By: Sylvia Davila MM
Bogotá/Copyright
These days, Colombia is commemorating the Constitution written in 1991, which was born from a union of political forces called The Constituent. By the time, I worked with Semana magazine writing its People section. Any given day, the director suggested me to write a profile on one of the constituents. I prepared myself to do my job not knowing how far any given day could take me.
I arrived to the Conventions
Centre, went through multiple security measures, and interviewed a Constituent.
Before leaving he asked ‘would you like
to be in a session? I said yes. He
said: Follow me and rushed through
the corridors. We entered into the Hall. On one side, the table for the
collegiate presidency, facing it multiple seats for the constituents. A wooden
fence encircled the place. Behind it, platforms staffed with journalists.
Walking fast behind him I took a
look at the place. The famous oil on canvas of the historic Angostura Congress came to my mind. ‘It
must have been something like this’, I thought. At that point, my guide went on
his way towards his seat. Standing there in the middle of the Hall, I looked
for a place to sit myself quick without disturbing the session. Just there,
beside me, there was an empty seat from where I had a panoramic of the Hall and
a good view of the Presidency table. I sat down to take some notes. In
a certain moment, I looked up and there I saw - at the other side, behind the
wooden fence, on the journalists’ platform - Maria Paulina, a colleague from
the magazine who was in charge of the coverage, her eyes popping out her head,
her arms parking an airplane, her mouth making a perfect “O” that silently but
certainly cried “No!!!” I understood the alarm but did not quite get the
reason.
Suddenly, I sensed that, in fact,
the place I had chosen was a little bit too lit up. I turned my head and the
whole Hall stared at me, hundreds of curious and skeptical faces. At that
precise moment, a very well behaved lady approached and murmured in my ear: “Excuse me. You are seated in the Secretary
of the Interior’s seat.”
Before I closed my notebook, stood
up, and left the place with the dignity the occasion required and without
bursting into laughing, I said to myself: “Hm!
Had I found a different seat, I would have been left out the canvas.” SYLVIA DAVILA MORALES®
No comments:
Post a Comment