by B. TRAVEN
A secretary, who could have assisted them in capturing their prey, was not on the spot: Since don Gabriel’s departure the jefe político had not found anybody who seemed to him suited to take over the post.
The place was left for more than two years without a secretary. The door of the prison was left to molder. The roof caved in over the office in the cabildo, where the table stood with the ink bottle on it and the pen with its rusty nib, and on which lay the piles of regulations concerning the well-being and education of the Indians.
As the Indians did not patch up the roof, more and more of it broke away. The telephone wire was in order; even the instrument in the office was in order, until one day it was damaged by the falling roof. But there was no one there who took the trouble to telephone.
In spite of this, the sun was still in the sky. In spite of this, the maize grew in the fields. In spite of this, the Indian wives bore their husbands child after child. The people of the village managed perfectly well on their own. It never occurred to one of them that the place was in a desperate situation because no secretary was sent to govern it. Not one of them thought for a moment that the world might come to an end and mankind perish because they were not governed.
For this reason the idea came to none of them, not to the chief nor to any of the village council, to send a submissive report to the governor or the jefe político, reminding these gentry that the place lacked a secretario and in consequence had no means of communication with the central government.
Gerónimo, who was now chief, said one day when the men were assembled to decide upon the allotment of the common land among the new families, “I should like it best if the government forgot us for good. I have said all I have to say, my brothers and friends.”
9
As often happens in this world, where a good God controls all human destinies for the best and never makes a mistake, good luck was constantly on don Gabriel’s side, while the innocent and the wretched had all the ill luck that could rattle down upon them from any direction and for any reason. This is a nice disposition of the Almighty which no man on earth has the right to criticize. For however incomprehensible a process may seem to men, the more certain it is that God in His great wisdom and eternal, inscrutable love for humanity has need of this incomprehensible process in order to pursue, through spiral mists of infinity, a definite aim known only to Himself.
It was owing to this quite sufficient cause that don Gabriel was pursued by good luck so persistently that there was no escape from it. Scarcely a day passed without his getting one more man contracted, and with every man he captured his fortune was increased by something between twenty-five and fifty-five pesos.
He did not take all those he bound by contract along with him. In that case he would have had them all at his heels from finca to finca and village to village. As soon as he got a man, he made the local secretary or the finquero or the chief of police answerable for the man’s punctual arrival on the day of the festival of the Candelaria at Hucutsín, where all recruited labor was assembled before being marched off to the monterías from this outpost of civilization. Or, when don Gabriel and don Ramón decided to escort the men to the monterías themselves, they charged the local officials with seeing that the men arrived at a village or town on a certain date predesignated by them.
The local secretaries, the mayors, finqueros, or police officials received payment from the agent of the debts or fines on account of which the men were handed over. The agent had enough sense never to give the creditor payment of the whole sum due—only about a quarter of it was paid. This also made it possible for an agent to employ a smaller working capital. The balance was paid after the men had been delivered to the monterías. The agents by that time had their checks, which they cashed at Jovel or Tuxtla, and had plenty of money to settle up with.
In this way there was little risk of an agent’s losing his money; and it seldom happened that a contract laborer did not turn up. If the man failed for any reason to leave his native place in time to arrive at Hucutsín on the proper day, he was guilty of breach of contract, the worst offense that an Indian laborer could commit under the dictatorship of don Porfirio. An Indian who had murdered one of his fellow men, that is to say another Indian—incurred a smaller penalty than for breach of contract.
It did not matter whether there was an Indian more or less in Mexico, or anywhere else on the American continent—they increased fast enough even though four-fifths of the children perished before they were twelve years old—but it did matter, and mattered more than all else, that the foreign companies, who exploited the wealth of the country, should always have enough labor. This was guaranteed by their concession grants and licenses. Breach of contract by an Indian laborer was high treason. Therefore going on strike was punished with death, because it was breach of contract on the part of, and together with, labor in general. A contract-breaking Indian lowered exports, and lowered exports were detrimental to the credit of the country. This had the effect of putting the country at the mercy of the foreigner, who is always the enemy, merely because he is a foreigner. Hence breach of contract by an Indian laborer was high treason.
And so if an Indian who had entered into a contract did not leave his native place on the appointed date, he was arrested by the police or the soldiers. The costs of taking him in charge were debited to him. If he was very fortunate and God took him under His wing, he got only fifty merciless lashes; if he made trouble, he got two hundred and fifty; and if the Holy Virgin had utterly forsaken him and took no account of him at all, five hundred.
There is no necessity, then, to explain in further detail why the agents felt no anxiety about the punctual appearance of their men when the lists were read out on the evening of the day they were all collected for the next morning’s march into the jungle. If a man was absent, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it could be assumed that he was dead, or had lost an arm or a leg, and so was of no use to any montería and therefore of no use to his country.
