La Torera

Etching, engraving, chine colle & color pencil
5.75″ x 6″
2012

When I was growing up in Quito, there was this woman called “La Torera”. She was called “The Bullfighter” due to her imposing character. She dressed elegantly with a big hat, a fox coat, embroidered blouses, long skirts, gloves, black socks, high heels and a large purse where she stored her most appraised treasures. It was said that she was a very wealthy woman but had lost everything. She would walk daily down the streets of the Center of the city with a stick keeping people in order and conserving justice. The boys would bother her, shouting bullfighter! Bullfighter! and she would persecute them with the stick. Her presence made her another character of the city. It is said that once she traveled abroad, but returned quickly. She never married. She was enrolled in a mental institute several times, but always returned to the windy streets and ready to control the streets of the city.
At the end, she ended up in an asylum, blind and without being able to walk. They say that she had to bandage her eyes because she could not support how people destroyed the city with great buildings and preferred anarchy, greed and wealth brought by a new black viscous liquid in the country. This was her revenge and she never went outside.

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