The Incredible Wedding of a Dictator

By Horacio A. Hernández

The novel is divided in ten chapters. It starts with the wedding of one the victims of the dictator. In the preamble, there are two godfathers [compadres] (two fathers, one who has baptized the other one son) who share their manuscripts about a fictitious community called Dolorosa Village, the finding of the original manuscript of Christopher Columbus, known as Columbus Journal; and about the apocalyptic predictions of the island. Then, continues the description of the priest of the community; followed by the life of the dictator of Dolorosa: his origin, his political tricks, and his repressive measures, the adventures of his centaurs, the extravagance of his wedding, his decadence, and his death. In the same way, the life of the hero is developed parallel to the dictator with all his vicissitudes and struggles against him. The novel continues with the desperation and exodus of the younger members of the community, and the destruction almost of the whole island caused by a tsunami. Finally, it is closed with an epilogue where the two godparents make a scrutiny about the books written during the dictatorship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781477151372

Horacio A. Hernández

Biography Horacio A. Hernández was born in Sabana de la Mar, Dominican Republic; he holds a M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish and Latin American literature from the State University of New York at Albany where he was awarded a Teaching Assistanship. He has a Licenciatura in Modern Languages from Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD), 1987. Before coming to USA, Dr. Hernández worked for ten years as a Spanish language trainer and technical coordinator for the Peace Corps. He also taught for six years at Northfield Mount Hermon Scchool, MA; and seven years in Houghton College, Houghton, NY. Dr. Hernández has been in Montreat College, North Carolina, since 2003 as a professor of Spanish Language and Literature. He is the author of The Incredible Wedding, a novel in Spanish with the title, La boda increíble; this novel is now translated into English with the title, The Incredible Wedding of a Dictator. Dr. Hernández also wrote a book of poetry, Divagaciones Poéticas. He is now working in his second novel, and with a collection of short stories.

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Copyright © 2013 by Horacio A. Hernández.

Library of Congress Control Number:        2012913673

ISBN:                Hardcover                          978-1-4771-5136-5

                          Softcover                           978-1-4771-5135-8

                          Ebook                                978-1-4771-5137-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

The Two Godfather Friends

I

A. The Dolorosa Village and Its Genealogy

B. Father Antonio Rosario de la Cruz

II

The First Manuscript

III

A. The Origins of the President

B. Compadrazgo (Crony) and Compadreo (Cronyism)

IV

Official Repression: Arrests and Executions

V

A. The Spirit of His Godfather (Friend) in the Grave

B. Mesié Meliá’s Hex

VI

The Amazing Wedding

VII

A. The Terror of the Centaurs

B. The Plague of Ticks

VIII

The Return of Colonel Felix Antonio Maldonado Hernández

IX

The Channel of Death

X

A. The Discovery of the Second Manuscript

B. The Great Tsunami

EPILOGUE

ENDNOTES

image.jpg

Women have been ravished in Zion, and virgins

in the towns of Judah. Elders are shown not respect.

—Lamentations 5:11, 12b (NIV)

To my beloved children, Granadita and Enmanuel, and to my adored granddaughter, Nicole Samara Ramkissoon

Also, with great affection and admiration, to my former colleague and friend Kathleen O’Connor of Columbia University

PROLOGUE

Lucia went to bed that night so happy and full of joy that for all the excitement, she found it difficult to fall asleep. She thought that tomorrow, her dream would come true and what she had woken up from so many times, at least, would finally happen.

Her fiancé was a descendant of one of those rich Jewish families living in the north of the island. He was blond, tall, and a well-mannered young man; he also had a very solid academic background and good moral principles. He was the ideal person for any educated young lady in Dolorosa Village wishing to get married someday.

The interesting thing was that he had set his sights on one of the young ladies of the community, just like any other rich young man who wanted to marry. By tradition, his parents arranged everything about the new family relationship with other families from the nation in the north of the island.

However, her wedding would never be like the one the president had, but it was the one she had dreamed of since she received the first arrow shot by Cupid.

