Andrés Hurtado García

format_list_bulleted Contenido keyboard_arrow_down

ImprimirCitar

Andrés Hurtado García at the base of Monte Cervino or Matterhorn in the 1970s

Andrés Hurtado García (1941) is a Colombian journalist, environmentalist and photographer from the city of Armenia, Colombia. He belongs to the community of the Marist Brothers. He is a teacher at the Champagnat School in Bogotá where he teaches in higher grades. Graduate from the Universidad del Valle and Doctor in Literature from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) (1976), graduated with the thesis: The novelistic of violence in Gustavo Álvarez Gardeazábal, journalist with a degree from Ministry of National Education of Colombia, tourist guide of the SENA National Learning Service and renowned nature photographer for more than 50 years.

He is an independent journalist, a lover of nature, who for 50 years has promoted the preservation of the Environment under the premise of 'knowing to love and loving to preserve'. Without a doubt, he is the one who knows the Colombian geography best thanks to his frequent journeys through most of the Colombian landscapes, from the coasts to the snow-capped peaks without leaving aside the jungle and the plains.

He has won numerous national and international awards for journalism and the Environment, including the Simón Bolívar National Journalism Award. He has a biweekly column in the newspaper El Tiempo, and a weekly column in the newspaper La Patria and is a writer for several national and foreign magazines related to the Environment. Although less known, his literary articles in magazines and texts are also worth highlighting. academics.

In Manizales some spiritualists declared him the reincarnation of Ramaputra Rawalpindii who was a wise and holy monk who lived in the forests of the Himalayas in northern India in the 17th century VIII. Some time later monks from Nepal and Bhutan made the same declaration to him.

Biography

Childhood

He was born and raised in Armenia, the son of a coffee-growing family. From a very young age his parents instilled in him a love of nature. His mother with the story that "The rainbow swallows people in its contact with the earth" She motivated the boy Andrés to go out into the field and chase the rainbow. After he returned without having found anything he told him:

"The most important things are always farther away."

Along with the stories of runaway mules, tigers, downpours, stars and mountains that his father, who was a mule driver in his youth, told, Andrés grew up motivated to discover nature.

At the age of four he got lost going up the Quindío River and was found after an intense search. At the age of seven, he climbed to the summit of Nevado del Ruiz in the company of the Scouts from the San José de Armenia School. At this same age he began his familiarity with spiders, and at the age of seven he made a small discovery that he described as follows: "No poisonous animal stings the ground on which it sits unless it feeds on that ground." My hands are your floor. Elementary!". This statement refers to terrestrial animals, such as spiders, scorpions, and scolopendras. Applying the principle that these animals do not bite the ground, he played with banana spiders without clearly knowing the danger they entailed.

Youth

From a young age, Andrés realized his vocation for teaching, he joined the Community of Marist Brothers and has dedicated himself to education. Here is his explanation:

"I studied with the Marist Brothers at the San José de Armenia School. There I was in the scout troop with Brother Pío Miguel. He was a man with a deep love for Nature and I wanted to be like him. It's that simple, right off the bat. The years would teach me that I chose well. Being an educator is the most beautiful job of men. When God became man he did not become a journalist, much less a senator of the republic. How are you! He became Master & # 34;

Teacher

As a teacher he has trained more than 50 environmental leaders in Colombia and worldwide. Work that he has achieved thanks to his example of deep love for nature, his press writings, his conferences with slide projections about his trips, many of which he has taken his friends and those who wanted to accompany him, and the implementation of Important Environmental Educational Projects, such as the management of ecological outings for all grades of the Champagnat School of Bogotá following its motto of "Champagnat Loves the Earth".

In the literature and general culture classes that he teaches to the final year young people of the Champagnat School in Bogotá, he instills in them a great love of nature, a great sense of belonging to the earth and a deep sense of communion with all beings in the universe.. The poem by Pedro Bonifacio Palacios (Almafuerte) entitled: "Piu Avanti!"

has become an anthem of his students.

