A Return Trip to Cali, Colombia - 4 to 14 July, 2022 : Neill McKee

In July 2022, I completed the first draft of a new memoir on my adventures as an international film and media producer, manager, and facilitator for most of 1971 to 2012. Then my wife Beth and I flew to Cali, Colombia. I had visited Cali several times during 1975-1984, and never thought that I’d ever return to see the city or the beautiful Cauca Valley again, which Simón Bolívar, the great liberator from Spanish rule, called “a paradise on Earth.”

See the article as published on Neill McKee's website

The occasion of our visit was the marriage of our son Derek, to Maria Claudia, who was born in Cali, where her family still lives. My son married into a great South American family of mixed Spanish, African, and Amerindian descent. Derek and Maria Claudia continue to live and work in Montreal.

The trip also served as a family reunion after 2.5 years of the Covid pandemic and a celebration of our 50th wedding anniversary—a happy occasion for all!

Cali, once the home of the Cali Cartel, has woken up from “a long and dark night” of violence, due to drug trafficking and wars between criminal factions, the police, and the army.

The city’s many murals tell stories of displacement, disappearances, murders, and other injustices never resolved.

Protest for retribution continue, but today, murals also portray hope and the lighter side of life.

Some parts of Colombia remain with security problems, but Cali is a peaceful place. People are surprised and happy to see tourists on the streets.

The new symbol of Cali is the domestic cat. Many Colombian artists have contributed their creations of cat sculptures in a park along the banks of the Cali River in the heart of the city. It’s a great attraction for visitors today.

On a hill just outside of the city the statue of Sebastián de Belalcázar (1479/80 – 1551), the conquistador of Cali in 1536, has been torn down and some citizens want to replace it with a cat statue.

I wanted to visit CIAT (Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical) and to FUNDAEC (La Fundación para la Aplicación y Enseñanza de la Ciencia)—the Foundation for the Application and Teaching of Science, more popularly known as “the Rural University.” I had shot parts of films on visits to these institutions in the 1970s and early 1980s, when I was a filmmaker for the International Development Research Centre, IDRC, Canada. But visiting these places would have taken up family time—more important to me these days. Maria Claudia did arrange a great outing to a family friend’s farm restaurant situated southwest of Cali in the Farallones Mountains. This place, with its authentic Colombian dishes, is located on the Pance River near the Village of Pance.

We were also able to visit and photograph some of the beauty of the rural Colombia I had known.

If you take a two-day hike to the top of the peak above, you can see the Pacific Ocean on a clear day. 

In this part of Colombia, a man and his wife can peacefully retire today, while keeping an eye on the restaurant they started from across the street.

I can highly recommend Cali and parts of the Cauca Valley to other adventurous travelers.

So, now I’m back in New Mexico thinking about this journey and all the places I have lived in and visited during my long career in international development with CUSO, IDRC, UNICEF, Johns Hopkins University, and finally at AED cum FHI360, Washington, D.C. Many of my films/videos and media initiatives are on my digital library link below. I’ll let you know when my new memoir comes out. My first three, completed during 2019–2021, are on my author’s website, below.

Neill McKee, M.S.
Creative Nonfiction Writer
Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
nmckee20@gmail.com

Author’s website: www.neillmckeeauthor.com/
Author’s digital library: www.neillmckeevideos.com/