The El Niño phenomenon of 1982 upset the life of Ecuadorians, and produced a migratory wave from the countryside to the cities, since the fields, crops, animals, and peasants were easy prey to bad weather, diseases, lack of money, bad communications, since telephony was only from telephone exchanges, or by radio messages, transportation along the coastline returned to being in boats with noisy diesel engines, or in boats with outboard motors, like the weather of the banana, in the fields, the horses were once again the key, as in the time of the Colony 400 years ago.
In the towns, the absence of trade brought back native foods, which had been displaced by packaged and industrialized products, and the lack of medicines brought back medicinal plants. This allowed me to investigate the food and medicinal plants of the Muisne Canton, one of the last tropical areas on the Ecuadorian coast, which had primary forest, wild animals, abundant fishing, mangroves, reefs, cliffs, where agriculture and cattle ranching had not deforested or depredated.
Visiting house to house, sharing medical care with midwives, healers, sobadores or traditional traumatologists, with sorcerers, who did psychotherapeutic work, or with snake-eaters, who were the only ones who could save from snake bites against which they did not there was anti-venom serum, like rotting, which slowly necrotized the tissues. That information was valuable for preparing a manual on medicinal plants and native foods for OCAME health promoters and for the research of my professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Dr. Eduardo Estrella, who would publish a book called El Pan de América, with these data, after continuing his research in the Archivo de Indias, in Seville, Spain.
But it also upset the OCAME, which became a cooperative of peasants, which commercialized wood, cocoa, and products that were sold in their peasant stores. The peasants became small proprietors, thanks to the agrarian reforms of 1968, and 1974, money, property, as well as the chief's dignities or positions became a priority, money, goods, and wealth returned to be worth more than life, something that the Spanish conquerors taught the indigenous and blacks for 500 years, thanks to the gold of the Incas, their territory and the silver that became the first global currency, due to the mines and the exploitation of human beings without mercy, in the mines of Potosí.
This led to a confrontation between Luis, my fellow doctor who worked in Muisne, who lived there with his Nicaraguan wife and their two young children, practicing double standards in everything from sexual infidelity to political ambitions, teaching the health promoters, that the most important thing was the armed struggle, like the one that lived in the Sandinista Front, that the landowners and the church were part of the oppressive tradition of the peasants, since 1535 when Quito, the capital of Ecuador and the old Royal Court.
The parents, for their part, saw the danger we represented for the organization since the health promoters who listened to us were the most radical in their confrontation with the landowners, who were the owners of the land, lives, and government of the canton.
Contrary to Christ, who drove the merchants out of the temple with a whip, the priests of Muisne's Liberation Theology, Graciano and Julián, wanted to turn peasants into merchants and owners, through what they called fair trade. Luis, on the other hand, wanted to be a successful professional, owner of his house, car, and more comforts, and a high-level public official, for which he specialized in public health, but just as he demanded his wife's fidelity, but he cheated, asked the peasants to be a loyal, organized armed group, for that, the first thing was to be the owners of an organization, where the property belongs to everyone, and there would be no richer, no poorer, which would be the foundation of a new state, where everyone would be equal, as in Cuba, where wealth is to have health and knowledge, not money or goods, but the party leaders would be the owners of their lives, the administrators of the wealth that they can produce and Luis wanted to be a boss.
Finally, after 40 years, the Liberation Theology priests ended up being cocoa exporters, Luis, a bureaucrat head of a capitalist state, the health promoters, some were public employees as assistants to the health sub-centers of the ministry or the Seguro Social Campesino, or small proprietors, as proposed by the North American plan of the Alliance for Progress, with its agrarian reforms.
