CITY LIGHTS

POSO
BOOKS
WELLS Gabriela Alemán
Translated from the Spanish by Dick Cluster

This PDF file remains the property of

CITY LIGHTS BOOKS,
City Lights andFrancisco
Books | San may not be
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written permission.
CITY LIGHTS
Copyright © 2018 by Gabriela Alemán
Translation copyright © 2018 by Dick Cluster
All rights reserved

BOOKS
Cover and book design by Linda Ronan

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Alemán Salvador, María Gabriela, 1968- author. | Cluster, Dick,
1947- translator.
Title: Poso Wells / Gabriela Alemán ; translated by Dick Cluster.
Other titles: Poso Wells. English
Description: San Francisco : City Lights Books, 2018. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018000978 (print) | LCCN 2018008832 (ebook)
| ISBN
9780872867819 | ISBN 9780872867550
Subjects: | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PQ7889.2.A438 (ebook) | LCC PQ7889.2.A438
P6713 2018
(print) | DDC 863/.64—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018000978

City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore

261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133
www.citylights.com

This PDF file remains the property of

CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written permission.
CITY LIGHTS
Contents

BOOKS
pa rt o n e The Cooperative of Poso Wells
The Candidate 13
Yesterday’s Papers 19
The Hole 31
The Scar 43
Waiting Forever for You 53
Órale Pinche Güey 65
A Mass for the Dead 71
The Spur 81

pa rt t wo Amazonas and Naciones Unidas

Press Conference 101
Minefields Express 113
The Bottom of the Empty Glass 121

a rt t h r e e The Cloud Forest

p
Checkmate 129
The Prosecutor 139
The Sovereign People 147
Without You . . . 153

This PDF file remains the property of

CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written permission.
CITY LIGHTS
BOOKS
For three hours now, he’s been sitting on one of the four benches
that face the statue of García Moreno in the park between the Ba-
silica and Calle Vargas in the center of the capital city, waiting for
Salém’s call. Meanwhile, he’s been slowly eating his way through
the bag of mangoes he bought for a dollar on the corner, watch-
ing the people come and go, reminding him of ants. By now, he’s
sucked the juice from half of the mangoes. He’s saturated with the
cloying sweetness of the fruit, his hands are sticky, and he’s desper-
ately tired. He hasn’t slept in two weeks, ever since he promised
his mother on her deathbed he’d stop drinking. Maybe he’s been
waiting for the call here rather than in the streets by the courthouse
because, close to the church, something might come along to solve
his problems, some divine intervention perhaps. In his shirt pocket
he’s got an image of St. Expeditus right next to his cell.When the
phone finally rings he ignores the sound and continues sucking.
With four dead bodies and no arrest, Salém ought to build him a
monument. He didn’t want to kill her, the judge, not over a land
dispute with a drug kingpin rotting in jail. During one of his
sleepless nights he’d heard a psychoanalyst on the radio talking
about how men who mistreat women have homosexual tendencies.
He doesn’t want to be remembered as a faggot as well as a murder-
er. He stands up and walks toward the door of the Basilica, which
is unusually packed.
“What’s going on here?” he asks a shoeshine boy. He’s short
ofThis PDFsounds
breath and filelikeremains
an asthmaticthe
dog. property of
“The Jericho pilgrimage,” the boy says, knocking twice on
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
the tip of the man’s shoe.
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
9
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
Richard Zambrano looks at the boy. He puts one foot on top
of the case full of cans of polish and dirty flannel cloths, while dry-
ing his sticky hands on his pants. On a flat sheet of rusted steel,

BOOKS
the boy mixes some brown polish with a mustard-colored one.
“The what?” Richard asks.
“It starts here and ends there.” The shoeshine boy points
toward El Panecillo, the breadloaf-shaped hill topped with a statue
of the Virgin. “They say you get two wishes if you make it all
the way up.”
“Yeah?” the man says, interested.
The boy nods and taps the tip of the shoe again. The man
switches feet.When the boy is done, Richard tosses a fifty-centavo
coin in the air and takes off running after the pilgrims.