2
Don Gabriel’s invariable luck brought him to Pebvil at the very moment when he could net a good catch.
Pebvil was so independent and self-willed a place that don Gabriel had had doubts of getting even a single man there. Every attempt the Spaniards had made in the three hundred years of Spanish rule to dissolve their pueblo and break it up into fincas had failed—the pueblo was too strong. When small groups and single families could not hold out, they gave way; but if a finquero settled on the land of these deflated Indian families, he was murdered or driven out as soon as the soldiers left. The Spaniards despaired of getting the pueblo under their yoke. Only a single concession could be extracted from the pueblo: the Indians accepted the presence of a secretario in Pebvil. But the Spanish governors, following the good advice of merchants and artisans of Spanish origin, finally reached the conclusion that it was more favorable to business in general and to peaceable and profitable trade to recognize the independence of the pueblo and to live in harmony with the members of the tribe, buying their products from them and selling them other goods in exchange. Both the Indian pueblo and the large Mexican town nearest to it, which was the pueblo’s chief market, benefited greatly by this mutual and peaceful arrangement. It resulted in the pueblo’s accounting for half the trade of the Mexican town.
Pebvil was a federation of four tribes who all spoke the same language, had the same customs and traditions, dressed in the same way, and were so closely allied that a young man of one tribe could marry into any of the other three, if a girl of another tribe pleased him and the wedding gift to her father was within his means.
About fifteen thousand independent Indians belonged to this federated nation. Their capital was given the same name, Pebvil, by which the whole nation was called. At the capital were the cabildo and a church. The secretary lived and carried on his duties in the cabildo. The pueblo, the federal community of family groups, was ruled by an Indian jefe.
The open space where the ch
urch and the cabildo stood and around which about thirty families lived was the political center of the nation. It was here the family groups assembled for the yearly festival and it was here the representatives of the tribes and family groups met in council.
From this center the different tribes radiated in four directions. Generally from three to ten families lived in one group. They were settled, according to the lay of the land and its fertility, from three hundred to more than a thousand paces apart in any direction.
The whole territory was divided according to the four points of the compass and all these groups of three or four or ten families belonged to the barrio, that is, to the district, of the north, the south, the east, or the west. Each barrio had its primitive Indian name, but under the influence of the Catholic religion, each of the old Indian names was prefaced by a pious one in order to limit the power and mischief of the devil. Thus one barrio was San Andrés, another San Marco, the next San Pedro, and the fourth San Miguel. Each of these barrios held a fiesta on the day of its patron saint.
Each barrio had from ancient times its own industry, which was respected by all the others. No barrio ever tried to enter the industry of another. One barrio made pots and earthenware, the second made hats, the third baskets and mats, and the fourth woolen blankets. No one from another barrio made his own hat. It was the invariable custom to buy a hat from the barrio which had the ancient privilege of making hats. In the same way no woman used a pot which had not been made in the barrio which had the right of making pots and plates for the whole people. And yet every Indian is capable of making his own hat, of weaving his own petate, of molding and firing his own cooking vessels.
There are almost as many systems of government among independent Indians as there are nations and languages. There are casiques who are elected for life, with the proviso that they can be set aside if they show themselves incapable; there are casiques who are not elected but who slowly ascend the ladder of office; there are regencies consisting not of one man but of four with equal rights and duties; there are casiques who are elected for four years, and others whose period of office lasts one year only; there are nations where a man who has once been casique can never again be elected to that office, however competent he may be; in other cases a casique can be re-elected after two, three, four, or more casiques have officiated since his last term. In some nations a man whose father has been casique can never himself be elected. However varied all these systems may be, they are all without exception of a republican and democratic nature.
Now, in Pebvil there was yet another system in force. If its origin could be successfully investigated it would certainly be found to lead back to that day when the nation migrated to this region in search of new territory. It must have settled down from the beginning in the four tribes which exist today. For political reasons and for better defense against other nations in their area the four tribes formed a federation, which assured to each tribe its independence.
To ensure to each of the four its rights and attributes and also to ensure the unity and strength of the federation, it was decided by a national council that the chief of the nation should be elected afresh each year. No one who had once been casique could be elected a second time. The barrios elected the casique in rotation. Only members of the barrio which was electing the casique for that year might vote. During his year of office the casique took up his abode in the capital of the federation, where he was allotted good land for himself and his family to cultivate. He was given no other payment or privilege for holding office. He was held responsible by the representatives of all four barrios for any mistakes in his administration.
The ceremony by which a new chieftain was instituted in his office was a remarkable one. In earlier times it had taken place on the sixth day after the shortest day—which according to our calendar would be about the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth of December. Later the people began to hold it on New Year’s Day.
