Tripita y Media and Arroz Barato. Chronicles from Getsemani

Abstract

This text is an essay that intersects its scope between travel writing, short fiction and sociological and linguistic analysis. Originating from the perspective of the author’s childhood, raised in the North of Spanish Africa and later developed and matured in Mexico, it builds an illusory vision of the united Hispanic America that transcends and materializes in a Cartagena de Indias, which evolves from being the mythical city in the dreams of the protagonist’s infancy, to a living and palpitating reality as a result of his visit to the Colombian Northern enclave now as an adult. Sociologic descriptions, linguistic analysis of the common uses of the Caribbean Spanish, anecdotes of the seasoned traveler and urban reflexions, all of them contour this swarming assortment coming from a Spanish writer that designates himself as extremely peripheral, while observing his new homelands at the other side of that Hispanic Mare Nostrum, which is the Atlantic Ocean.