The ‘pringamocera’ question, as Chelo de Castro C. would say verbatim, occurred on the night of Thursday, July 13, 2017, at the ‘La Gran Chuleta’ restaurant, in Cali.
After covering in Miami, from Sunday to Tuesday, the entire programming of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, which had the participation of former Colombian player Édgar Rentería as manager of the Rest of the World team, it had arrived 24 hours after the announcement –due to the failure of the Avianca airline–, almost in the afternoon of that day at the InterContinental hotel.
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The ‘Inter’ was the venue, from the anteroom, of the 24th Congress of the Association of Sports Journalists of America, an entity affiliated with the AIPS, the highest body of sports journalists in the world. And in Cali, since the night of Tuesday, July 11, the Italian Gianni Merlo, president of the organization that had affiliates from 168 countries at that date.
As late as I arrived, that night I entered alone through the wide door of ‘La Gran Chuleta’. It was nothing more than taking a few steps inside, when, from the first table on the left side, they called me by my name. It was the Paraguayan colleague Gustavo Benítez, who shared with fellow journalists Héctor Agüero (Paraguayan) and Martín Machado (Uruguayan).
I barely greeted them, because when I heard my name, Carlos Julio Castellanos, president of the Association of Sports Journalists of Colombia (Acord), organizer of the congress, called me from the first table in the center.
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He began writing in 1945, in the weekly ‘La Unidad’ and, shortly after, he moved to ‘La Prensa’. Later, in ‘El Nacional’ and ‘Diario del Caribe’, up to ‘El Heraldo’…
Castellanos kept me, in my capacity as vice president of Acord Colombia and president of Acord Atlántico, with residence in Barranquilla, venue of the next Central American and Caribbean Games, the only unoccupied chair, to his left.
At the opposite end of the table, facing him, was the Paraguayan journalist Gabriel Cazenave, president of AIPS America; To the right of Castellanos, the journalist Konny Mora and at the top, Merlo, president of AIPS.
–President, excuse me –I said, after the greetings, to Merlo, who had Mora on his left, as translator–: who is the longest-serving journalist in the world in activity registered in the AIPS?
Yes, Mr. President –I said–: 97 years old, he writes a daily editorial column and, in addition, he does a daily radio program, both from Monday to Friday.
“An Irishman,” he replied.
– And how old is he? I questioned again.
“83 years old,” replied the Italian.
“Here we have a 97-year-old man,” I assured.
– 97 years old and active?
–Yes, Mr. President –I said–: 97 years old, he writes a daily editorial column and, in addition, he does a daily radio program, both from Monday to Friday.
And, full of pride, I finished:-He is from my hometown, Barranquilla, and his name is José Víctor de Castro Carroll, but he is better known as Chelo de Castro C…
first in america
The question occurred to me on the afternoon of Thursday, March 8 of that year – while Barcelona were making an epic comeback with 6-1 over PSG, who had won 4-0 in the first leg of the Champions League –, when I went to interview the teacher at his home. And it gained strength when, in an internal meeting of the organization, I learned of the announcement of Merlo’s arrival.
That day of the interview, which was published on the 17th of the same month, two days before his 97th birthday, I was surprised that my former writing partner at El Heraldo apologized three times in an hour and a half of conversation, because he had forgotten the name of a soccer player – a few days ago I learned that it was Teófilo Gutiérrez.
But he recounted in detail how goalkeeper José Escorcia had killed him with a kick to the liver, in an argument over a game of dominoes in the house rented by the Atlantic Football League in the 1940s.
He is from my hometown, Barranquilla, and his name is José Víctor de Castro Carroll, but he is better known as Chelo de Castro C…
“It’s just that my memory began to fail me,” he told me sadly on that occasion, while I praised, on the contrary, his lucidity and thought: “This is the longest-serving sports journalist in the world, and perhaps also in general.”
In Cali 2017, Merlo told Mora to pass on the name, and the conversation continued on other aspects of sports journalism training for the Central American and Caribbean Games.
