In the lands of the coffee, from the book, Searching for treasures
Taxco de Alarcón, Guerrero, Mexico
Jon Jairo began to quietly talk about the lands to the south of Medellin. He started by explaining how in contrast to the rest of the country, the so-called Coffee Zone or the Cultural Coffee Lands were colonized or settled by successive waves of Antioquians, better known as Paisas, that migrated towards the lands in the south.
“Initially, this movement originated from Medellin and its surroundings,” he explained. From there, the Pisas began their peregrinations, always searching for new lands to settle down in. They forced into this situation by the extreme poverty that existed during those harsh times at the end of the Xviii Century.”
“You will have to excuse my poor speech and Spanish. I admit that I am not what you would call a cultivated man. I’m barely a man from the country, with a poor and quite a rudimentary schooling. An illiterate peasant if you will.” He started saying with his melodious voice. His accent was soft and sweet-sounding, though, at times, he slurred the words a bit, pronouncing his “s” as if it were a “sh.”
“As a child, I studied until the first grade. That was the norm, where I grew up in the sticks, in the country or the rural areas, if you prefer, far from the cities and the urban centers. I walked over an hour and a half just to get to the village where the school was located. It was more of a country-side hamlet than a town proper, you see. A small farming community strung out among a few scattered families. Nowadays, they all have a school, but in my time, we considered ourselves lucky to walk to the nearest schooling center, which consisted of a tiny one-room converted shed. When I was a kid, schools were a rare and expensive commodity!