This PDF file remains the property of

CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
10
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
BOOKS
PA R T O N E

the
cooperative of
poso wells

This PDF file remains the property of

CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written permission.
CITY LIGHTS
BOOKS
I
The Candidate

Poso Wells does not appear on any map. How could it? The
last time anyone did a topographical survey, that huge mass
of mud dredged from the estuary was still part of the river.
And water flows. It’s not subdivided into lots. But there
lies Poso Wells, objections be damned. If you were to ask
any of its residents for a precise description of its location,
they might tell you it’s the most stinking, forgotten hole
on this side of the Pacific. Kilometers and kilometers of
houses built of sticks and reeds held together by a mix of
mud and stones, all resting on a suspension of sewage and
moldy clay. Mangrove posts sunk into soft, unstable soil
that cracks open in new places with every tide or current
sweeping the high-tonnage ships toward the port of Guay-
aquil. But if that answer didn’t satisfy you, and you were to
press on with, “But what street do I take, what corner do
I turn, from the Beltway do I head north or south?” then
most likely you’d be told to go to hell, and your respondent
Thismutter
might PDF under
file remains theanyone’s
her breath that property
idea ofofhell
on a bad day would look a lot like Poso Wells. It’s in the
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
mouth of the fucking devil, if you really want to know.
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
13
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
And yet, though no one who didn’t live there would
venture within a hundred yards of that place, when cam-
paign time rolls around it suddenly turns into an electoral

BOOKS
battlefield—because there are hundreds of thousands of
votes to be had. Every inhabitant needs something, and
offers come raining down. Especially housing. Houses are
promised in exchange for votes, as are construction ma-
terials and building loans. Stages are erected, loudspeakers
are hung, and along come the girls, immodestly clothed
teenagers who have to be escorted by bodyguards because
everyone wants a piece of them. Hundreds of thousands
of hands, like tentacles, try to touch them on their way in.
But once on stage, that sensation of being mauled fades
away. The plaza is electrifying. The girls quickly forget that
without the bodyguards, if the stage were to collapse, none
of them would survive. They’d be lost in the labyrinthine
twist and turns of the barrio, destroyed, only bits and pieces
of them to be found. But not this time. Every four years, or
sometimes every two, television crews descend on the bar-
rio.Trucks full of cables and satellite dishes arrive. An entire
brigade of national police is deployed while a city trac-
tor fixes the roads, or at least fills them with enough dirt
from the nearby Santa Elena peninsula to allow the entry
of the candidates and their vehicles full of political party
boosters and functionaries. In Poso Wells such gatherings
always take place on a particular vacant lot, an enormous
abandoned rectangle situated in the third phase of the Co-
operative, that is, the third part, historically speaking, to be
occupied by a wave of settlers. Nobody, in twenty-some
This
years PDF file enacted
of democracy remains the property
via repeated of
election cam-
paigns, has stopped to ask why no houses have been built
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
on this lot, why it doesn’t even serve as a sandlot for sports,
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
14
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
while elsewhere in the barrio any vacant expanse is invad-
ed by squatters, one lot after another, by settlers who risk
their lives to build on top of garbage that has only achieved

BOOKS
the flimsiest hold on the riverbed. Why, even though this
lot is surrounded by the only lampposts in all of Poso Wells,
does no one ever gather there except at campaign time?
The answer is not very interesting—and even less so
for those who are charged with the task of covering the
news.Those who live in the Cooperative know that some-
thing isn’t right, but they are not likely to explain. If forced
to say what it is about this particular patch of sterile and
cursed ground, they couldn’t. They simply know, everyone
knows, that certain parcels must be avoided. Because all
over the barrio, things disappear. A bunch of bananas can’t
be left outside the door, because it will vanish. It has to
be safeguarded inside the house, though padlocks are not
much use either. Something crouches in the streets of Poso
Wells, and it attacks the nerves like a persistent drumbeat.
Whatever it is haunts the dreams of the residents, panting
in their faces, slobbering them with noxious saliva and sep-
tic-tank breath, leaving their bodies sticky and dirty when
they wake up. This sensation of danger cannot be shaken
off by a mere act of will. The residents live with it all day
long. In the evening it just becomes more palpable, because
what vanishes then is not just food. People disappear, too.
At campaign time, the threat diminishes.There are too
many electric wires, too many workers, too much equip-
ment turning everything upside down. The music rever-
berates as the girls dance their way through choreographed
Thisagain
moves PDFandfile remains
again, the property
though they’ve been selected offor
their looks, not their skill. They put on their best faces for
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
the cameras and smile.
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
15
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
In 2006, the campaign in Poso Wells has picked up
steam. The first round is over and the winner, who has
edged ahead of his opponent by four percentage points,

