Omayra (and Azucena) aren't their death of course but, I just can't feel anything but sorrow for their horrible fate. Thirty-five years after, I still feel only anger about the Colombian government who left a little girl to die, just because they didn't bring a pump in order to try saving her. Sorry, I can't feel anything symbolic, or soothing in this story. For three days, she remained trapped in the mud, while a pump could take away all the water and probably could release her legs from the bricks of the roof she was trapped. Omayra, the real girl, died because her rescuers couldn't save her, without cutting her legs, and the doctors found it more humane to let her die. The worst is that the Colombian girl's photo, -just before her death- which I have seen in a newspaper when I was at the same age, has haunted me for the next years. In fact, I am devastated because it is well written, it has the poetic realism that Allende always has, but couldn't make me feel anything else but sadness.
It is a heartbreaking story about a man who tries to save a little girl from death in a volcano eruption.
