Carrying Cartagena

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BP-Getsemani

When the Spanish conquered the Andes, they lured the indigenous locals into newly-built churches by placing fragments of mirrored glass within the gilded wood carvings of ceilings and altars so as to reflect and magnify light from candles. As one of the main outposts of the Spanish in the New World and seat of the Inquisition, Cartagena has seen its share of mirrors; but since then, they have also moved on to become part of  homes. No longer drawn to candles as our only source of light, on a morning walk near the stone ramparts of the Matuna market in Cartagena, one man seems to carry an entire street on his shoulders and a spontaneous moment in a historic city which inspired its native son and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez to coin the phrase “magic realism.”

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