The Dark Bride

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Then slowly the night would open and the miracle unfold. Far off in the distance, against the immense, silky darkness, strings of colored lights would appear in La Catunga, the barrio of las mujeres, the women. Men, freshly bathed and splashed with cologne, would pile into trucks on payday and come down the mountain from the oil fields to the city of Tora, drawn like moths to a flame by those twinkling electric lights that held the greatest promise of earthly bliss.

“To see the lights of La Catunga from a distance? That was heaven, hermano,” recalls Sacramento, who has suffered a great deal because of his memories. “For that, just for that, we would break our backs working in the cruel jungle, the four hundred workers of Campo 26. Thinking of that sweetness, we withstood the rigors of Tropical Oil.”

Day after day they waded through swamps and malarial dampness, until finally the moment arrived, at the far reaches of hope, when they would glimpse the lights of La Catunga, that barrio baptized by las mujeres in honor of Santa Catalina — la Santacata, the loving Catica, the compassionate Catunga — in accordance with their devotion to her, whether for her chastity, her martyrdom, her beauty, or her royal status as a princess.

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