Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena

by J. A. Zahm

I was curious to learn from him, a Llanero, and therefore an expert horseman, the shortest possible time in which the trip could be made to Bogotá from Barrigón. Some books I had read stated that the distance from the head of navigation on the Meta—and we had reached that point—to Bogotá was only twenty miles, while certain Venezuelans I had met had assured me that the trip could be made in two days. His answer was conclusive. “The shortest possible time without a relay of horses,” he said, “is four days. To attempt to cover the distance in less time would be fatal to the horse. I never try to reach Bogotá from here in less than four days, and even this means hard riding.”[3]

“But what brings you up the Orinoco and the Meta at this season of the year,” he enquired. “You are certainly the first Americans to come here—rio arriba—up the river. Others may have come to the llanos from the capital, but, if they did, I am not aware of it. And why did you select the rainy season for your journey? Why did you not wait until summer, when it is dry, and when the roads are in better condition?” We then explained to him that no boats ascended the Meta during the summer season and that we were thus forced to come during the winter. Strange as it may appear, this had never occurred to him. And yet he was an intelligent man and well informed about his country and presumably about the means of communication with the countries adjacent.

The Colombian Llanero is a most interesting character. He is absolutely unique among his countrymen. The only people with whom he can be compared are the inhabitants of the Apure plains and the Gauchos of the Argentine pampas. Like these he regards as “fortunate the man who has received from heaven the means of safeguarding life and property—a good horse and a good lance.”[4] Having these two essentials of defense and offense, he is happy and independent.

This is readily understood from his manner of life, which is quite akin to that of the Arabian nomad. The desert in which he lives and his eternal struggle against a physical environment that is as savage as it is grandiose; his occupation as a herdsman and his roving life in the boundless plain, have given the Llanero a character that is as original as it is interesting.

As a son of the desert, he is a lover of music and poetry, and will spend an entire night or several consecutive nights dancing, playing his rude guitar, scarcely larger than the hand that twangs it, or a huge banjo, and singing verses either of his own composition, or those of some other poet of the plains. For strange as it may appear, poets abound in the llanos as scarcely anywhere else. They may be unable to read or write but they are nevertheless able to produce songs—tonos or trovas llaneras—that are frequently marked by rare beauty and depth of feeling. Considering their limitations, their faculty for versification is often really remarkable, and it is not unusual to find among them a singer that will improvise with as much facility as an Italian improvisatore.

The Llaneros have a poetry of their own which they never abandon. They compose what they sing and sing what they compose. And, although they cannot as yet point to one of their poets who has had the advantages of education and culture, they can, nevertheless, point with pride to many of their number who have produced metrical compositions of marked excellence and power of expression. The pity is that so far we have no anthology of these poets of the plains. There is certainly a rich field here for research awaiting some lover of the fresh and the novel in literature and it is to be hoped that some one may soon explore a domain that is so promising in results.

Their favorite compositions are ballads or rhymed romances, called galerones, which are sung as recitatives. They closely resemble the popular rhymed romances of Spain, and refer generally to deeds of prowess performed by their own heroes in their constant struggles with the wild and unsubdued nature in which their life is cast. In these galerones valor and not love is the protagonist. Love, in the metrical compositions of the plains, is always a secondary character.

Two stanzas from a poem entitled En Los Llanos—On the Plains—will exhibit the character of these poems, and show, at the same time, that the Llanero has a keen eye for the beautiful and sublime in nature and that his heart is open to the sweetest sentiment and the deepest piety and reverence.

“Lejos, muy lejos del hogar querido

Paréceme que estoy en un desierto,”