by B. TRAVEN
Tomás waited politely in case the secretary wished to add anything more, but when don Abelardo remained silent, the Indian said, “That is no doubt the right and necessary thing for the Ladinos, but that is just why it may be very far from the best thing for us Tsotsils. We have existed for thousands of years and we have not gone under, although we have different customs and different systems of government than those of the Ladinos. And as we have lived for thousands of years with our own customs and thrived without needing the Ladinos or asking their advice and adopting their manners and summoning them to our country, we are sure that our customs are no worse than those of the Ladinos. We have lived for thousands of years in this manner, just as we thought good and right for ourselves, and we have convinced ourselves that we can live with this system and these customs of ours for thousands of years longer without going to pieces or being overcome. We have found through age-long experience that it suits our people to choose a new jefe every year, to take him every year from a different barrio, and never to re-elect a man who has once been jefe. If we were engaged in a long war and wanted the most experienced man as jefe, or if we were on a long migration to new territory, then it might be advisable to keep the most experienced man among us in office for a longer time. But the tradition of our people tells us that we have not altered our method of election even in critical times. Never once in our long history has a jefe held office for longer than one year. If the new jefe lacks knowledge and experience, he can get help and advice and support on all sides from previous jefes who have more experience than he has. There is not a man among us, whether he is jefe or not, whether he has been or whether he will be, who will not put all his knowledge and experience at the service of our nation if the people have need of his advice and help. That is why we have never had kings and dictators and despots. Every man, even the simplest, can be made jefe for a year if he has or can win the confidence of the grown men of his barrio. We have often had, and I know this from the stories of my grandfather, a jefe who was so clever and so competent that everyone would have been glad if he had held office longer and been able to carry out his plans. But it has usually happened that the next jefe has been even better than the last; for everyone learns from his predecessor, and each new jefe has the ambition to show greater zeal and capacity than the man before him and to earn even greater praise. The more often a new man can be chosen as jefe the more of our people can be jefe, and the more of us learn how to govern. The more men know of how to govern, the better they are in council. Our desire is that every one of us should be a jefe once. Then we criticize less, but we advise better. The men of the people constitute a parliament of regents. Men who have once been jefe are better citizens because they have learned how important it is to obey on occasions when the welfare of the nation is at stake. But the most important asset is that since every person brings at least one idea into the world that no one has had before him, every new jefe brings an idea to the administration of our people and has the chance to prove whether it is any good or not. Everyone believes that he can do everything better than anyone else if only he were in office. We give all our citizens a chance to show whether they can do better than others. Everybody who has once held office has learned that maize must be boiled or roasted if it is to be eaten and digested. That is what I was sent here to say on behalf of my people. We do not criticize the government of the Ladinos, but we give no one on earth, who does not belong to our people, the right to alter our manners and customs as he deems fit. If the government could convince us that our system is harmful to us, we would consider the matter and do what we thought best. The great drawback of the system the government wishes to impose upon us is that if a man who has been chosen jefe betrays the trust of those who chose him and is not what the people expected of him, he cannot be put aside, or only with great difficulty. Even if he is a rogue, who looks out for himself rather than for his people, or is domineering, egoistic, and vainglorious, still he will try by intrigues and by poisoning the minds of the people to remain in office. This is bound to lead to corruption, to unrest and rebellions. We, however, wish to live in peace among ourselves and with our neighbors, because we have learned after thousands of years that only peace and harmony bring us prosperity.”
10
It is not to be supposed that the secretary understood all that the Indian meant. Partly this was because he did not pay much attention. In his view the decree was a fact, and these lousy Indians had no right to object—they were merely subjects. They had to obey and to do whatever their dictators saw fit to command. Another reason why he did not understand was that the Indian belonged to a world and a way of looking at things which were as remote from him as the notes of the trumpet call to the last judgment.
But one thing the secretary had understood. Tomás had managed his speech very cleverly. He had carefully and deliberately kept until the end the particular case which the secretary had made use of to get this decree passed.
Amalio had not been mentioned by name in the peroration. Nevertheless, don Abelardo had understood at once who was meant. And though his peroration was full of merciless digs at the secretary, it had been so well thought out by the Indian that don Abelardo could not say he had been insulted, or been accused of corrupting and dividing the Indian nation for his personal advantage.
He found himself quite unable to make any reply. He would not have known where to start. The Indian had armed himself with those thousand or ten thousand years during which his nation had evolved and practiced this system of government, probably after long continued dissensions which threatened to destroy the people. It was impossible to argue against results which had their roots in a thousand years of experience. He did not even venture an attempt to make objections, because he felt sure the Indian would score him. So he only said, “A decree is a decree, Tomás; you have got to obey it. You can tell your people that. Amalio is going to remain jefe for another year, and whether he will still be jefe the year after that will be settled when the time comes.”
