THE FANATICAL POLICEMAN

NN was born in Cabo San Francisco, and her mother was the healer, the director of the children's center, and the one who led the community in the village. When the rural doctor and his wife arrived in the village, she became his assistant, since the nurse and the doctor didn't get along. That nurse thought she owned the Ministry of Health center and believed that the doctors had to do what she told them. Furthermore, she saw patients in a building located in the village and didn't want to work in the new health center, which had been built in 1980, somewhat distant from the village, at the north entrance. It had no water, electricity, sewage system, or equipment. The new doctor turned the health center into his home, as it had living quarters for the doctor, and his office was in another part of the building. The team provided electricity, first from a noisy generator, and then from the village generator, which provided electricity for 3 hours each day. The water was collected in cane channels leading to storage tanks, and during the two months without rain, someone would go to a nearby waterfall, where the whole village would also gather to collect water and bring it back. That young man, seven years younger than the doctor, learned to suture, take blood pressure, administer injections and IV fluids, and provide first aid from the doctor, and when the doctor left in 1982, he came with him to Quito and applied to the police force as an assistant. His career as a police officer began as an assistant at the new police hospital, but he later took a course to become a full-fledged officer. As a police officer, he worked throughout the country and specialized in the search and protection of minors. When the country's worst economic crisis hit in 2000, along with dollarization, there was also a mass migration of Ecuadorians, and many families were separated, as it was the first migration crisis in which women, more than men, emigrated, primarily to Europe and the United States. This breakdown of families and the lack of money, food, and work within households forced many teenagers to seek employment, and for young women, the primary job was prostitution. Smugglers appeared, taking migrants to other countries and offering young women jobs in cities within the country, or in Peru and Colombia, which became child trafficking for sexual exploitation. NN was part of the investigative police force that searched for minors in the hands of traffickers and brought them from neighboring countries. But the economic crisis also led to the expansion of slums, especially in Guayaquil, Machala, Santo Domingo, and Quevedo. These slums were truly hell on earth: houses made of cardboard, wood, and zinc, without streets, sewage systems, electricity, or garbage collection, where every neighbor was a thief, a murderer, or an extortionist. The neighborhoods were formed through land invasions, where the homeless, led by populist leaders, paid a sum of money to the invaders' bosses and had to pay for electricity, water, and security to their henchmen, who would either expel them or recruit their sons or daughters to form gangs of doctors and child prostitutes. During this time, he married and had three children who lived in Ambato, while he carried out his duties in different parts of the country. When NN went to work as a police officer in Guayaquil in these slums—Guayaquil had become the city with the most slums in South America, worse than Lima—NN was traumatized. He could never believe the incredibly high level of evil and cruelty that existed in those neighborhoods; he couldn't sleep, and he walked around feeling danger and death at his back. This led him to suffer psychological trauma and become a patient in the psychiatric ward of the Police Hospital in Quito. The main psychological help he received at the hospital was from a Catholic priest who introduced them to religious fanaticism. He spent months as an inpatient until he was finally able to work in Ambato with his family. His wife and daughter studied educational psychology at the University of La Rioja in Spain, earning master's degrees. His other two children studied civil engineering and systems engineering, and after obtaining their university degrees, they were able to enter the police officers' academy. However, NN and his wife divorced after he retired as a non-commissioned officer. The reason for his wife's divorce was that NN has a mental disorder that has turned him into a preacher of the word of God, and he cannot stop mentioning the Bible and interpreting reality in a personal and arbitrary way. NN has stopped living in this world and now lives in a world where human beings are good or bad depending on whether or not they follow what the Bible says.