March to the Monteria

by B. TRAVEN

  “While I was thinking, trying to realize how matters really stood, Pedro, the head man of the caravan, came and told me: ‘Hey, Santiago, run for all you’re worth! The police are after you. They’re looking for you in the poolrooms. They’ll be here any moment. Don Manuel, whom you beat up, is dead.’ And hearing this, Sinforosa, like a mad savage, shouted: ‘Dead? You murderer! You’ve killed him, you murderer!’ And she ran to the door and out into the middle of the street and yelled with all the power she could muster: ‘Policía, aquí, acá, aquí está el asesino, here is the killer, he is right here! Come get him and shoot him like a mad dog!’

  “So I grabbed my hat and bolted out of the house. I ran along back of houses toward the wide open space on the outskirts of the town where we had made our camp. ‘Quick, quick, I’ve got to leave, because the police are after me,’ I hastily said to the muchachos who were there, fixing the carretas. I ran to my carreta. I grabbed my pack and when I was ready to leave, Pedro came. He gave me four pesos and told me: ‘Here, take this money and get a good start. We’ll tell them you haven’t been here so they’ll look for you all over town for another two days. Muy buena suerte, lots of luck. I’ll go and look up your girl and paste her a few good ones straight in the face. Thank all the saints that you’re rid of that one.’

  “I went off across the fields and through the bushes into the thicket, avoiding every village where there were police. And here I am. Nobody will look for me in the monterías. They wouldn’t think of it. In two, three, four years the whole thing will have blown over. If I outlive the montería, and why not, the Republic is so big and wide that I won’t lack a place to sit down where nobody will bother me.”

  23

  After half a day’s march in the jungle the troop arrived at a lake. The lake was small but beautiful and romantic in its quietness. The agents blew their whistles, signaling a halt. All the men got down on their knees and dropped their packs. Then they went down the steep bank, washed their hands, rinsed their mouths, filled their jicaras with water and prepared their pozol.

  Celso, Andrés and Santiago had been marching together, one behind the other. Since the camp near the finca La Condesa, Paulino had joined the three. Paulino was considered a sort of philosopher by everyone, because he had piled up a vast experience in the art of catching little black kittens.

  It was only natural that these four young men should have joined each other. They stood at about the same level of inborn intelligence. Andrés, the former ox-cart driver, possessed the best education, which he had absorbed through his own efforts and inclination. The other three had probably lacked the opportunity as well as sufficient personal ambition.

  Andrés was the quietest, the most serious and the most peaceful of the four. Celso, Santiago and Paulino relied more on their fists and on rapid action than on long meditation and careful consideration. Andrés was the strategist, the other three were tacticians. Andrés was inclined to take life seriously and thus make it harder for himself. The other three took life in their stride and adapted themselves until they believed that they had made their situation tolerable, even somewhat easier. The four of them, just like the rest of the troop, had fallen under powers which were stronger than they were and over which they had no influence whatever. But every power rests upon recognition. No power can exist of its own and continue like a constantly renewed universe. No dictator is so strong that his power cannot be evaded. No dictator can give orders where the will to obey him does not exist. Concentration camps, Siberia, slave labor, tortures and death penalties have their narrow limits, because the will to non-obedience, to resist brute force, is, in the end, infinitely stronger than the will to attack or to exercise a similar brute force.

  The power which determined the fate of these four muchachos was invisible and intangible. It was impossible for them to comprehend that their fate was determined not by the agents or the contratistas of the monterías but by the dictator, whose actions, in turn, were influenced by the idea that the welfare of the Republic was guaranteed only if native and foreign capital was granted unlimited freedom and if the peon had no other object in this world than to obey and to believe that which he was ordered to believe by the authorities of the State and Church. Anyone who had other ideas concerning human rights was whipped or otherwise tortured until he changed his opinion, or was, with the blessing of the Church, shot if he spread such ideas.

  Even the most intelligent among the muchachos were incapable of seeing clearly where the real power was located and who it was who held it firmly in his hands and therefore could freely dispose of their lives. Everyone in the long chain of men who were interested in the mahogany business was, himself, only a link completely innocent of the cruelties, the misery and the sufferings of the caoba workers. Every one of them, had he been asked, would have replied: “I never knew that anything like that could happen. I’m very sorry and I’ll see if anything can be done about it.”

  Occasionally, the cries of pain of the men tormented in the jungle reached the dictator’s ear. Then he got very mad, officially mad, and ordered a commission to investigate. But then more important matters were placed on his desk and he forgot to find out whether the investigating commission had really started an investigation, or whether his order to send an investigating commission had only served for a dozen of his partisans, always after a lucrative sinecure, to get a high per diem for ninety days, without even spending a single night outside the city to find out whether those cries of desperation had actually sounded or if they were but some deceptive illusion or poisonous propaganda of the ever-increasing movement against the dictatorship.

