American Demons

Supernatural Assistance

Mariana de Parédes y Flores was educated by Jesuits. She set records in self-chastisement. She chastised herself passionately. The Lily of Quito believed she had a special relationship with creation. She took on the elements and challenged plagues to a duel.

In 1645 she struggled with the plague in Quito. The plague competed with a volcanic eruption and an earthquake. The lily asked God to calm Quito. Blattschneider writes: "Mariana fell ill soon after her prayer, and the epidemic immediately crept out of the city with its head bowed. The earthquake had insight and the volcano switched to spittoon."

Hieronymus de Vargas is also an admirer of the lily. At the temporary end of his rise in the church hierarchy, he serves as consigliere to the Bishop of Lima. This is a great job with a high stress factor. The church fights against colonists who put non-whites on the same level as mules. Vargas oversees compliance with regulations protecting "natives" and slaves. As part of his missionary work, he climbs the Latin American Alps to the "boundaries of eternal snow." He brings back "those who have escaped from fever valleys", reinforced by "supernatural assistance". Evidence shows Vargas's "gift of languages, so that natives understood his sermons even though he spoke into their consciences in Spanish."

Vargas goes to bed with plague sufferers and tells them about Saint Rosa, born Isabella Flores, who defied her parents by deciding to remain virginal. She put a hut in her parents' garden and scourged herself in it from morning to night. She burned her skin with quicklime."Lord, increase my suffering, but also my love," she prayed. The construction of the hut was followed by the construction of the monastery of "Catherine of Siena". Rosa went into nursing. Blattschneider praises "the lovely complexion of the blessed ones." It comes from procedures with the bark of the "Indian pepper.""Rosa recognized unreflected self-love as her main enemy and declared a relentless war against it. Humility, the complete denial of one's own will and childlike obedience..."

The Rose of Lima, the Lily of Quito... In 1820, Antonio José de Sucre and Simón Bolívar separated northern Peru and connected it with Colombia, which was called New Granada and was larger than it is today. After the secession of 1831, it became Ecuador. Blattschneider: "Ecuador includes the strange group of Galapagos Islands, which lies 1,200 kilometers from the west coast under the equator."

Blattschneider made fun of cormorants who had lost their ability to fly.

Brigands, whalers and escaped convicts used the islands.