In this newspaper article, Alberto Llerena recounts the career of Alfonso Suárez Ciodaro, placing emphasis on the three works for which he received honorable mentions at three consecutive regional and nationwide art salons (from 1995 to 1998). Llerena pays special attention to the performance El Ribereño [The Coastal Man], presented at the regional salon held at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Cartagena in 1997. Llerena provides a vague description of the performance and the context for Suárez Ciodaro’s work, which affirms the identity of the Caribbean man, and Colombians in general. Llerena sees El Ribereño as a figure of political resistance to the foreign cultural standards imposed on the Colombian art scene. He criticizes those foreign influences as ideologically and conceptually decadent in relation to Colombian art of the time.

This article attests to one way the work El Ribereño (1998) was understood in the academic context of the Caribbean region of Colombia during a decade particularly interested in the continental identity and he native people in light of the celebration in 1992 of the five hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the Americas.

Journalist and playwright Alberto Llerena (b. 1944) does not provide a thorough description of the performance although he does mention some of the elements it uses; he calls it simply the “dance of the farotas” assuming the reader of a newspaper based in the Caribbean region of Colombia will understand the reference. However, he explains that the origin of the dance began as a “creation” by indigenous resistant fighters in retaliation for the continuous abuse at the hands of the Spanish. On the basis of this idea, the artist builds a patriotic and regionalist discourse that affirms his identity as a Caribbean man. 

Though he uses adjectives like “tri-ethnic” to describe the polycultural nature of both the dance and the performance, emphasizing how Alfonso Suárez Ciodaro (b. 1952) has enriched the dance for the visual arts and for theater, Llerena discounts the importance of external influence on the Colombian art scene. This leads him to formulate a rigid theory that sees foreign influences as “false prophets” that confuse young artists who create derivative and shabby products that Llerena compares to “dirty rags” and “false gestures.” The text exemplifies a strain of thought that envisions deepening cultural roots as the sole method for creation without grasping that foreign influences are equally important. It nonetheless demonstrates a regional context whose discourse is borne from a mix of the popular and the academic.

A contributor to Diario Universal, Alberto Llerena is primarily a playwright, actor, and director. His work has received awards at the Festival de Teatro Universitario (first, third, and fifth exhibitions), an honorable mention at Arte Joven Pierre Daguet, and the Premio Nacional de Autores Teatrales (1966). He has taught the history of theater and acting at a number of universities in Cartagena, Bogotá, and Medellín.