Silver, Sword, and Stone

by Marie Arana

Three years later . . . the carnage would continue: On December 22, 1997, in the tiny village of Acteal, forty-five people (twenty-one women, fifteen children, and nine men) were murdered in a local shrine. Krauze, “Chiapas.”

  Forty thousand government troops would descend: Ibid.

  “The truth is that for the indigenous”: Womack, Rebellion in Chiapas.

  the Vatican tried to muzzle him: Molly Moore, “Embattled Chiapas Mediator Steps Aside,” Washington Post, August 3, 1998.

  Dubbed the “Red Bishop”: Ibid.

  Guatemala’s systematic purge of nearly a quarter million: “Press Briefing: Guatemala Historical Clarification Commission, United Nations, March 1, 1999”; Mireya Navarro, “Guatemalan Army Waged ‘Genocide,’ New Report Finds,” New York Times, February 26, 1999.

  Its drug wars have generated catastrophic human losses: “Mexico Drug War Fast Facts,” CNN online, last modified July 26, 2018, https://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/02/world/americas/mexico-drug-war-fast-facts/index.html.

  Mexico is the most dangerous country: “Mexico Is One of the Most Dangerous Countries for Priests,” Aid to the Church in Need (CAN) online, last modified March 8, 2018, www.churchinneed.org/mexico-one-dangerous-countries-priests.

  Drug lords make a point to attend Catholic Church services: La Familia Michoacana, which does this, “became widely known in 2006 when its members stormed a disco and threw the severed heads of five men on the dance floor along with a sign that read ‘La Familia doesn’t kill for money, doesn’t kill women doesn’t kill innocents. Those who die deserve to die. Let everyone know, this is divine justice.’ ” Dudley Althaus, “Mexico Catches Reputed Leader of La Familia Cartel,” Houston Chronicle, June 21, 2011; also George Grayson, La Familia Drug Cartel: Implications for U.S. Mexican Security (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2010), 5, 35–37, 46, 101.

  Xavier Albó was visiting with Ruíz during the peace talks: Albó and Ruiz, 465–66.

  Epigraph; “ ‘Religion’ suggests something structured”: David Choquehuanca, chancellor of Bolivia, in conversation with Xavier Albó. Ibid., 357.

  The native populations . . . have survived to different degrees: Useful statistics can be found in the CIA’s World Factbook (www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook), which is constantly updated. According to it, Brazil, for instance, is 47.7 percent white, 43.1 percent mulatto, and only .4 percent indigenous; Argentina is 97.2 percent European descent and 2.4 percent Amerindian; Ecuador is 71.9 percent mestizo; Bolivia is 68 percent mestizo and 20 percent indigenous; Colombia is 84.2 percent mestizo/white and 10.4 percent mulatto.

  As soon as Spain was able to impose some semblance of control: Arana, Bolívar, 11–12; John Miller, Memoirs of General Miller (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, 1828), 1:5.

  the Cosmic Race. La raza cósmica: José Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica (México, DF: Espasa Calpe, 1948), 47–51.

  “We are all men of La Mancha”: Fuentes, 192.

  “When we understand that none of us is pure”: Ibid, 193.

  Bolivia’s Indians referred to themselves instead as campesinos: Albó and Ruiz, 385–68.

  race is devilishly hard to catalog: Peter Wade, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (London: Pluto, 2010), 155–61.

  (“El Chino” Alberto Fujimori): Gille Fromka, “Why Did Peruvians Call President Alberto Fujimori ‘El Chino’ When He Was of Japanese Heritage?,” Quora, April 7, 2017.

  the Mexican billionaire “El Turco” Carlos Slim: “A True Eastern Star: Carlos Selim El Turco,” World Turkish Coalition, March 12, 2010. Slim is actually of Lebanese origin.

  Guaraní is spoken by the overwhelming majority: Simon Romero, “An Indigenous Language with Staying Power,” New York Times, March 12, 2012.

  a minuscule population—2 percent: Ibid.

  90 percent of all Paraguayans: Oishimaya Sen Nag, “What Languages Are Spoken in Paraguay?,” World Atlas, last modified August 1, 2017, www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-languages-are-spoken-in-paraguay.

  For the 80 percent who count themselves Catholic: A full 80 percent, although only 25 percent attend church regularly. Ronnie Kahn, “Religion in Latin America,” Newsletter of the Outreach Services of the African, Asian, Latin American, and Russian Studies Centers University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, no. 86 (Spring 2002).

