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- Church of San Pedro Claver. The bones and tooth-
- less skull of the saint himself lie below the altar, gro-
- tesquely benign. When Cartagena had the largest
- Caribbean slave market, Father Claver styled himself
- "slave of the slaves," caring for the sick, baptizing
- blacks by the tens of thousands.
- Near the church, impious couples stroll toward
the
- city walls, brightly lit with amber floodlights on the
- outside but shadowed within for amorous privacy.
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Lovers call the wall's
niches stone beds.
On the waterfront,
barges and coastal
sailboats are tied
up with cargoes
bananas and hard-
woods. Sailors prowl
ashore, some on Half-
moon Street with bar
girls from the Hotel
Tropicana. Policemen
patrol the middle-
class barrio of San
Diego, where families
have pulled their
rocking chairs onto
the sidewalk, the bet-
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- The soft notes of a Spanish
- guitar create a mellow mood
- at Paco´s, a bar popular
- with tourists and locals
- alike. Outside the empty
- Convent of Santa Clara
- young parents share a light
- monument (facing
page). Pro-
- jected renovation will make
- this 17th-century building
- into a hotel, returning it to
- the mainstream of a com-
- munity that throbs with life
- among cherished reminders
- of its past.
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- ter to visit; their youngsters play games of tapita with
- bottle caps.
- A roar goes up from the old bullring, tonight used
- for boxing. In the fancier restaurants late diners are
- finishing their locally famous coconut desserts. Resi-
- dents are winding down, turning off television sets,
- putting youngsters to bed.
- Soon the garbage trucks will begin their rounds,
- and sailors will head for their freighters to catch an
- early tide. Taxi drivers have begun to wash their cars,
- and newsboys deliver the morning El Universal.
Fish-
- ermen at La Boquilla are hauling in their catch, and
- bright-painted chiva buses bring maids and kiosk
- keepers to the Bazurto market.
- The dark sky turns pale as milk, then red, and,
as it
- has for four and a half centuries, another day begins
- for Cartagena.
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