September 21, 2026
Plaza San Sebastián
“At the time, it had been another beautiful plaza in a city of beautiful plazas.”
- By Dennis Easters
Saturday, September 12, 2026
After a lovely morning at the Santuario de la Virgen del Rocio and the ruins of Ingapirca, we stopped for an extraordinary lunch at a nearby hacienda, Posada Ingapirca. The restored two-hundred-year-old property was something out of a storybook, with white adobe walls and uneven wooden floors. The soft smell of smoke came from the fireplace, permeating the rooms. A wall of French windows in the main dining room opened onto spectacular gardens that spread across the cool Andean countryside, where llamas roamed freely.
Apparently, the property had once encompassed the nearby ruins as part of a much larger hacienda, and stones from the ancient Inca and Cañari site were said to remain in the house’s original foundations. It was the kind of place where history didn’t feel displayed so much as lived—absorbed into the walls that surrounded us.
Manuela’s life had unfolded long before Wilson began telling her story, yet some part of me wanted to reach back into her world and keep her safe.
As we made our way back toward Cuenca through the bucolic Ecuadorian countryside, we passed sweeping haciendas, small villages, and old colonial ruins. Crisp mountain air blew in through the open window beside Santiago, our driver. The banter and jokes flowed that afternoon as easily as they had since we left the hotel earlier that morning.
“Ariel and Isaac are looking for some sugar,” Gerardo said to Wilson, our guide.
Wilson looked at Gerardo, perplexed.
“¿Qué?”
Gerardo, not one to let a word go to waste, offered a colorful clarification.
Wilson, who had turned in his seat for ease of conversation, then understood what Gerardo meant by “sugar” and laughed with a childish embarrassment.
“You know,” Isaac added, “someone with only a few months left. Someone I can make happy until the end.”
The van erupted in laughter.
Wilson shook his head in disbelief. I could almost hear him thinking, Why me, Lord? Why me?
Then came one of those brief silences that follows a good laugh. This one lingered a few seconds too long.
Wilson looked back at us, a little more seriously. “Speaking of sugar, I have a story for you.”
“There was this wo…” He hesitated.
“You have your own sugar story, don’t you, Wilson?” Gerardo interjected, mischief in his voice.
“I can see it in your face.”
Wilson laughed almost uncontrollably, shaking his head in denial, an innocent smile on his face, his eyes hidden by his dark shades.
“No, Gerardo, no.”
“It’s okay, Wilson. We all remember what it was like to be young,” Gerardo said, continuing to push the limits.
“Pero, la verdad—seriously—this story is true, and it is etched in my memory. I’ve never been able to forget it. But…I don’t know if I should tell it. It’s heavy. Rather macabre.”
“Of course you should tell it—you have to now that you’ve piqued our interest,” I said.
Wilson remained silent a moment longer, then began. “When I was eighteen, Ecuador required one year of mandatory military service. To me, it felt like a waste of my life. I figured I’d end up dead on the jungle floor, like so many other young men my age. It seemed that Ecuador would have endless wars with Peru over a territorial dispute in the Amazon.”
Isaac and I spoke in unison. “Ah, sí, we heard about that. You guys were called monkeys, is that right?”
“Yes,” Wilson continued. “We were monkeys because our troops hid in the jungle canopy, waiting. When the Peruvians were just below us, we’d attack. The Peruvian troops would scatter like chickens. That’s where the terms monkeys and chickens came from. They even made a movie about it, I think. No, I’m sure.”
“Anyway, I was young, and I thought life was too interesting—too valuable—to die for a piece of land in the Amazon that might not even have been ours to claim. After all, the dispute and the wars it had produced had been going on since my grandfather’s time. So I decided to disappear. Not literally, but I had to fall off the radar for a while. Luckily for me, later that year, in October 1998, Ecuador and Peru signed a peace agreement.”
“But had that part of the Amazon ever truly belonged to Ecuador?” I asked.
Wilson shrugged. “When I was in school, we sang a patriotic song about the Amazon.”
He looked toward the sky, searching his memory. Humming, he began the line, stumbled, then tried again.
“El Ecuador ha sido… es y será país amazónico.”
Ecuador has been, is, and always will be an Amazonian nation.
