El destierro de Adolfo León-Gómez: Necroescritura y modernización en Agua de Dios

Abstract: This text reconstructs Colombian poet Adolfo León-Gómez's (1856–1927) banishment, writings, and first experiences in the leprosarium of Agua de Dios (Colombia), placing it in the broader context of a necro-literature emerging from the horrors of the War of the Thousand Days (1899–1902). By paying close attention to the ways in which the press narrated his banishment to this colony and the ways in which León-Gómez narrated it in La Ciudad del Dolor: Ecos de enterrados vivos y del presidio de inocentes (1923), this essay analyzes the political tools given to the macabre and the necrological. First, it argues that León-Gómez practiced a "necropoetics" (Davison) to show how inhabitants of the leprosarium were "buried alive" in so much as they were, because of their condition, deprived of their political rights and, thus, turned into ex-citizens. Secondly, it reflects on the links between modernization, popular music, and poetry to show how musical adaptations and recordings of León-Gómez poetry about Agua de Dios created a pathway to (re)connecting the world of the living (the 'healthy') with the world of the dead (the infirmed) as a reflection on speed and empathy in times of rural modernization in Colombia.