  Latin American Christianity . . . is infused with superstition: Aldo Rubén Ameigeiras, “Ortodoxia doctrinaria y viejas ritualidades,” in Cruces, intersecciones, conflictos: Relaciones Político-Religiosas en Latinoamérica, 212–26.

  “You cannot be truly religious here if you are not interreligious”: Albó does not name the superior general who said this, but it was probably Pedro Arrupe, a Basque, who was the superior general of the Jesuits from 1965–1983. Albó and Ruiz, 307.

  the urge in this fickle landscape is also toward change: Nine percent of Brazilians now say they follow no religion. Forty percent of Uruguayans claim no religious affiliation whatsoever. Philip Jenkins, “A Secular Latin America?” Christian Century, March 12, 2013. Other harbingers of change: Journalist Paulina Trujillo has established an atheist news organization in Quito, “Gracias a Dios soy Ateo, Thank God I’m an Atheist,” https://www.atheismandhumor.com. Juan Gabriel Vásquez, an established novelist-journalist in Bogotá and a self-professed atheist, insists on a secular education for his children. Such bold, public rejections of the church would have been unthinkable a generation ago.

  Francis carefully avoided . . . sexual abuse scandal: “Iglesia y abusos,” editorial, El País (Madrid), September 15, 2018.

  “Politics is in crisis”: Pope Francis I, in Stauffer and Pullella, “Pope Ends Latin American Trip.”

  Odebrecht scandal, the largest foreign bribery case: Linda Pressly, BBC World Service online, last modified April 22, 2018, www.bbc.com/news/business-43825294.

  “What is wrong with Peru”: Stauffer and Pullella, “Pope Ends Latin American Trip.”

  “Many grave sins were committed”: Pope Francis I, quoted in Jim Yardley, “In Bolivia, Pope Francis Apologizes for Church’s ‘Grave Sins,’ ” New York Times online, July 9, 2015. Also “Pope Francis Asks for Forgiveness for Crimes Committed During the Conquest of America,” uploaded to YouTube by Rome Reports on July 9, 2015, 1:42, www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi-KjEHBFjg.

  “infidelities to the Gospel . . . especially during the second millennium”: Pope John Paul II, “Homily of the Holy Father, ‘Day of Pardon,’ Sunday, 12 March 2000,” https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/2000/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_20000312_pardon.html.

  “I humbly ask forgiveness”: Pope Francis I, quoted in Yardley, “Pope Francis Apologizes.”

  Epigraph; “If someone asks me if I believe in kharisiri”: “Si me preguntan si creo en los kharisiri, diré que no, pero respeto profundamente a quienes creen en eso.” Kharisiri is the Aymara equivalent of pishtaco (Quechua), evil phantom goblins that come from foreign lands to exploit the Indians. Albó and Ruiz, 301.

  tata tapukillu: our father of endless questions: Ibid., 288.

  “the most terrifying tribe”: Albó, interview by author, February 20, 2016. He is paraphrasing the Catalan sociologist Carmen Salcedo, who said this to him about the Jesuits in Bolivia.

  “I don’t want to conquer souls”: Ibid., February 21, 2016.

  las tres patas: Ibid., February 22, 2016.

  “There is nothing religious about this”: Ibid.

  “I am not one to pray”: Ibid., February 20, 2016.

  “For us, it is more deep inside”: Albó and Ruiz, 301.

  “There’s an image I can’t quite get out of my mind”: Ibid., February 22, 2016. Albó later told the gist of this story in his memoir, Un curioso incorregible, 218, 313.

  “I’m telling you this”: Ibid., February 23, 2016.

  The prayer card with Lizardi’s likeness: Albó and Ruiz, 218.

  “So you see. It’s a fraught business”: Albó, interview by author, February 22, 2016. He essentially repeats thi
s thought in Un curioso incorregible, 313.

  EPILOGUE: IT’S JUST OUR NATURE

  Epigraph; “Stress is transgenerational”: Ali B. Rodgers and Tracy L. Bale, “Germ Cell Origins of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Risk—The Transgenerational Impact of Parental Stress Experience,” Biological Psychiatry 78, no. 5 (September 1, 2015): 307–14. This is paraphrased for clarity. The full quote is: “Critically, the consequences of stress experiences are transgenerational, with parental stress exposure impacting stress reactivity and PTSD risk in subsequent generations. Potential molecular mechanisms underlying this transmission have been explored in rodent models that specifically examine the paternal lineage, identifying epigenetic signatures in male germ cells as possible substrates of transgenerational programming.” (The italics are mine to indicate what is quoted.)

