San Juan Romero

"San Juan Romero" is a short story by the Brazilian writer, Rita Maria Felix da Silva. It is also the name of the fictional Mexican village the story features and was the first story to feature the recurring character, "Sir James Winterwood". In the tale, Winterwood arrives in San Juan Romero after his adventures throughout North America. Soon he learns about the terrible curse that haunted the village, concerning a nasty secret involving the people of that village, originally a group of miners. Since this tale deals with the evil in the human being's heart, it has been termed a "metaphysical western". Another curious feature of this story is a mention of one member of the literary version of the Whitehill family.

Readers of the story have varyingly placed the village either near the Mexican frontier with the United States, or farther south towards Central America.