Fermina Daza’s departure for Flores de María

Fermina Daza’s departure for Flores de María is the decisive act of withdrawal in the only serious crisis of her long marriage to Juvenal Urbino. In a fury she cannot fully explain, she leaves their home for the place of her childhood, turning a temporary change of scene into a separation that lasts nearly two years. The journey gives her room to inhabit a life apart, while the secrecy and subsequent regret show how neither spouse can easily make that distance permanent.

Causes and the decision to leave

The crisis takes both spouses by surprise. Their children are grown and well-behaved, their marriage has been stable for years, and they have begun to imagine a future in which they can learn to grow old without bitterness. Precisely because they believe themselves safe from misfortune, the rupture catches them unprepared. Rather than resort to the shouting, tears, and intermediaries customary in the Caribbean, they try to resolve it with what they consider European wisdom. Their uncertainty about whether their loyalties belong to the Caribbean or Europe leaves them stuck in a childish impasse instead of bringing them to an agreement.

Fermina finally decides to go, driven by sheer fury rather than a clear plan. She does not know why she is leaving or what she intends to accomplish by doing so. Juvenal, restrained by guilt, cannot persuade her to stay; he accepts her decision humbly, interpreting it as God’s punishment for the seriousness of his sins. The departure is therefore neither a settled declaration that the marriage is over nor a considered plan for a new life. It is a drastic act made in anger, met by a husband who feels he has forfeited the right to stop her.

The secret journey

Fermina sails at midnight with her face hidden by a black mantilla. Her destination is not Panama aboard a Cunard liner, as the cover story suggests, but San Juan de la Ciénaga, the city where she was born and lived until adolescence. The homesickness she has felt for it has grown harder to bear over the years, and the journey answers that longing even as it defies her husband’s wishes and the customs of the day.

Her only companion is a fifteen-year-old goddaughter who has been raised as a family servant. Yet the voyage is not wholly unannounced: ship captains and officials at each port have been notified of Fermina’s journey. She tells her children that she will spend about three months with Aunt Hildebranda for a change of scene, while her private determination is not to return. The difference between the harmless explanation and the real resolve gives the departure its double character: an escape presented to the family as a visit, and a separation whose intended duration Fermina keeps to herself.

Life apart and the attempted bridge home

Fermina settles on a ranch half a league from Flores de María, where her Cousin Hildebranda Sánchez lives. She leaves without scandal, by mutual agreement with Juvenal, though the agreement does not make the separation emotionally simple. Their children later spend a school vacation in Flores de María, and Fermina appears content with her new life. Juvenal learns this through his son’s letters, which offer him an indirect view of the household she has made at a distance.

The distance is sustained by formal correspondence about the children and domestic affairs. The letters preserve practical contact without resolving the breach: for almost two years neither spouse can find a way back that is not obstructed by pride. Their restraint contrasts with the conventional Caribbean scene of public recrimination and intermediaries, but it does not amount to composure or closure. Both had already repented of their weakness before the boat’s lights disappeared from view; still, regret alone cannot immediately undo the separation.

The bishop’s visit and Fermina’s refusal

During the second year, a pastoral visit by the Bishop of Riohacha brings a public spectacle to Hildebranda’s ranch. Riding beneath the pallium on his celebrated white mule, whose trappings are embroidered in gold, the bishop arrives amid pilgrims, accordion-playing musicians, and peddlers selling food and amulets. For three days the ranch fills with the crippled and the hopeless, many drawn less by sermons and plenary indulgences than by the mule’s rumored miracles, performed behind its master’s back.

The bishop has known the Urbino de la Calle family since his years as an ordinary priest. Escaping the festivities one afternoon, he lunches at Hildebranda’s ranch with Fermina; their conversation concerns only earthly matters. Afterward he takes her aside and asks to hear her confession. Fermina refuses amiably but firmly, explaining that she has nothing to repent of. She does not consciously mean the response as a message to Juvenal, but she is certain it will reach the appropriate ears. The refusal makes her separation visible as a position she can defend, not simply a private absence: through the bishop, the possibility of reconciliation acquires an indirect channel, while Fermina declines to describe herself as guilty.

Meaning within the marriage

The episode turns a long-standing marriage into an experiment in distance. Fermina’s departure does not erase the practical and emotional bonds between the spouses: they continue writing about their children, Juvenal receives news of her through their son, and both regret the rupture almost at once. But the gap between remorse and return is prolonged by pride, leaving neither the original stability nor a decisive ending intact. Their crisis exposes how secure domestic life can become vulnerable to a sudden act neither spouse can fully explain.

The journey also connects marital estrangement with Fermina’s growing homesickness for San Juan de la Ciénaga, the city she left in adolescence. Her departure moves her toward a remembered place and away from a marriage whose future she cannot yet settle. The ranch near Flores de María becomes the setting for this interval: Fermina appears content there, but the formal letters, her husband’s guilt, and the bishop’s carefully mediated approach all keep the absent marriage present. What begins as a secret voyage meant not to end soon becomes a separation in which regret and pride coexist, delaying the return neither can immediately bring about.