But that same night and, the next day, after a conversation with the Colombian-Uruguayan Julio Comesaña, technical director of Junior de Barranquilla, a team that was focused on ‘Inter’, the Paraguayan Cazenave only asked me about Don Chelo. I told him, then, what I reviewed in that work:
That he began writing in 1945, in the weekly ‘La Unidad’ and, shortly after, he moved to ‘La Prensa’. Later, in ‘El Nacional’ and ‘Diario del Caribe’, until arriving at ‘El Heraldo’, in which he has remained for 40 years.
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That his column, called ‘Palestra sports’, came out from Monday to Friday, regardless of holidays, throughout the year. But since December 2016, due to vision problems, he has gone out two or three times a week (he dictates to a grandson, Chelito de Castro), just since the days that his friend Mike Schmulson died, with whom he started the radio program ‘ Sports Parade’, on April 7 (Barranquilla’s Day) 1953, which even today, 64 years later, is broadcast in the morning on Radio Aeropuerto.
What had published two books: ‘La pértiga rota’ (he practiced athletics, alongside Gonzalo González, GOC, a relative of his wife Judith Vásquez and whom Gabriel García Márquez called ‘teacher’ since he began working at El Espectador in 1954) and ‘Costumbrista watercolors’, this is a selection of columns about the typical things of the city, which he reflected in the last two weeks of the year to give his readers a break from sports issues.
That he used, on occasion, phrases and sayings from Barranquilla at the beginning of the 20th century (‘take me that zarandete top with your nail’, for example) and that he was a staunch defender of the values of the city, so much so that a good part of the scenarios stadiums were named after athletes for their campaigns, such as the Roberto Meléndez football stadium, in homage to the first Colombian footballer hired from abroad…
On October 4 of that 2017, on the eve of the Colombia-Paraguay match for the world qualifiers against Russia-2018, in a well-attended morning ceremony organized by Acord Atlántico in the Combarranquilla Boston auditorium, Cazenave and this clerk delivered to Mr. Chelo, On behalf of AIPS America, Acord Colombia and the local branch, recognition plaques for his career. In Cali, in common agreement with Carlos Julio Castellanos, president of Acord Colombia, it had been approved.
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now in the world
With the journalist and writer Fausto Pérez Villarreal, we decided to participate in the Audio category at the AIPS 2020 World Sports Journalism Awards, with a work on Don Chelo, at the suggestion of Faiver Hoyos, president of Acord Colombia.
Broadcast on the show ‘Esquina Neutral’, which is broadcast by the Caribe Radio Online station, was called ‘Chelo de Castro, 100 years of life, 75 years of sports journalism’. A tour of his brilliant career.
Little by little, among 1,871 works from 129 countries, Chelo’s was passing filters. On the morning of Friday, February 19 of this year, he appeared in the list of the 20 best in the world – he was in that position and third in America. But, most importantly, he made the Colombian ‘visible’ again in the eyes of Gianni Merlo.
The Italian caught his attention, and he had to remember our conversation in Cali. That same day he contacted Carlos Julio Castellanos, interim president of AIPS America, and told him that he needed graphic and video material from the teacher from Barranquilla for a special prize.
To Don Chelo, world record holder for publishing his last column at the age of 100 – the day he turned 100, March 19, 2020 – and who coordinated his last radio program up to two days before that date, on March 22 March, in a ceremony broadcast live, he was awarded the AIPS World Sports Journalism Award ‘Lifetime in Sport’.
This Monday, Barranquilla, the Atlantic coast and Colombia are in mourning, lAfter the disappearance of the figure of journalism in the country.
Acord Atlántico mourns with incalculable sorrow the death at the age of 102 of member emeritus Chelo De Castro, the longest active sports journalist in the world. Irreparable loss for Caribbean culture. We raise prayers and words of affection to his family. #RIP. pic.twitter.com/4a61yOD3my
– ACORD Atlantic (@acordatlantico) June 20, 2022
Estewil Quesada Fernandez
Caribbean regional editor of EL TIEMPO
On Twitter: @EstewilQ
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