First published in 1903 A fuego lento has all the elements to be considered a veritable roman a clef: its first part takes place in some caribbean place that under the despective name of Ganga hardly conceals it"s real identity as the colombian city of Barranquilla, where Emilio Bobadilla lived during some months in 1898 and from where he was ousted, embittered and angry with the local literary circles. His later expulsion from the country by president Jose Manuel Marroquin (1827-1908) did not precisely contribute to his appeasement, thus his retaliation with his best weapon, his pen. What he depicts is sperpentic and Bobadilla, enrolled in positivism does not leave the occasion go by without highlighting with irony his lombrosian observations. At the end of the XIX Century Barranquilla had grown vertiginously from pauper settlement to main colombian port. In spite of widespread analfabetism, revolutions and come and goes of political factions, to the enthusiastic locals the city...