Roses from France: the initial tracks of literature in Pereira

Abstract

Everything has an origin, a moment or a root, and in the processes of writing in our city, of course, we have essential roots. That is what I intend to talk to them today: the origins of literature in Pereira.

The first thing I want to say is that our literature begins to be published in newspapers with very little circulation. Well you know that Pereira was founded in 1863, that is, almost in the middle of the 19th century. It happened that at the beginning of the 20th century, a merchant who lived in Manizales settled in Pereira and brought something that was going to be wonderful for our local history: He brought a printing press which called with its name: the printing of Emiliano Botero. He brought it in 1903 and in the same year published there, according to my research, the newspaper The Pijao. We have not seen any copy of this newspaper; a mystery is of its existence; but it is a newspaper which the chroniclers of the time listed in their inventories. A chronicler as don Carlos Echeverry Uribe reviews this paper and gives an account of it; because he was one of its editors.