Don't give up, not yet overcome,
do not feel slave, or even slave;
Trémulo de turkey, think bold,
And take a hard time, already hurt.
Have the throbbing clove
that is old and decayed, it becomes nailed again;
not the intrepid cowardly turkey
that loves his plumage to the slightest noise.
It happens as God who never cries;
or as Lucifer, who never prays;
or like oak, whose grandeur
He needs the water and doesn't implore it...
May he bite and vocifere avenger,
already rolling in the dust, your head!

Environmental Promoter

He is famous for having made known nationally and internationally one of the natural wonders of Colombia that is located in the Sierra de la Macarena, Caño Cristales. He called it "The River of Five Colors", "the river where the rainbow melted", "the most beautiful river in the world", " the river that escaped from paradise when that happened" having been the explorer who, with his photos from 1977, made this place of Colombian ecotourism recognized. He also made "La Puerta de Orión" known in Colombia. (Guaviare) which he called the most beautiful rock in Colombia. He also made the Jirijirimo stream widely known in the country, which had already been visited in 1941 by the American scientist-explorer Richard Evans Schultes.

Part of his life, known in ancient times for his special skill and knowledge of handling spiders and scorpions, has been recounted by the writer Gustavo Álvarez Gardeazábal in his novel El Bazar de los Idiotas (1974) and which was a Caracol telenovela in 1984 with María Eugenia Dávila as the main actress.

He is one of the pioneers of ecotourism in Colombia and also one of the promoters of Colombian mountaineering. He is the pioneer of school environmental education in Colombia. He is currently the organizer of the Mountain Week Archived on November 5, 2016 at the Wayback Machine., Annual cycle of mountain and outdoor life conferences and exhibitions that takes place in Bogotá and which in 2019 reached its XXII version. Every year, in addition to the mountain theme, an ecological component is added and thus the Week of the Mountain and the moor, the mountain forests, the sea, the fauna, the flora, the desert, the rivers, of Antarctica, and in 2019 the ecological component was the Páramo de Pisba: 200 years of the liberating route. The mountain week held at the Champagnat School in Bogotá is attended by guests from the most important mountaineers of the world: Kurt Diemberger, Juanjo Sansebastián, Carlos Soria Fontán, Iván Vallejo, Ramón Portilla, Chus Lago, Sebastián Álvaro (director of the famous Spanish television program called "Al filo de lo impossible"... He was also an advisor of the Viajes & Aventura Magazine. And in Spain he was editor of the magazine La Estafeta Literaria and wrote reports for the newspaper "YA", published in Madrid. Both magazine and newspaper, now defunct.

Groups of nature guides such as Caminantes del Retorno and Colombia Secreta have developed around him, of which he is the founder and current advisor. From there he continues to spread his love for nature and show the beauties of Colombia on the trips that he periodically schedules throughout the national territory.

He has been the victim of two attempted attacks on his life, for his work as an environmental promoter. And he is frequently invited as a lecturer in Colombia and in different countries, especially in Europe, having given lectures at the Ateneo de Madrid. In 1974, with the presence of the entire Spanish-American diplomatic corps, Andrés' conference was about the 50 years of the appearance of the Vorágine by José Eustasio Rivera.

Andrés highlights Silence as the most important thing in ecotourism, listening carefully to the sound of things. For him, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's thought is axiomatic: "Let me feel the immense music of things".

Andrés is cataloged along with Jorge Ignacio "El Mono" Hernández Camacho as the father of ecology in Colombia according to the Tertulia Tropical Magazine.

Mountaineer

In Spain, the National High Mountain School of Madrid, a subsidiary of the Spanish Federation of Mountain Sports and Climbing (FEDME), was linked to the school. Where he quickly became a climbing advisor and teacher.

He has climbed various peaks in Africa, Europe, Asia and South America. For him, mountaineering is not a sport but a philosophy. In Colombia he has climbed Nevado del Ruiz 38 times.

Filming Esteban Vicente's winter climb to Naranjo de Bules in February 1977, Andrés rolled 200 meters up the vertical wall of the mountain; He had several serious injuries.

On July 18, 1982 (during the World Cup in Spain) he suffered a fall through a crack in the Nevado del Ruiz, where he remained in the snow for 3 days.