It was what Wilson’s generation had been taught: the disputed Amazonian territory belonged to Ecuador and must always remain Ecuadorian. But Wilson, like many of his peers, had begun to question that certainty.
“At the time, failing to complete your military service could complicate every part of a young man’s life. In a way, those military papers were the key to a man’s freedom—or to his death. To get a job, you needed to present a kind of passport showing that you had completed your military service. If you didn’t have it, things became difficult for the employer, and you could end up in jail.
“A friend’s father was a professor, and he offered me a job conducting market research for new product concepts. He was sympathetic to my situation and was willing to hire me without my papers.”
“My first assignment was a survey about energy-efficient lightbulbs. I would go door to door in Cuenca, asking residents—mostly elderly housewives—a series of questions. During that first week, I came to a colonial house on the corner of Plaza San Sebastián in the old part of the city.
“I knocked on the weathered wooden door.”
“A small, rather frail and humble elderly woman answered.
“‘Señora, my name is Wilson Vallejo-Ullauri.’
“‘Manuela Pillajo,’ she replied simply. ‘How can I help you?’
“‘Estoy haciendo una encuesta… Can you answer a few questions for me?’
“‘Would you be interested in using energy-efficient lightbulbs? They could save you money,’ I said.
“My question was met with a blank stare. It was obvious that she was an indigenous woman, but because she had answered me in Spanish, I assumed language wasn’t the problem. Still, she didn’t seem to understand what I was asking. I tried several different ways of phrasing the question, but as I began to ask it one more time, she interrupted.
“‘I don’t know how to answer your questions, but my husband will be home soon. He can help you. Come in, please wait.’”
“That’s interesting that you mention language, Wilson,” I said. “When we were in San Pablo del Lago, we noticed that some of the indigenous people we met had very heavy accents when they spoke Spanish.”
“You have to remember, Spanish isn’t their native language; it’s their second language. Even today, some of the more remote indigenous peoples don’t speak Spanish,” Wilson reminded us.
“I almost left, thinking that waiting was more trouble than it was worth. After all, I had a whole city before me. But I was raised to believe that when you start a job, you finish it—and do it to the best of your ability.
“As I entered the house, I kept turning her words over in my mind: Mi esposo. Por Dios, this woman was at least eighty-five years old. I wanted to ask how old her husband was, but my manners overrode my curiosity, so I remained silent.”
“A few minutes later, as I sat in the sala overlooking the plaza, watching people rush by as the morning unfolded, a taxi pulled up in front of the house. A young man—thirty years old at most—got out from behind the wheel and walked toward the house. When he entered, Señora Pillajo said, ‘Here he is. This is my husband.’
“I must have looked shocked. I certainly felt it.
“Husband, I thought.
“He’s a boy.
“How can this be your husband?
“I stood, gathered my composure, and introduced myself. He didn’t respond, at least not with words. Neither handsome nor unattractive, of average height—he was nondescript, really—just a regular guy. He was abrupt and aggressive, obviously uncomfortable with my being in the house, and demanded to know what I was doing there.
“I explained, and his posture and the creases in his forehead relaxed slightly. He obliged me by answering my questions, but used as few words as possible. It was obvious that I was intruding and he wanted me out of his space.”
“Espera, espera,” Gerardo interrupted. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying? The old lady was married to a thirty-year-old man?”
“Yes!” Wilson exclaimed.
Intent on continuing his story, Wilson said, “I left the house on Plaza San Sebastián and spent the rest of the day going door to door through the neighborhood, asking the same scripted questions.
“That night, as I lay in bed, I couldn’t get her name out of my head.
“Manuela Pillajo.”
“I asked myself over and over: What had I witnessed that morning in Plaza San Sebastián?
“It was perplexing to me as an eighteen-year-old boy from a traditional home. It wasn’t unusual to see an older man with a younger woman. But an older—no, not older, an old woman with a very young man? That was unheard of. It shouldn’t have mattered, but somehow I needed to make sense of it. What would an eighty-five-year-old woman want with a thirty-year-old husband? I could almost rationalize that. But a thirty-year-old man with an eighty-five-year-old woman? In my innocence, that stumped me. Could they possibly have anything in common?”
