Fermina Daza’s journey to Valledupar and Riohacha

Fermina Daza’s journey to Valledupar and Riohacha is at once a forced separation from Florentino Ariza and a passage toward independence. Sent away by her father after he discovers their hidden correspondence, she crosses a region marked by hardship and civil conflict. Yet the journey also brings her into a sustaining circle of relatives, renews her communications with Florentino, and helps her understand that her life need not be defined solely by the love she has lost or fears losing.

Expulsion and the journey’s beginning

The journey follows the discovery of Fermina’s love letters at the Academy of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin. Sister Franca de la Luz catches her writing a letter during class, and Fermina admits the offense but refuses to identify her sweetheart. The Academy expels her. Lorenzo Daza then searches her room and finds, in a false bottom of her trunk, packets containing three years of letters. He sends his daughter away by schooner to San Juan de la Ciénaga without giving her a chance to appeal, and she has no opportunity to warn Florentino or arrange how they will communicate.

The separation makes the journey’s physical hardships inseparable from its emotional cost. Fermina expects not to see Florentino again and believes she will lose the comfort of his letters. She and her father travel through a landscape where staying overnight may mean an open-air public dormitory rather than an inn. Lorenzo has spent much of his life trading in the region and knows its routines; for Fermina, the journey is unfamiliar and distressing. The contrast makes her displacement plain: what is ordinary travel to her father becomes a test of endurance for her.

Hardship and the threat of war

The nights intensify Fermina’s sense of exposure. She cannot sleep in the public dormitories, where travelers arrive after dark, tether their animals, and hang hammocks beneath palm roofs. By dawn, the initially quiet resting places have become crowded, with families and animals filling the space. The changing scene gives the journey a recurring rhythm: the caravan pauses, strangers gather, and Fermina must endure conditions over which she has little control.

Food and fatigue compound her grief. The smell of salted catfish worsens the loss of appetite brought on by her distress, and she gradually loses the habit of eating. She thinks of the country as a land of forgetting, but memory of Florentino remains the relief that keeps despair from overwhelming her. Her recollection of him does not end the separation; it makes it possible for her to bear it.

The civil war adds a danger that at first seems remote. Mule drivers teach the travelers how to distinguish the opposing forces, and mounted soldiers sometimes seize recruits by roping them. One night, a patrol of unknown affiliation captures two travelers and hangs them from a tree near the settlement. Lorenzo has the bodies taken down and given a Christian burial, although he did not know the dead men. The episode makes the violence of the region an immediate part of the journey and shows that Fermina’s exile takes place amid dangers beyond her father’s control.

Hildebranda and the recovery of connection

At Valledupar, Fermina’s cousin Hildebranda Sánchez recognizes her exhaustion and grief. She arranges a room for them to share and, with her mother’s help, tends to Fermina after the journey. The welcome offers a sharp change from the exposure of the road: Fermina is no longer alone with her father and her distress. Hildebranda understands her condition because she, too, is consumed by an intense, frustrated love.

Their reunion also reconnects Fermina with the correspondence Lorenzo’s actions have interrupted. Before setting out, he has telegraphed news of the journey to his brother-in-law Lisímaco Sánchez, who passes it through a broad network of relatives. Florentino learns the itinerary and organizes telegraph operators to follow Fermina’s route. When the cousins are alone, Hildebranda produces an envelope sealed with the emblem of the national telegraph. Inside are eleven telegrams. Fermina recognizes the sender and reads them through tears, discovering that the separation has not ended Florentino’s attempts to reach her.

The telegraph network turns the journey’s scattered towns into a channel of intimacy. Fermina stays in Valledupar for three months, and the correspondence continues from her arrival there until the journey ends in Riohacha a year and a half later. Lorenzo believes that his daughter has forgotten her attachment and relaxes his vigilance. His assumption creates room for the very connection he sought to break: messages reach Fermina across the distance, while his dealings with her relatives distract him from monitoring her closely.

A wider family world and a changed sense of self

After the long stay in Valledupar, Fermina and Hildebranda continue through foothills, meadows, and mesas. In village after village, relatives receive them with music and fireworks, and telegraph messages arrive with punctual regularity. Fermina discovers that the celebrations are not an exception: in this province, ordinary days can take on the character of a holiday. Houses stand open to visitors, with a hammock ready and food being prepared even when guests arrive before their telegram has announced them.

Hildebranda accompanies Fermina for the rest of the journey, guiding her through the intricacies of her extended family and toward a fuller knowledge of her origins. With that company, Fermina feels free for the first time, protected and befriended, and recovers her tranquillity and will to live. Much later, she remembers the trip with a nostalgia that makes it feel increasingly near. The journey does more than carry her away from home: it gives her a sense of belonging and possibility that her life under Lorenzo’s authority had not afforded.

That broader experience does not dissolve Fermina’s love for Florentino. When her father considers arranging a marriage between her and the wealthy heir Cleofás Moscote, Fermina compares the elegant suitor with her memory of Florentino, a frail young man sitting beneath the almond trees with a book of verse. She finds no doubt in her heart. After consulting a fortune-teller, she takes renewed courage from the prediction of a long and happy marriage and assumes command of her fate. The telegrams then become practical as well as passionate: she and Florentino set dates, agree on ways to meet, and pledge to marry without consulting anyone when they are together again.

Return, independence, and the journey’s significance

The return initially fails. After Lorenzo and Fermina leave Riohacha by schooner, contrary winds drive the vessel back to the port from which it sailed. Fermina endures the reversal without thinking of Florentino for one night, while he waits anxiously for her return. When the crossing is attempted again, the schooner finally reaches the harbor in Las Ánimas Bay amid rain. Florentino watches from the telegraph office, but Fermina arrives so drenched that he does not recognize her as she is carried ashore.

At home, Fermina discovers how much she has changed. The house has been closed and neglected, but she takes up the work of making it livable again with Gala Placidia, who returns to serve the family. Lorenzo formally gives Fermina authority over the household, placing its keys in her hands. At seventeen, she accepts the responsibility with the knowledge that each measure of freedom matters to her love. Her return therefore does not restore the old order: she comes back not merely as the daughter Lorenzo sent away, but as a young woman prepared to exercise authority and shape her future.

The journey’s significance lies in this double movement. It separates Fermina and Florentino across distance, interrupted messages, and the threat of forgetting; at the same time, kinship and the telegraph keep their relationship active. For Fermina, travel through hardship opens a route beyond paternal control and into a wider identity, while the return gives her the authority to act on the commitment she and Florentino have made. What begins as banishment becomes an interval in which love persists, and Fermina’s independence takes form.