Synopsis
Before there was a wild herd of hippos in America, somewhere in Africa, there were thousands of them.
Three of them were kidnapped and would reach Colombia, to the Magdalena River. There, in the hacienda that housed them, they coexisted with other wild African animals. The private zoo would be abandoned after the death of the man of the house, and that is how the animals found different destinies; some were stolen and sold in the black market, others were taken to national zoos and the less fortunate died due to lack of food, in other words, habitat in-adaptability.
Neither the state, nor the merchants of the black market, nor nature could put off the inevitable. One species would discover how to adapt to the habitat, the hippos of Latin America. The only wild herd outside of Africa would form. In this transition from being a free herd to a tourist attraction, Pepe, our protagonist, was born.
He was the last son of the old alpha from the herd. His older brother would kill his father to become the new patriarch, giving way to an important dictatorship. Pepe grew strong and vigorous in the Magdalena River. Its abundance would give Pepe a good body, which led him to think he could end his brother's tyranny.
Pablito the tyrant, is a beast of about 500 tons; his name was given by his watchmen in honor of the former owner of the hacienda. He is the only one who can mate with the females and sometimes, with a single blow, he kills the young that interfere with his food.
One morning, our protagonist takes up courage to face the tyrant. Pepe decides to give the first blow. The bodies move with speed and violent leaps that splash the water. After the tenacious confrontation, Pepe is badly hurt and has no choice but to accept his defeat.
As the old hippopotamus law dictates, the loser can no longer remain in the herd and has to assume his exile.
Thus he would depart through the Magdalena River in search of a new herd, ignoring the geographical aspect. In the great America only they exist. In spite of everything, Pepe found other animals to which he would refer with his own voice as "The two-legged ones". And so it was that men and women of Magdalena would begin to have strange encounters with him. Sometimes he was a reflected shadow, a trunk adrift with a gigantic mouth, a being from the great beyond, an unmentionable being that wandered through those waters.
Quickly that unknown was identified as a hippopotamus from the Hacienda Nápoles, thus his hunt began while the Colombian press would narrate his story and name him PEPE.
Now his ghost speaks; he doesn't know which language is the correct one. Between sounds and bellows, Pepe narrates his story, an authentic and false story, serious and playful. It's the work and the shadow of his life; another story to add to the imaginary of these neighboring towns, full of macho fights, dictatorships and beings that have died without ever knowing where they really were.