  The workers in the monterías, even had they discovered where that power which had such terrible influence on their fate was located, would have been unable to eliminate it or even shake it. This anonymous power was intrinsically interwoven with all other powers in existence. The import-export companies in New York were not sovereign in their might or influence. Their power, in turn, depended upon the good will of the hardwood import companies in London, in Liverpool, in Le Havre, in Hamburg, in Rotterdam, in Genoa, in Barcelona, in Amsterdam and in Copenhagen. And the power of all these companies again depended upon the good will of the thousands of hardwood-consuming companies and individuals which in their ramifications and branches could, in hundreds of instances, be followed to village carpenters in the smallest countries. That fundamental power was so dispersed, so ramified, so branched out and so interlaced with all the activities of human production and human consumption, that not even God Himself could have pointed a finger at a certain man and said: “This is the one who is holding the original power which determines the fate of the mahogany workers.”

  As impossible as it would have been to explain to the peons that an office in New York, full of diligent, tireless, typing and calculating men and women, in constant fear of losing their jobs, did not determine the fate of the troop which was marching through the jungle, it would have been less possible still to convince the peons that the fate of a hungry jobless worker is not determined by a person but by a system. Not even the ablest of agitators, the most fiery speaker, would have found a single man in the entire troop to whom he could have explained, with even very limited success, what is meant by a system.

  For all these Indian lumbermen, including the fairly intelligent Andrés, everything that was not linked immediately to a person or an animal or anything visible, was incomprehensible. These muchachos recognized as the fateful power governing them those who were nearest, those whom they could see and those whose whip lashes they could feel. Strangely enough, their hate rarely even reached the agent. They excused the agent by agreeing that it was his business and his mission to recruit men for the monterías, just as it was the business of cattle traders to buy cattle for the butchers in the cities. The men whom they considered as the real brute force and power, because they exercised their power directly, were the coyotes for the agents, the capataces and the drivers of the troop.

&nb
sp; The national dictator, who perhaps could have altered the fate of these marchers, was as strange to them and as far beyond their call for assistance as God in Heaven. Their dictator, whom they knew and saw, was the capataz. They could reach the capataz. To implore him to be less cruel never occurred to them for a moment. But the capataces, who came from the same blood as the Indian peasant, denied all blood relation and, even more strongly, all common solidarity. The capataces thought that the more brutally they treated the peons and the more mercilessly they helped their masters to catch new victims, the closer they were socially to the ladinos, the agents and the contratistas.

  The peons, to avoid bursting from the fury within them, saw no other recourse but to be in permanent rebellion against the capataces, not only during transports, but even more so in the monterías. Day and night it was their constant thought to get, for once, one of those brutes under their fists. It never occurred to a single one of the peons to eliminate the capataces by a combined attack on the system of which a capataz was but a tool. The greatest extreme to which they might be driven by utter desperation was that of destroying the monterías, just as, a few years later, the revolutionary peons in the state of Morelos destroyed all the sugar factories, razing them to their foundations, because they considered los ingenios, that is, the sugar refineries, the source of all their sufferings. And it was for exactly the same reason that during the revolution the most ferocious attacks of the revolutionaries were against the priests and the churches. Whatever the kind of oppression, it always causes the same consequences, because men never change.

  24

  At the lake where the troop now rested, the march was delayed for quite a while. Several of the pack animals had met with difficulties in crossing a troublesome brook on the way. The brook, very stony, with numerous deep holes washed out by the stream, had caused several animals to stumble and fall. Besides, broken-down trees obstructed the ford. A new detour had to be opened through the thicket to get the animals across. A large part of the troop had already arrived at the lake, but an equally large part had not yet even crossed the brook. The head of the column had to wait until the rest caught up with it. And of course this rear guard also needed rest after its arrival.

  When the vanguard had already advanced two miles and the main troop was just about to start, a messenger from the van arrived to say that a bridge would have to be built across a swampy stretch, because the animals were sinking in the mud. As the path was so narrow that only one animal, horse or mule, could pass at a time, it was decided that the main troop should remain at the lake until further notice. It was also announced that no other general rest period would be allowed during this day until they came to the next campamento, still a good distance away.

  Because of the limited width of the trail, only a few men could be employed in the construction of the bridge.

  “Well then, we can lay in a good supply of sleep,” said Santiago, stretching himself out on the ground.

  “I’ll do the same,” Andrés mumbled.

  Celso, however, did not feel sleepy. Too much was on his mind at this moment. He tried to find an answer to the question: Why had fate torn him so mercilessly from his native village, from his girl and from all the things that he needed to carve out a life, rich or poor, that he could call his own?

  He did not let anyone know what was inside him, how much he suffered and how sad he felt, so sad, indeed, that at times he believed that his soul was crying, filling his whole being with tears. The character of his race would not allow him to show his feelings.

  But at night, when he lay down to sleep, these feelings began to gnaw at him. Then he evoked images of revenge upon those who were responsible for his undeserved fate. In his mind he saw the capataces, the agents and the contratistas die under terrible tortures. He saw them imploring help and himself squatting, looking on their torments as unmercifully as they had been merciless with him. These phantasies excited, enraged, tired and exhausted him more than any sexual phantasy could have done. Afraid of these imaginings and their prostrating consequences, he was always glad to overwork himself during the day so that he would fall asleep the moment he stretched out on his petate.

