Tuesday, March 5, 2019
The Beginning of Everything
By Alejandro Rigatuso, Fundador y Director de Fundación Loros
In 2019, Rosángela received a green-and-yellow chick in a cardboard box at her apartment. She had gotten it at the Bazurto market, where someone had simply offered it to her — and she had accepted, unaware that keeping an Amazonian parrot was illegal in Colombia. Her boyfriend, Alejandro Rigatuso, an Argentine citizen who had been living in the city for some time, received it with surprise, the way you receive a gift from someone you love.
What followed was pure improvisation: a turquoise gymnastics bar as a cradle, a syringe and a spoon as hand-rearing tools, and the internet as the only available veterinarian. Alejandro read, tried, adjusted. The chick grew slowly, feathers gradually replacing the grey down, its eyes growing more alert with each passing day.
Beethoven was the first — though in the records of Fundación Loros he appears as number 15. That paradox says everything about how important things begin: without protocol, without a name, without anyone yet knowing that this moment will matter. An unexpected gift in an apartment in the El Cabrero neighborhood, and the urgent need to return that small green body to where it belonged.
About the author
Alejandro Rigatuso · Fundador y Director de Fundación Loros
Alejandro Rigatuso arrived at Fundación Loros after years as Vice President of Growth Marketing at Toptal, bringing with him an unconventional perspective: he knows an animal is well by its eyes, "bright, wide open." Lorenzo, the first parrot released, recaptured several times and always set free to fly again, marked him forever. At dusk, around five-thirty, you'll find him at the Mirador de las Ciénagas or wandering around Cerro El Peligro, envisioning observation towers and hundreds of native parrots soaring over a reserve that an entire community calls their own.
