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FIRST BOOK

«The disappeared of Tafí del Valle»

Chapter I

I met Belicena Villca when she was interned in the Neuropsychiatric Hospital «Dr.
Javier Patrón Isla» in the city of Salta, under diagnosis of irreversible senile dementia. Being
Medic of the «B» pavilion, of incurable patients, I had to paid attention to the referred patient
for a long year in which I applied all the resources that the psychiatric science and my
extensive experience in the profession gave to attempt, vainly, her recuperation. As will be
seen later, her story was written by herself while she remained in that joyless confinement.
She dedicated to that purpose all the available time, which was a lot, because the medical joint
had authorized her to write «due to the activity redounded in evident therapeutic results on
the mood of the patient». Although, no one knew to what referred her writes and if them
revealed some logic coherence, information which possession would have been helpful to
confirm or correct the adverse diagnosis. Two reasons avoided to know the content of her
writings: the first, and main reason, consisted in that the patient wrote in «Quechua
santiagueño», a language which is only spoken in her natal region; in secrecy, it seems,
Belicena Villca translated the writings into Spanish a few days before she died; the second
reason was the homicidal zeal that she put to avoid the reading of the texts, what ended, one
day, in a violent incident with a nurse who dared to look at one of its pages. But, as what
concerned was to maintain her calm, and the writing contributed to maintain her in that state,
they opted to not contradict her maniac desires and they allowed her to hide the writings in a
briefcase from which she was never separated. However, part of her story was related to me by
herself, during her convalescence, either through large monologues that were frequently on
her psychoanalytic sessions, in the days in which some mental stability allowed this therapy,
or, involuntarily, when the narcosis treatment plunged her into a heavy stupor where,
however, never decreased her oral activity. Naturally, it was not possible to give credit to her
statements, not only due to her diseased condition, but for the tenor of them, which were
incredible and hallucinative: her writings would be never qualified, with more justice, as an
own story of a madwoman.

The alienated situation of Belicena Villca surely will discourage the readers about the
veracity of the narrated events. It is comprehensible because just one year ago I’d have made all
possible to avoid the divulgation of a material that prudence, and the professional ethic,

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