Latin America: The Bridge

On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below. . . . It had been woven of osier by the Incas more than a century ago. . . . St. Louis of France protected it. . . . It was unthinkable that it should break.

To the people of the tiny Colombian village of Pauna, snuggling in the Andean foothills a day’s motor drive from Bogotá, the new bridge over the deep, swift Río Minero had seemed as permanent and reassuring as Thornton Wilder’s bridge of San Luis Rey. It was made of wood, suspended from steel cables. Across the 100-ft. span, donkey carts rattled, bringing produce to market. Across it, campesinos and the mountain people trudged to Pauna for the Saturday fiestas.

This time Pauna had a more celebrated visitor: the governor of the department, Don José María Villarreal himself. He came for the dedication of a new highway strip. The day was hot, and after lunch the governor and his aides went down to the river, below the bridge, to bathe. Hundreds of villagers gathered to see His Excellency in a bathing suit. For a better view, at least 200 of them crowded onto the bridge, 45 feet above the rushing stream.

Suddenly, like a taut fiddle string, one of the cables snapped. The bridge floor flipped sideways, sent a stream of men, women & children cascading into the river. A few lucky ones at the bridge ends saved themselves. A few more scrambled out of the water. But most were killed on the rocks below, or were drowned in the rushing Minero.

All last week, downstream from the dangling bridge, the people of Pauna hacked through the jungle on the river banks, looking for their dead. Of the 200 on the bridge, at least 120 died.