“The hugs I received in Guayaquil were quite important,” says Colombian storyteller Pacho Centeno who is coming from his country by motorcycle and will travel to Ushuaia

He was already in Ecuador twice as part of the International Meeting of Oral Narrators Un Cerro de Cuentos organized by the Ecuadorian storyteller Ángela Arboleda. So it’s almost one of the neighborhood.

Francisco Pacho Centeno is scheduled to perform this Friday, October 21 at Casal Catalá in central Urdesa. He comes with several backpacks full of stories, anecdotes and experiences that he has been collecting from the places where he has passed on his motorcycle. This journey that he calls ‘Exploring the patio of my house’ It has various nuances, but above all it is painted with love for his work as a storyteller, one to which he has dedicated himself for many years and which has left him many friends in all the cities he has traveled in his 58 years of life. She has just arrived in Ecuador where she will offer what she knows best.

“I live in a small house. A small cabin in the countryside where every day I can see the sunset and one day I thought that my house goes until sunset and I came to the conclusion that the sunset is part of the patio of my house”, says Pacho, who lives in the Table of the Saints in the Municipality of Piedecuesta, Bucaramanga. “So I decided to do this journey that somehow had her stuck for a long time. I wanted to do it when I was 20 years old, I put it off; then I wanted to do it when I was 35 years old and again I put it off. But I told myself no more. I am already 58 years old and if I don’t do it now I will never do it. So I’m in it and it’s been very beautiful because in each place where I have stopped I have found dozens, hundreds of friends who have not only opened their homes to me but have also opened storytelling spaces for me in Bogotá, Cali, Medellín, Manizales and Pasto. Now I am in Quito on the first day out of Colombia”.

He relates that he has already passed through those Colombian cities and has already told. Even a group of theater actors in Bogotá paid tribute to him. “I have been in the performing arts for 38 years. So I was there with various actors from Latin America who were invited to pay tribute to them. and well, I feel very flattered, so much so that I still don’t believe it. But I got it anyway. I was telling my stories in the Gaytán Room of the Bogotá Theater, a very beautiful place”.

This is the second week of his tour, a journey that he plans to complete in four months to the very distant City of Ushuaia (Argentina), located at the southern tip of South America. “It will be about 48 weeks of travel. I will go to Patagonia, even passing through Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Brazil. In the latter I will be in the city of Sao Paulo. I will return along the Atlantic coast, then I will go up again through the Andes mountain range and I will surely visit Quito or some other city again, preferably to the East because I do not like to repeat the path. The idea is to go down one path and up another. This is how you get to know more people, more things, more landscapes, another gastronomy and above all because you receive different hugs ”, He says.

Centeno points out in his networks “I go with my stories and this dream that no longer admits waiting. See you on the road or on the way back, telling and listening to ‘stories of the road’”. This name has been used for his presentations and in Guayaquil it will not be the exception. This Show It will be full of personal anecdotes, stories of his authorship, magical realism and other verbiage that have accompanied him during his years of artistic life. and that he is carrying in the suitcase of his motorcycle, with which he intends to reach Ushuaia one day.

Centeno has proposed to tell stories in each of the seasons. Is this journey like a life project? He describes it differently. “I say that it is a turning point in life, but it is a project that is going to make a turning point in my life. I am already 58 years old, that means that I am already getting old and what I want is for this old age not to be simple, not to be stupid or simply to wait for the grim reaper to take me away. I want to live my life intensely. That is the first intense experience that I have proposed to do before entering my retirement (laughs). It wouldn’t be like a sabbatical year, but rather four sabbatical months that I’m giving away to tell stories in unknown places. I already know some of them, but it is not the same because they always took me and returned me by plane. But this experience of walking the roads, of reaching my destination and telling stories, I think is unprecedented, I suppose because I don’t know of another storyteller who has done it this way. I know that puppeteers, musicians, actors have done it, but someone telling stories, I don’t think so. PI think I will be the first storyteller to take this crazy journey, but it makes a lot of sense because it is the food for the storyteller’s spirit that is fed by telling his stories. and, at the same time, listening to those of others”.

“In Guayaquil he left his stories and emotions in the endearing Un Cerro de Cuentos (2005 and 2013). Now he comes back in passing and it’s not a good idea to miss it,” says Ángela Arboleda, a friend of Centeno’s.

In the places that Pacho has already visited and will visit, the rule is to tell stories. “At each station (stop), whether my friends organize it if there are any at that station, if not I go to a park and start telling people stories or maybe I go to a bar to tell one another tale. It’s a challenge, I don’t even demand anything for that, just the pleasure of telling stories; I finance myself by selling my books, but if people want to collaborate I will be grateful. It is calculated that the trip should have a presentation of stories every day”.

Do you have a marked route or will you be able to deviate from the path from time to time? Pacho does not rule it out. “Yes, yes there can be. There is a traced route, but the road is the one that rules, this one could tell me ‘it’s this way’, ‘get away a bit’, ‘come closer’ or he can even tell me ‘okay, this is the road, stop now! Go down the Pacific, then go up the Atlantic visiting Cusco, Iguazú, Bolivia, among others, until you get home. That is the route or itinerary in mind. It could even be that I stay, you never know (laughs). Let it be the path that tells me what I should do. So far I have followed the route outlined.

Humor marks the work of ‘Pacho’ Centeno

2013 was the last time Pacho was in Un Cerro de Cuentos. He came despite a tragedy. “My daughter goes with me, she is my companion on this journey and in every day of my life. She is present, so I feel it. On that occasion it was something special because Ángela Arboleda had invited me to the festival, but just about two weeks before coming, my daughter died of an illness that she had been suffering from for several years. Actually I didn’t know what to do and Ángela (Arboleda) told me, if you want to come here, do it. I felt that this was the best way to assume the duel, the sadness. To distance myself from that painful moment, to get away from the people who were embracing me because of the grief, but I wanted to be alone, with myself. Despite that tragedy, I came and was able to count, and I felt good. I think the hugs I received in Guayaquil were quite important to heal that huge wound.”

During his stay in Ecuador, Pacho will be in Quito, Manta Portoviejo and finally, Guayaquil, from there he leaves for Lima (Peru), where his friends are surely waiting for him.

File

• Event: ‘The tales of the road’.
• Date: Friday October 21.
• Hour: 20:00.
• Place: Casal Catalán Guayaquil in Mirtos 706 and Ficus (central Urdesa).
• Tickets: $15 per person, $25 as a couple, $10 for groups of three or more ($10 each) and $10 for the elderly, disabled and students with ID.