At six o’clock in the morning all the members of the barrio that had elected the chief for the new year would march onto the open space in front of the cabildo, bringing the elected chief with them. The members of the other three barrios could also join in the ceremony.
A few men ran ahead to ring the church bells. There was no priest in the church. He made the extremely arduous journey to this isolated spot in high and mountainous country only once a year to scramble through a hurried Mass, to baptize children, to bless marriages already twenty years old in sinful delights, to sprinkle with holy water graves whose exact location could no longer be ascertained, to visit with the apostolic blessing all sheep, whether human or woolly, and to pocket the money for the Mass, the christenings, the blessings, the expenditure of holy water, and the forgiveness of unsanctified and unblessed marriages. The señor Cura did not appear at the festival of the institution of the new chief because on this day, New Year’s Day, it paid better to work in the Lord’s vineyard in the church of a large town.
While the bells pealed to celebrate the changeover from one chief to another, fireworks were set off to the accompaniment of music, dancing, frolic, and noise. Then the newly elected chief was introduced to the retiring chief and his council in front of the entrance to the cabildo by the assembled men of his tribe. With this introduction the result of the election was confirmed.
The retiring chief made a speech in the communal language. It was poetic in form and apparently of great antiquity. Then with much ceremony the staff of office was handed over.
The new chieftain replied politely and modestly. He too made use of the old rhymes which were appointed for this ceremony and which were probably a thousand years old or more.
Now a chair was brought up. It was a low chair woven of wickerlike twigs. The seat had a hole in the middle.
The new chieftain pulled down his white cotton trousers and sat on the chair, while all the men who had crowded around to watch the ceremony laughed and made ribald jokes.
Holding the ebony staff with its silver knob in his right hand, the chief sat solemnly in the chair, his face turned to all the men of his nation standing before him. He sat there with majestic dignity as though he were performing the first solemn act of his office. The laughing and joking of the crowd was stilled, to show that the first weighty utterance of their new chief was awaited with due respect.
But now three men came up, sent by the barrio which was to elect the casique for the following year. These men carried an earthenware pot with holes bored into its sides. The pot was filled with glowing charcoal, glowing brightly because of the holes.
One of the men explained in rhymed verses the purpose that the pot of fire would serve, and when he had concluded, he put this pot of glowing charcoal under the seat of the new chief.
He said in his speech that the fire under the chief’s posterior was to remind him that he was not sitting on this seat to rest himself but to work for his people; he was to look alive even though he sat on the chair of office. Furthermore, he was not to forget who had put the fire under him—a member of the barrio that would appoint the chief for the next year—and that it was done to remind him from the outset that he could not cling to the office but had to give it up as soon as his time was up, so as to prevent any risk of a lifelong rule, which would be injurious to the welfare of his people. If he tried to cling to his office they would put a fire under him that would be large enough to consume both him and his chair.
As soon as the pot of glowing charcoal had been placed beneath the chair, rhymed sayings were recited, first by a man of the barrio of the retiring chief, next by a man of the barrio who would elect the chief for the following year, and last by a man of the barrio of the newly appointed chief.
The new chief had to remain seated until these recitals were at an end. It depended on his popularity with the people whether the men who recited these sayings chanted them in slow and measured tones or as fast as they possibly could without openly giving the show away. If the last man to recite thought the two who
spoke before him had recited too quickly, he would make up for it by reciting his verses twice as slowly.
Whatever the chief might feel, he would not show by even a movement or the flicker of an eyelid how hot it was for him. Quite the opposite. When the sayings had all been recited he did not jump up at once in relief that his warming was over, but remained sitting for a good while to show that he had no intention of running away from the pains and troubles which his office might hold in store for him. Very often he made this the occasion for a joke, which increased the good humor of the men who watched eagerly to see whether a sign of discomfort might escape him and give them an opportunity of laughing at him. The more cheerful his jokes and the longer he remained seated the more respect and confidence he won from the men.
He tried by his jokes to turn the laugh against them. “You have no lungs, you weaklings,” he might say. “What will your wives say to you if you are too weak to blow up the fire underneath my behind? There is no warmth at all coming up through the hole. Here you, Eliseo, come here and scrape off the ice that is forming on my buttocks.”
When the charcoal died down the chief got up slowly. The ice he had spoken of had not been so innocent. Great blisters had been raised on his skin and in places it was so well roasted that it could be smelled from a distance.
A friend came up and smeared his backside with oil and then applied a compress of crushed herbs, while another poured him a huge glassful of tequila.
The new chief would not forget for weeks what he had had under his seat. It helped him considerably during his period in office to carry out his duties as his nation had expected of him when it elected him.
In nearly all cases scars were left on the exposed parts, which proved to his last days better than any moldering document that he had once had the honor of being chief of his nation. They also made it certain that he would never think of being elected a second time against the practice of the people.