Parachutes

John Walker is a professor of Spanish studies at Queen’s University.

The coca-colonization of Latin America, the destruction of the Amazon
rainforest, and the devastation of Latin America’s Native peoples are
all issues that are dealt with in this harrowing novel.

Dr. Debra Baumstark, who works in her father’s Miami medical clinic,
abandons the comfort of her practice to spend a year in Venezuela,
working first in Caracas, then at an isolated tropical research
institute. The “gringa doctora” soon comes to realize that the real
enemy is not the crippling diseases she’s treating, but the New World
Protestant missionaries and CIA agents (often the same), corrupt
Venezuelan military, and unscrupulous scientific researchers (medical
and anthropological) she encounters as she struggles to defend Native
interests. Her lover, a local Communist leader who joins her in a final
showdown over the theft of some human remains and Native artifacts,
meets the same fate as the sick Natives whom they are both trying to
protect.

Parachutes (Venezuelan slang for condoms, a constant source of discord
between the liberated doctor and her macho lover) is an occasionally
humorous, action-packed indictment both of scientific imperialism and of
religious, political, and military exploitation; it raises many moral
and ethical questions. The Calgary-based author studied tropical
medicine and disease control in the United States, Venezuela, and
Canada.