“Days and weeks passed, but I couldn’t get Manuela Pillajo off my mind. The scene replayed in my head, like an old projector in a smoky theater, frame by frame.
“One day, my father asked about my work and whether I was satisfied with how life was going, all things considered.
“‘Papa, it’s a job. I’m earning my way. I have to admit, I’ve met some interesting people. Something happened a few weeks ago, something that I can’t forget, which is a perfect example of what I mean.’
“‘Tell me, Wilson,’ Papa replied.
“I told him about the old indigenous woman in the house overlooking Plaza San Sebastián—how she hadn’t understood my questions and had invited me inside to wait for her husband.
“‘Papa, when her husband arrived, he was driving a taxi. He couldn’t have been more than thirty years old.’
“My father looked at me.
“‘Manuela Pillajo!’
“I was floored. In an instant, I was back in Manuela’s sala, feeling the same disbelief I’d felt when she introduced the young man as her husband. I couldn’t process what my father had just said.”
“He repeated himself. ‘The woman you’re talking about—her name is Manuela Pillajo.’
“‘How could you know that? I haven’t said her name.’
“‘It’s a long story, Wilson, but I’ve known Manuela and her story since I was a boy. She worked for my grandfather—your great-grandfather.’”
Wilson paused, breaking his rhythm. I watched the old astonishment return to his face, as though he had just heard his father say it.
“‘She came down from the mountains when she was just twelve years old—a poor little indigenous girl with long, jet-black hair, barefoot, scruffy-looking, malnourished, and dressed in rags—looking for work. My grandfather hired her, and she worked in the house for years, cooking, cleaning, and helping to raise the younger children.’
“‘But she was a child herself,’ I interrupted.
“‘Yes, Wilson, you’re right. Today, she would be a child. She was a child. But you know, that was common in those days. There were no laws, no protection for children. Many people in the rural countryside starved to death. What should he have done—leave her on the street and let fate take its course?’
“I wasn’t sure that answered my question, but I decided not to interrupt Papa again.
“‘Manuela became part of the family, like an older sister to my aunts and uncles. One day, she met an old man. He was a friend of my grandfather’s, so I assume she must have known him. He was single—either he had never married or his wife had died. I can’t remember. I’m not sure I ever knew.
“‘He didn’t have any children. The old man asked Manuela to marry him, and she agreed. I imagine he would have asked my grandfather for her hand—la pedida de mano—since that was the custom in those days. I don’t know the nature of their marriage, but Manuela remained childless.
“‘When the old man died, she inherited everything: extensive properties in the city and countryside, as well as cash and investments. It was unimaginable wealth for a woman who had begun life as she had.
“‘She lived alone for years. Then, one day, this young man appeared. She bought him a taxi. The next thing the old women of the neighborhood were saying was that Manuela had married the young man.’”
As the story unfolded, we were passing through a small village when I noticed an elderly woman walking down the street, her gray hair crowned by a traditional hat, a colorful shawl draped over her shoulders, and a weathered old stick in one hand to steady her steps. In that moment, she became Manuela.
Funny how Wilson’s story stirred something inside me—a strange closeness to a woman I had never met, a protectiveness, even. I thought of my mother, my grandmothers, and the elderly women of Riverview and Grange Hall Loop who had shaped my life in one way or another. Manuela’s life had unfolded long before Wilson began telling her story, yet some part of me wanted to reach back into her world and keep her safe.
“Manuela Pillajo,” I said under my breath as I pulled my phone out of my pocket and made a note of her name.
“I thought you said there was a twist to the story,” Gerardo asked.
“There is. Tenga paz, be patient, Gerardo.”
Gerardo growled theatrically. “I don’t like waiting. I want to know what happens.”
“Years later,” Wilson continued, “word spread through the neighborhood that there had been a murder in Plaza San Sebastián. It was shocking news for such a quiet, old neighborhood.
“What we heard was that Manuela had been found dismembered in her house, her remains placed in burlap sacks that the police discovered in her kitchen.
“People immediately suspected the husband. By then, though, he had left the house. It seemed he and Manuela had separated and were no longer living together. No one could remember exactly when he had disappeared or why—not even the old widows of the neighborhood.”
“Did he do it?” we all asked at once.
