The crazy Luz Caraballo
In my country there are many legends and stories, some have been true, others the locals have annexed part to it in truth, but also of fantasy. A story that caught my attention was what my mother told me, when I travel to the state of Mérida, to a very beautiful town called Timotes, where there is a monument dedicated to the crazy Luz Caraballo and it is a statue located in a square within the “Parque loca Luz Caraballo”, in Apartaderos, at 3473 meters above sea level and which is the building heritage of Merida state.
It is a 1967 work by the Spanish plastic artist Manuel de La Fuente, who settled in the city of Mérida from 1959 until his death. My mother said that she visited the monument, remembering a poem that a successful poem from Venezuela had dedicated to this lady.
According to them, Luz Caraballo is a legendary name as there are no documents or memories about someone called as such in the region. The name was given by Andrés Eloy Blanco to a woman considered “crazy” in the areas around Timotes. It is said according to legend that there was a woman during the independence period of the country, thus one of the arguments of her “madness” being the fact that two of her children found themselves behind Bolivar's army, which is also associated with the verse of the word that two of her children went after a man on horseback. And according to the story, she said the opposite route to the Spaniards so that they would not follow Bolivar on their crossing through the Andes. That is, two sons went to fight him in the war of independence, with Bolivar
Alvio Alfonso Briceño wrote a book where he claims to be the grandson of La Loca Luz Caraballo. In it he collects the real data about the character, highlighting that: Her real name is María Blasa Rivas. He was born in 1885 in the town of Jajó, Trujillo state, had two children, a male and a female. Therefore, the five children that Andrés Eloy Blanco's poem tells are fictitious, the reason for their madness is not known, which was limited to simple ravings, not as legends are portrayed. In 1927, at the age of 42, he left home for the last time and never returned.
As you can see this story, it has some reality and some fantasy, placed by the writings Andrés Eloy Blanco, and a fragment of the poem reads as follows:
