In his column “Marginario fugaz” [Fleeting Notes from the Margin], the young Colombian writer, Darío Achury Valenzuela, reports on the formation of the group, Los Bachués. This document is an invitation to young adults in their thirties to work with new ideas toward “un fin esencial” [an essential goal]: “colombianizar a Colombia” [to Colombianize Colombia]. Achury invites his readers to join forces to crystallize an Americanist ideal with a single objective: “hacer de los pueblos de ambas Américas una sóla y única organización en todos los órdenes de la actividad humana” [to bring the peoples of both Americas into a single, unique organization in all spheres of human endeavor]. In addition, the writer states the need to nationalize “nuestra literatura y nuestro arte” [our literature and art], starting with reviving the past, and, at the same time, to be open to new currents of renewal.

First and foremost, this text is ideological and may be studied as a good example of the intellectual agitation and the spirit of renewal that inspired Latin America in the 1920s. This wave introduced a pronounced change in the visual arts, literature, music and dance. The Colombian essayist, Darío Achury Valenzuela (1907–2001), echoed the call issued by the Peruvian intellectual, José Carlos Mariátegui (1894–1930) when he proposed “peruanizar el Perú” [to Peruvianize Peru]. With this call, the Peruvian thinker was referring to the trends that sought autonomy and promoted Indianism, which were like two sides of the same coin presented by the Latin American avant-garde. Achury Valenzuela was one of the founders of the group, Los Bachués—essentially made up of Rafael Azula Barrera (b. 1912), Darío Samper (1909–84) and Achury, himself. Their name was assumed from the earth-mother goddess of the Indigenous people, the Muisca. The group, which was formed in 1930 in the heat of the enthusiasm stirred up by the Colombian artist, Rómulo Rozo (1899–1964), with his sculpture Bachué, madre generatriz del pueblo chibcha [Bachué, Mother Earth of the Chibcha people] (1925). The young adults of the time considered the work to be the one that best interpreted “el llamado de la tierra” [the call of the earth], the motto of the Colombian nationalists. While the personality of Rómulo Rozo was always present, inspiring these theoreticians with his aesthetic, when the group was founded, most of the Bachués were writers. The only representative of the visual arts in the group was the [female] Colombian sculptor, Hena Rodríguez (1915–97). Achury Valenzuela was also cofounder of the Instituto Caro y Cuervo [Caro and Cuervo Institute], an organization formed for the study and dissemination of the Spanish language—as well as a member of the Academia Colombiana de la Lengua.