BOOKS
needs to make the next encounter with the electorate
more spectacular than the one before. He arrives in a char-
tered helicopter under the last rays of the late-afternoon
sun. The light is diaphanous, ethereal, seemingly infinite
as it reflects off the shell of the aircraft. The occupant is
as eye-catching as the machine that bears him: Chinese
silk guayabera, creamy linen pants that flutter around his
gym-toned legs, iguana-skin shoes custom-made in Italy.
Long, curly hair falls to his shoulders and down his back,
while prominent cheekbones accent his rugged face. His
movements are graceful, in the way of those favored by
divine Providence or an overstuffed bank account. He isn’t
tall, but on the stage he’ll look enormous. He’ll offer to
fulfill desires and confer salvation. This time, like every
time, he has ordered sacks of cornmeal and flour to be
distributed, along with containers filled with lard. While
he’s still hovering over the cityscape, his boosters distribute
these gifts in the plaza. That’s why a crowd has piled into
the space that had been cleared for the helicopter to land,
and now the pilot doesn’t know what to do. The candi-
date sweats, prodigiously, soaking his clothes and tracing
a design of wispy wings down the back of his guayabera
while he wipes his face with an impeccable handkerchief.
He has six more of these waiting in the back pocket of his
trousers. Before boarding the copter, he fortified himself
with two large bottles of beer and five glasses of whiskey,
oneThis PDF file
after another, remains
at the theof property
headquarters of
his political party.
Now he needs to urinate. Desperately. But, flying over the
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
vast spread of the barrio, he tries to forbear.
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
16
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
“Motherfucker, I can’t hold it any more. Get those
people out of the way!”
“How?” the pilot asks.

BOOKS
“Get down lower and give it a try,” the candidate
responds, barely moving his lips and blinded by sweat.
“Where there’s a will there’s way.” He takes a deep breath
and repeats the adage like a mantra—“Where there’s a will,
there’s a way”—while the pilot nods and attacks the sea of
bodies.
But try as he might, no one moves.What do they care
if the rotor blades cut off their heads? In the whirlwind,
matchbook houses tremble and threaten to fall. The blades
cut through TV antennas and pirate electrical wires. On
the fourth try, the pilot swoops down close to the desig-
nated rectangle while lowering an aluminum ladder, the
only way to deposit the candidate on the ground. Under
the continuous rush of wind, seven houses perched on rot-
ten posts collapse, accompanied by the crying of children
and the screams of women, while husbands and boyfriends
try to pull themselves and the women and children from
the rubble. But all of this can barely be heard as the loud-
speakers saturate the atmosphere with decibels. It’s as if the
doors of heaven had opened for celestial choirs and trum-
pet blasts, for all the angels of heaven to proclaim the sec-
ond coming of the Lord. On stage, the girls shake their hips
with frenetic, hypnotizing rhythm.The people shout, jump,
sway, swing. No one can hear the protests of those who
have just lost their homes. The candidate, his hands spread
like a man on the cross, descends through space—the
Thisaround
crush PDFhim fileactsremains
in his favorthe property
now—until of
he touch-
es the earth where his waiting bodyguards surround him.
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
From the viewpoint of the great mass of people, he seems
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
17
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
to levitate as the bodyguards lift him bodily to the stage.
That’s when he realizes he has no place to discharge his
bladder in peace. He sweats and sweats, with few options

