Memory of Mauricio Cobaydrá Bobarishora - Part 2 (Memoria de Mauricio Cobaydrá Bobarishora - Parte 2)

Part 2

The Motilón or Bari are names of a Native American ethnic group, part of the Chibcha family, remnants of the Tairona Culture. They concentrated in north-eastern Colombia and western Venezuela in the Catatumbo River basin, in the Colombian Department of Northern Santander and in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. They have been the subject of the French ethnologist Robert Jaulin's, who redefined the concept of ethnocide by observing their particular fate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motilon_people

A history lesson about the leader of the Motilón tribe, original inhabitants of Cúcuta. In three parts, from my Dad’s book Boundaries (Confines).

Memory of Mauricio Cobaydrá Bobarishora - Part 2 (Memoria de Mauricio Cobaydrá Bobarishora - Parte 2)

Before it was only Cobaydrá

in the humble hut and on the hammock

that belonged to his mother Abucbacdara.

Rapacious, he inherited vanities

from Abrincadura, his father.

The tired head already

bursting with futures.

He used the bow and arrow

with mastery beyond his years.

There was a strange ability

in the arm and the sharp eye,

as if they had been made

for this exercise

with messianic fate.

The rivers and the jungle as witnesses,

he was the most skilful fisherman

and the best hunter in the tribe.

He knew the art of sensing the prey,

hunting it and cooking it:

in the stove,

he was heir

of the maternal hands.

His name was still Cobaydrá

but his child eyes

soon would see many things

that required a whole man

and he would need to have a different name.

In the hut, under the large

rustic ceiling

his hammock of a child in transition to be a man

swang hopes.