Under the shadows of this gigantic tree the town was founded, everyone camped here in search of its shade; the rice farmer who harvested the crop, the one who returned from a cattle trip, the one who carved the totumo to store the serum or make the wooden spoons for lunch, the one who crossed the fever, the one who planted the orange blossom to the orange blossoms of the night, the one who gave the birds a drink in stone bowls, the one who wove hammocks with banana vines, the one who made canoes with the skins of the snails, the one who wove rope backpacks to store wishes, the one who sang tenths at sunset to scare away fears, the one who lit up on dark nights with the glow of fireflies. The fisherman from bocachicos shoal, the one who told tales of horrors to tame the shadows, the one who prayed to ward off snakes, the one who guessed with a stick where the water was in lonely and thirsty lands, the one who cooled off with chicha of corn at noon, the one who got drunk with the fermented pineapple in the jars, the one who tamed the horses, the one who sang to the cow while he milked it, the one who pounded the rice for dinner, the traveler who got lost in far away and found this tree and became a child of its shadows. Citizen of the thickets and the swamps, men and women who returned and promised to return and stayed forever without realizing that their promise would be a destiny. We will see each other again in El Carito, tree and shadow, abode of the birds and the inhabitants of the earth, under those fresh and distant branches the music of the tribe grows, to the beautiful tribe of Alfredo Torres and Martha Páez Madera, Gustavo Tatis War.
