The Witch

Lia M. Padilla

COUNTRY: Colombia

TITLE: La Bruja (The Witch)

AUTHOR: Germán Castro Caycedo

PUBLISHING COMPANY: Planeta

YEAR 1994

Summary

Amanda is a woman born in Fredonia, Antioquia.  She felt a strong attraction  to witchcraft. Amanda learned to become like a witch through stages,  skills were reinforced  through learning from different people who appeared in her life. Amanda learned to read:  the cigarette, a the chocolate cup,  and the handkerchief until  she was able to make burials and to work the vudú. She was a teacher of vocation, belonged to a recognized family. Amanda was able to relate with people of great power, among them was a recognized gangster of that time, Mr. Jaime Builes. Mr. Builes returns with an amount of money, which gave him sufficient spending power to buy the best properties of the town, like the club where only the best families of Fredonia could enter. Amanda met the Antioquia’s governor and later became great friends based on the subject of witchcraft.  Through her friendship with the governor, she knew very influential people  in the Colombian public life.  Amanda had a direct bonding with the Colombia’s president,; who contracted her and  sent her to Bogota to do some “Little works”  for him. One of the mentioned works was in love the Governor’s son with the President’s daughter, and also a multimillionaire business with very influential people of this country. Also, the author talking about the great meetings with important people. That were made in Jaime Builes house. They attended very important characters of the Antioquian political life and where money was greatly wasted, to the point of  giving out gold pens  as a  reminder of celebrations.

Recommendation

I recommend this book because it gathers many factors of Colombia in the 70’s and 80’s; like drugs, politics and witchcraft. It is a very entertaining novel in which the author manages to link these three elements and show the reality of our Colombian history.