The launch of the Voyager space probe (Viajero in Spanish), which is in orbit 19 thousand kilometers from the Earth today, inspired the managers of the project. National News Javier Ayala and Gabriel Ortiz came up with an idea that revolutionized news television at the time.
This was a Renault vehicle, version 9 – range 2 – recently introduced by Sofasa in Colombia. and the famous Renault 4, which promised to replace the “Amigó Fiel”, was the family vehicle that realized the economic opening in Colombia at the time, which allowed all brands in the world to move on several paths. nation until the end of the 20th century.
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El Viajero was a ratings success for a prime-time news program with great penetration, broadcast on public television channel 2 and hosted by Spaniard José Fernández Gómez and reported by a dozen young journalists who would later become famous.
We all got into the vehicle that traveled the streets and highways of the country non-stop for four years.and this seemed invincible against the roads of a geography far more rugged than the present.
We did it: Arritokieta, Carmelo, Estupiñan, Porquenza, De Bedout, Fajardo, Ayala, Hung, Esmeralda and many others who will forgive me for being excluded due to my lack of memory.
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The traveler was urban, international, been to the Vatican, made his first live broadcast on a Colombian news program about cycling tours in France, Spain, the Giro d’Italia, went to the Amazon and San Andrés. by boat and train Santa Marta was everywhere without missing any possible or even impossible place.
Daniel Coronell, who made me a historian and who, at only 21 years old, is the youngest editor-in-chief of any news program in Colombia, allowed me to take the longest excursions about him. I remember leaving for a year in January and returning to Bogota in December after twelve months of recording the most incredible stories. my memory.
El Viajero only recorded normality, it was banned from massacres, there was daily news in a country where blood could be watched on television in front of the horrified gaze of a generation of Colombians accustomed to horror in those years, it was a period of terror. Escobar, Gacha, Rodríguez, Tirofijo and Cura Pérez are a mix of sinister characters who are simultaneously building a history that will not be repeated.
That’s why I say this El Viajero not only taught viewers how to watch television, he also taught some journalists how to make television, as they explored a country that went beyond the capitals. and they had problems, and because it was Nacional, we had to honor that promise and be consistent with that name as we toured Colombia.
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The traveler went through forests, plains, sea, mountains, I found him in faded photographs in many places in Colombia, hanging on the walls of places that have survived from the time when we stopped to eat with the crew. a cameraman, a sound engineer and the driver of an element that became the only link between the regions and Bogotá in a centralized country before the 1991 political constitution.
Javier Sánchez, an industrial engineer from Bogotá, was just four years old when El Viajero was born in 1988, and he was staring in wonder at the television screen in the living room of his home with his family. He says he remembers the introduction of the news program, which ended the car’s passage through various parts of the country, with the echoing words of an announcer: “Tell El Viajero and Colombia will know”.
This promotion registered like a trace in his mind, and perhaps that is why, at the end of the highest peak of the epidemic in 2021 and at the bottom of a second-hand car sale on 76th Street in Bogota, a Renault 9 series was discovered. 2, one owner, French keys included and only three parts worn, fell in love at first sight, fulfilling his life dream.
From a very young age he cherished the idea of restoring one of these and secretly having someone decorate it to revive a symbolic vehicle. Javier, who is now the owner of the vehicle, adapted the vehicle, adjusted a few details, and took it to a mechanic who is also an expert in Renault. and prepared to subject it to the harshest of tests, presenting it for qualification in front of the jury so that it would be awarded classical plaques, an accolade that only those who manage to maintain a legacy can receive.
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The tests went smoothly, and within a week the car was “dressed” in its 1987 El Viajero livery to be presented at the annual meeting of classic vehicles of the same brand, which was held on Sunday in a parking lot in the Bogota savannah.
Javier explains that the exhibition is an explosion of curiosity and nostalgia, that people under the age of 30 love the colors and older people love the history. Thanks to that white magic that social networks sometimes become, the images Javier posted began to reach many people, including me, who watched with amazement in HD quality, and this story re-emerged in the 21st century, full of good things about four wheels.
I easily reached Javier, asked him to let me accompany him for an afternoon in his Viajero, until that moment I felt that he belonged to me, and in return I would write a television note with him as I had done before, on the way to La Calera. So 35 years ago, he went back in time to the living room of his parents’ house, and I to the roads of Colombia.
It was a fun experience, but above all, my son Jacobo, who was excited and nostalgic, also participated in this scene; My son Jacobo, to whom I told many things about my 60s when I was 17 and who could not believe seeing in person what he had observed many times in the Photos.
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This engineer from the Regional University, a university professor from Barranquilla with a wife and a young daughter, with two specializations, a master’s degree and now a “doctorate” in history, but from television I gave him a badge with news microphones on the news. Yes, I kept the button they gave us for Christmas to decorate the collar of the jacket, and that’s the only physical thing I remember from that news.
We owe all the journalists of the National News and some of the surviving viewers of that time a greater debt of gratitude to Javier Sánchez Rozo for his success.
By Óscar Ritoré
Historian and reporter for National News.
Time Special
Source: Exame
