Read as leg 6 (Pasto, Columbia) of the
Bookpacking reading journey.
The Feast Day of the Holy Innocents, 28
December 1966, is the start of a tumultuous and fateful week for Doctor Justo
Pastor Proceso Lopez (Dr Proceso familiarly).
In Pasto, southern Columbia, the day is celebrated by practical joking and
begins a week of festivities leading up to carnival parade on ‘White Day’ on 6
January.
The Doctor, who in his spare time has been
researching and writing a damning reappraisal of Simon Bolivar, the much
revered ‘Liberator’ of his country, decides that actions will speak louder than
his dry dusty words. He commissions a
float for the parade on which the Liberator’s misdeeds will be writ, and
illustrated, large and uncompromising.
There being no such thing as a secret in
Pasto, word gets out and while the authorities apply pressure to dissuade him a
shady group of self-styled ‘guardians of the revolution’ plan more direct
action. To complicate matters the
Doctor’s domestic life is in crisis due to a love-hate relationship with his
wife and his wayward teenage daughters disowning him. But the would-be urban guerrillas are in
similar disarray, some going off half cock and one who would rather be writing
poetry.
With the week increasingly fuelled by the
local ‘aguardiente’ liquor, reality is diffused by a drunken haze, but its
trajectory is ominous for Dr Proceso.
The progress of the book mirrors the unfolding
week in tone, beginning light-hearted and humorous, inserting episodically a
potted alternative history of Simon Bolivar’s impact on southern Columbia, then
spiralling into chaotic comings and goings that climax dramatically on the day
of the carnival parade.
Although set in 1966 the book was published
in 2012 so the subject must still resonate in Columbia. The political history lesson is delivered
seamlessly within the story, and while the style is fluent and reminiscent of
his more illustrious countryman Gabriel Garcia Marquez it doesn’t quite hit
those heady heights.
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