Novel
When the Guayacans Were in Bloom
Cuando los guayacanes florecían
Nelson Estupiñán Bass · 1954
Synopsis
In Esmeraldas, after the assassination of Eloy Alfaro, Colonel Carlos Concha raises the province against the conservative government. Militiamen, peasants, women of the people, priests and opportunists take turns to speak, and the Afro-Ecuadorians, enlisted in a war that others are leading, gradually discover their own strength.
Context
Completed in 1943, the novel came out in Quito in 1954 and went through six editions in Spanish. A historical novel, it tells from the country's Black periphery a war that official history writes from the capital, and shows Afro-Ecuadorians reduced to the role of tools by the conservative and liberal parties. The guayacán, a tree whose yellow flowers open once a year, stands for the awakening of a people. Henry J. Richards translated it into English in 1987.
Who it is for
For reading the great Esmeraldas revolt as told by those who fought it, in the first novel of an Afro-Ecuadorian writer from Esmeraldas.
Prizes and reception
Its success was immediate: the book became one of the most widely read novels in Ecuador and Latin America.