Searching for Lorena Bobbitt

Bucay, Ecuador, April 1995—Their country is on the brink of war with neighboring Peru, but for the people of this tiny town the burning topic of conversation continues to be the town’s most famous former resident: Lorena Bobbitt.

The Manassas, Va. woman who cut off the penis of her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, and initiated a worldwide debate over spousal abuse, grew up in this sleepy railroad town of 6,000 on the western foot of the Andes.

By most accounts, she and her relatively well-to-do family lived here until she was in her early teens, before they moved to Venezuela and then the United States.

But Lorena continues to be Bucay’s (pronounced Boo-Kai) claim to fame. "There’s not much to see around here," Juan Dias, a food store owner and part-time moonshine peddler told a reporter sloshing through this railroad town’s muddy streets. "But I’ll show you something you won’t find anywhere else—Lorena Bobbitt’s birthplace."

It is a two-story wooden ramshackle, sloppily painted sky blue, with the downstairs now home to a dimly-lit fly-infested dinning hall. Across the street sits the police station. The restaurant owner, apparently tired of the visiting curious, didn’t respond to questions.

But few Bucay residents can resist the temptation to explain what really happened on the night of June 23, 1993, when Lorena Bobbitt pulled back the bed sheets and made history with a 12-inch kitchen knife.

In a nation where machismo is a ubiquitous theme and men who beat their wives are rarely prosecuted, opinions are almost always divided along gender lines. The women usually defend Mrs. Bobbitt, while the men shake their heads in disgust .

"It is obvious he was some American brute who thought he could rape and beat a girl from a poor country," 17-year-old Katty Villagomez said.

Her sister added: "I would do the same thing if a man did that to me."

But barber Segundu Yugzhi said there is no excuse for taking away a man’s means of reproduction (John Bobbitt’s penis was successfully reattached). "I thought the United States was a country of laws. I couldn’t believe that they let her go. Now all American men must constantly hold their crotches." Perhaps also Ecuadorian men.

There were at least two reported cases of similar attacks in Ecuador after the Bobbitts made the headlines here. Some Bucay residents said a few disgruntled women in their town publicly threatened to do the same to their husbands.

"It’s too bad. Now no foreigner will ever marry a woman from Bucay," said Rosario Argulo, a natural foods store owner. "The strange thing was that Lorena was such a good girl, so meek and obedient, always saying hello when she walked by.

"If you saw her then, you would have never imagined what she was capable of."