[read blog-style -- first entry at bottom of page]

works of sam libby:HOME

travel narrative by sam libby

Wednesday, January 3, 2007 - post date

The Lost Hebrew Tribe of Antioquia, Colombia

Those that survived obeyed the dream. They fled to the highest

mountains, crossed to the other side of the most desolate deserts.

They engaged the spirit/demon of place. They were shaped by IT.

Their descendants are more like the Indian than the first ancestor

that crossed the water.

Jah D.E.P. (www.libbyhome.blogspot.com)

Christopher Columbus was a Crypto (Secret) Hebrew. His parents were

given the choice of converting to Catholicism, or being burnt alive.

Columbus' first expedition had at least seven other Crypto Hebrews

aboard, including Rodrigo De Triana, the first of the expedition to

see that new and very old world of the Americas.

The first expedition left Spain on August 3, 1492, the day the

Alhambra Decree went into effect which gave Jews the choice between

converting to Catholicism, leaving Spain after being dispossessed of

all their property, or being burnt alive.

Bernal Diaz del Castillo, the chronicler of Hernan Cortes' so-called

conquest of the Aztecs, tells of fellow soldiers, who were revealed

to be Jews (they were found to be circumcised) and murdered on the

spot.

Medillin, Colombia, Antioquia the department (state) that Medillin is

the capital of, was founded in 1616 by Crypto Hebrews fleeing the

Inquisition.

There are less than 4,000 people in Colombia who profess to being

Jews or openly practice Judaism. But Antioquia is a very crypto-

Hebrew place.

Antioquians (Paisas) are the most distinctive thread in the tapestry

of Colombian Culture. Medillin is one of the most conspicuous

entrepreneural enclaves in South America.

Paisas have the reputations of Jews. They're said to be shrewd,

innovative business people. They're said to be frugal (cheap). They

are said to be insular, clannish, adept in living underground lives.

And yet they are also said and are straight-dealing, kind-hearted,

open-hearted, generous, and rugged individualists.

They are the butt of jokes. They are envied. They are original

niggah.

Paisas made Columbian coffee into big business controlling at least 20

percent of the world market. Pablo Escobar was of Crypto Hebrew

ancestry. He made cocaine one of the biggest businesses of business-

as-usual. Paisa businessmen, Paisa doctors made the big cosmetic

surgery business of flying fat, ugly gringos to Medillin and flying

them out cosmetically beautiful with big boobs, and very small,

regular Anglo Saxon noses.

And yet the Crypto Hebrew reality is another disjointed, fragmented

post-Inquisition Latin American/modern reality requiring, calling out

for a new, great synthesis, a great, new integration of experience.

Paisas are returning to the knowing of their Hebrew ancestors.

Perhaps, the Paisas are particularly well set up to do the great

integration of the heretical, revolutionary message of Rebbi Yeshua

(a.k.a. Cheese-us), with the Jewish Gnostic/Kabbala context from

which he comes.

Perhaps, they are set-up by their historic experience to do at least

as great enterpreneural achievements in the not-business-as-usual, as

they have done in the business-as-usual.

Perhaps they are particularly well set-up to obey the dreams, to be

shaped by the spirit/demon of this place, this new and yet incredibly

old place of the Americas.

And to directly engage IT.