A Place Where the Sea Remembers

Like many small towns and communities, Santiago is torn between its cultural roots and the encroaching progress of the modern world, be it technological or ideological. The balance is a delicate one, and the residents struggle on a daily basis to negotiate that balance. Esperanza the midwife delivers babies in the home, the way women have delivered babies for millennia, but if a problem arises that is beyond her abilities, she is not averse to sending the woman to a modern hospital. While Candelario and Chayo Marroquin both have their superstitions—his is the color blue, she believes in curses—they nonetheless are tied to the 20th century economically. They rely on tourism and the service industry, both modern economic models, to survive. And both of these industries are rooted in the economic philosophy of capitalism, which often epitomizes social Darwinism at its most merciless. People’s livelihoods are dependent on the capricious whims of others who have no investment in the welfare of those people. In a small community where everyone knows everyone else, and where the residents’ lives intersect almost daily, the dog-eat-dog ethos of survival is a stark counterpoint to the benevolence of shared responsibility.