“Guayaquil”: the work that presents what San Martín and Bolívar were able to speak during their famous meeting

It is one of the greatest mysteries in our history, an event of which until today there are no official data: no letters, no documents, no signatures. What happened in the interview held by the liberators Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin in Guayaquil, on July 26 and 27, 1822? What exactly did they talk about? What determined that San Martín gave up the last independence battles with which Bolívar finally covered himself with glory? The Argentine playwright Mario Diament knew how to take advantage of these gaps in history to, from the theater, solve the mystery. And he does so in “Guayaquil, a love story”, a mixture of political chess and impossible melodrama, in which the encounter between the two liberators cannot be understood without the participation of their then companions, Rosa Campusano and Manuela Sáenz.

Directed by Javier Valdez, the play that this Saturday, October 9, opens at the Teatro de Lucía, It is one of the most intimate, humane and demystifying events that are counted within the strange commemoration of our Bicentennial. On stage, actors such as Alonso Cano, Cindy Díaz, Fabiola Vargas, Omar García and Giovanni Arce repeat their roles in the series “The Last Bastion”, To star in a drama that, this time, allows licenses and freedoms to propose a very suggestive hypothesis: that behind one of the greatest enigmas of our republican historiography, there has been a mess of skirts: two generals in love with the same woman .

Indeed, on the one hand it is about showing the liberators from a much more human angle and, on the other, highlighting the much more historical role of their partners, Campuzano and Sáenz, also close friends and empowered fighters for independence. We are not here in front of untouchable bronze figures, but with much more carnal characters, with a particularly intense love life, and fully aware of their political weaknesses. The historical speculation of the Argentine playwright is to propose that, although it is known that San Martín knew Manuela Sáenz before Bolívar (he even decorated her in Lima), to suggest between them a one-night stand, and an obsession in the mind of the Argentine general .

That San Martín and Bolívar discussed in those meetings for the love of Manuela Sáenz is, for Javier Valdez, a totally viable and credible hypothesis. “That is the great virtue of Mario Diament, having been able to see that aspect of the story. It is an event about which everything is assumption. All we know is the fight of egos suggested by the phrase that San Martín wrote in one of his letters addressed to Bolívar: “Two suns cannot shine in the same sky.” But the rest is a fascinating mystery”, He says.

As Valdez points out, the Argentine playwright’s interest in history is not only reflected in “Guayaquil”, but in works as notable as “A report on the banality of love” (which Valdez himself starred in in 2016), on the relationship between the German philosophers Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, then played by Camila Zavala; or “Franz and Einstein”, about the chance meeting between the German physicist and the Czech writer Franz Kafka, in Prague, pieces in which the author worked with plausible elements to install a dose of imagination. “Mario Diament has the virtue of writing about historical figures, to fully humanize them”Explains the director, who shares responsibility for this staging with his daughter, Micaela Valdés.

In this case, they are two antipodal characters: the austere San Martín (Omar García), and a more hedonistic Bolívar (Alonso Cano). “Although historical information is valuable when you are going to build a real character, for us the important thing is to stick to what the text proposes. For this reason, both Alonso and Omar, who come from playing Bolívar and San Martín in “El last bastion ”, I asked them to build our own history. This is how these two historical figures emerged with two such opposite visions”, Explains the director.

Certainly, it is a happy coincidence that the play can take advantage of actors who have already known how to fit such historical roles. All of them brought a lot of history learned to the montage, and it seemed that they knew everything about their characters. Omar García, for example, contributed to his interpretation his knowledge of the chronic diseases suffered by San Martín. But beyond the historical reconstruction, what is interesting is the freedom of the premise: what does war and heroism matter, if not the woman who has been lost.

Place: Lucia Theater, Calle Bellavista 512, Miraflores.

Premiere: October 9

Season: Friday and Saturday, 9:00 pm. Sundays, 7 pm. Until October 31.

Directs: Javier Valdés and Micaela Valdés

List: Víctor Prada, Alonso Cano, Giovanni Arce, Cindy Diaz, Fabiola Vargas, Omar García, Roberto Ruiz.

Art Director: Granda dishes

Costume designer: Jessica Navarro Rodriguez

Musical director: Jorge Sabogal