  On the rise where the troop was resting pine trees towered into the sky. Some grew close to the lake. The pines reminded him of his village and of the peaceful little huts in his comarca. The huts were built of adobe, with no windows and no furniture. The fire burned on the close-packed earthen floor in the middle of the hut. When his mother was cooking, the whole hut filled with smoke, which escaped only slowly along the edges of the walls near the palm-thatched roof where the beams left a small open space. But the pinewood smoke drove away scorpions, venomous spiders and mosquitos hiding in the palm roof.

  Here the ground where they sat was thickly covered with pine needles, each as long as a finger. It reminded him of the feast days in his village, when the dirt floors of all the huts were thickly strewn with green pine needles, more beautiful than the finest rug, filling the hut with a pungent aroma more agreeable than the costliest perfume.

  There he squatted with his arms around his knees, looking at the gigantic pine trees.

  “Andrés,” he said, “did you also have pine needles in your jacalitos at the finca on festive days?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Andrés, thinking of his carretas and of who might be driving them, and of how the boys at this moment were possibly stuck in the mud, was deeply moved by the question. He, too, was reminded by this rug of pine needles of his home. And, suddenly, he thought of his girl, Estrellita, his little star, whom he had to leave behind and with whom he had hoped to live some day in a little hut, with pine needles for a rug on the earthen floor.

  “Bueno,” Celso went on, “if you also have pine needles in your casitas and they remind you of how fine it is at home, you had better take a good, long look at these pines here. Take leave of them. These are the last pine trees you’ll see in years. Perhaps they are the last you’ll ever see. Because we are Los Perdidos, the lost men. And whether you’ll ever return and see pine trees again in your life, not even your patron Saint Andrew could tell you. You’d better take a good noseful of the smell of these gorgeous pines around here with you to the monterías.”

  Andrés picked up a little twig which lay by his side, played with it, smelled it and, without thinking, stuck it into his pack.

  “Great idea,” Celso said, watching him. “I’ll do the same. To own such a twig and to take it into your hands in the evening at the fire in the montería is like a little piece of hope. Even if it’s dry it will always mean hope and you won’t forget that, somewhere in the world, there grow pine trees and that, somewhere, somebody is waiting for you, thinking of you, no matter how badly things go with you.”

  Andrés lost his sleepiness. He sat up and came a little closer to Celso. For a while they did not talk. They only looked down upon the lake, where small ripples glittered in the sun.

  “You had better get yourself sufficient pine splinters right here,” Celso said. “If you don’t collect your ‘ocote’ here, you won’t get any along the whole road, and then you’ll have to light a fire with dry shit. Ever tried it? It works, I tell you. It works. But it must be horse or mule shit. That of the capataces is no good. It only stinks like hell, just like the whole goddamn gang. I don’t know of anything in this world which I’d do with greater devotion than push my machete through the bowels of two certain coyotes. That would be real pleasure. And to be hung and buried right here for killing those two would be heavenly joy. You know, those two crooks who snatched me in Hucutsin. For five duros. Five lousy pesos. But I tell you, mano, I won’t soil my honest machete with their stinking insides.”

  “I’ve not the slightest idea what you mean, cuate,” Andrés said, without taking his gaze from the lake glittering in the sun.

  “Soy algo adivinador, kind of prophet, sonny.” Celso grinned maliciously. “Didn’t you know that I can foresee exactly what is going to happen
to those goddamn bloodsuckers right on this march? I believed you smarter than you are, mano.”

  “I’m not good at guessing.”

  “You would be good at guessing if you knew what happened at the last settlement, the one we left only this morning. You see, yesterday I had to help to rebuild the fence where the mules had broken through. I had dug a post into the ground and when the muchachos pulled hard with the vines from the next post, the one I had just stuck in toppled over. Now, I ask you, how can you sink in a post if you can scratch out a hole only with the machete and with your hands, and if that cursed capataz won’t wait until you’ve properly tamped down the soil around the post? The post can’t hold, see? So that son-of-a-bitch dealt me one that just doubled me up, I can tell you. Damn it. Half an hour I stay there, picking thorns and stings from my hands because they were boring deeper and deeper in between my fingers. You can’t grab the posts properly and work with thorns pricking your hands. It’s torture. So along comes the other son-of-a-bitch and he says: ‘Hey, you golfo, you stinking vomit of a mule, so you’re having yourself a jolly holiday. I’ll give you your holiday.’

  “And with that he let me have half a dozen with his mule whip. I didn’t say a word. Not one word, I tell you. What’s the use of quarreling? No words. No arguments. Action. And in the evening I acted. I read the fate of those two coyotes who sold me for five duros and who now want to have their fun with me on this march. But by now I know their destiny as well as my own. I told you, I’m a prophet. Not my fault. It’s written in their hands that the bitch who put one of the two into this world won’t see him again among her brats. And the other whore who spit out that second reptile also will have one bastard less before we reach the monterías, I can tell you that.”

  “It’s true, they are a pair of stinking bastards,” said Andrés, “and if asked I’d say it will be more pleasant at the montería if fate takes good care of them.”