What never crossed Lucia’s mind was the fact that on the same day, a malicious person—a man without a soul—had devised an evil plan that would take place just moments before the wedding celebration.

But before we delve into that, let’s see the community where she had been raised.

The Two Godfather Friends

My godfather Almancio was a very friendly storyteller. Growing up with his grandparents as a child, he had been exposed to a series of historical events in his country, especially those stories he heard about their community through some relatives.

One Sunday, after leaving the church, no sooner had I stepped on the road [when] I heard a familiar voice.

Godfather Puro!

I lifted my head, and I realized that it was my friend Almancio. I said, Hello, my dearest godfather. How are you?

Not as well as you, buddy, now that I see you with your Panama hat and denim clothing.

Ah, it is because of church, my friend!

After all the greetings of rigor and having asked of his godmother and the entire family, I began to remember some of his usual stories.

Look, my friend, you know what I have decided to do lately? he said.

So tell me, pal. I’m all ears.

Do you remember some of the stories I told you about my community? Well, this time, I decided to put them all in writing so that I can share them with other people like you. Here is my first draft. He extended his hand and handed me a notebook with the title The Dolorosa Village (La Villa Dolorosa). I want you to read it when you have time and let me know your opinion.

Deal done, Godfather. Sure, I will. But before we parted, I said, Godfather! Wait a minute. I want to show you something.

I was also carrying, by chance, a portfolio where I had copies of some leaflets. It happened that I, unlike my friend, had the opportunity to go to college for a few semesters. But because of my job responsibilities, I had to leave college before completing my studies.

However, in the short time I spent there, I learned something about literature. But what really interested me most was to read old documents and manuscripts from the colonial era.

So in that very moment when my friend gave me his notebook, I remembered that I had copies of two historic manuscripts I had found in the old library in our community council. One was about the colonial time, and the other one was more contemporary. Additionally, I had my written comments on these documents.

So before we parted, I said, Have this, Godfather, a copy of these old documents. Take a quick peek at it whenever you can. But above all, pay attention to my comments and then let me know your reaction about it.

All right, my godfather, so I will do, he replied.

Then I put on my hat and bade him farewell with a handshake. He went on with his tasks of the day, and I went home. Because it was Sunday, I had the day off. What follows is his story.

Chapter I

A. The Dolorosa Village and Its Genealogy

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the normal development and suffering of a community that had to survive under the cruel and repressive threats of a bloody regime.

In the beginning, everything seemed like when God created the world. It was an innocent world, like paradise. Then after a while, everything began to change gradually due to the malice of people, until the time of the nightmare of the president.

The early inhabitants of these paradise lands were living in a complete state of innocence and in harmony with nature, which provided them with all the natural resources they needed for their subsistence. Their first rudimentary tools were sufficient to satisfy their basic needs. They were living in small sedentary villages, engaged in farming, hunting, and fishing in the flatlands near rivers and beaches.

Women were engaged in the cultivation of corn—their primary means of subsistence—in child care and in food preparation. Men spent hours a day resting by lying in hammocks. While they were resting, they fell asleep under the murmur of the waves of the sea, the sweet singing of birds constantly perched on the branches, and the echo of leaves gently vibrating with the delicate breeze from the bay.

To the beat of the palm trees, in this state of bliss and comfort, they dreamed of other lands and distant shores they would like to find one day, where they could also hang their hammocks under the trees, awaiting the arrival of cool times when they could pursue their usual work of hunting and fishing.

Many springs had passed when one day, amid the horizon in the middle of the sea, one of the inhabitants in the village happened to see something that seemed like a giant canoe that was increasingly widening as it approached the beach where he was.

The Indian immediately sounded the alarm, and they all began to hide behind the trees. While some of them took their children to secure strategic sites, the chief and his followers were located prudently along the beach, concealed by the trees, awaiting the approach of the gigantic and strange canoe, whose shape and colors they had never before seen around the island.

