The Oedipus of Blood - Or of the Stormy Life of José María Obando

“There is an intricate drama in the life of General Obando that confuses the imagination and moves the spirit. There is in the varied adventures of his hectic public career... a mysterious fatality that drags him like Oedipus from the fable of good to evil and from the glory of command to the curse of the parricides.

This profile of José María Obando, written by Salvador Camacho Roldán on the occasion of the trial followed by the Congress of the Republic, explains the title that Paz Otero has chosen for this extraordinary novel, where the stormy Colombian history, particularly that of his century XIX, finds unexpected decipherments and disconcerting clarifications, a measure that penetrates into the life and events that surrounded the intense personality of the charismatic Caucano leader. The proverbial rivalry between cousins ​​José María Obando and Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera—both aides-de-camp of Bolívar; both aristocrats, landowners and warriors; both presidents of the Republic—dominates the pages of this fortunate fusion of literature and history about our process of political and cultural formation, carried out with poetic virtuosity,

Linked to the author's previous work —El demente exquisite, la vida estrafalaria de Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, published by Villegas Editores—, this novel is a delicious invitation to appropriate a historical past that we have not fully understood but that is urgently needed to know. to redefine our future.