Indiana Jones in Colombia

Preliminary note: This column was originally published in Spanish here:

https://blogs.elespectador.com/actualidad/lineas-de-arena/indiana-jones-colombia

The cinematographic event of this year has been the premiere of the last film in the Indiana Jones series with the farewell of the great actor Harrison Ford of the character that gave him “fortune and glory” to paraphrase the character (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom). Today we are going to dedicate this column to comment on the discreet passage of the adventurous archaeologist through Colombia, fact that had not been detected by anyone until now.

The first book that I published was “Colombia in the cinema universal” (in Spanish, “Colombia en el cine universal. La caza de citas” 2011), a text that includes more than 300 references or mentions of Colombia or Colombians in foreign films, especially made in Hollywood. I must admit that among the omissions I had, was to include the visit that Indiana Jones made to our country, which appears in the film “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (2008), directed by Steven Spielberg.

Since the beginning of the Indiana Jones saga (in “The Raiders of the Lost Ark“, 1981), the character would have flown over Colombia, since his adventures in the cinema begin in a place in South America, with the search of a gold statuette from an indigenous culture. Considering that Colombia was the place where the legend of El Dorado originated and that it has the largest collection of pre-Columbian gold figures in the world (precisely in the Gold Museum in Bogotá), it is reasonable that the story would have been located in our country, but it would have taken place in Peruvian territory.

So, a bit frustrated to know that Indiana had not started its successful adventure film story in Colombia, like the majority of national moviegoers, I overlooked a major detail of the fourth film of the adventures of Professor Jones, when it he engages with his son, whose existence he was unaware of, in search of another mystery, which this time involves Soviets and aliens.

This week and motivated by the media virus and nostalgic for knowing that one of our quintessential movie heroes will not return to the big screen (although with Hollywood you never know), I went back to review the filmography of Indiana Jones and I watched in better detail the fourth movie of the entire saga, despite of historical and geographical inaccuracies. However, at a certain moment the screen showed me something that made me feel like Indiana itself in front of a fundamental archaeological discovery, the map of the journey that the protagonists of the story take through the Amazon River.

It turns out that Indiana Jones with his family and friends, fleeing from the Russians, led by a mysterious woman who is a mentalist and a fencer at the same time, played by Cate Blanchet, travel from Iquitos in Peru to Aramacá Island in Brazil, where it takes place the final part of the story. To do this, they move along the Amazon River and this route corresponds to the Colombian portion of that body of water, approximately 110 kilometers, in which there are towns such as Puerto Nariño and Leticia, the southernmost city of Colombia and the largest importance in our Amazon. In fact, Aramacá Island is located a few kilometers from Leticia.

The image shows, as it appears in the film, the journey of the adventurers. So, I can rectify and conclude that Indiana Jones was in Colombia, enjoying an unforgettable journey, this so that the specialists can add to our country in the list of countries visited by Professor Jones. In the Colombian portion of the Amazon River, there are remarkable sites such as Isla de los Micos (inhabited for Titis monkeys) or Lake Tarapoto, a favorite place for pink dolphins. After all, a specialized traveler like Indiana Jones cannot go wrong.

Dixon Acosta Medellín

Twitter: @dixonmedellin