BOOKS
left. He is going to pee, and he’s going to do it in front of
the hundreds of inhabitants of Poso Wells. He’ll be discreet,
he’ll allow a stream of urine to slide down his linen pants
while he moves about the stage to avoid forming a puddle
under his feet. In the heat, what his clothes absorb will
evaporate quickly. The rest will slip though the gaps in the
stage. While he struts about and waves to the clamoring
crowd, he puts this plan into action, until his party loyalists
close around him in a great human chain and someone
hands him a microphone. The electricity can be felt in the
air. At this moment, he stops moving and the puddle at his
feet takes on a certain depth. It wouldn’t bother him, no
one would notice it, really, except that he is holding a cable
connected directly to one of the high-voltage streetlights,
and he’s standing in a pool of liquid.
Bad combination.
Before the wires explode and the lights go out—the
lights that the organizers of the event have stolen from
the lampposts erected by the municipality a few months
before—the people see the candidate rise above the stage,
encircled by a celestial halo. The glow shoots like lightning
through all of his entourage.
Really, it’s a sight to behold. Of a strange, extreme
beauty. Extraordinarily so.
And then, a smell of meat on the grill. A stench of
scorched flesh that permeates every square inch of the usu-
allyThis
vacantPDF
lot. file remains the property of
And then, finally, pitch black.
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
18
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
BOOKS
II
Yesterday’s papers

He came in search of clues for an article about the disap-

pearances, which had happened months before he arrived.
When he realized what a large and difficult task it was
going to be, he decided to meet with his editors to ask for
more time to investigate and more column inches for his
story.The answer was no to both requests. All that had been
reported on TV so far was that three or four people, all of
them women, had disappeared near the island called Trin-
itaria in the so-called Cooperative of Poso Wells. It didn’t
take long for him to discover a lot more: that there was a
pattern dating back at least fifteen years, and the number
of women who had disappeared was not four but nearly
fifty. All this was buried in a tangle of half-finished legal
procedures and official neglect: cases never filed, no money
to pursue them, dead ends, leads never followed, no clear
priorities established, migrants who went back to where
they had come from, leaving the names of daughters, wives,
This
and PDF
nieces file remains
forgotten on the shoresthe property
of the of
saltwater estuary.
But now, in light of the most recent events, everything that
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
went on in Wells needed to be reevaluated.
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
19
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
Varas had managed to reconstruct those events, in a
rudimentary way at least: The candidate who’d won the
first round of the elections had been incinerated in a flash,

BOOKS
along with all of his possible replacements except one, the
lone survivor, who had either been kidnapped or disap-
peared in the confusion and chaos that ensued. Thus,Varas
had the story of the year in his hands. Because of the black-
out, the TV cameras had no footage, while Varas—who had
asked to cover the rally—had been right there on the stage.
He sold the article under any number of pen names to
whatever media outlets wanted to buy it, and he proposed
to his own paper that they allow him to investigate the
disappearance of the late candidate’s only possible succes-
sor. This time, the owners of the paper did not hesitate to
offer him whatever he needed. The story was not missing
women, but the country’s future. The opposing candidate
was already proclaiming his victory, while the Congress
met with a slew of legal advisors to try and figure out what
procedures to follow. Meanwhile, the charbroiled candi-
date’s backers had thrown their unconditional support
behind the missing man—whom, furthermore, they con-
sidered anointed by fate. Having narrowly cheated death,
he was destined to chart the country’s future. At this point,
his image was for sale at every stoplight in every city, on
every corner throughout the land.
If only people knew what’s hidden behind the image
of a saint.
Gonzalo Varas had engaged in a bit of distortion, or to
put it another way, he had allowed himself certain liberties
This
in the PDFhe file
articles wroteremains theserious
for the nation’s property of
papers. Seri-
ous in the sense that no one dared to impugn anyone’s hon-
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
or, much less that of a dead man. A man who, furthermore,
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
20
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
had won the first round of the elections and, even after
death, enjoyed political power and connections. But, for
the popular daily of the country’s principal port, he had

BOOKS
described the events that led to the death of eleven people
and the disappearance of the twelfth in absolute detail:

