On the anniversary of the deadliest volcanic eruption of the last 100 years, Colombians are using the power of dance to heal generational trauma and build a peaceful future.
In a forest in the heart of the Colombian Andes, on the western shore of the Magdalena River, where the Lagunillas River meets the floodplain, lime-green parrots chatter in the canopy overhead, and leaf-cutter ants march over the forest floor like a caravan of settlers heading west. Butterflies the size of my hand flit from tree to headstone to rock. A banyan tree clings to the corner of a dilapidated house like a squid, its tentacles entering through the windows and spreading across the tiled floor.
This is no ordinary forest.
On 13 November 1985, the Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted, melting the glacier at its summit and sending a wall of water, mud, and debris racing down the Lagunillas River canyon. The only thing standing between the waves of mud and the Magdalena River was the city of Armero.
Despite warnings from experts of an eruption, local and national government had failed to organize any evacuations and when the wave crashed in the early hours that Wednesday morning, the bustling city of 30,000 residents and several-thousand seasonal labourers became a mass grave.
In the immediate aftermath, families were separated and some children were given up for adoption despite having surviving family members. Countless bodies were carried away by the Magdalena River while many of those not buried beneath the mud lay rotting at the surface. Time and again, survivors tell me the same thing: that because they never had the chance to bury their children, they can’t help thinking that there’s a chance they are still alive and might show up any day.
Over 23,000 people died and Armero, resembling nothing so much as a great, grey beach, was abandoned.
In the 40 years since, dry tropical forest has reclaimed the terrain, today known as the camposanto – the ‘cemetery’ or, literally, ‘holy field.’
International aid flowed into the area to try and accommodate for the needs of survivors and rebuild the local economy, but the horror was not over yet. In the 1990s, armed violence between guerrillas and paramilitaries engulfed the still-grieving community; kidnappings, forced disappearance, extortion, and drug trafficking became the norm. During one four-year period from 1999 to 2003, 30 civilians were abducted and executed, according to the Rutas del Conflicto database.
The survivors
Yira Ñustes Velandia was due to celebrate her fourth birthday on 13 November 1985; instead she was up to her knees in mud as her parents searched for their family. This is her earliest memory, and she never celebrated her birthday again.
The family relocated to the much smaller town of Guayabal, which gives the municipality of Armero-Guayabal the other half of its name. They later moved away from the area after Yira’s father was threatened by paramilitaries for his political affiliations.
Throughout all of this tumult, Yira danced. Bambucos, tolimenses, and cumbias were popular at home; periods of exile in Bogotá and Medellín allowed her to experience contemporary dance, to study, qualify, and teach. In 2007, she was back home, teaching dance at the YMCA in Armero-Guayabal, when she was kidnapped from her home by paramilitaries. After two terrifying days in captivity, one of the paramilitaries – a former pupil of hers – helped her to make a break for it, advising her to dive and roll down a hill while they were moving from one camp to another at night. She ran all night until, at sunrise, a farmer let her borrow his horse to reach the highway. She believes the order had been given to kill her.
Hans Trujillo Vargas, 32, grew up in Armero-Guayabal being told stories of his grandmother’s house in Armero, known as la ciudad blanca (‘the white city’) owing to the importance of the cotton trade. They would talk of ‘going fishing, the Armero festivals, the Armero town square, that there was an airport; that it was a very prosperous town; that there were many jobs; that there were five banks, so many schools’.
This description made a sharp contrast with the destitution, addiction, and paramilitary violence he saw around him. The cotton was gone too, replaced by non-native cash crops such as rice. After attending a student march in 2010, Hans found out his name was on a paramilitary ‘hit list’. He considered running away to join the guerrillas, but his grandmother convinced him not to, and instead he went to study sociology at the University of Tolima in Ibague.
Hans has a deep love of his territory – the birds, trees, and bugs, the history and the dialect – but he wanted life to live up to the descriptions in his grandmother’s stories. He returned with a determination to give the young people of Armero-Guayabal ‘a place to be and to belong’. At the same time, he wanted a medium through which to speak to young people about environmental issues and the history of armed conflict in Colombia. Yira had the answer for him: dance.
Throwing rocks
In 2023, Hans and Yira, with Yira’s daughter María Paula, established the Corporación Calina Cumbay which offers free dance and performing arts classes to over 100 young people from across the municipality, and some from further afield, with no lesser aim than healing the wounds of the last 40 years of suffering in Armero-Guayabal. Calina Cumbay apparently means ‘rock-throwing friends’ or ‘friends of the rock’ in local Tolima dialect, both a reference to the volcano and a rebuke to the creole elites who once disparaged campesinos as ‘rock-throwers’.
Meeting apathy and scarce funds with relentless energy and imagination, they have begun to make their dream a reality. They have set up their salón in the hall of the abandoned Red Cross building in Armero-Guayabal, driving out nesting birds and planting tomatoes out the back. Hercules the melancholy hound keeps guard.
Bringing together Yira’s background in dance and theatre and Hans’ experience as a circus performer, sociologist and keen amateur botanist, they have created a ‘biocultural school’ that aims to connect young people with their history, community, and the natural environment through performing arts.
When students are unable to catch a lift to the salón, Hans goes and collects them on his motorbike.
What they have found, says Hans, is that dance opens up the world for their pupils, allowing them to ‘hear new sounds, feel new rhythms’, to find themselves on a map and, ultimately, learn about other territories and cultures.