“I don’t know. But think about it: What other motive could a man that young have had for marrying an eighty-something-year-old woman?
“I imagine he saw an opportunity and took it, convincing Manuela to marry him. Then she lived too long. The money wasn’t as easy as he thought it would be.”
Wilson paused. “Especulación on my part, of course.”
“So what happened?” Ariel asked. “Did they catch him? And what about her fortune and properties?”
“I don’t know. Really, I lost track. I was doing tours all over Ecuador at the time. I didn’t follow the case. I’ll have to ask Papa.”
As we skirted the banks of the Tomebamba River, nearing Cuenca’s historic center, silence settled over the van. After a full meal and a long day, we should have been catnapping. Instead, Wilson’s story had left us stunned and wide awake. My mind raced, trying to piece together what had happened. I wanted to fill in the blanks—no, I needed to fill in the blanks. I pulled out my phone again and took more notes.
Wilson had gone quiet too. He was typing away on his phone, holding it close to his face as he scrolled away.
Reading.
Typing.
Reading more.
“Here it is,” he said.
October 2010.
Manuela Elvira Pillajo.
“I didn’t know that,” Wilson said. “I didn’t know her middle name was Elvira.”
Elvira. It was my great-grandmother’s middle name too.
Found dead after a home invasion.
The article suggested that a group of intruders had entered her home and, finding her weak and defenseless, robbed and murdered her.
“Mmmmm.” Wilson stared at the screen, reading.
“There are some discrepancies here,” he said. “This isn’t what I heard—not what the women in the neighborhood said.”
He went back to reading, clearly unconvinced.
Perhaps the article was correct. Perhaps the story had changed as it passed from one person to another. Sitting in that van, none of us could know.
By the time we returned to the hotel, night had fallen over Cuenca. But we hadn’t arrived alone. Somewhere along the way, Manuela had joined us. The domes of the Catedral de la Inmaculada Concepción glowed against the night sky as we looked out over the city. We talked about Manuela, the discrepancies in her story, and what might actually have happened inside the house on Plaza San Sebastián. It was only a few blocks from where we sat.
I may have been the one most deeply moved, but I wasn’t alone. Before the conversation ended, the others were encouraging me to write her story. I didn’t need convincing. By then, half of it was already written in my head.
Almost a week later on the flight home, somewhere between Ecuador and Costa Rica, I was scrolling through my photographs, creating a file and choosing the best ones to share with friends.
One of them stopped me: a block-long colonial building, brightly painted, with celestial-blue windows and a terracotta-tile roof, dominating an entire city block at one end of a plaza. The next photograph, taken facing the opposite direction, showed the Church of San Sebastián.
Plaza San Sebastián.
We had passed through it earlier that morning, hours before Wilson told us the story of Manuela Pillajo. I remembered noticing the old building, Wilson pointing out that it was now home to the Museo Municipal de Arte Moderno but had once served as a prison. The entire block had caught my attention: its colonial façades, some of the old homes transformed into cafés, tables shaded by white umbrellas. Gerardo had even remarked that we should have lunch there.
At the time, it had been another beautiful plaza in a city of beautiful plazas.
Now I studied the photograph, wondering which of those old wooden doors had opened for an eighteen-year-old Wilson all those years ago—which one had concealed the life and death of Manuela Pillajo.
As I stared at the photograph, Wilson’s words returned to me.
“Manuela Pillajo. I’ve never been able to forget her.”
About the Cover PhotographCuenca, Ecuador
This watercolor imagines an elderly woman walking through Plaza San Sebastián. She was inspired by a woman I saw from the van as Wilson told us about Manuela Pillajo. For a moment, I pictured Manuela in her place. The illustration is an imagined scene, not a portrait of Manuela.
Ingapirca, Ecuador
From the dining room of Posada Ingapirca, French windows frame the gardens and the Andean hills beyond. We stopped at the old hacienda for lunch before the drive back to Cuenca, when Wilson began telling us Manuela’s story.
Cuenca, Ecuador
This long white building beside Plaza San Sebastián once served as a prison and now houses the Museo Municipal de Arte Moderno. I photographed it that morning, hours before Wilson told us about Manuela. Only on the flight home did I realize that I had taken a picture of the plaza where her story unfolded.