MEN WITHOUT EYES

On the night of October 16, to the astonishment of the thou-
sands gathered for a political rally held to celebrate the winning
candidate’s victory in the first round of the elections, a series of
gruesome events resulted in the death of eleven individuals in
an unprecedented case of spontaneous combustion. The confusion
that followed was rendered even more strange by the appearance
of a group of three to five eyeless men who carried off the lone
survivor of the electrical short-circuit. When the candidate took
to the stage—after nine p.m., with a splendid full moon illu-
minating the night of our Pearl of the Pacific, also dubbed by
the incomparable Daniel Santos the balmy Carribean’s farthest
port—all those present onstage, the author of this article included,
opened a circle to make room for him to, presumably, place himself
in the center. The truth is that we did so, without any spoken
agreement, because the candidate was sweating like a condemned
man and the stench from his armpits could be discerned from
some distance away. One could confidently claim that he smelled
of death and that his perspiration was mixed with the stink of
fear. What could the candidate have been afraid of? This we will
never know. What we do know, because I could smell it and see
it, is that the candidate began to wet himself in full public view
while the organizers introduced him to the public and the dancers
This PDF
performed filethatremains
pirouettes the
exposed their property
nubile, ofHe
luscious legs.
did not do so like any ordinary man of the people, opening his fly
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
and holding his organ while emptying his bladder; no, what he did
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
21
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
was use his leg as a urinal and the stage as a drain—leaving his
respect for the noble electorate in some doubt. But, in any case, he
walked about the stage while he peed. And let me testify that he

BOOKS
peed a lot. And continued sweating. The ensuing vapors caused
me to retreat to the farthest corner of the stage, for which I should
thank him, because otherwise I might not be here to write these
lines. At this point, I must also explain that the candidate did not
bring a generator with him, but rather stole the current from some
lampposts located about fifteen meters from the stage, by means of
two thick cables connected directly to the spotlights and the sixteen
loudspeakers which would, in normal circumstances, have left us
hypnotized and deaf.
At a certain moment, the rally’s announcer went silent, and
so did the music—think (because advertisement of commercial re-
cordings is not permitted in this space) of a prime example of
reggaeton, of the song most heard today on the airwaves, the one
that ironically refers to a highly explosive product that is not diesel
fuel—and the announcer approached the candidate, requiring him
to interrupt his pilgrimage around the stage. Just for an instant,
shall we say, but that was long enough for a puddle of urine to
form at his feet. In that instant, there was a sudden loss of current,
a drop in voltage. A circuit within the microphone being passed
from announcer to candidate let loose a spark. Remember that the
candidate was sweating copiously and that salt water is a superb
conductor of electricity. It should also be clarified that the spectacle
was especially dazzling because current taken from a streetlight
is 220 volts, not 110, and because the electricity not only flowed
through the drops of sweat on his hand but also rose up like a
charmed cobra along the thread of urine running down his leg.
This toPDF
According file remains
the coroner’s the property
report, the candidate was not just of
elec-
trocuted but incinerated. When he collapsed, smoke rose from his
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
body. According to the same report, he had a hole in his stomach.
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
22
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
I would speculate that an electrical charge came snaking up from
his penis to his other vital organs, causing them to burn to a crisp.
What a spectacular departure! The rest of the event was less elec-

BOOKS
trifying. The other members of his party had only a few seconds,
as could be seen from the look of terror in their eyes, to realize that
death awaited them too. Some tried to let go of each others’ hands,
to save themselves from an end that would show solidarity, yes, but
would otherwise be foolish. But the current was already whisking
them off, each one passing it along to the next.
At this point you must be asking, but what about the man
who managed to save himself? This man—a chubby man with
scarcely any neck, with the face of a frog and the arms of a child—
had never joined hands with the others. He was behind a loud-
speaker, not very far from me, holding a gold credit card near one
of his nostrils. He did not even know what had occurred. When
he turned around and saw his comrades, still holding hands, col-
lapsed on the floor among bolts of electricity that snaked around
the stage, he managed only to open his mouth and then to cover it
with his childlike hand before a group of men, either with no eyes
at all or with deeply sunken eyelids, took hold of him and carried
him off before he could protest. How did I see this? Thanks to
the light of the magnificent full moon shining down on the stage
at that moment, only to, lamentably, disappear behind a cloud
within an instant.

