NARCOMAR. CHAPTER 48. Corruption in the Peasant Health Network

It did not take many days before the new director of the Peasant Health Network, who was a social worker, partner of his friend Victoriano, friend and ally of his father since the 1980s when together they organized the peasants and their organizations, who They resisted the fearsome President Ovejero, who brought the Condor Plan to Ecuador and killed some young men who took up arms to make an M19-type guerrilla in Colombia, kidnapped their father when he was the first private doctor in Santa Rosa and tortured him at the naval base from the oil terminal and arrested Victoriano, who had to eat his passport to avoid being accused of being a subversive communist.

Victoriano was from the southern province and went to fight in Nicaragua when President Redondo sent Ecuadorian medical students to support the Sandinistas and liberation theology priests, who came to power in Nicaragua after overthrowing Anastasio Somoza. , the last of the Somozas, who ruled that country since 1922, for 3 generations and whom President Eisenhower of the United States called our bastard.

Carmelina, the social worker who now directed the Red Campesina doctors, dentists, and assistants, came to visit him with Victoriano when the Network had begun a remodel of the dispensaries, which completely changed them. The El Faro dispensary ceased to be that hovel with bars like a prison, to which snakes appeared, and like that of the Gaviotas, they were changed from the roof, they were well equipped, stocked with medicines, and now they were so comfortable like that of Santo Tomás.

But there was a new rotation of doctors, dentists, and auxiliaries, as every year and at the Las Gaviotas dispensary, the worst auxiliary arrived, which according to Carmelina, who had known her very well for years, was terrible within the Province Network of La Esperanza.

-This auxiliary who is going to come, she worked for years in a community from where she was expelled.

"How is it possible that this woman comes here?" Maxima asked him.

-She had the right to choose and she chose to come- I can't do anything.

When Máxima and the dentist arrived at the El Faro dispensary, she found that the facade of the dispensary was covered with posters in which the assistant put the new dispensary rules.

Before entering, she was removing those posters from the walls, and she arrived with them in the waiting room, where the patients were waiting. Seeing what the doctor had done with her posters, the assistant named Barbara burst into anger.

- How dare you have removed my posters? she yelled at the doctor.

- Because you are not the one in charge here when you sign the death certificates, and the prescriptions then you can give orders in this place. Is it clear to you? was the answer shouting also from the doctor.

- Here we are all the same - answered the assistant.

"You are an equalizer!" The doctor yelled at him.

Igualada was a very offensive word in the province, where most of the population is black. The new assistant was mestizo, that word hurt her because she took it as if the doctor had told her that she is black.

"Racist!" Yelled the auxiliary.

The screams between the new auxiliary and the doctor attracted the neighbors, who for the first time saw a scandal of this magnitude in the dispensary.

The dentist, who witnessed the scene, warned the doctor that he knew the new assistant because, at the parties that the doctors and the assistants made every year, she was very popular because she liked to drink and dance very suggestive with the doctors.

At four in the afternoon, when the staff had to leave to reach the last bus, the assistant yelled at the doctor RUDE, ABUSIVE!

The doctor replied, offered! A term that in the province was also very hurtful.

That scandal in the dispensary reached the leadership of the Campesina Network, where Máxima's relationship with the auxiliary and the president of the Santo Tomás dispensary was already news, this complicated the renewal of her contract, which had to be renewed every year. She had already had two problems with her auxiliaries.

The auxiliary union was the most powerful union in the Network, the one that decided the fate or death of doctors and dentists.

When she returned the following week, after working at El Faro, she found him, who arrived with the gun at the dispensary when two micro-traffickers from the town's youth gangs found a block of cocaine on the beach. She was filling a glass of water, which she was taking from the new water dispenser.

-What is Huevaso doing here? Wasn't it enough to come to the dispensary to want to kill Ticket?

. Auxiliary Barbara invited me. Having a glass of water at the community dispensary, I don't think it's a crime.

The assistant Barbara did not look up to see what was happening, while she was ordering the medical records of the patients.