Yesterday I came to Cali, about a ten hour drive down from Bogota. Cali is the largest city in the country's south. The culture and economy of the Cauca valley, where the city is located, has been shaped in many ways by sugar cane plantations and the people who were brought here as slaves in colonial times. The city is most well known for its salsa orchestras and fancy dancing. But below the surface rests an ignored, dormant story. Along the way, nearing Cali, I passed the most important archeological find in Colombia in the last fifty years.
Notorious for the looting that took place there, the site known as Malagana was discovered by accident in a plantation in 1992, five hundred years after that other "discovery." Some of the objects found there date back over two thousand years, and their appearance shattered assumptions about the area's history. Specialists are still trying to understand the significance of this place, who were the people that lived there, and why they disappeared. The grounds today are covered up by sugar cane again, but local activists want a museum built instead. Scientists want to keep digging. Less than a month ago the construction of two roads in the area was halted when more remains turned up. I was told the Attorney General's Office is scheduled to visit the site tomorrow....
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