That was all that was known. And, despite entire battal-
ions of the national army that descended on Poso Wells,
nothing more had been found. Not a trace of the missing
man. As if he had never existed. Meanwhile, Varas asked
This PDF
questions, filetheremains
walked the property
streets, and although he did notof
find
anything to lead him to the politician, he continued to
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
accumulate information for his other story, the one about
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
23
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
the missing women. He kept finding someone who knew
someone who had lost a daughter or a niece. The women
vanished like smoke, and no one with the power to do

BOOKS
anything seemed to care.Varas decided that his best bet was
to find someplace in the barrio to stay, so as not to miss
any detail. In his wanderings he met a man named Jaime
Montenegro who proved welcoming. Montenegro was an
elderly resident with a friendly face, a short, small man
who lived alone and had an extra room that he offered to
rent to Varas when the reporter told him what he was do-
ing. So he moved in. In the evening, when Varas returned
because it was no longer advisable to be walking the dirt
streets of Wells, his host would set out two chairs at the
entrance to the house and they would talk till nightfall. In
these conversations, Jaime told Varas he could no longer
even remember when he’d first come to this part of the
city, but he did remember that he’d had no neighbors at
the time. There’d been no one around but himself and his
dog. As a curious note, he remembered a journalist who
had showed up around that time to ask strange questions
about blind men who came from a valley in the sierra.
Jaime had been barely twenty, and so his memory of this
was vague. That was the first time, though, that he heard
the name of Wells, from the mouth of this same journalist,
and he also remembered vaguely that something or other
had happened which led to the barrio taking on that name,
Poso Wells—or Wells’ Sediment in less poetic terms. The
“Cooperative” came later, when a savings bank opened
and the name appeared on a sign. Later, at the time of
theThis PDFinvasions
squatters’ file remains the for
amidst a clamor property of
land, a lawyer
saw that sign, which was how the name became known
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
outside the neighborhood. Jaime also told Varas that at this
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
24
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
time—maybe a decade after his arrival—the first of the
women disappeared without leaving a trace. He had lost all
track of how many disappearances had occurred since. Ev-

BOOKS
erything Montenegro told Varas was invaluable, though it
was also clear the old man’s memory was a minefield.Varas
felt his way through that territory little by little, seeking a
path along which Jaime could move forward without his
memories exploding in mid-sentence.
“What did that newspaperman want to know?”
“The one from years ago, or the one who showed up
here the day before yesterday?”
“The one from when you had just recently come to
Wells.”
“I told you, he wanted to know if I’d seen a bunch of
blind men around here anywhere.”
“And had you?”
“No. Really, I hadn’t.”
“What was the newspaperman’s name?”
“He didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask, but he said a lot
of words in another language, and he had a strange accent
too. And, like I told you, he was the first one to mention
this Wells.”
“Who was he?”
“The newspaperman?”
“No, the other guy, Wells.”
“A historian, I think. He’d written I-don’t-know-
what about Ecuador, something that the newspaperman
was interested in.”
Since Varas wasn’t making much progress in the rest of
This
his PDF file
investigations, he remains the the
decided to follow property of In
trail of Wells.
the Rolando library, in the center of Guayaquil, he found
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
what he was looking for. It was a book of travel writings by
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
25
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
an Englishman who had been in Ecuador toward the end
of the nineteenth century. They were impressions, rich in
detail, mostly about the central valley of the Andes. They

BOOKS
mentioned Guayaquil only as the port where the author
landed, but they did discuss a village of blind men and
a mysterious encounter with them. Varas made a copy of
this chronicle and continued to search for any trace of the
other writer, presumably British as well, in papers from the
1950s, when Montenegro had arrived. After three fruit-
less days in the library, he found an article in the daily El
Telégrafo signed by someone called Binns. It was neither
a news article nor an opinion column, exactly, but more
of a collection of fragmentary facts that gave the impres-
sion of having been written in the hope that some reader
would come forward with more information, which the
last paragraph of the article, in fact, openly requested. In
the meantime, what Binns said began to give shape to the
few things that Varas knew. As if Binns had written the ar-
ticle expressly for him to read fifty years later.

THE END OF A CIVILIZATION?

