hills near Silvia at an altitude above 9,000 feet. A home that, so we were told, had previously belonged to a high-ranking member of the infamous Calí Cartel. The house was eerily empty, as the Moroccan owners were off on a different adventure. The caretaker, and our host in their absence, described a trail to a nearby village that we deemed a worthy use of what remained of the dwindling sun, so we set out to find it. Our navigational knowledge of the area was solely directional, meaning that our version of the trail followed no designated route, but passed through half a dozen cow paddocks whose closed gates offered little resistance to our desire to advance towards the town. As we marched onward the words of Matthiessen quite accurately summarized our resolve, “Many paths appear, but once the way is taken, it must be followed to the end.”
We trudged for an hour and ended up on a dirt road that was clearly leading somewhere. Dilapidated mud-brick houses stood on our left and several loud motorcycles belching black smoke passed with pace on our right. The road spilled out into a main square decorated with a few tall trees and encircled by a slew of small homes on the opposite side of the road. Several rusted out World War II era jeeps were parked on the road - some appearing abandoned, others in use to shuttle townspeople back and forth from the relatively larger nearby town of Silvia. The pueblo was quiet and empty, with a few meandering townspeople being the exception to the otherwise dominant rule of vacancy. We were eager to learn more about this place, and thus circumnavigated the dirt road perimeter of the town - a journey of roughly five minutes. On our first pass we greeted two elderly gentlemen sharing a glass bottle on a bench outside of a humble home. On our second pass those gentlemen invited us to join them. Their names were Don Emilio and Don Germán, two brothers with welcoming and worn countenances whose combined height equaled no more than eleven feet. Don Emilio took particular interest in us, and fielded our probing questions into his background and the story of this place.
Emilio was born in Usenda 73 years ago and has never lived elsewhere. He vowed that he could name every member of every family occupying the 150 homes of the village. He and Germán are musicians, frontmen of a local outfit frequently present at town gatherings. He retrieved a picture of the full band from inside the house and beamed with pride while insisting that we continue to pass the bottle of Caucano along the four-man drinking line. Despite having lived in Usenda since the mid-40s, he felt that it hadn’t changed much. When we asked him what events stood out, a familiar theme of violence emerged.
Beginning in the early 90s (coinciding with the fall of the Medellín cartel), and lasting for nearly 20 years, the stories he told described Usenda and the surrounding area as perilous. Only 75 miles from the powerful narco capital of Calí and surrounded by farm country capable of growing profit-bearing crops, Usenda tended to attract narcos. Emilio entranced us with a tale which only confirmed our fast-developing view of him as unshakable. Several decades earlier, en route to his aunt’s house, he decided to walk through a narco-controlled marijuana field rather than take the longer, safer route around. In preparation for any encounters, he armed himself with the only weapons he deemed necessary for self defense: a bottle of aguardiente (sugar cane liquor) and a pack of cigarettes. When he inevitably encountered the armed men guarding the crop, he handed out shots and cigarettes and was spared any harm. His aunt, suffice it to say, was not pleased on hearing how he arrived so quickly. In general, his take on the narco presence was one focused on logical outcomes. He felt that those who were killed universally brought that result upon themselves by having unpaid debts, by saying something they shouldn’t or by not delivering on a promise. He told us that anyone who avoids said pitfalls would be completely fine. It should be noted here, however, that these lines, although filled with confidence, were delivered to us in a whisper. It was abundantly clear that Emilio had no desire for anyone nearby to hear his perspective on how to survive in a narco zone, even today.
Beyond the narco presence, Usenda was also located in the territory of FARC, a left-wing rebel group responsible for dozens of extremely violent attacks on the general populace, military and police over several decades. FARC was established in the mid-1960s and employed a plethora of illegal activities including kidnapping, extortion and the smuggling of drugs and weapons in order to fund a reign of terror that lasted for over 50 years. In 2002, FARC militiamen and women used Usenda to hide themselves from the authorities. As a result, the Colombian military cut down the trees in the main plaza, visible from the bench upon which we sat, to eliminate any obstructions keeping them from opening fire on the rebels. Emilio told us that during those days he never walked the square at night, lest he be mistaken for a member of FARC. The threat of FARC remains real to this day, as evidenced by the dozens of armed military personnel guarding every bridge along the freeways through this region. However, Emilio celebrated a drastic reduction in the tensions of the region following the 2016 ceasefire agreement between the Colombian government and the rebels that led to their disarmament and marked the end of their time as a military group
As night fell and we began to grow concerned about the hour-long return journey through farm fields that we hoped contained nothing more illicit than yet another cow, the conversation naturally came to a close. Emilio and Germán seemed truly glad to have shared their perspectives on Usenda with us as they shook our hands warmly and returned to the comforts of their home. Fortunately, on our way out we found the actual trail back to our accommodation. The path was caked in deep mud and we sunk in up to our shins. But, we disturbed no cow, a fact for which we were quite thankful.
Traveling by vehicle grips the interest.
And it is not just the road, but that which can’t be foreseen by examining a map. The unforeseen consistently leads one towards the unusual in yet another place represented on the map by the faintest of dots. It is the unforeseen that led us to Usenda.