Chocó is the poorest region in Colombia. It is very isolated geographically from the rest of the Colombian territory, abandoned by the government, and the statistics, in addition to raising its alarming rates of poverty, rank it among the most violent areas in the country. These are the facts that typically appear in the press when it deigns to mention Chocó and which most often shape outside perceptions of the region.

 

To illustrate the isolation and the lack of infrastructure in Chocó, in 1954 Garcia Márquez recounted his impressions of a trip to the region with these words, “It is thoroughly sensible to think that if someone had the idea of planting a banana tree (in the Chocó earth), the fruit would have grown heavy with platinum nuggets. However, the reality is that these fabulous fruits would not even have been able to be brought to the nearest market, they would already have begun to rot”.

 

Several decades later, very few of these things have changed, but if in his writings, Garcia Márquez evokes the possibility of bananas bursting with platinum nuggets, he alludes to the natural and mineral riches of the territory. Because, though this is less often mentioned in the media, Chocó is the richest region in Colombia and one of the richest in the world in terms of its biodiversity.

 

This work is first and foremost a reflection on the way one can play with the image with which one reports on a territory, from which narratives can be constructed. But it is also a way of revealing Chocó by approaching it from an angle that is less visible, often overshadowed by a dominant and omnipresent representation. It is an attempt to rise up against the bad news, to bring to light more positive and optimistic narratives. While not denying the Chocó territory’s own realities, Elsa Leydier wanted to talk about its magic, its luxuriance and its wealth — she wanted to talk about its bananas with the platinum nuggets.