María Antonieta Valdivieso C.
The devotees of Saint Lazarus, Journey to the world of luminous ugliness, is the title of the work of this distinguished Loja native (1960), doctor by profession and writer by ancestry and vocation, resident in France, published by the Private Technical University of Loja, in April 1923. The author already has two works published by the Benjamín Carrión House of Ecuadorian Culture, Núcleo de Loja: The Virgin of the Black Stone, 2005, and The Confession2009.
According to Patricio Aguirre, who writes the prologue of the novel, The Devotees of San Lázaro “contains a story that allows us to distinguish the author’s inclination for social causes and at the same time his interest in the life of the abandoned towns of our province.”
The events recounted in the work, according to González Carrión, take place in the decade of the seventies, where military governments took place, who with certain progressive and also partisan ideas, created development organizations such as Foderuma, attached to the Central Bank, whose mission was the financing of agricultural and related projects in the rural area, aimed especially at the most remote towns on the border; and, raising awareness among women about their role in society and the importance of their contribution to escape marginality.
He also talks about the time of President Roldós, already in the eighties, and with the return to democracy, his open mentality, his social commitment and his liberal ideology, “a man of Pan-American political dimension who symbolized the spirit of a country that wanted to rebuild itself with dignity, although its deeply nationalist project became a chimera that left a large majority of its compatriots frustrated,” since unfortunately he died along with his entourage, in a dubious plane accident, which has not yet been clarified.
During his university vacations, the protagonist participates as a Foderuma volunteer to teach primary health care courses; He is assigned to work in a hamlet called Four Winds, Located on a hill, and where there is no motorable road, it arrives after two days of an exhausting trip, on the back of a slow and tired donkey. The first thing you see when you arrive at the hamlet is an old image of San Lázaro, patron saint of the town.
He narrates in first person his meeting with the locals, who are extremely kind people, but who suffer tremendous human dramas: Estherwho is a woman of great strength and dynamism, president of the women’s association, mother of three children and married to Malachi, a leprosy patient. Another relevant character is Delicious, a boy between 12 and 14 years old, who takes him in at the Matilde Hidalgo school in Procel, which will be his place of residence and where he will teach his classes. He soon realizes that Delicio suffers from a tremendous limp, caused by polio, since he had not been vaccinated. He tells her that he is an orphan and that he had grown up with his grandfather.
Coincidentally he knows Vitelino Rojasfather of Malaquias, who is a leprosy patient registered with the Ministry of Health, owner of a mill, to Juana, his wife, who welcome him with all cordiality and offer him the brandy distilled by Vitelino himself.
The classes are received with great enthusiasm, especially women, of different ages, attend; but soon the doc., which is what the locals call him, considers that it is a human group that needs special treatment, that has to change its academic language to a simple and colloquial one to be understood and understood.
He realizes that they are desolate places, that a large number of their inhabitants have abandoned their homeland due to the drought of the sixties, in a massive exodus to the big cities, where they begin to form poverty belts.
They are abandoned towns that lack the most essential things, such as drinking water, access roads, medical services, they suffer from exploitation in the sale of their products, since they are paid ridiculous prices for them.
Esther is an exceptional being, not only is she the leader of a group of women, but a great mother and wife, since she has to deal with Malaquías, who suffers from advanced leprosy, which has disfigured the left side of his face. The classes continue and one day it is her turn, coincidentally, to talk about leprosy, which is a taboo subject, only spoken in a low voice. She finds it difficult to discuss the issue, since several women have family members in their homes who suffer from this illness.
At the end of class Esther stays to tell him that they had prepared a farewell evening for him, but in reality what she wanted to talk about was the situation of Malaquías, her husband, who, apart from the terrible illness that afflicts him, has become an alcoholic She asks him to talk to him to persuade him to continue with the medicinal treatment and to give up the alcohol that is causing so much harm to her and her daughters.
Earlier than expected, Malaquías comes to talk and his confession is pathetic. He opens up about the terrible situation he has to live in due to the facial disfigurement he has due to leprosy. He tells how he is shunned, how he is discriminated against, the suspicion that the people for fear of contagion, the terrible effects of medicine; All of this has led him to take refuge in alcohol, to forget a little about his sorrows.
The day of farewell arrives, it is done with sadness and nostalgia, but with the commitment to try to help in the future to improve the existing precarious living conditions. Previously, together with the local residents, he built a latrine, to somewhat alleviate the terrible hygienic conditions in which they live in these distant regions of the province.
The question is, have the living conditions of the inhabitants of these remote places improved? To answer I am going to refer to statistical data published in the magazine Diners World, January, 2024: Regarding Poverty due to Unsatisfied Basic Needs, which includes housing, health, education and employment, in 1990 the rural population did not cover 71% of its basic needs; In 2022, 46% of the population still does not cover these needs.
Regarding leprosy, according to the WHO “cases of leprosy or Hansen’s disease have decreased by 30% in the last 20 years, in the region of the Americas.”
A short novel of denunciation, of pure realism, as it describes a precarious and moving socioeconomic situation at a certain time in our country; narrated with prose that flows easily, which could be said that the author writes as he speaks: with very graphic, very vivid descriptions, with personal introspections, with existential doubts, with reminiscences of his childhood, with autobiographical notes that have doses of nostalgia . On the other hand, he shares with us a personal experience and a reality lived in situ, which allows us to know the extreme backwardness and poverty, which, as we have seen from the data cited, still lives in a good percentage of the Ecuadorian rural population.
As additional information, I am going to refer to the reissue of the novel Confession, now called Confession without guardianship, whose launch took place on Wednesday the 16th of this month, in the La Maternidad Cultural Center; Congratulations to Hugo and success in this new literary challenge.
Loja, January 18, 2023
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