Other Noted Early Colombian Imported Paso Finos in the USA

Early Export of the Colombian Horse
(translated from Spanish by Lynn Gallup)

In 1952 a group of horseman, helped partly by the Ministry of Agriculture and with mostly their own resources, traveled to Dallas, Texas in the United States, in order to exhibit in this city, where a exhibition would be made of the Colombian Paso Fino. They were: Jose Ignacio de Francisco, Ignacio Urdaneta, Rafael Eduardo Garcia. In addition to go were great horsemen of their time: Raúl Jimeno, Jaime De Narvaez, Roberto Londoño, Martín Vargas Cualla, Jaime Mejía Escobar, Anastasio Iriarte, Miquel A. Escobar, (if my memory serves me right to have read). They took horses that occupied the best championship status, as they were: Artista --National Champion, "zaino" descendant of Mahoma and Pintura; Cereza -- 1952 National Champion, descendant of Yusuf en Fundación; Bengala -- 1950 National Champion, son of Anarkos and Alondra; Sardinata -- daughter of Marengo, and La Mona of Roberto Londoño. The exhibition had been programmed for only a day, but the response was so great, the public was touched so much and applauded incessantly that it forced the directors to make several exhibitions during the days they remained there.

They were offered to sell Artista and Marengo, but the thought of the Colombian Government was not to sell their best champions. In short, it was a seed that was watered to the United States for the first time and left a restlessness in the horse breeders of the U.S. A series of American horse breeders came more or less to Colombia, in 1966, and they crossed all of Colombia and visited people like Don Fabio Ochoa, like Germán Posada Alvarez, Mario Jaramillo Uribe in the valley, and the villages of Pereira and Manizales. The visitors were more fascinated with these Colombian Paso horses than they were with the Puerto Rican Paso Finos they had previously seen. Then the Americans made the first great export from Colombia to the United States, with: Mar de Plata LaCE, El Pastor, Coral LaCE, the mare GUALA -- mother of Resorte III, but decided not to take Resorte III. Later in 1969, Hilachas would be exported, and a group of 24 mares from the farm of José de Eusebio Vargas in the city of Bogotá, for Mr. Colín Phipps of Meridian Meadows. The Colombian horses entered the market the United States; people became enchanted with them, bought them and began to breed them in the United States. The mare GUALA had four offspring born in the US: Cortes que tal, Faldero que tal, Eximio que tal and Gala que tal.