Cronos, Paloma and Dolce left Bogotá more than a decade ago, but Bogotá has never left them. They are horses with a particular character. They are calm, mentally strong, they endure anything. As they would say in Colombia: they have a street. They live on a 79-hectare farm, El Imperio, in the municipality of Chocontá (Cundinamarca), an hour and a half from the Colombian capital. The spectacular view of the El Sisga reservoir, the moors in the distance and the mountains covered with eucalyptus and acacia trees are an ideal place for any animal. The owner of El Imperio, Santiago Páez, says that since he adopted the three, 11 years ago, they have always been different from his other horses. Makes sense.
Dolce, Paloma and Cronos are part of the more than 4,000 horses that the current President of the Republic, Gustavo Petro, helped remove from the streets of Bogotá as mayor of the city. They were horses that worked with the city's informal recyclers: they pulled carts known as bitches, filled with plastic, wood and every form of scrap metal imaginable. Fox horses, as they were called, could drag more than a ton of waste. They caused traffic jams, filled the roads with feces, and suffered abuse. They not only starred in medieval scenes; They were a public and animal health problem.
All that changed when the Petro Administration said no more. In 2013, it prohibited the use of animal traction and implemented a replacement program in which 2,890 recyclers participated, according to data from the Ministry of Mobility. Those foxes They were forced to hand over their animals. In exchange, many received vehicles to work with, including electric ones. Others were unable to complete the process and received nothing. The collection of recyclable waste began to be done with combustion engines, electric batteries and human power. It marked a before and after for Bogotá, for the foxes and, of course, for the horses.
This is how Cronos, Paloma and Dolce ended up in The Empire. While walking through his farm, Páez, 31, remembers that his father took care of the adoption process. He had to prove that they had a large property, that they could take care of them. He picked them up at the private University of Applied and Environmental Sciences (UDCA), one of the two universities that, together with the public National University, were in charge of receiving the horses.
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The man walks up a hill and calls the horses. Soon about 20 of them run down, plus a donkey named Shakira. “All three of them are calmer than the other horses we have. A horse usually gets very scared, not these ones. It shows that they have experienced things,” he says. This helps, according to Páez, in the horseback riding excursions that tourists take on the farm. The three fox horses are used to being ridden. They are good workers.
Remember that they arrived at the farm full of parasites, with sores and wounds. The youngest, in age and height, is Dolce, at 14 years old. He is white, skinny and has a dark mane. He has brown marks on his back that Páez explains show that the harness with which he pulled the rope was put on incorrectly. bitch. “She was raised in very bad conditions, she has not taken shape,” she says. Despite her size, Dolce rules the pack. “He's small, but he's really screwed,” points out the owner. If he wants to drink water he gets in among the others and drinks. If he wants to be at peace, he lets it be known. “He doesn't leave anything behind,” he says.
Paloma is the only mare of the three. Blanca is much taller and more muscular than Dolce. She is about 17 years old and has a scar on her forehead that is almost the same as that of a famous English magician. “When tourists come, I call her Paloma Potter,” Páez says with a chuckle. Paloma rests next to Surprise, her best friend. Her mane and tail flutter in the wind. Suddenly Surprise gallops away from her and Paloma follows her. “They always stay together. “I don’t know if Paloma is racist,” jokes the owner.
A retreat in the countryside
A few meters away is Cronos, the calmest one, drinking water from a trickle. Brown, a white stripe splits its head, its legs are the same color and a spot lightens its back. Páez says it's probably because he suffered abuse. A horse can live about 25 to 30 years, and this is an older man, about 22: “Surely he has gotten into neighborhoods in Bogotá that you can't even imagine.”
The owner says that when he arrived he bit a lot, and hard. But over time he calmed down so much that he ended up carrying the children who came on a field trip. Now, after living half his life in the countryside, Cronus doesn't carry anyone. He has retired among the green mountains. “He is strong, he could continue working. But he deserves a break,” says Páez. In a few years Paloma and Dolce will be able to enjoy that privilege too.
