The Man Who Gave Soul to Puerto Colombia
A memory coming apart
In 2002, Antonio María Suárez Jiménez was crowned Rey Momo at the Puerto Colombia carnival. He was over seventy years old, a lifetime already given to his community, and he danced. That image exists in a photograph. What doesn’t exist yet is the full story of who this man was: co-founder of the Casa Municipal de la Cultura, creator of dance troupes and football teams, parish volunteer, port worker. Someone who, without ever planning it, turned collective joy into a form of public service.
When he died, his story began to scatter across the fading memories of those who had known him. That always happens. What doesn’t always happen is that someone decides to go and gather it back.
His granddaughter, Dorelys Martínez Suárez, wrote a first chronicle of his life at age 14. That text exists: affectionate, chronological, with the limitations that age brings. No psychological depth, no dramatic scenes, none of the voices of those who knew him from the outside. Twelve years later, that chronicle is still the starting point for something more ambitious: telling the story in a way that does justice to who he actually was.
How it gets told
The project has two phases.
The first is the literary chronicle: a long-form text in the tradition of Latin American narrative journalism, with literary prose and journalistic rigor, scenes reconstructed with sensory detail, and a non-strictly linear timeline. The reference points are García Márquez, Tomás González, Leila Guerriero. The structure follows twelve chapters, from Andrés Jiménez Molinares (a diver who helped build the Puerto Colombia pier in the late nineteenth century) through Antonio María’s death and what he left behind in the town.
The second is the documentary: a 30 to 60 minute film that uses the chronicle as the backbone of its script. It would combine voiceover narration, interviews with family and community, photographic and audiovisual archive material, and footage of Puerto Colombia today. The intended destinations include festivals such as FICCI, DocBog, and regional television.
Source material is being collected from multiple channels: interviews with his wife (Isolina Duarte), his three children, siblings, carnival companions, and people from the parish and sports communities; family photographs to be scanned; historical records from the Puerto Colombia mayor’s office, the El Heraldo archive, and the carnival board’s files.
The team
A solo-authored project. Dorelys Martínez Suárez is the writer, researcher, and documentary director. The project also depends on a network of community sources (family members, neighbors, companions from Antonio María’s life) whose voices are an essential part of the work, not merely raw material.
Current status
The research and writing phase is underway. There is a structural draft of twelve chapters, a detailed source collection plan, and interview guides by interviewee profile. The original chronicle (written at age 14) serves as the working foundation.
Family and community interviews are still pending. Existing photographic material includes carnival images and family portraits, among them photos from the 2002 Rey Momo coronation.
The next step is completing the interview round before the memories of those who knew him continue to scatter.