Farmers from the municipality of Fredonia in Southwestern Antioquia observe as pilots Alex Villa and Mayer Zapata cruise between Medellín and Cali in their Paragliders, during a four day championship. Having crossed the Alps earlier this year, the Paragliders took advantage of favourable wind to entertain locals with acrobatics and low altitude flying techniques.
Nestled in the Antioquia massif, Fredonia sits at 1,800 mts and was founded in 1790 by farmers in search of fertile soils in which to plant coffee, plantain and tomatoes. Fredonia was the largest producer of coffee in Antioquia during the years of La Violencia, as the town’s voters were divided between Conservatives and Liberals. By 1947, the Liberals dominated the town’s council and a regional trunk railway connected the town’s coffee and cattle haciendas with the departmental capital, Medellín. In the years following the end of World War II, Germans and Italians sailed across the Atlantic to the central volcanic highlands of Antioquia to set up local businesses and work with the 1079 farms listed with the official coffee census. Every year in December, Fredonia hosts its own coffee festival, not unlike the much-visited one, in Calarcá, Quindio.