***
María Cantor and her daughter Sandra Milena Cantor, Conchita and Mile, arrive with a painting full of nostalgia. It shows a road lined with hills on one side and a lake on the other. In the background are Jesus Christ and a brother of Mile “who is in heaven.” The two monitor the scene. Later, two horses and a truck appear, which they received in exchange for their two horses. In a corner, a text: “I remember my faithful friends Rosilla and Arrapán who left a big mark on my heart, I love them very much.” It is signed on June 20, 2013, the day they handed over their horses.
The Cantors are recyclers, they have never known any other job. Conchita is 67 years old and still working. With Mile, 46. Three days a week they leave Bosa, an impoverished area in the southwest of Bogotá, and travel around the city in the van they received from the Mayor's Office, collecting recyclable waste. Then they sell what they have collected in a warehouse. They say they earn about 350,000 pesos per day of work (around $91), and they emphasize that they divide it among the six members of the family. That means that each one keeps 58,000 pesos; about 15 dollars.
They are not poor, in a technical sense: each one adds 700,000 pesos per month, when the Colombian statistical authorities set the 2022 poverty line, the most recent, at 396,894 pesos per capita. They assure that they do not earn more money than when they worked with horses, but that their working conditions have greatly improved thanks to the vehicle. “We don't get wet anymore. We don't sunbathe. We have dignity,” they say. If they could talk, Cronos, Paloma and Dolce would surely say the same thing.
Growing up among horses
Mile grew up on “a little farm” in Bosa, on the river bank, when the area had not yet been urbanized. There, she says, she and her five siblings grew up among horses. She shows photos from the last century while listing a dozen horses she owned throughout her life. “Bertico, Mocho, Princesa, Furia, Caterín… Wow, what a beauty!” She exclaims: her eyes fill with joy. The horses lived in pens on the Cantor farm, where they were trained and Mile pampered them. “They were part of the family. They fed us,” she remembers.
Not all foxkeepers had such an intimate relationship with their animals. For many, they were just a work tool, which they mistreated even in the street, in front of passersby. Others, like Sandra Vargas, who also gave up a horse in 2013, loved them but did not see them as part of the family. “One got attached, but it was also dangerous because they got angry. She had to be careful so they didn't hit us,” she says, and imitates a horse kicking.
Work days were very different at that time, the Cantors say. They left Bosa at 4 in the morning with their bitch, their work tools and food for the beasts, such as carrots and brown sugar. They made a route similar to the current one, but much slower and more laborious: they worked until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. If a horse got sick or tired, the day was even longer.
In 2010 they found out that everything was going to change. Andrés Uriel Gallego, Minister of Transportation of the then president, Álvaro Uribe, issued a decree that established measures to replace animal-drawn vehicles throughout the country. He also announced that the mayors were in charge of bringing those words to reality. Conchita and Mile couldn't believe it.
The farewell
Two years later, with Petro as mayor, the Cantors began attending meetings of the Mobility Secretariat. They also began to learn how to drive the truck they would receive – Mile has never done it: “I'm very nervous, I don't like driving.” They did the paperwork that reflects the delivery minutes of Rosilla and Arrapán, which they still have. And, suddenly, the day had arrived. They remember it like it was yesterday.
“I didn't sleep that night,” Conchita recalls. “We left at 2 in the morning. “It was like a caravan.” In the darkness of early morning, the Cantors and hundreds of other recyclers paraded through the streets of Bogotá. Escorted by the traffic police and the Mobility Secretariat, they traveled about 35 kilometers to the UDCA, on the northern edge of the city. There, they prepared for delivery. “My mom cried a lot. Even the men cried,” says Mile. Then, he says, a man told them a phrase that remained stuck in his memory forever: “Say goodbye, because you will never see you again.” So it was.
More than a decade later, mother and daughter agree that the Government did well: “We always treated them with affection, but it is true that there was a lot of abuse. “It was the best thing they could have done.” However, they still think about them a lot. “At home I have had enough [muchas] photos of them,” says Mile. Half an hour later, she confesses that sometimes she dreams of going back to the old days. “If they put me to drive a little fox with a few little horses, I would do it in love with life,” she says with a flirtatious smile. Maybe one day I will visit The Empire and have that opportunity again.
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