As we wait for the light to turn green by the new notary, I think I finally understand something about that day. No one really cared about Bolívar and his campaign, about the three colours in the flag, none of it. It was all about the beat. Adventists and Arabs, even some Muslims, Poles, Swedes, Austrians; paisas, coastal Colombians, cachacos – we all suffered or revelled every year on 20 July, under the intensity of the same sun, the relief of the rain that always poured down that day. You could hear the drum rolls, and you’d move like this: Right foot forward, right foot back, march, one step forward and repeat, right foot forward, right foot back, march,one step forward and repeat… The rhythm was catchy, and the drum went boom, boom, boom, ta-ta tan-tan, boom, boom, boom, all along the main road, all the way to the bleachers of the Wellingworth May baseball stadium by the airport. Your hips swung, and your waist; your knees advanced, and your feet, and even your neck swayed to the pulse. We girls wore our hair as nicely coiffed as possible, each in our own style, though we had to wear dungaree uniforms down to our knees, like early twentieth-century nuns. It was like dancing in a long batucada, just in a very uncomfortable outfit. The baton-twirlers always stole the show – batons spinning in the air, then through their legs – and so did the native school superstars; we’d eagerly wait for them to start breakdancing and have their moment of glory. Everyone had to dance that day. I finally understand the rage Juleen once told me she felt when, in 2012, the Colombian president suspended the school parade in favour of an exclusively military one. It’s not like the army doesn’t already have its own parade every year. It always features a Korean War veteran. As a kid in the school parade, though, I only remember seeing a few scattered soldiers at the end of the route, when many of the school groups lingered on the beach, playing music and dancing.

Taking the road towards the slope, I can smell the traditional bon-bread that bakeries set out at six in the evening. Sheer coconut milk. We rode up past the Colegio Bolivariano, with the Cliff to one side, the neighbourhood where people say sometimes not even the police will go. Circumstances, immigrants. We’re overtaken by a Marine Corps truck from the Cove. I’ve seen lots of them: they come and go full of foot soldiers from god knows where, ogling every passing woman as if they’d never seen one before. At this time of day, they’re probably relieving the soldiers from the checkpoints on the ring road, or maybe heading for the edge of the blockade.