When armero is turned off, its children light up: Tragedy, magic, and transformation in the northen tolima

Abstract

This document is product of an ethnographic analysis on the ways of telling and remembering the tragedy that destroyed Armero (Tolima) in 1985. The avalanche that ended the town, considered the greatest natural disaster that Colombia has had, is told by its survivors in the key of a magical, sacred and transforming event. In the pattern of two of the most distinguished references for those who remember the tragedy: the birth of the boy Armerito and the death of the girl Omayra Sánchez, local forms of the tragic sense emerge representing the continuation of life while death is assumed. This paper considers the ethnographic description and the narrative essay emphasizing on the way in which the Armerites produce the version of what has been the end and the restart of their world.