“I will report what you say to the men of Pebvil,” said Tomás quietly. “I have no authority to make any further reply to what you say, don Abelardo.”
He approached the table. The secretary got up and went around the table to meet him. Tomás touched the fingertips of the secretary’s outstretched hand and said, “Adiós, señor.” Then with a deep bow he left the office.
The other men of the deputation likewise took their leave and followed their spokesman. They picked up their machetes in the portico, threw their shotguns over their shoulders, and marched off. They said not a word to one another.
11
The whole nation knew that the deputation had been with the secretario, but not a man in Pebvil, along whose maguey fences the deputation now went on their way home to their barrio, came up to ask about the result of the interview with the secretario.
This might perhaps be taken as a lack of interest on the part of the Indians. A case like this, however, arouses nothing that you can call interest in an Indian. He knows what is happening and what has to happen. More than this he does not need to know. Every member of the nation knew long before the deputation was sent that the negotiation with the secretario was in reality no negotiation, no attempt to make a compromise, no balancing of parliamentary parties. The discussion with the secretary was the final warning, nothing more.
Yet it was not a declaration of war. The nation did not desire war either with the government or with the Ladinos. They were not so foolish as to come out with machetes and shotguns against machine guns and mountain artillery. This is only done by civilized peoples when they want to lose two million of their best men and enslave themselves to debt for six hundred years.
The uncivilized Indians, who could not read and write and who were therefore less easily led into folly, never thought of bringing such danger on their people and wasting its wealth and manhood. They were a people of governors and had neither a war department nor steel manufacturers nor arma
ment firms.
Since they were a people of governors with plenty of men who had learned by short periods of office to give good advice and to judge the advice given by others, they could not be stampeded by a horde of fanatics until all fell into the same pit. They acted like barbarian Indians; but they acted rightly, successfully, and inexorably. And punctually.
12
The first of January had come. A thick morning mist hung over the earth, which was bathed in dew.
As day dawned over Pebvil and the mist unwillingly broke up and drifted away and the sun topped the mountain in one leap, thousands upon thousands of Indians filled the square.
This mass of people appeared as suddenly as if they had spent the night hidden among the bushes, waiting for the sun to send its first flicker of light over the crest of the mountain. Indeed, they filled the whole open space so swiftly and so evenly that it seemed they had been lying in wait between the blades of grass and in the crevices of the earth and then risen to their feet as one man.
There was a murmur such as was heard only on this day, the day of their nation’s most important ceremony. Men and women and children and dogs were gathered in small, tight groups and in larger, looser assemblages. All were in high spirits. There was laughing, shouting, joking, calling, singing, and music-making all over the wide space.
Some of the men of the tribes had long staves with brightly colored feathers at the top, and these were planted like banners in the center of each group. Others had come with flags on which Saint Anthony or the Virgin was clumsily stitched.
Here and there among the crowd the captains could be distinguished by the variously colored silk ribbons fluttering from their hats. The captains, too, were elected yearly. They were elected by their tribes as representatives to the great council presided over by the chief of the nation. Now, at this gathering of the whole nation on this extraordinary occasion, they were the leaders and marshals of their tribes. By means of them each tribe was in close and constant touch with the central council of the whole nation. At the last decisive meeting all the captains had been instructed on what their tribes were to do in given events and at given moments and on how and where they were to lead them at given signals from the central council.
Don Abelardo, the secretary, was greatly astonished to see the whole nation assembled on the square in front of the cabildo so early in the morning. He could think of no ready explanation. It was not the saint’s day of any of the four barrios, but since he did not know all the feast days and other occasions on which the nation assembled, he was not alarmed.
Then it occurred to him that it was the first of January, and he supposed they must have come to celebrate the new year. He was not aware that Indians do not celebrate the new year. Taking this to be the explanation, he went in to breakfast.
When he emerged again onto the portico he asked some Indians who were standing nearby talking to one another what the reason for the mass assembly was. They replied with remarkable alacrity that it was the first of January. Don Abelardo was reassured.
13
He sent out the police—Indians who lived at Pebvil—to keep order. While he stood there wondering what else he could do to show that he was in authority, the church bells began to peal. Looking across, he saw that the low belfry was occupied by a crowd of young men who were shouting, yelling, and screaming as they wildly swung the wheels of the bell cage.
Then, from the bush on one side of the square a crowd of Indians came marching to the sound of music. They had drums, flutes, guitars, and violins, and played dance tunes. They carried staves adorned with flowers and feathers. In front of the column the church banners of their barrio were borne aloft by some youths with all the dignity they could muster.