  Juan Gabriel Vásquez . . . tells of the moment: Juan Gabriel Vásquez in conversation with Jonathan Yardley at Politics and Prose bookstore, Washington, DC, October 5, 2018. A photograph of the jar with the segment of Gaitán’s vertebrae also appears in his novel The Shape of the Ruins (New York: Riverhead, 2018), 66.

  Perhaps that is why we are so predisposed: Carlos Rangel, Del buen salvage al buen revolucionario (Madrid: Editorial FAES, 2007), loc. 258–319.

  When Peru’s poverty rose in 2018: Reuters, “Peru Poverty Rate Rises for the First Time in 16 Years,” April 24, 2018.

  When rumors of impending coups cropped up: Natalia Sobrevilla, “El espectro del golpe de Estado,” El Comercio (Lima), November, 7, 2018.

  How is it that Argentina, the fifth richest country in the world: Rosenberg, 118.

  How is it that Venezuela, with the largest proven oil reserves: Jessica Dillinger, “The World’s Largest Oil Reserves by Country,” World Atlas, last modified January 8, 2019, www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-world-s-largest-oil-reserves-by-country.html. The top three are Venezuela, 300,878 billion barrels; Saudi Arabia, 266,455 billion barrels; and Canada, 169,709 barrels.

  Carlos Rangel once said that the ten thousand kilometers that separate: Rangel, Del buen salvage, loc. 258–319.

  Rangel, who despised Castro’s Communist dictatorship: Enrique de Diego, “Retratos: Carlos Rangel,” Club de Libertad Digital, no. 2, www.clublibertaddigital.com/ilustracion-liberal/2/carlos-rangel-enrique-de-diego.html.

  the spate of Latin American countries: Specifically, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, and Central America’s Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador).

  terrorism became “narconomics”: This is Tom Wainwright’s term, coined when he was the Mexico correspondent for the Economist and explained in his book Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel (New York: PublicAffairs, 2016).

  a ready-made fighting force for the drug trade: Bello, “Peace, at Last, in Colombia,” Economist, June 25, 2016. See also “Growth of Bandas Criminales,” US Department of State Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, vol. 1, Drug and Chemical Control (Washington, DC: March 2012), 170–71.

  Illegal drugs, as one economist has suggested, are Latin America’s new silver: Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal, and Zephyr Frank, eds., From Silver to Cocaine: Latin America Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500–2000, esp. ch. 12, Paul Gootenberg, “Cocaine in Chains: The Rise and Demise of Global Commodity, 1860–1950” (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 321–51.

  it involves veritable armies of narco-operatives: Jeremy Haken, “Transnational Crime in the Developing World,” Global Financial Integrity online, last modified February 8, 2011.

  few citizens whose lives it doesn’t touch: Saalar Aghili, “The Rise of Cocaine in Peru,” Berkeley Political Review, May 16, 2016.

  With revenues in the hundreds of billions of dollars: Haken, “Transnational Crime,” 4.

  among the most valuable single commodity chains in world history: Gootenberg, “Cocaine in Chains,” 345–46.

  from Santiago to Mexico City: The Andean drug trade flows through Chile, much as the Colombian and Caribbean trade flows north through Mexico. According to the nonprofit investigative organization InSight Crime: “Chile serves as a transshipment point for cocaine leaving the coca-producing countries of Bolivia and Peru. . . . With an estimated 71 percent of the cocaine from Bolivia passing through Arica, the Chilean port appears to be one of the major transshipment points in the country, along with the other coastal cities of Iquique, Antofagasta, and Mejillones.” Tristan Clavel, “Report Finds Drug Trafficking Through Chile Is on the Rise,” InSight Crime, last modified December 19, 2016. See also Jason Lange, “From Spas to Banks, Mexico Economy Rides on Drugs,” Reuters, January 22, 2010.

  Venezuela has succeeded in reinventing itself as a narco-mafia state: The Venezuelan oil powerhouse PDVSA (Petróleos de Venezuela) worked independently for decades, but under Chávez and Maduro, it financed government projects. In 1979–81 Venezuela was responsible for laundering narco-dollars from one metric ton of illegal drugs; thirty-seven years later, it was laundering the equivalent of fifty to sixty metric tons. Profits from the sale of drugs empowers it to control the politics of the nation. Panel discussion between Ambassador William Brownfield and Juan Zarate, moderated by Moisés Rendon, Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 12, 2018, www.csis.org.

