Doña Bárbara

Doña Bárbara is a novel written by Venezuelan author and politician Rómulo Gallegos, first published in 1929. It's one of the most widely known Latin-American novels, and has been adapted to TV and film several times.

Santos Luzardo, freshly graduated lawyer from the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas, decides to travel to this natal Apure flatlands to see his father's farm, Altamira, with the intention of sell the land and travel abroad. What he finds, however, is a farm in such state of disarray that he decides against selling it and instead attempts to bring it to its former glory. He is promptly informed that part of the reason of the sorry state of the land is because the region is controlled by a woman known as Doña Bárbara, a despotic devourer of men that has taken over the area due to a mix of cunning, seduction, and alleged pacts with demonic spirits. Not helping his impression of the woman is discovering that she seduced his cousin Lorenzo Barquero and then conned him out of his farm and abandoned him and the daughter that resulted of said relation, Marisela, to their luck. Now Lorenzo is an impoverished alcoholic and Marisela is a borderline feral teenager. Santos decide to take them on his house and give Marisela an education; Marisela, in turn, develops a crush in Santos that may or may not be returned.

Doña Bárbara, on the other side, is impacted when she meets Santos Luzardo, as he is the first man that doesn't fall for her beauty nor bows to her power and influence. This and his gentlemanly manners, so different to the rude llaneros she is surrounded by, little by little awaken feelings she thought she was forgotten. But as she internally struggles, she realizes that her own daughter may be her real rival...

It has have several adaptations, including at least three Telenovela versions, a very famous film Mexican one in 1943 starring María Felix, and a very infamous Argentinian one in 1998.

Doña Bárbara is the Trope Namer for:
Tropes used in Doña Bárbara include:
  • Abusive Parents:
    • Barbara has no parents, and the individual that raised her did so to sell her when she become of age and never treated her well. In turn, Bárbara abandons her daughter Marisela the minute after her birth and never cares about her until she becomes old enough to be her love rival.
    • Marisela's father, Lorenzo Barquero, is too alcoholized to properly function, and he is this close of selling his teenage daughter for more liquor. It's implied than when he was sober he didn't care about her that much.
    • Santos's father quarreled with his eldest son due to them supporting opposite bands in the Spanish-American War, a quarrel that ended when the father killed the son in a fit of rage. Then the man realized what he did and starved himself to death. No wonder Santos' mother extracted him from there the minute she could.
  • Ambition Is Evil: the main trait of every evil character in this novel is their unrestrained ambition.
  • Antagonist Title
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Santos is no moron, but his city manners and his insistence on solving Altamira's limit problems with law-based solutions makes everybody believe he is too soft for living in the land. Then he manages to tame a wild horse in front of a wide group of experienced farmhards and cowboys, and suddenly everybody realizes he has the strong will needed to deal with all the hacienda‘s problems
  • The Dragon: Melquiades "el brujeador" to Doña Bárbara.
  • Femme Fatale: Doña Bárbara. She has the habit of seduce, use and discard men, out of disdain for the male gender.
  • Feuding Families: the Luzardos and the Barqueros, back in the day. It was such a bloody feud that at the beginning of the story there are only one adult member of each family alive, and the only one who has managed to reproduce at that point has a daugther (in an place and time where the Heir Club for Men is alive and kicking). Ironically both families were related (the last member of each family are second cousins) making the feud all the more tragic.
  • Hikaru Genji Plan: unintentional on Santos account, but when he makes Marisela his ward, cleans her up, and teaches her to read and to have manners she soon becomes closer to the kind of woman he likes.
  • I Was Quite a Looker: Lorenzo Barquero.
  • Kissing Cousins: Santos and Marisela
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: the book doesn't clearly establish if Bárbara actually have supernatural abilities (since the thesis of the novel is to ward away superstitions to make way to modernity and civilization), but Bárbara and Melquiades does believe they have such powers and interprets things under that perspective (and since things did went Bárbara's way for so long before Santos' arrival, they are not exactly proved wrong.)
  • Meaningful Name: bordering in Anvilicious. Santos[1] Luzardo[2], Doña Bárbara[3], and of course Míster Guillermo Danger. Also the neighboring farms in dispute, hacienda Altamira[4] and hato El Miedo[5].
  • Mister Danger: Mister Guillermo Danger, egomaniac hunter and sort-of ally of Doña Bárbara
  • The Mole: Balbino Paiva, Altamira's administrator, is actually working for Doña Bárbara.
  • The Mourning After: basically Bárbara feelings by her first love, Ásdrubal, who was murdered in front of her. Men have come and go, but no one managed to displace him. Santos almost became her Second Love, but he rejects her and in the end she leave him to be happy with Marisela
  • Old Retainer: many of Altamira's laborers are old enough to remember when Santos was a kid, and are very loyal to the Luzardo family.
  • Rape as Backstory: Bárbara. She was gang-raped just after a mutiny where the captain of the boat she worked for killed her love Ásdrubal.
  • She Cleans Up Nicely: Marisela.
  • Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Both Bárbara and Marisela fall for Santos, probably the most decent man in all of Apure state.
  • Yes-Man: Mujiquita, the secretary of the Jefe Civil


  1. ↑ A legitimate, if unusual, first name in Spanish, meaning "Saints"
  2. ↑ Roughly translatable to "burning light"
  3. ↑ While also a real name in Spanish, it also means "barbarian", making her Exactly What It Says on the Tin
  4. ↑ Meaning "high sights"
  5. ↑ "The Fear"
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