The secretary knew by the flags that this marching column was the barrio of San Miguel. Its arrival was greeted with wild excitement and shouts of welcome, and numbers of young men ran out to escort the newcomers to the square.
The captains of the barrio could be seen just behind the banners, and among them marched Natividad, the man whom the barrio San Miguel had elected as chief. Natividad’s hat had no streamers—it was part of the ceremony of installing him to tie the streamers on—but he wore two bright sashes across his chest and these singled him out as chief-elect.
The column had scarcely reached the edge of the square when Amalio, who by decree was to remain in office, came running at great speed to the cabildo. He pushed open the door of the office, shouting back to the secretary, “They’re here, they’re here. Me matarán.”
“Nonsense, estas loco,” said don Abelardo, following him in. “Don’t be crazy, no one will kill you. You are under the government’s protection.”
But the secretary did not appear to be so calm and confident as his words were meant to suggest. His face was ashen and he kept pulling at his belt to bring his revolver around. He looked down and counted the cartridges in the belt. He felt better when he saw that it was full to the last loop, forty-five of them, each bullet flattened and filed. The flattening was to smash the bones, and the filing to harbor dirt and microbes in the indentations so that even a flesh wound would prove fatal.
As soon as he had seen the Indian rush by with terror on his face—an unusual sight in an Indian—he knew in a flash the meaning of this gathering of thousands of people.
However he did not yet grasp the full seriousness of it. He thought that as secretary and as representative of the government he was strong enough to control the threatening situation by virtue of his authority.
14
Amalio knew better. He knew the customs of his race, and he felt no security in the office. He went out onto the portico and looked about for some way of escape, but the Indians were massed in a crescent as dense as a thick forest.
They were too far away for him to distinguish one man from another, but he could feel their pitiless hostility directed upon him. This huge gathering had one eye, and this one eye was fixed upon him in an unalterable and merciless resolve.
Don Abelardo came to the door. “Don Amalio,” he said, “you have nothing to fear. You are to remain in office by the decree of the government, by its special command. I shall telephone to the garrison for a squadron of cavalry with machine guns. Go up into the schoolroom. You’ll be safer there than here. Meanwhile the soldiers will be on the way.”
The casique could not set himself against the orders of the government. That would have laid him open to the charge of disobedience and landed him in prison for years to come. It might even have gone worse than that with him, for the judge might have found that disobedience to a special decree of the governor was an act of rebellion and an open defiance of the power of the State, and in that case he would have been shot. He had neglected to seize the opportunity of declining a further tenure of office—on the plea that he was no longer fit for it—the day the decree arrived.
Besides, the obstinacy of his Indian character and his honor as a man forbade him to yield and confess himself beaten at the moment when danger threatened. Such conduct would so utterly have disgraced him in the eyes of his tribe and nation that he would have been driven out—to take to the jungle and starve there or be devoured by jaguars. He was in a position from which there was no retreat. His only hope lay in putting off his fate until the soldiers came and protected him.
15
The upper floor of the cabildo was reached by wooden steps at the eastern end of the building which led onto a balcony with a railing. Off this balcony was the schoolroom, which also served as sleeping quarters at night for passing travelers and traders. The schoolroom had no windows. It was lighted through the open door.
Amalio left the portico and went around the corner of the building to the steps in full view of all the thousands in the square. His wife saw him too, as he went up the steps. She knew instinctively that he was going to the upper floor because he no longer felt safe below, and from this she realized that these were perhaps the last steps her husband would take of his o
wn free will.
She ran to her hut and got a jug of water, a few tortillas and chiles, some frijoles wrapped in banana leaves, and, gathering her four children, hastened back to the cabildo.
She made straight for the steps, hustling her children up them in front of her, while she put down her jug and provisions on the lowest step in order to tie the cloth, which held her unweaned baby on her back, more tightly across her chest. The knot had loosened as she ran. Then she snatched up her load again and followed her children into the schoolroom.
Not one among all those thousands through whom she had had to make her way had spoken to her or stopped her. A lane had opened in front of her. Only they could say whether it was to avoid touching her or because they wished to speed her flight.
16
The column escorting the newly elected chief meanwhile marched merrily toward the cabildo. It went its way apparently without a care and without showing any sign of awareness of what was occurring in the cabildo. It was as though not a man among them had ever heard of the decree; for they advanced exactly as every barrio had for hundreds of years when a new chieftain was being installed, and they followed every ancient rite with ceremonious precision. As they could see nothing in what they did that threatened harm to any one of their own or any other people, it would have been impossible to convince them that they were guilty of rebellion or any unlawful act. They did not interfere in the political customs of the Mexicans and they did not therefore see why it was rebellion if they did not allow the Mexicans to interfere in theirs and to alter them by force to suit themselves.