  90 percent of all US dollar bills: Yuegang Zuo, professor of biochemistry, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Bills turned up positive for cocaine in these percentages in certain cities: 100 percent: Detroit, Boston, Orlando, Miami, Los Angeles; 88 percent: Toronto; 77 percent: Salt Lake City. Madison Park, CNN online, last modified August 17, 2009.

  the physical enslavement of twenty-three million human beings: To be exact, it is 22.85 million; 6 million in the United States; 10 million in all the Americas; 5 million in Europe. “Number of Cocaine Users Worldwide from 2010 to 2016, by Region (in Millions),” Statista, accessed February 3, 2019, www.statista.com.

  Since 2006, more than a quarter million Mexicans: “Drug War Statistics,” Drug Policy Alliance online, accessed February 3, 2019, www.drugpolicy.org/issues/drug-war-statistics; see also José de Córdoba and Juan Montes, “It’s a Crisis of Civilization in Mexico,” Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2018.

  thirteen thousand were mowed down in drug-related violence: “Mexico Drug War Fast Facts,” CNN online, last modified July 16, 2018.

  Almost forty thousand Mexicans: Córdoba and Montes, “Crisis of Civilization.”

  five severed heads were flung onto a crowded dance floor: “Human Heads Dumped in Mexico Bar,” BBC News online, modified September 7, 2006.

  An equivalent number of Colombians—more than 220,000 to be exact: Nick Miroff, “The Staggering Toll of Colombia’s War with FARC Rebels, Explained in Numbers,” Washington Post online, August 24, 2016.

  Almost 8 million souls have been displaced: “The Countries with Most Internal Displacement,” in Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2017 (Geneva: United Nations Refugee Agency, 2018), https://www.unhcr.org/5b27be547.pdf.

  Tens of thousands of children were kidnapped: Hudson, Colombia, 335.

  peace process in Colombia . . . reduced the murder rate: “Murder South of the Border,” Editorial, Washington Post online, September 30, 2018.

  millions of refugees have fled: Brownfield and Zarate, discussion.

  Brazil’s drug-related homicides in a single year: The year is 2017. Chris Feliciano Arnold, “Brazil Has Become a Gangland,” Foreign Policy, June 6, 2017, https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/06/brazil-has-become-a-gangland-prison-riot.

  forty-three of the fifty most violent cities of the world are in Latin America: Macias and Engel, “50 Most Violent Cities.”

  extractive societies . . . are built on social injustice: Acemoglu and Robinson, 399. The cost of Latin America’s reliance on mining and farming were in full evidence by the end of the nineteenth century when life expectancy in certain areas was below twenty-seven years, literacy was as low as 2 percent, and considera
bly more than half the total population lived in utter poverty. Fuentes, 281–82.

  According to polls, the overwhelming majority believe: Four in five believe their governments are corrupt, while three out of four have no confidence in government institutions. That level has fallen since 2010. A quarter of the population live in poverty; 40 percent of all Latin Americans belong to the “vulnerable” middle class, and this year, in some countries, a portion of those have slipped back into poverty. The CAF report Economic Outlook for Latin America 2018 is described in “Confidence in Government Institutions, the Key to Growth in Latin America,” CAF Development Bank of Latin America online, last modified April 9, 2018.

  the police and the army are co-opted: Rachel Kleinfeld, “The Violence Driving Migration Isn’t Just Gangs,” Wall Street Journal, November 10, 2018. Kleinfeld’s essay is from her book A Savage Order: How the World’s Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security (New York: Pantheon, 2018).

  In El Salvador in 2015, the vice president: This is Óscar Ortíz Ascencio. Kleinfeld, “Violence Driving Migration.”

  “without fear of suffering consequences”: Ibid.

  “We are rotten to the core,” the drug czar said: This is Gustavo Alberto Landaverde, former deputy drug czar of Honduras, who was fired from his job, sued for libel, and, two weeks after this interview, killed by hit men on motorbikes. Frances Robles, “Honduras Becomes Murder Capital of the World,” Miami Herald, January 23, 2012.

  a gargantuan Brazilian operation totaling billions of dollars: $4.5 billion is the total dollar amount of penalties levied on Odebrecht so far for its bribes and payoffs. US Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, “Odebrecht and Braskem Plead Guilty,” December 21, 2016. Also Extra Fieser, “Colombia Reveals Odebrecht Bribes Were Three Times Larger Than Previously Known,” Bloomberg, August 15, 2018.

  Latin American politics was in crisis: Stauffer and Pullella, “Pope Ends Latin American Trip.”

  cédulas de Gracias al Sacar: Bethell, History of Latin America, 3:30.

  as Chilean Cardinal Raul Silva Henríquez once offered them to General Pinochet: Rosenberg, 344. To be fair, Silva was probably hoping to put a foot in the palace door. He became a stubborn opponent of Pinochet once the dictator took absolute power into his hands.