In 1964, wanting to undergo the test of loneliness, he remained at the summit of Nevado del Quindio completely alone for 15 days, with only the tent, a pot and food. He did not carry books, radio, or magazines, in the style of Henry David Thoreau, who has been one of the great philosophers and writers who have most influenced his life. In the 1960s he founded the Cali Mountaineering Club of the Colegio de San Luis Gonzaga which was the first mountain club in Colombia and with which they explored and climbed many mountains in Colombia. Andrés's special predilection is volcanoes and so he slept in the crater of Azufral, Nevado del Ruiz, Nevado del Cumbal and Galeras. In these last two he lived adventures that could end in tragedy.

Work

Photography

Thanks to some of her photographs, Jackeline Kennedy declared the Jirijirimo waterfall one of the most beautiful places in the world.

In 2005 he participated in the exhibition "Is the roll over?" about the book "History of photography in Colombia 1950-2000" at the National Museum of Colombia, an exhibition born from research by art critic Eduardo Serrano. He has taken more than 3 million analog photographs and more than 10 million digital photos of Colombia and the world. Many of his photographs have been and continue to be published in countless newspapers and magazines in Colombia and the world.

In several countries such as Spain and China, exhibitions of his photographs about Colombia have been held. This is what the embassy of the People's Republic of China in Colombia reported: "The exhibition "Colombia Secreta y Maravillosa", with 37 works by Colombian photographer Andrés Hurtado García, opened on June 24 [2006 ] at the National Library of China, located in Beijing"

Likewise, he has projections of his photographs on the last Friday of each month at the Champagnat School in Bogotá. There he presents photos taken in different natural settings and cities in Colombia and the world.

Books

Andrés has published four luxury books with Villegas Editores:

Colombia Secret (Unseen Colombia), 2004. Listed as the best travel book at the New York Book Fair. This book had a special presentation at the Chinese National Library in Beijing where an English copy rests. In addition, the then president of Colombia Alvaro Uribe Vélez gave a copy to Pope Benedict XVI in his official visit to the Vatican.
Caminando Colombia (Trekking Colombia) Archived on July 12, 2020 at Wayback Machine., 2012. Listed as the best book of photographs at the New York Book Fair. These last two books have been the most selling luxury books in Colombia.
National Parks of Colombia, 2018. In this book the author tells the adventures he has lived in the National Natural Parks of Colombia and the photographs are by Gabriel Eisenband and Andrés Mauricio López.
Paraisos de Colombia, 2021. In this book there are 15 paradises to which, as the author says, “I am excited. Five regions of the country: Cordilleras, Atlántico, Pacífico, Llanos Orientales y Selva Amazónica. From each region I choose one or two representative landscapes and, from them, I extend through the environment... For all readers in love with the country, here are my loving and hard steps for the beautiful and sometimes tormented skin of Colombia.” In 2022 this book won the gold medal awarded by the Best Travel Book Award.

Other books are the following:

My feet smelly of roads1994 Travel reports.
Letters from the road1988. (Commemorative Edition, 2013). The author expresses his philosophy about life, paths, spirituality, death, destiny...
Approximations to Gustavo Alvarez Gardeazábal1977, co-author. Literary criticism.

Co-author of photographs of the following books among others:

National Parks of Colombia.

Plains of Colombia.
Amazonian Colombia.
Colombian Pacific.
Faces of Colombia.
The Colombian Caribbean.
The Orinoco.
Sierras y serranías de Colombia.
Colombia, cultural and natural heritage.
This is Colombia.
System of natural national parks in Colombia through its management plans.
Colombia Natural Parks.

La Vorágine by José Eustasio Rivera is one of the books that Andrés Hurtado García knows inside out, in addition to many poems from Colombian literature. You can see a page of the Vorágine recited by Andrés on YouTube.

Currently, Andrés is giving a series of LIVE talks that can be seen on the following YouTube channel, where he tells of his life and work, as well as countless anecdotes from a life dedicated to nature and exploration.

