Basically, it was an all-inclusive healer. Invented by Jesus Rodriguez in the 1950s, Mama Juana was created to be an herbal medicine that apart from acting as an aphrodisiac could rid you of the flu, aid digestion and circulation, and cleanse the blood, liver and kidneys.

The result is an elixir that some say tastes similar to Port or Amaro, but unlike those fabled beverages, Mama Juana promises those who consume it all sorts of incredible benefits, including sexual potency, which has given the drink a nickname of “liquid Viagra”. It’s a concoction that’s made by combining rum, red wine and honey, and then allowing that mixture to soak with tree bark and herbs. Once she falls, her conscience ceases to bother her, and it is Donna Julia the hardened sinner who tries to turn the tables on her husband in her brilliant invective when he bursts into her room in search of her lover.Unless you’re Dominican, happen to live in a Dominican neighborhood or have spent a lot of time outside of the all-inclusive beach resorts on the Dominican Republic exploring the real island, you have probably never come across Mama Juana. Her conscience becomes warped in the process.

She tries to persuade herself that her love is only friendship. She knows she should avoid Juan and she tries to resolve the conflict in herself by rationalizing. Her eyes are gradually opened to what is happening in her, but by this time love is so firmly rooted in her that she becomes a hypocrite both in regard to herself and in regard to her husband. She falls in love with Juan as she had not been able to fall in love with her husband. She does not know herself well, and when she begins to find in Don Juan what is lacking in her life, nature takes over and cooperates with her frustrations. She is not basically hypocritical but she is desperately in need of love. These she finds in Don Juan and therefore is powerfully attracted to him. He is incapable of giving his wife the affection and comradeship that she needs.

The personality of her husband is neither attractive nor repulsive it is neutral. Donna Julia is a young woman of twenty-three who is married to a man of fifty.

Dona Juana by Lorena Lupu