15. The decline of the chief

Máxima came to Bolívar in search of Bernard's son, who was the rural doctor at that dispensary. The town was surrounded by Don Buche's 200 hectares of shrimp pools. The sub-center that she looked very good, unlike the sad dispensary in which she worked, which was in Tres Vías, in a house that she had businesses on the first floor. and in the second, the place of attention to the affiliated to the Rural Social Security. The rural doctor from the dispensary was on annual leave, so she would be back in a fortnight. She took a boat that took her to the island of Porte, which is in front of her. A gentle and transparent estuary separated them. The jet skis from the Decameron Hotel were now racing through that estuary, which looked huge on the rock. The beach of Portete, were kilometers of palm trees, under which the backpackers had their tents and their bonfires, in front of a huge beach when the tide went out, with a turquoise sea and waves of white foam.

On the island, there were also hotels, and one of them made of very nice wood, it was the one that she chose to eat something. Its owner was a lawyer, Dr Juancho, who had known his father when he worked in Atacames. He was then just a boy, who studied law at the Private University of Loja, practicing his profession in Atacames. His father, Don Sebastián, had been the town apothecary when Dr. Umiña came to work as a private doctor. He and the Apothecary rented premises in Don Gerardo's house, opposite the church and the park. The pharmacy on the first floor and the doctor on the second floor.

One day the apothecary fell ill with typhoid, when together with malaria, the two plagues reached the town in 1985. Don Sebastían became complicated with appendicitis, it was necessary to refer him to a private clinic in Esmeraldas, where they operated on him, but they forgot a gauze in the intestine, which produced peritonitis. He was urgently transferred to a private clinic in Quito, where he lived months of agony, until they were sent to die in Santo Domingo, where he had a house.

-His father Dr. Umiña and his mother went to visit him in Santo Domingo, to accompany him in his last hours- said the doctor excitedly- My father, who had been a robust man, who always told his father, enter him with chalaca to all the problems, this is enter him with determination, he barely weighed 45 kilos, his abdomen was open, his intestines were visible, the food he ate was spilled in him, the pestilence that this produced was terrible. A station wagon also arrived with the residents of Atacames, to say goodbye, thinking that he had already died, they entered one, by one per second, because the stench took them out on the run. My father took the hand of his and said to him approaching his head to his mouth, because he could barely speak- Doctor, you and God are going to save me. Heal me with your plants - because his father cured with plants and medicines. His father ordered to buy matico and had a pod called guarango, which he ordered to buy, they prepared a large quantity of that water, put on gloves, a mask and began to wash the intestines. His mother and my mother helped him. The pus came out of buckets. Then he sent to see a pint of blood, put it on. He came back several times to repeat the procedure, which my mother did up to twice a day. After a few months my dad was born again, his skin grew. Although he had no muscles underneath her, you could see the movement of the intestines, what's more, he got my mother pregnant and we had a new baby brother.

- Is your dad still alive? - Máxima asked as they served her a delicious fried fish with patacones.

-No, he already died, he gave him cancer many years later. My mother, Dona Mechita, if she lives at the entrance to Atacames, surrounded by grandchildren.

At that moment when she was enjoying that delicious fish, with an ice cold beer, a tall, old man with white hair appeared on a tractor.

- Who is he? asked the doctor.

- It is Don Buche, the one who owned that rock where Decámeron is, of all the lands that can be seen, he had 10,000 hectares and 10,000 head of cattle, buying for nothing, or taking from the peasants, he persecuted them accusing them of owing him, or of being communists, he removed the priests, from Liberation Theology, Julio and Gracia, from Muisne, those who created the Peasant Organization, he was the Organization's worst enemy, after Fundecol, the organization he defended the mangroves, and the concheras, illegally appropriated the mangroves to make 200 hectares of shrimp farms in Bolivar.

"Yes, I saw them when I was coming here," said the doctor.

 But now he is imprisoned in his house in the Treasury and on this island, for fraud when he was mayor, the people rose up against him, they burned his yacht, they took him out on the run, after decades of doing his thing, since the years fifty.