Names (Nombres)

From my Dad’s book Elementary motherland (Patria elemental).

Names (Nombres)

           

Just mentioning their names dignifies the memories of those

who built the city with their twibill and shovel,

more with love than with science.

To complete their fate they would add narrow passages,

bridges, and installed shadowy places

for dominical escapes, but they would christen them

with names of wise allegory:

Puente Plata, Nisperal, Vuelta de La Laja…

Mr. Francisco de Paula Andrade traced with a cord

the streets and avenues and then the wit of the people

gave them names. In every street the memory of a nobleman

had to be planted, so that the people of Cúcuta would learn

to transit through their history without fright

and with some familiarity, Fortoul Street, Girardot Street,

Ricaurte Street, D’Eluyar Street, Zea Street…ultimately,

in each of them, a glorious reference.

The avenues allowed the pedestrian

a glance into the world of the domestic pedagogy

of rudimentary geography. Under the scorching sun

one walked along Bolivia Road, Panamá Road,

Perú, Cundinamarca or Colombia Roads…

It was around the year 1819 the official christening

of the streets and the legal norm,

the reminding plaques. Then the devastating time came

and arithmetic replaced the theory of the

identifying patriotic evocation.