An Impolite Look at Buenaventura, Colombia in 1924

I found in a thrift store this rare book called “Polly in South America” by Lillian Elizabeth Roy. It’s an installment in the Polly Brewster series, young adult fiction about a teenage mountain gal from a Colorado ranch who is taken in by a group of New York socialites. They take her on epic trips where she navigates adventures and whatnot.

I bought the book to see what an author from 100 years ago would say about South America. What has changed? And what has you saying, “the more things change the more they stay the same?”

I’m still working through it but I had to share this gem on Buenaventura, the port town three hours from Cali that is widely known as one of the most dangerous cities in Colombia.

With the rising of the sun that morning, the eager guests of Mr. Dalken were out on deck to see the town of Buenaventura. They had entered the Bay of Choco during the night, and now the yacht was anchored a short distance from the docks of the town. In the half-mist which veiled the city (so-called), the houses of rough plaster, and colored pink, yellow, or white, looked more like a huge bouquet in a tight cluster.

Naturally the girls were anxious to go ashore and take snapshots of the attractive place. But they had to be satisfied for the time being with turns at the seaglasses which were directed at the docks where swarms of blacks were moving huge bags of sugar, tobacco, and other commodities of the country, from the low sheds where they were kept in storage till such times as their freighters came to Buenaventura to carry it away to Valparaiso.

“The notes I have here say that Buenaventura is not a very attractive port to enter,” said Mr. Dalken, coming up to the group that hung over the rail watching the far-off work on the freight boats, and the negroes who worked on the docks.

“Oh! the writer must have been thinking of the shipping only,” returned Eleanor. “But we want to see the pretty little city itself.”

As the others agreed with Eleanor’s point of view, their host had nothing more to say, but he did insist upon ordering a very early breakfast for all, rather than listen to Polly’s suggestion that they go ashore in the cool of the morning and have breakfast at one of the native eating-houses…

“We’ll rush breakfast, but we do not start away on an empty stomach!” decreed Mr. Dalken. Therefore the entire party hurriedly swallowed less than they really wanted to eat, in order to be off without loss of more time.

The town had looked most inviting from the distance that the yacht lay at anchor, but now that the launch with its merry party came ever nearer the docks, the hallucination began to disappear. Buenaventura was a most convenient port for all the tropical exports of Colombia and northern Peru, hence the piles of fruits and other products to be moved to the boats. The naked half-breed men—half negro and half Indian—did the dirty work generally left to trucks or mules in other shipping ports. Also it was a most convenient port for the harboring of alligators, large and small, old and young, in its filthy streams which emptied into the bay.

However, the ladies were determined to go on with the adventure, and the Captain motioned the sailors to continue to the wharf. The nice, snow-white launch belonging to the yacht made its way through the reedy mud which eddied about the logs that upheld the rough, rotten planks of a small dock, thus disturbing the sleep of numerous ugly creatures which, half-submerged, looked more like slimy bits of tree-trunks than anything alive. The girls screamed at the appearance of one upthrusting head and gaping jaws, but this ‘gator had no use for a meal off such dainties as American misses. He had more important business, and that was to scuttle out of their way before a gun made a hole in his carcass.

Mr. Dalken led his friends across the wet, greasy wharf, the ladies trying hopelessly to pick a dry spot for their dainty white-shod feet. Finally they left the slippery, dirty place behind, and were breathing easier; they expected to see a beautiful ancient town of South America—the first port they had entered since leaving Panama.

They found the inhabitants dressed mostly in dirty excuses for clothes, the children playing in squalor and mud, the men lounging lazily about or dozing in rope-hammocks which were slung in front of their clay-baked homes. Also they found more flies, mosquitoes, and gnats to every square inch of human flesh, than could be accommodated; hence, those insects which could find no resting-place where they might feast upon the unexpected delicious blood of the white visitors, swarmed around their future victims in droves, hoping eventually to take the place of surfeited, more-fortunate predecessors at the banquet.

As the sight-seers advanced from the dirty street near the docks, they reached still dirtier streets, or narrow foot-ways, where the natives were too indolent to notice strangers. Only the old women and children tagged after the heels of the yachting party; and the multitude of mutt dogs and guinea-pigs ran this side and that, before and behind, or in between the feet of the disgusted tourists.

Finally the girls could stand it no longer. They had been whipping and slapping incessantly at their exposed faces and ankles, trusting to kill a few score pests, or to drive them off temporarily, but all their efforts seemed of no avail. Matters reached a climax when Polly, walking in front of the others, stopped unexpectedly to make a furious dab at a vicious-looking insect which plainly was drawing blood from her tender instep. The sudden halt, and stooping over, made a game of leap-frog for the girls behind Polly. However, they failed to leap in time; instead, they stumbled over the doubled form just in front of them, so that Eleanor and Ruth tumbled in the filthy street. That was the last straw!

“Dalky, we’re going straight back to a place where we can wash away all remembrance of this dreadful town!” cried Eleanor, angrily gazing at the mud-spots all over her dainty organdy dress and white suede shoes.

“I don’t see why we ever stopped at such a port. Nothing, not even an Inca temple, could survive the fierce thrusts of these beasts that swarm around incessantly. One can’t breathe without taking in myriads of them!” exclaimed Nancy, who dreaded malaria and had brought all known remedies for that fever germ.

Evidently Mr. Dalken had had enough of the place, too, for he led his party back without a moment’s hesitation, sending Jack in advance to have the launch ready to start away. Turning their backs upon three-fourths of the sights of Buenaventura which they had not seen was never regretted to this day!

“The very idea of naming that dirty place ‘Buenaventura’!” cried Polly as the launch started for the yacht.

“It’s the way folks have of giving the ugliest child the loveliest name. Perhaps it is by way of compensation,” remarked Eleanor.

“I wish some one would compensate me for all the swellings I can count on my face,” sighed Mrs. Courtney.

“Lucky for us we wore gloves and veils,” added Mrs. Ashby.

“We should have had steel armor, even the leg casings,” laughed Jack Baxter, who being a man, had worn no gloves and veil.

“Say, Dalky, after this fiasco, you’d better let us choose the stopping-places,” advised Mr. Fabian, who, with a dripping handkerchief, sat dabbing the red lumps on his neck and face and wrists.

“Instead of every one finding fault, why not feel grateful to me for having peroxide, baking soda, and other lotions by the wholesale, on board the yacht—enough to relieve all irritations caused by insect bites,” returned Mr. Dalken, whose bitten face was as crimson as a peony.

As the White Crest fled from the Bay of Choco, Buenaventura and its population, insect as well as human, were left behind, but not forgotten; who could forget while unsightly swellings remained so evident.

The reputation is about the same.

The elephant in the room isn’t Buenaventura, but the changing times of what is acceptable to say in polite company. Consider the only review on GoodReads:

The Polly Brewster books have always erred on the racist side, but this one takes the cake, even for 1924. It could almost be called Polly in South America or How Awful that it isn’t North America, because most of what Polly and her merry band object to are the different lifestyles and all of the brown Spanish-speaking people. Roy is still one of the more skilled authors of girls’ series books, but I don’t think this one is due for a renaissance any time soon.

The interesting fact is that I doubt the author considered herself racist. I imagine she wrote it considering it measured and impartial, enlightened even.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. And the times they are a changin’.

More from “Polly in South America” coming soon!