JAMAIQUIN BLOOD IN HIS VEINS

 By: Eleodoro Portocarrero Clark

When I began to write about Jamaica in Ecuador, the full conviction that we were facing a great story took on even more dimension, because issues began to emerge of which we had not had any notion or imagination, it was only enough to know that with the passage of time began to shed as when the sea casts memories on the beach. So it was that one of the great surprises that we got in this research work is the one that affirmed that Julio Jaramillo was one of us, he could not believe it, the most valuable and the most recognized of all the Ecuadorian singers whose performance transcended the national borders, joined what Jacinta Sandiford had already done, the first medalist of the Pan American Games held in Argentina and what was executed by Alberto Spencer Herrera, the top scorer of the Copa Libertadores, the football event that called all football teams or clubs of Latin America when thinking about the passage and the trajectory of each of these characters of Jamaican origin, but born in Ecuador. With that trident that could be alluded to, that one could think, the contribution of the Jamaicans by putting their offspring in this land in a few years was more than the same contribution as the blacks already established in this land. A special gift, a generational talent, the desire to excel, I don't know? The truth is that this attachment to music, theater, writing, attitudes to certain careers always make me think of DNA, it is not that I feel special, nor spatial, but there are many wooden things that keep the aspect related conjunctural inheritance. We listened to Julio Jaramillo at the 9th house, the Clark's house, my uncles, Julio, Felipe, Eleodoro used to listen to his songs, we especially liked the songs that Julio Jaramillo sang to his mother and others taken from a Long Play that my uncle Felipe brought, who lived in Venezuela for many years and also traveled to that country almost always, Jaramillo was a regular guest at those meetings, when one is a boy, it is also in childhood and adolescence that musical taste begins to develop, without wanting as a coincidence JJ was our favorite singer without having known that Jaramillo's ancestor, his maternal grandfather, was also a Jamaicans who had come among the group of workers who arrived from Jamaica to work on the Alfaro Railroad. With the enclosure of this History, we can bring to each one of the Ecuadorian homes and people around the world a knowledge that this Ecuadorian, an exalted singer with a prodigious voice and a man of record within the artists of our country, to the having to his credit several recordings made in Ecuador and in Latin America that digging into his origins we find ourselves in the peculiarity of putting up that he was also a descendant of Jamaicans. Julio Alfredo Jaramillo Laurido, was born in La Perla del Pacifico, Guayaquil, of mountain origin by his father who was a native of Machachi Province of Pichincha and Guayaco with Jamaican origins on his mother's side because she was the daughter of a Jamaican who came to the journey of working on the Alfaro Railroad. Julio would be born on October 1, 1935, Don Juan Pantaleon Jaramillo Erazo, would leave him an orphan at age 5, his mother, Doña Polita Laurido, Apolonia Laurido Caceres. He died on February 9, 1978 at the age of 42 in the city where he was born. His performances and his wide musical repertoire exhibited in countries such as Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina and other Latin American countries made him fame, also money and many women, JJ won based on work, effort and the musical talent that he had managed to conquer the demanding public of the Americas, who recognized in Jaramillo a true singer. The idolatry of him paradoxically as the great divos derives after his early departure, with just 42 years and the years that have passed cemented his idolatry. It is an icon and a reference, since this Guayaquil is the City of Olmedo, Rocafuerte, but it is also the City of Jaramillo, the bohemian atmosphere, the popular atmosphere, the jukebox, the record player, the Sound Team or YouTube, which continues to pay tribute to one of his most beloved children and who recently turned 40, since the fateful February 9, 1978 would deprive us of one of the best voices in Ecuador and one of the representatives of Latin America who sang to love, to heartbreak, to the office, to hatred, to betrayal, to women, etc. The memory of Jaramillo has been preserved in each of the homes of Ecuadorians who still make him sing in their halls, rooms, patios or portals and it so happens that he sings better than before ...