Awards and recognitions

Andrés Hurtado is one of the Colombians who has received the most decorations in the country, having received more than thirty important awards and being declared 'exceptional and out of competition' in several of them.

Among others:

FRANCE DEPORTS MEDALLA. CHAMONIX. 1974
NATIONAL PREMISSION OF PEACE ARBOL ECOLOGY.
ORDER “ORO RING” MONGÜÍ, BOYACÁ.
CONDECORATION “LINE REALLY” _
NATIONAL PREMISSION OF BLOOD SIMON PERIODISM. 1991
DECLARADO “FUERA de CONCURSO” IN THE FIRST NATIONAL PREMISSION OF ECHOGIC PERIODISM, CPB, 1993.
FIRST NATIONAL PRIME OF SCIENTIFIC PERIODISM, CPB, 1994.
TURISM NATIONAL PRIME, COLOMBIANO, 1994.
NATIONAL PRIME OF PERIODISMO, CPB, 1996.
DECLARADO “EXCEPCIONAL AND FUERA DE CONCURSO” IN THE FIRST NATIONAL PRIME OF AMBIENTAL PERIODISM, AMWAY, 1998.
PREMIO DE PERIODISMO AMBIENTAL, “EXPOAMBIENTAL 2000”.
PREMIO MANOBI, MINISTERY OF THE ENVIRONMENT, 1998.
FINALIST OF THE BOLÍVAR PREMIUMS OF PERIODISM, 1995 and 1998.
SCOGGED LIKE THE PERSON OF THE YEAR BY THE BOGOTANA JUVENTUD, 1996.
_
CANDIDATIZED TO THE WORLD PREMIUM OF SULTAN GABUS ECOLOGY.
CANDIDATIZED TO THE UNITED NATIONS GLOBAL PREMIE, 1992.
Order of the QUINDÍO in GREAT CABALLERO. 1996
FINALIST OF THE WORLD PREMIUM FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PERIODISM OF THE “IUCN”, INTERNATIONAL NATURAL CONSERVATION UNION, 1999.
PREMIO ORDER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL EXCELENCE JOSÉ CELESTINO MUTIS, CONCEJO DE BOGOTÁ, 2010.
ELEGIDO como UNO de los PERSONS ILUSTRES del DEPARTAMENT del QUINDÍO, 1996.
CONDECORATIONS OF GUAINIÍA, PUERTO INÍRIDA, GUAVIARE and VICHADA.
CONDECORATION OF MACARENA.
ILUSTRE AND ADOPTIVE SYSTEM OF MANIZALS WITH ORO WALLS AND GREAT COMENDATOR'S ORDER.
ELEGATE AS “The COLOMBIANO EJEMPLAR.” COLOMBIANO. MEDELLÍN. 2014.
PREMIO “VIDAY AND OBRA”. NATURAL NATIONAL PARKS AND PROTECTED AREAS. 2014.
Order. “JOSÉ EUSTASIO RIVERA”. HUILA's most important condition. 2015
IBAGUÉ CITY. 2015.
THE DEPARTMENT OF TOLIMA. 2015.
CAFÉ's command, the highest decoration of the Quindío Department. 2016.
Decoration of the BOGOTÁ TRADE CMARA. 2.018.
MEDALLA DE ORO DEL PREMIO BEST TRAVEL BOOK 2022 (For the book Paraisos de Colombia)
BOCAS REVIEW. AUGUST 2022

Some concepts

“The ecological conscience of much of the Colombians is due to Andrés Hurtado García,” said then President César Gaviria Trujillo.
“In Colombia talking about Ecology is talking about Andrés Hurtado and referring to Andrés Hurtado is thinking about Ecology.” He tells the jury's record that he gave him the NATIONAL PREMIO OF BOLÍVAR SYSTEM, 1991.
“With the lucid exception of a couple of press columnists, - Andrés Hurtado in El Tiempo and Captain Ospina Navia in El Espectador -, nobody in this country cares about the destruction of Nature,” wrote Antonio Caballero in SEMANA Magazine, #778, 31 March/9

Contenido relacionado

Más resultados...