NARCOMAR. Chapter 56. The Lighthouse Party

The loudest moment in the festival in the town of El Faro was the match between two women's teams, which, unlike the men's teams, were inclusive teams, because they played from teenagers to young grandmothers, who competed with their daughters. , many of whom already had children, as teenage pregnancy was almost normal.

In the stands, under the awnings or around the court, the families of the players were the fans and supported them with whistles, metal pots or plastic jars. that served as drums, there were shouts, flags, or people wearing the team's jersey.

A wave of hysteria seemed to break out when one of the two teams was about to score a goal. Every foul or every dangerous play enraged the fans.

Then came the dispute between the men's teams, which followed one another. Until the last game ended at 6 in the afternoon, when the sun was setting. with its red color behind the rock, where the old lighthouse was, which the Spaniards built in colonial times, 500 years ago.

At night the election came on the main street in front of the Church park, where a platform was set up.

 The election began with a musical group that animated the party, and immediately the parade came in full dress, in casual dress, and finally in bathing suit. Angela was sitting next to Dr. Máxima.

To Maxima who had refused to be a judge in the election of queen in Santo Tomás and later in Las Gaviotas, where the party was really something extraordinary despite being a tiny town

On the day of the queen's election in Las Gaviotas, they brought a Colombian singer who lived in Santo Tomas, who sang rancheras, dressed as a mariachi and as a cumbiambera from the Atlantic and Pacific coast of Colombia.

In addition, the boys, who studied from schools in El Faro, Punta Gloria, and the school, presented choreographies, in which they danced their marimba music in a natural way, then another group danced Bomba music from the blacks of Chota, in the Andes . The bachata, the calf and finally as a star number perreo, regetón and the manroneo that was pornography with clothes could not be missing.

 Unlike the Santo Tomás parties, where transvestites and gay men only arranged the candidates, at the El Faro party, the transvestites made the best of the show.

Their first number was a fashion show, and catwalk, where they wore costumes made with their hands. The second number was the fantasy costumes, in which they really put a lot of work, imagination and money, to make colorful dresses, which represented birds, flowers, and even spaceship travelers' costumes.

The surprising thing was that those transvestites were perfect women, and taller than the village girls, who even had their own disco in El Faro, where there was total respect for LGTB.

Another of the great differences is that in this party, unlike the party in Santo Tomas or Las Gaviotas, the public officials were the most important among the attendees, who were mostly sitting on the side of the street, but they were in plastic chairs and under a tent, in front of a stage with huge speakers, where the candidates and the artists performed.

In Santo Tomás, and Las Gaviotas, there were many chairs on the street, but those who were sitting there, like hunters after the prey, were the drug traffickers, and among them the capos, the ones who had huge Ford trucks, double cabins, and looked their rank with gold chains around their necks, brand watches and rings with precious stones on all their fingers, and that after the election they invited the candidates to their table filled with a bottle of beer for the young women and the whiskey of more of one hundred dollars each bottle.

Maxima retired to sleep that night and for the first time in the remodeled dispensary, as there were no buses to go to her house and the hotel rooms were taken over by the locals, who every October 4, the day of the town's patron saint. San Francisco de Asis, they returned from Quito, Guayaquil, La Esperanza and even from the Amazon, to share the party with their families.

She accompanied him to sleep in the office one of the old health promoters of the Veina village, who now had diabetes, and she was one of the health promoters that her father trained in the 80s.

In the dispensary, before the party, there was a robbery. That place had no guard, it was near the river, but far from the town and in front of the school, in an almost abandoned place with large tropical trees.

The thieves had come down the river in a canoe, they stole the sterilizer, equipment and more, so sleeping in that place was a real danger for Máxima.

Briseida, the health promoter who accompanied him along with her husband. they began to remember the times when Máxima's father arrived, in 1982