Mario González Feo

Mario González  Feo, reporter and columnist, is the author of Nihil, Nihil II, and María de la soledad.  His story “Bucho Vargas, Healer and Medicine Man” is the recollection of the speaker, who, as a child, witnessed the arrival of a medicine man.

Bucho Vargas arrived “carrying an immense umbrella, since it was raining…He had a pleasant laugh, ready and contagious, not at all the laugh of a simpleton.  With natural grace and a good deal of ingenuity, he was the first to celebrate his every word.”  Bucho Vargas visits the home of the speaker to care for a very pretty girl named Challa who suffers from an unrelenting attack of boils on her skin.  Perhaps it is because Vargas arrives with the rain that he uses the rain to cure Challa of her ailments.  Regardless, he leaves his mark on the speaker.

Photo Credit: Pixabay / CC0 Public Domain
Source: Ras, Barbara, ed. Costa Rica: A Traveler’s Literary Companion. San Francisco: Whereabouts, 1994.

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