Searching Google for the least visited or least known UNESCO sites throws up a lot of very remote geographical regions, such as the sub Antarctic which you can easily imagine to be very expensive and complicated to get a passage to. Mompox does not appear in any list, there are challenges to arrive but they are mostly due to a lack of 5 star shuttle services, that the less adventurous traveler prefers.
I’m sure it would be completely wrong to say Mompox is the least visited UNESCO site but it is definitely going to be near the top of the sites that are in the list based on their architectural value. The entirety of the list that a Google search returns shows many places for their geographical significance and not architectural prowess. Sifting deeper you can find many locations you have never heard of; in total there are around one thousand places deemed worthy by the UN, but they all “seem” to have a steady stream of visitors. There is indeed a stream of visitors to Mompox but it is not steady. From a romantic point of view you could argue when the river silted up over a hundred plus years ago and the commercial vessels no longer arrived, then with it the town slowly stopped receiving anyone at all. But with the advent of the plane, motor driven boats, cars and even helicopters it is easier to arrive in Mompox today than it would have been at the height of its commercial life.
There are times of the year when the Colombians descend upon the five-street town. Easter or holy week as it is more commonly known in Catholic parlance is one of those moments. With rich traditions related to the church, colorful processions and more myths and legends than a Hollywood producers studio, Mompox for a few days becomes the centerpiece of Colombian cultural life. But it is not for that it is given UNESCO status, it is for the extensive array of houses that have stood the test of time and for a town that functions to some extent as it always did. A town that offers shelter to the residents in its houses and is still not converted into a museum punctuated with hotels, souvenir stores and screaming school kids on cultural identity visits.
So being one of the least visited makes it special for those that visit? Well yes and also no. The yes, as you can visit a site without pretention, without stress of bumping into things that shouldn’t be there, namely hoards of tourists jostling for a selfie in front of you or a drone whizzing past your earhole. But no if you start to understand the dynamic of the town, how the public schools have to divide the school day by three, i.e. a child only studies for one third of the school day to fit all the kids into a rushed and basic education, you start to wonder if it had a few more tourists it might be a bit better off. A town that has so many riches, a town nominated as one of the most important architectural examples on the planet struggles to offer its residents a place in the modern world. It is of course a symptom that is not only found in Mompox for Colombians, in general Colombian fails to compete on the world stage with everything from security to education, however it is more marked in place that has been elevated by the UN to such a special status. The purists of the world would say it’s possibly a good thing. Look at Venice, who lives there anymore? The city does not function as anything more than a sinking museum piece to be gawped at, albeit an incredibly beautiful one! Mompox is still full of stories, songs, poetry and life of the people. As the sun sets the seven church doors are used as goal posts for games of soccer, the squares are bustling with vendors selling the local cheese and other sundries, at the weekend food stalls pop up and only locals are eating, talking and just living the life that would have been played out by their ancestors before them. In the world of mass migration Mompox is filled with families that are really from there, for centuries and not just blow-ins that populate the majority of the cities of the world.
The magic of a town like Mompox for the modern visitor is in its serenity, in its tradition and it’s lack of ambition and failure to attract tourism. As the sun rises each day, the birds start their daily routine of searching for insects or fishing by the river bank. The lone tourist can stroll along and literally not see anyone else other than a few people with their antique style brooms, something you might see Harry Potter fyling on, sweeping up the foliage that has descended from the trees over night; they are not picking up plastic food wrappings or gum off their shoes. The sunrises and sunsets are not long drawn out affairs as you might see in exotic destinations further from the equator, they are sudden, so any array of colors that might appear are only ever fleeting. The magical realism, a catchphrase adopted by the tourist board from Gabriel Garcia Marquez is not therefore so much in the visual, there is arguably a haze that you can feel as much as see, the magic is in the tradition, the lumbering pace of life. The fauna such as an iguana or lizard will raise its head, salute you until you get too close and then carry on with its basking, soaking up the sun as you might soak up the energy that washes over you.
If you read the UNESCO description of Mompox it repeats over and over that what is remarkable about the town is that the buildings are still used for their original purpose. Whilst in some cases this is a little tenuous as one warehouse for example is now a hotel, there are still families rocking away in their locally made chairs thoughout the day and commerce thrives in cellular phone shops wedged into the back of the church squares, selling their wares as they would have done centuries ago. All this happens without a great deal of force, a natural succession from whatever might have blown in from the east, perhaps spices, precious metals, dyes etc have been replaced by modern Chinese products of the day. And it is this natural succession that UNESCO are trying to highlight, still the same pace of life, a little less commercial than the heyday, but folks just beating to the rhythm of the daily grind of commerce, consumption and social intercourse. The kids are growing up, playing, swimming in the river, studying in the same schools that have been there for hundreds of years. Life goes on, simply, without fuss, without pretention as the older, wiser Momposians recount tales of the past, legends and songs taught by their forefathers and a curiosity of what might be to come.
The jarring fact if you dig a little deeper is that what might be to come may not be too different from what is there now. The politicians will come and go with promises of more tourists, more development, better education and more employment. A plan that would keep families together as inevitably without the above there is not enough to anchor the young in the town that they will grow up in. There is a limit to the filigreed tradition of the jewelry shop owner as one tells me about his day as regular, “regularly bad” he says, as he sold nothing, which from Spanish doesn’t quite translate. With just a splattering of hotels and restaurants, families are not supported by the tourist trade but the community. So in 20 years if Mompox is the same as it is now, for the lucky few that are likely to arrive by car or bus over the concrete monolith that spans the silted up waters, they will most likely feel the essence of time slowly washing over the serene community just carrying on, with the expectation of a change that never comes. Perhaps it will be an even more aged population with less children knocking new memories into the church door with their soccer balls. Or perhaps it will be different, with thousands of Japanese and Chinese tourists descending into the airport after it is reformation (yes there is a perfectly good airport, its just not been maintained in years), with drones whizzing above the 16th century houses and bodegas, taking videos back to the orient from where once the merchants were arriving to the same very banks of the river so far, far away.
Whatever happens, the legends will still be told of the three travellers who were boarded up inside their room for several days and when someone finally forced the door they found three coffins, each with contained a manikin of Christ inside. A neat way to give more color to the representations of Jesus that hang proudly in the churches of the town. The princess Barbara will still be recounted as the beautiful young woman who was locked in the tower of the church by her Muslim father for falling in love with a man who wanted to be Christian. She will still be taken to the mountain, de-robed and when with her father at the point of removing her head he will be still be struck my lightening and she will be free to return to Mompox and live out her life of legend with her husband. Maybe the stories will add more color, more variations from tour guide to tour guide, but then maybe that’s the whole point. What’s the point of having one version when you can have your own, personal experience.
A curious house stands towards the edge of town called the house of the Devil. It’s a relatively new building built in the 1930’s with influence from the Art Deco style. According to legend it is haunted, not so says the man who lives opposite and also passed several years inside the house. It simply was not finished, abandoned to some extent and nobody has ever filled it with their family or business. On the site of the house, according to the same man there once stood a brothel, so that perhaps is a more fitting explanation as to why it has its name. But as it stands, with a guise of looking burned out, however the only fire that has ravaged the building is that of time and the stories that swirl around the chatter of the town as to why it was truly abandoned. The truth is banal, it's likely to be caught up in the mire of hereditary passing, going from one man to ten or so sons and daughters, where a sale would require a dozen people to agree on its future destiny in order to release the property from its current state. Still, like everything else in Mompox it will change when the time comes, in it is own time and not any other.
