Growing up, my dad mostly only saw his father on the weekends.
My grandfather worked hours away from his family, in a little town built and run by the Texas Oil Company. He was an electrician in Puerto Niño, which was styled after a typical American city.
A couple times a year, the company would fly the workers' families out for a weekend. My dad remembers a pool, and American-style diners. The managers' kids were there too -- they were American. The Colombian kids and American kids didn't interact -- they didn't speak the same language, my father said. But kids can get along fine playing in different languages so maybe there was something else there.
My dad's family would pile into a dusty old pick-up truck and ride around the town. It was fun, he said. He got to hang out with his dad. But he doesn't remember much -- he was too young. He was seven when his father died.
I asked if he thinks there would be any remnants of Puerto Niño today. "That was in the early '60s," he said. What he meant is: everything is gone.
If anything, he said, the guerilla is in control of it.
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