Obeso: Poet of the Magdalena
Según palabras de Alfredo Vanín, el poeta momposino Candelario Obeso, se levantó de las miserias de la vida marginal hasta convertirse en un gramático, militar, abogado y escritor que puso de presente, en el convulsionado siglo XIX, nuestro triple origen étnico, desconocido por las élites supuestamente blancas de Colombia. Richard Emblin, The City Paper H ad Candelario Obeso (b.1849) been raised north of his coastal Colombia, chances are, he would have been the son of slaves, and as a young man sent to fight in the American Civil War. But around the time of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Obeso was heading to military school in Bogotá, son of a laundress and a teacher, and far from his hometown of Mompós on the Magdalena River. On the occasion of the coup of 1867, the school was closed and he went to the National University where he studied language, literature and law, and, chiefly, began his writing career. His impressive resumé went on to include