THE MAN OF CORREVEDILE

ERNESTO McCAUSLAND SOJO

For: ERNESTO McCausland Sojo - Journalist - Barranquilla, Colombia

PUBLISHED IN THE HERALD, JANUARY 12 OF 2007

In the facade of the Barn "Point 8" of the Market Chiquinquirá, is not warnings of liquors neither of promotions of winning tapas, neither anything for the style. There sentences are read like this, of Óscar Wilde: "That speak of me, well or bad, but that they speak."

The one that the facade of a store has become a public board of popular culture is something that should surprise anybody if one knows its proprietor, Álvaro Serrano Duarte who among other things—with base in its experience like tradesman—it possesses a thirty of own sentences, that is: "A merchant knows how much she sells, but she will never know how much she stopped to sell."

Serrano Duarte has reason to know. Originating of Zapatoca, Santander, arrived 26 years ago in Barranquilla, incited by its uncle's promise, Guillermo Duarte who told him that in this city the money appeared in rolls thrown in the street.

Eight spread later, Serrano Duarte learned to tip of blows that the sentence doesn't have anything of certain, the luxury has been given this way of writing a titled book: "How a millionaire Tradesman to be and not to become crazy in the intent."

It is one of the four books that has published: "Memories of the Future", "The Culebrero" and "Everything for her", an exciting story about the daily life of a tradesman in Barranquilla.

Serrano Duarte is, in fact a multifaceted man: writer, police former-inspector, political adviser and merchant, but what got me the attention of this squared glasses santandereano, to the point that I included it among the characters of the year, was their acting with the internet.

In 1990, when you grieve they began to arrive the personal computers to the country, Serrano Duarte bought its first PC. The company that he sold it to him noticed him that he/she didn't light it and it began until a technician didn't visit him. Serrano didn't wait. Using the common sense began it and immediately it undertook their learning like self taught.

Then, "cacharreando", as him he says, he learned how to mount pages web, and it elaborated their first place, "detodoparatodos.com", until some avivato cibernáuta took possession of the name and it sought to charge him 500 dollars to be returned it. It was necessary to look for another name.

He was born this way "correvedile.com" that is today per today one of the converged places in the Costa Caribbean, reporting in one year more than 100 thousand vistantes.

Of course that Serrano Duarte is not a paragon of virtues in the design area and maybe here is evidenced the lack of a formal education a little in the topic. But I have seen, right here, in Colombia, pages that well have been design by Michelangelo Buonarrotti, and however they are simply unnavegable. (Or you try to open the famous one 'virtual page' of the magazine "Don Juan").

The important thing is that through this page without pretenses, fed with articles of general interest and other simple services, Serrano Duarte overcomes in visitors to the monsters of the communication in Colombia, receiving permanent messages of all the corners of the world.

Today Serrano Duarte has been diagnosed with ateromatosis, a cancer of the arteries that dates of its birth and which should have taken it from this world to the fifteen years of age.

Some amigote told him that the illness has not conquered it "for zapatoco", that is to say, for greedy, like want that Serrano Duarte only eats three times a day and in its house, that which is key in a diet that has maintained it fortunately with us.

Or be maybe the enthusiasm to live off this cibertendero whose vital energy is evident in the page that renovates every day with its own hands.