Eduardo Galeano: Sacrilegious Women

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In the year 1901, Elisa Sánchez and Marcela Gracia got married in the church of Saint George in the Galician city of A Coruña.

Elisa and Marcela had loved in secret. To make things proper, complete with ceremony, priest, license and photograph, they had to invent a husband. Elisa became Mario: she cut her hair, dressed in men’s clothing, and faked a deep voice.

When the story came out, newspapers all over Spain screamed to high heaven — “this disgusting scandal, this shameless immorality” — and made use of the lamentable occasion to sell papers hand over fist, while the Church, its trust deceived, denounced the sacrilege to the police.

And the chase began.

Elisa and Marcela fled to Portugal.

In Oporto they were caught and imprisoned.

But they escaped. They changed their names and took to the sea.

In the city of Buenos Aires the trail of the fugitives went cold.

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Copyright 2015 Eduardo Galeano. Reprinted by permission of TomDispatch.

Excerpted from Eduardo Galeano’s Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History published by Nation Books.