Fortunately, it was a moderate vessel under the command of one of the small conquerors by the name of Diego de Lira. In the vessel was a small group of Europeans from Spain. Luckily, in the midst of them was a respected priest in the group, who—having already heard of some conquerors and the contact they had with the natives at nearby islands—decided to take the lead in this first contact with these residents. He wanted to make sure that the meeting with them would be held in a cordial and peaceful way, without having to shed a drop of blood.

This priest suspected exactly the proximity of the Indians because he saw the remains of a smoking bonfire that they did not have time to extinguish before the rapid approach of the ship. While approaching the beach, as this priest was unaware of the peaceful nature of the residents, he gave instructions for some children to come down; some women accompanied them.

As the priest went before them, he made some peace signs to the Indians so that they had the confidence to approach. That was the time when the chief made the decision to approach them, and he was followed by his main bodyguard, then by small groups who had begun to emerge from all directions.

They began to surround the European visitors after realizing that the first meeting had been peaceful and cordial, both from the side of the priest and his companions as well as on the part of the cacique and his group.

Among these families were relatives of Pedro Antonio Maldonado and Louise Martinez, who were the leaders and founders of Dolorosa town; they were the first to settle, building a ranch next to the Yabón estuary on a beautiful beach. They had arrived at the scene in a canoe from the north of the island, where they had been attracted by the fame of the discovery of America.

Pedro Antonio Maldonado had been a descendant of the heroes of Segovia, who had settled in the colonies at the north of the island with the first divisions of land known as Las Encomiendas (certain grants of land made by the Spanish Kings). This colonial institution gave him the right, as an explorer, to a large piece of land, including the Indians who lived there.

Sometime after they had settled in that place at the north of the island, he decided to make a long journey to the east of the island in a canoe with his wife, his son, Julio, better known as Simon, and a foster daughter called Adelaide. They traveled throughout the east coast up to the two ends of what they understood to be a peninsula; it had a beautiful bay, which the Admiral christened as the Gulf of Arrows because of the first armed encounter there with the natives. Then they headed south of the bay, and there they found the Yabon estuary, where they settled. Thus began the history of Villa Dolorosa.

What prompted Pedro Antonio Maldonado to abandon their first colony was the social pressure he received from other explorers, who had stripped him of his rights to the colony because one of his relatives had mingled carnally with one of the Indian women. In addition, most of the Indians were extinguished due to the exploitation they faced and because of the diseases brought by Europeans.

When the settlers of the first northern colonies realized that the reduction of the indigenous population would affect the business of construction and agriculture, they made the decision to import the first black slaves. This would provide for the heavy work of the sugarcane plantations, thus establishing the first sugar mills in the island. The Meliá family began, and they were among the first African-West Indian colonies in the north. A descendant of the family would come later to Dolorosa.

With the progress in these early settlements, it was expected that other families of different races as well, would come to settle on the island, like the Jews, Lebanese, Japanese, Chinese, and other ethnic groups. As was natural, these ethnic groups also brought to the colonies all their cultural baggage, including voodoo and other beliefs and superstitions of African groups established on the island, many of whom were descendants of the Yoruba culture.

*

Upon the arrival of the Hernandez and Meliá families, Pedro Antonio Maldonado welcomed them and told them it was time to formally establish the Dolorosa Village. Having spent some time in that part of the island, he warned the newcomers of the bad weather, saying that when it rained, they would spend weeks without seeing the sun. So he recommended that the city should be settled a few miles east of Yabon River, as called by the natives of that place, because his farm had been destroyed twice by the rising river and some Indians had disappeared during the floods. In addition, he noted that the closer they were to the river, the more problems they had with mosquitoes and gnats and other pests.¹

In those days, Father Enrique, a descendant of an Italian family, appeared at the place and brought to Dolorosa the tradition of devotion to the Virgin of Pilar. Father Henry was the ancestor of Father Anthony Rosario de la Cruz.

So with the presence of the Italian priest, they came to formally establish the Dolorosa Village a few miles east of the Yabon estuary, upon passing the forest edge that led to the bay. This would separate the community from the influences of the estuary; that way, it would be located just in front of the beach.

It was the perfect place for the start of Dolorosa Village, whose foundation began with