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🇵🇾 Paraguay /Culture & Society

Petronio Festival opens in Bogotá to help Cali recover from earthquake

From ABC Color · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

In-depth From a news agency Context piece
  • The Petronio Álvarez Pacific Music Festival moved to Bogotá this year after the earthquake damaged its usual host city, Cali.
  • About 120 Cali-based traders and artisans are using the event to showcase Pacific Colombian culture and raise money after suffering earthquake-related losses.
  • Musicians, including 2025 festival winner Patacoré, are performing traditional rhythms with instruments such as the cununo and guasá.

Orfelia Casquete spent two days listed as missing after Colombia’s major earthquake. This weekend, she turned up at an unusual location for the Petronio Álvarez Festival: Bogotá, where the event moved after the destruction suffered by its usual host city, Cali.

Casquete, a trader and artisan, had been traveling with a colleague to the traditional Pacific music festival when a landslide triggered by the magnitude 7.4 earthquake blocked the road between Buenaventura and Cali. “In the end, we managed to reach the city, but because we had no signal, they considered us missing for two days,” she told EFE.

In Bogotá, she displays hats made from tetera palm and amulets carved from a mixture containing coconut shells. Organizers gave her a space at this unusual edition of the festival, which she described as “an opportunity to meet and interact with other colleagues who have suffered the same tragedy.” For artisans and traders in similar circumstances, taking part offers a chance to raise money to cover earthquake losses and avoid the financial damage that a last-minute cancellation would have caused.

In the end, we managed to reach the city, but because we had no signal, they considered us missing for two days.

· Orfelia CasqueteThe artisan described how the earthquake and a landslide delayed her journey to Cali.

Around 120 Cali traders have come to the Colombian capital with hairstyles, clothing, sweets, jewelry, traditional spirits and bottles of viche cream. The festival presents an African heritage visible in colorful dresses, rag dolls and Afro-style hairstyles. Music groups accompany the market, producing Pacific rhythms with the cununo and guasá, instruments made from wood or animal hide.

Patacoré, which won the 2025 festival’s Marimba and Traditional Songs category, is among the bands on stage. The musicians wear bright red shirts and regional hats, while the singers wear colorful Afro-Colombian dresses, wide skirts and turbans. The article ends as lead singer Andrés Steven Quiñones, from Tumaco in Nariño, describes music as a bridge between...

An opportunity to meet and interact with other colleagues who have suffered the same tragedy.

· Orfelia CasqueteShe explained what participating in the Bogotá festival meant to her.
About this summary

Originally published by ABC Color in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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