The first conjectures about the population of the Valley of the Fall-
en date from the sixteenth century and the alliances that certain
Andean potentates sought with the Spaniards, especially the chief
called Sancho Hacho, from Latacunga. In spite of his attempts to
avail himself of an alliance with the invaders, they came to exer-
cise military control over most of that territory between 1573 and
1597. However, some indigenous groups decided to withdraw to
areas still unbeknownst to the new conquerors, areas that were ex-
This
tremely PDFto reach.
difficult file Inremains the
this regard, all property
credit of
is due to the hon-
orable Mr. Wells, who describes so well the sufferings to be endured
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
by anyone daring to venture into the fertile lands of the Valley of
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
26
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
the Fallen. If the dangers of access were many, they were well repaid
by the fecundity of its soil. Wells’s writing has a singular beauty
and there would be little merit in trying to emulate it, so I will

BOOKS
instead transcribe, for the benefit of the reader, the entire passage in
question: “The valley, he said, had in it all that the heart of man
could desire—sweet water, pasture, a good climate, slopes of rich
brown soil with tangles of a shrub that bore an excellent fruit, and
on one side great hanging forests of pine that held the avalanches
high. Far overhead, on three sides, vast cliffs of grey-green rock were
capped by cliffs of ice; but the glacier stream came not to them, but
flowed away by the farther slopes, and only now and then huge ice
masses fell on the valley side. In this valley it neither rained nor
snowed, but the abundant springs gave a rich green pasture, that
irrigation would spread over all the valley space.”
The next traces we find, closer to us in time than the era of
Sancho Hacho, date from the eighteenth century and are related
to the indigenous uprisings of San Miguel de Molleambato in
1766, provoked by the ruinous taxes imposed by the Marqués
of Miraflores; and of San Phelipe in 1777, provoked by the
Corregidor of Latacunga’s insistence on undertaking a census
of the natives. For centuries, it appears, the descendants of the
men and women who had made their way along unknown
paths to this valley in the shadow of the Cotopaxi volcano
had lived a peaceful and isolated life, until one or the other of
those eighteenth-century events led fifteen Spanish officers to
flee from the fury of Indian rebels pursuing them with spears
and shovels—and they fell into what may have been this same
abyss. I found that information in a chronicle hidden within the
pages of an agricultural manual that came by a circuitous path
This
into PDF file
the municipal remains
archives of the citythe property
of Riobamba, ofthe
though
report does not make clear whether this occurred before or after
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
the volcano’s minor eruption of 1766 or its major one in 1768.
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
27
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
What happened over the next hundred years is summarized in
a few brief lines by Wells: “A strange disease had come upon
them and had made all the children born to them there—and,

BOOKS
indeed, several older children also—blind. And amidst the little
population of that now isolated and forgotten valley the disease
ran its course. The old became groping, the young saw but dimly,
and the children that were born to them never saw at all.” It
is well known, from contemporary chronicles, that eruptions of
the eighteenth century brought temporary blindness to nearby
inhabitants and made it impossible, as far away as Quito, to
see one’s hand in front of one’s face. Could this be cause of the
initial blindness later prolonged by the genetic deterioration of
the Valley’s inbred population? Let us assume that Wells found
the village in 1880. As I write these words in 1950, based on
my recent research, I think that sometime after his visit the last
descendants of that ancient pseudo-civilization based on what he
called “the rudiments of a lost philosophy, the tradition of the
greater world they came from, converted into something mythical
and uncertain” must have finally left their valley for fear of an-
other eruption that would sweep them from the earth, or perhaps
because of other fears still unknown, and made their way to
Guayaquil. I write these notes after having spent some weeks in
that major port, pursuing certain clues to the south of the city
on the banks of the salt-water estuary. Any information about
this group of human beings that could be useful to men engaged
in scientific endeavor would be welcome. My contact information
will remain in the possession of the editors of this distinguished
newspaper, the paragon of the national press. —Niall Binns

This
That PDF
was all.Varasfile remains
continued theinproperty
searching the papers ofof
the
time, but there was no response to this article-letter, nor
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
any sequel to it. Binns disappeared, but that did not close
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
28
permission.
CITY LIGHTS
the door that his article on the blind men had opened.
For Varas, it was impossible to think that the figures who
carried off the man on the stage were unrelated to those

BOOKS
mentioned in the writings of Binns and Wells. But that left
a lot of holes to fill. What happened between 1880 and
1950? What happened between then and 2006?

This PDF file remains the property of

CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, and may not be
reproduced, copied or used in any way
without prior written
29
permission.