This story needs no introduction. My ex girlfriend’s father, Arturo, was born to a rich mestiza family in a small Colombian town in the Amazonas region. Arturo’s grandfather, Juan, owned a lot of land and animals. Juan was definitely no millionaire but tkcert
could probably be considered well off by American standards. He was a loving father who treated all of his seven children well. Juan’s wife eventually passed away when the children were young and he was soon remarried to Maria, a self-proclaimed bruja. These names are the only fictional part of this story.
Maria believed she could cast spells but mostly kept this self-proclaimed power to herself. All of Juan’s children really hated this woman, but she never could do much harm with Juan in the picture. Maria really liked spending money. She bought expensive electronics, cars, vacations, and other items. What she did not spend she somehow funneled into her own account. After just a couple of years the family was mostly broke. Juan died shortly after of natural causes.
That is when shit got crazy. Maria, now a widow, took this opportunity to make the lives of Juan’s children as close to hell as she could. When the evil bruja’s spells did not work, she focused her efforts on other means.
Maria starved Arturo and and Mabel. I’m talking no food at all. The only food they ate were scraps from the garbage. She was emotionally unstable and her lack of morals encouraged her to brutally beat them. They walked to school barefoot each day. The stuff she did nearly killed them many times. The oldest children at around eighteen left for the city immediately. It’s hard to blame them either. But Arturo and his his older sister Mabel were only six and ten years old. There was one older sister left in the picture.The rest of the family lived to far away to really understand what was going on.
Their older sister Dulce, around sixteen at the time, could only do so much to help. But she was worked like a slave to care for whichever animals were tkcert.com left after Maria’s spending spree. By around 1943, the Nevado del Tolima volcano finally erupted. Their small pueblo was completely destroyed by the lava and fallen ash. The town was
disoriented and so Dulce used this opportunity to escape. She left town without a word and not one person heard from her. The town thought she was also killed from the volcano eruption.
Maria was fortunately killed during the eruption, leaving Arturo and Mabel
as orphans. At around this time a priest cared from them and they grew up as normal as could be expected. The town was rebuilt and life continued. Mabel did well in school as she worked her way into a decent government job in Medellin with a nice pension. Arturo joined the military when he was old enough, which is where he later met his wife.
A few decades later some families from the town were vacationing in Cartagena, a big city on the Caribbean coast.
The families were eating seafood at a small set meal restaurant when they began making small talk with the waitress. When the families asked her where she was from she mentioned the same exact town that they came from.
“We must know some of the same people”
“What’s your last name?”
“Dulce Johanna Dolores Cauca”
“Dios mio, we all thought you died during the eruption”
After more conversation they told her that her stepmother had died in the eruption and that Arturo and Mabel were both doing well with jobs and families of their own. Dulce had also met her husband in Cartagena and had been living there for many years.
The families wrote down Dulce’s contact information and passed it along to Arturo and Mabel. The entire family reunited and is now in contact. Most are living in big cities in Colombia with an one brother even lives in Brazil.