Freddy Sanchez Caballero

The Poet

I was born in the savanna of Córdoba at the time of Uncle Rabbit. Rough and sunny land that harshly questioned how fragile your illusions are. Measles and chicken pox wreaked havoc on the skin of your dreams and lobster razed the crops of anything. The dogs were chased by clubs and stones through the dusty, thirsty streets and slime through their mouths, prey to the evil of rage, while the ladies closed the doors. They were difficult times for fantasy.

We went to build a better destination between two rivers of crystalline water looking for the promised land in the middle of the humid and green Chocoana jungle, full of guayacans, fish, mosquitoes and snakes. Freehand we forge the authenticity of our efforts by testing in each challenge the temper of our colorful lineage. But the stick was not pa’cucharas. Every day, every summer, every crescent, every plague, every circumstance impeded the growth of our vocation.

I came to study the overwhelming lands of Antioquia that were then – their intimidating geography, their alien faces, their gray concrete streets and the abruptness of the contrast shook all my fibers. I grew up then between the longing and the contradiction, between the cold and overwhelming landscape of the Paisas mountains and the warm and flat memory of my childhood. One afternoon at nap time I met Frida Kahlo’s broken soul, Van Gogh’s intense yellow, Portinari’s quartered peasants and … they caught me.

The panorama was sordid, the impossibility of returning hardened my soul and any other alternative was inconsequential. But when the time comes for reckless decisions, it is you against the rest and on the other hand you burst. In order not to take the mountain or pave my emotions, I paint… Because painting is perhaps the only job that “bases its spiritual dimension” on the matter’s own dimension.

• Publications: “Cuando va a llover, llueve”, “El Libre Albedrío” and “Crónicas del Viejo Mundo”.
• Collaboration with the magazine “Cultura O” of Rionegro, Antioquia.

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