Parents are understandably keen on the free after-school childcare, but one parent, Alesandra, tells me that her son is putting more effort into his schoolwork since he joined Calina Cumbay, as well as growing in confidence. Some teenage members tell me they were attracted by the chance to learn contemporary dance, but many seem to have joined because they look up to Hans or Yira, and only later discovered their enthusiasm for dance and theatre.
Jhon Esmid Gálvez, 20, who lives with his grandmother Rafaela – another survivor of Armero – has been mentored by Hans for many years and has now graduated from Calina Cumbay to become one of its leaders. Of Hans and Yira, he says, it is ‘thanks to them that I am who I am today’. He wants to ‘further empower children so they’re not on the streets’.
The spectre of the paramilitaries has faded, but organized crime is still active in the area and recruiting vulnerable young people. Just this summer, a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed in Armero-Guayabal. Hans knew him and believes he was punished for mishandling a drug deal.
When Hans is at his wits end with how to keep Calina Cumbay running, he often turns to the advice of maestro Hernán Darío Nova, a painter, sculptor, and teacher from Armero. Hernán, 64, was studying in Italy when the volcano erupted. It took him four days to get home and find that his family home was destroyed, his mother and brother killed. He counsels Hans to take it easy, but instead Hans takes out a loan to cover day-to-day expenses until funding comes through from the Ministry of Culture.
Folklore
Colombia is a country that simply loves to dance, and is home to a dizzying array of rhythms and dances, some of which were born here (bambuco, merengue, bullerenge, champeta, and more), and others (such as salsa and reggaeton) which have been imported, adopted, and adapted.
Armero was a town steeped in the culture of dance and folklore and, through the work of folklorist Inés Roja Luna, the birthplace of the sanjuanero tolimense dance, today celebrated across the region. Inés Roja Luna is another who lost her life that day in 1985.
Edison Rubio Rodriguez, 51, lost his two brothers to the volcano. He was a student of Roja Luna and believes continuing to dance means the ‘maintenance of our culture, our values, our identity’.
Yira, who has the strong balance of warmth and strictness typical of all good teachers, says, ‘the people here love to dance the tolimense, but they are not very good at it’. She is putting that right.
Artistic expression is not solely important for the preservation of the culture of the region. It also allows people to give form to feelings they might not be able to put into words. According to Yira, when children dance they can ‘be 100 per cent themselves, they don’t hide themselves’. In her view, dance teaches us to see one another’s humanity.
For the week of the anniversary, Calina Cumbay are putting on at least one event per day in and around Armero-Guayabal, celebrating their progress and bringing the community together.
Ethics of the body
Hans and Yira are not the only people to realise the transformational potential of dance and performance in Colombia.
To mark the anniversary of the disaster, Calina Cumbay teamed up with Compañía de Indias, a professional dance troupe taught and led by Álvaro Restrepo and Marie France Delieuvin.
The members are all graduates of Colegio del Cuerpo, a renowned Colombian dance school established in 1997 with the mission to ‘teach for peace through art.’ Founder Álvaro Restrepo’s aim is that all graduates leave with ‘a new ethics of the body, ethics of care, care for oneself and for others’.
When not performing in London, Paris, or Lima, Compañía de Indias travel Colombia creating participatory, community art as a means to heal the wounds of Colombia’s past.
They spend six days rehearsing in the drenching heat with kids from Calina Cumbay and other members of the community, including survivors such as Edison and Yira.
Álvaro has been involved with commemorating Armero for many years: for the tenth anniversary of the tragedy, he created, with photographer Ruvén Afanador, a series of stunning images that seek to make sense of ‘what it is to be a body in nature, with its destructive power.’
He uses these images as a jumping-off point and an accompaniment to the choreography for this work of art developed with the people of Armero-Guayabal, called 40 años: Derecho a la Memoria (‘40 years: The Right to Memory’).
The dance of memory
Each 13 November, survivors and supporters of Armero gather in the ruins of the city to remember. Some cut back the undergrowth from the plot on which their house once stood, and beneath which their loved ones are presumed to lie. Others simply drink a few beers and share reminiscences.
This year, amongst the headstones and plaques laid in the forest, is a large open-sided tent, and inside the tent a stage garlanded with flowers.
40 human forms sway like trees in the breeze, each draped in a sheet of sheer cotton. Hands on shoulders, they walk as one, tracing a solemn pilgrimage around the corners of the stage. Slowly, the dancers lift their faces to the sky above, then turn down to the ground beneath their feet. From a mound of raw cotton, a head and two arms reach up, forlorn, until eight more arms lift them up and out, bearing the human form aloft: a life saved or a soul being taken to rest. These agitated souls now turn and dash across the space in ones and twos and threes, before coming to stand once more as a serene forest.
Gloria Estela Herrera Gaitán, 74, was trapped in the mud for over 12 hours on November 13 before she was saved. When she was lifted out, she required 37 pins in her skull and her left leg had to be amputated. She tells me the performance was ‘beautiful’ and gave her ‘much to reflect on’, but the detail that makes her the happiest is the raw cotton: she likes the fact that the agricultural history of Armero was not forgotten.
After performing in the holy forest of Armero’s ruins, Calina Cumbay head to the municipal theatre for another performance, this time of Yira’s choreography. Together with dancers from other municipalities, they deliver a contemporary dance interpretation of the history of man’s relationship with the Nevado del Ruiz, with Hans as the fire-breathing volcano. After their bows, 80 children sing Happy Birthday to Yira from the stage.
The healing has begun.
