EASTERN COLOMBIA — CRIST AND GUTTL 405 



A COLOMBIAN PIONEER 



All over the world there seems to be a rural exodus, a kind of tidal 

 wave of human beings leaving the land for urban agglomerations, 

 large or small, that grow by accretion. However, a reversal of this 

 process seems to be taking place in various parts of Colombia, particu- 

 larly in the transition belt between the vast plains of alluvial depo- 

 sition and the massive Andean wall. To be sure, many of the settlers 

 entering this zone have been pushed off the land, either from large 

 estates or from plots too small to support a family. However, a large 

 part of this wave of migrants is made up of former urban dwellers, 

 men who have made their living as artisans or as industrial workers. 

 It can become so difficult to make a living in urban agglomerations 

 that they cease to grow by accretion — indeed they may, and do, supply 

 the recruits for pioneer fringe settlements. The pioneer settlers are 

 to a great extent mountaineers, rural or urban, who hail from those 

 regions of cold, rugged terrain that are feeling the effects of the con- 

 tinued and increasing pressure of population upon the land resource. 

 Competition for jobs is extremely keen and the struggle for mere 

 survival is grim. 



In order to pinpoint this colonization and to hoist it out of the realm 

 of mere statistics, detailed notes were taken on one family that might 

 be considered typical. 10 Tiberio Valderama Gallo is an Antioqueiio 

 who, with Ms wife and family, is working out his salvation as a pioneer 

 in the foothill area south of Sogamoso. As a young man, still a 

 bachelor, he left his native province for the Choco, where he worked 

 as a mechanic, or at any work he could find, in connection with a 

 mining enterprise. He saved little money but saw some of the country. 

 In 1935, at age 25, he married Maria Sanchez, age 18, who had had 

 some experience as a nurse. Then for eight years he worked as a 

 carpenter in the province of Antioquia and in the cities of Zipaquira 

 and Sogamoso. His memories of the back-breaking, soul-depressing 

 labor were still vivid. He kept longing to get out of this treadmill 

 into something where he would be independent. The opportunity 

 seemed to present itself when a "voluntary" contribution was asked 

 from the workmen on the occasion of the marriage of the daughter 

 of the owner of the small factory in which he was working. He spoke 

 of the poverty of the workmen, of the relative affluence and economic 

 security of the "patron," and he rebelled at the thought of having to 

 pinch a contribution out of the bellies of his family, which by then 

 (1942) consisted of five children, in order that the sleek, fat daughter 



10 Detailed studies by social anthropologists are yet to be made of social stratifi- 

 cation and value systems in the pioneer zone and in the sectors from which the 

 pioneers are coming. It is to be hoped that this virgin field will soon find 

 workers. 



