00:27The letter
00:33The meticulousness that characterized her leaves no room for doubt.
00:38His first vallenato song has a clear date in the almanac, Saturday, April 27, 1968.
00:48That first article in the newspaper El Espectador was titled Letter from Valledupar and was called the Festival
00:55Vallenato.
00:56There he refers to what would be the first festival of the vallenato legend to be held in Valledupar.
01:03April 27-30.
01:05From the very first paragraph, one senses the conviction that the event she refers to will not be just another one.
01:12within the concert of festivals of the genre that have proliferated throughout the country.
01:17In one page and with fewer than 850 words, he narrated the story of the Vallenato legend, in which the
01:25The festival of the same name has its roots,
01:27so that it would be clear to locals and foreigners alike that this competition would not be the crazy charade attributed to it.
01:34With irony, the painter Jaime Molina,
01:36not a whim of his imagination, but an event with an identity that amalgamates the melting pot of cultures that coexisted
01:45in the Valle de Upar.
01:46Indigenous tribes, Tupes, Chimilas, Caribs, Arhuacos, among others, blacks, slaves and, of course, Spanish conquerors.
01:56This first vallenato letter, written almost 60 years ago, laid the foundational bases of the festival.
02:04So it is no coincidence that the first time Consuelo Araújo sent a letter to the viewer,
02:10It was to talk about the then nascent Vallenato Festival, his eldest child, his favorite and cherished one.
02:18It is not unknown, of course, that the festival has shared ownership,
02:22like the same foundational triad of vallenato music of caja, huacharaca and accordion.
02:28But although Escalona and López were her parents, no one can deny that it was Consuelo,
02:34who raised the baby, breastfed him, changed his diapers, gave him fevers and discomfort
02:40And she stayed up all night like a devoted mother until she had raised him and made him big enough to walk on his own.
02:46From Consuelo de Molina to the cacica.
02:49In these early writings, she still signed herself Consuelo de Molina.
02:55He managed to publish a couple more that same year, 1968, under the name of his section, Letter from Valledupar.
03:03It was on Sunday, August 25, 1968, that the name Carta Vallenata appeared for the first time.
03:12In a column with the title, I open quotation marks, they took away our governor, I close quotation marks.
03:17There he refers to the untimely departure of the then governor of Cesar, Alfonso López Miquelsen,
03:23who resigned from his post on August 14, 1968 to assume the chancellorship in the mandate of the president
03:31Carlos Lleras Restrepo.
03:33With a biting and sarcastic style, Consuelo laments López's departure and speculates about his possible successors.
03:39And it ends with a jab, not in the style of vallenato, at Lleras, I quote, you didn't give them, you didn't take them away, you damned woman
03:46The funny thing you do to us, I'll close the quotes.
03:49Since then, and for more than 22 uninterrupted years, Consuelo wrote her Vallenato Letter in El Espectador,
03:55newspaper where she also worked as a reporter and correspondent.
03:59It was in El Espectador where she was given the nickname "La Cacica" (The Chieftain) and it was Don Guillermo Cano who validated it.
04:06the idea of journalist Hernán Giraldo,
04:08who, upon seeing her at the second festival, ran the event like a matron, giving orders here and there,
04:15Correcting details in that extreme perfectionism of his, Giraldo told him that he ruled everyone like a great chieftain.
04:23And so it remained.
04:24The stories of Consuelo, the Festival, and the Spectator intersect many times.
04:30In the pages of her diary, the chieftain sketched out what would become her first two books,
04:35Vallenatology and Escalona, the man and the myth.
04:38If the quote attributed to Washington Post co-founder Philip Graham is true,
04:44that journalism and newspapers are the first draft of history,
04:47It is undeniable that a large part of the history of vallenato music, its origins, its minstrels, its kings,
04:53Its idiosyncrasies, its identity, among other aspects, were written for the first time in El Espectador thanks to Consuelo.
05:01There she found a second home.
05:03He made close friends like Mono Salgar, Hernán Giraldo himself,
05:08María Jimena Duzán, later godmother of his youngest child,
05:11Don Gabriel and Don Guillermo Cano, Camilo Cano Busques, among many other names that escape me.
05:18From there he practiced courageous and combative journalism for more than 22 years,
05:24characterized by his peculiar provincial, bold and biting style.
05:29Through El Espectador, Consuelo told Colombia the seductive stories of a valley
05:35which until then could be contained in a party and not in a diary,
05:38Escalona and Alejo's, Leandro and Moralito's, Tobias Enrique and Chicos Bolaños's,
05:44Those of The Legend and the Plaza, those of Minstrels and Kings, but also the others,
05:49those of a newborn Caesar and a province that demanded to be taken seriously.
05:55From those pages the country learned to read the accordion and Consuelo finished becoming the chieftain.
06:10Thank you!
