Eduardo Varas presents his novel ‘Those creatures’: Justice has become an exercise of power

Carmen is a mother who discovers that her daughter was the victim of sexual abuse by her teacher. The pain is interspersed with the desire for justice that are seen ahead of the teacher’s disappearance, days before the judge’s ruling. But everything changes when J. comes to life with this mother. What would a mother do to avenge a sexual assault?

Loja is ready for the VI edition of the Living Arts Festival

This is the story that the journalist and musician Eduardo Varas develops in his new novel Those creatures whose presentation will be this Thursday at the Library of Arts, within the framework of Meeting of Free Book Independent Publishers.

“It is a tragic, dense, horrifying starting point, and in front of that a series of events takes place that allow the appearance of some fantastic beings from history, who are willing to help this mother and other people, even to do justice , in quotation marks, outside the judicial system “, reviews Varas, in an interview with this newspaper.

And it is precisely this judicial system that is also portrayed in the story of Varas. “There is a lot of that, but above all there is also a kind of confrontation between a systematic issue … the current tragedy of the penitentiary allows us to see how justice has become an exercise of power, and there is always someone who has the necessary power to make things move in their own way, according to their criteria “, expresses.

He indicates that the novel had its origins in 2014 when on a trip to Italy he visited medieval buildings where he could sleep, with a large metal door closed with a padlock. “I was thinking about what creatures could be there thinking about it and these beings that appear in the novel appeared -in an initial version- and I did not know what to do with them until at that very moment I read in the news a case of kidnapping, abuse and murder to a girl in Spain ”. reminisce.

However, it was upon his return to Ecuador in 2016 that this image of the creatures landed. Cases like those of Aampetra, The little Prince, in Quito quickly became the basis of its history. “I was able to find the land close to me to be able to talk about these beings, but deep down the tragedy, the unpleasant and disgusting thing like the silence of the authorities, the education system, the little empathy of the institutions became the basis for the history”, refers.

He confesses that the part that cost him the most to write was about the character of his mother, Carmen. “She is a very strong woman, I based her on important women in my life. It has the name of my grandmother who was an absolutely strong woman … I needed Carmen (character) to be like that and the fictional exercise was to imagine how a woman like my grandmother would react to a situation like this. It is an acknowledgment to her for her impact on my life ”, mentions.

Helena de Sarayaku, a film by the filmmaker Eriberto Gualinga, aims to consolidate and spread the concept of the living jungle

This is how the Quito journalist also presents a story that in the scoop of his synopsis reads: “Everything human is broken even before it breaks”. its presentation will be this Thursday, at 4:30 p.m., by Nicolás Esparza.

The novel will be available at Economic Culture Fund, Spanish Library and La Madriguera in Guayaquil. Meanwhile, in Quito it will be in bookstores Cosmonaut, Tolstoy, Hopscotch, Half Water and Three Cats. In Cuenca, at the Palier bookstore. (I)