Aztec Rage

by Gary Jennings

  “I’ve met him several times. He attended literary club meetings in Querétaro when you were away.”

  “He has brought the wrath of the viceroy upon him.”

  Allende shrugged. Over the years, as he observed the corrupt and inefficient viceroyal system, he had grown less concerned about the viceroy’s wrath.

  “The padre is a man of courage and honesty. Those are traits not often found in men, whether they be kings, popes, or peons. And he transcends those traits when he is rash. He challenged the crown’s prohibitions against colonial enterprises, and at the same time he set out to prove the worth of the indio.”

  Aldama shook his head. “He rubs salt in the viceroy’s wounds. The gachupines went to the viceroy and told him to stop this rabble-rouser before the indios overthrew their gachupine masters.”

  Allende said, “The padre has proven that with proper training the indio is capable of more than tilling the ground and digging in mines.”

  “Does he expect to train them in defiance of the viceroy? If he does, he’ll find himself in the archbishop’s prison, if the Inquisition does not break him on the rack.”

  “I don’t know what his plans are. He has asked that the members of the literary club meet and discuss the situation. His message said he’s being watched by a familiar, so he asked that the club meet in private.”

  As they rode, their talk moved from the padre’s problems to their own frustrations.

  “What of your conversation with Colonel Hernández?” Aldama asked. “Whenever I ask you about it, you look like a dog gnaws your cojones.”

  “Not a dog but a wolf. The colonel told me what we all have known. The upper ranks are prohibited to criollos.” Allende’s face reddened. “But this time he gloated, saying the climate of New Spain debilitates our brains, thus disqualifying us from command positions.”

  Like Allende, Aldama’s sole ambition was for a military career. His father managed a factory for others, but Aldama wanted a horse between his legs and a sword in his hand. And, like Allende, Aldama was a captain in the militia and knew how to swear. His blood-curdling oaths ran the gamut of gutter words.

  “What did you say to the colonel?” Aldama asked when he had run out of obscenities.

  Allende grimaced. “Had anyone but my commanding officer insulted me thus, I would have offered him his choice of weapons and seconds. But what could I say? That he was a fool and a fraud? That the gachupines have commandeered the high command and enslaved New Spain out of hubris, avarice, and depraved ambition? Could I tell him they do these things because they fear not only us but the peons?

  “Someday—”

  “No!” Allende snapped. “The gachupine will oppose all attempts at reform. If we are to run our own affairs—we must take action.”

  “What kind of action are you proposing, amigo?”

  Allende looked over at his friend. He knew Aldama admired him. In some ways, Aldama looked up to him as an older brother.

  “I don’t know. It is something to talk to the padre about. But I do know that when two men face each other and only one has a musket, the musket will command indisputable respect.”

  Allende shared some qualities with the priest of Dolores: Both were restless spirits. Both men began projects, even achieved success, but then moved on to another project before the project achieved its full potential.

  One difference between them was the type of knowledge each possessed. Allende knew men and arms; Padre Hidalgo knew the human heart.

  Allende said, “You wonder why I encouraged Father Hidalgo to join our efforts for change in the colony. We must recognize what has happened in the past. Forty years ago, when our fathers were young men, the Aztecs rose up, tens of thousands of them, especially in San Luís Potosí, where the inspector general, José de Galvez—”

  “Chopped off the heads of nearly a hundred of them and posted them on pikes for all to see and remember.”

  “Yes, they had no leadership, and the uprising was put down, but imagine what they might have done if they had had leaders guiding them. The indios also remember how ruthlessly the riots were put down. Hidalgo says they remember, and they thirst for revenge for the cruelties.”

  “I have no confidence in an Aztec army.”

  “Not even one led by us?”

  “How would we raise such a force?”

  “That is where the padre is needed. He is famous throughout the Bajío as a friend of the indios. Given the opportunity, I believe they would flock to his banner. Supported by a few thousand well-trained militia, a large host of Aztecs could serve as a military vanguard.”

  Aldama shook his head. “You speak of insurrection, revolution.”

  “I speak of change, which will only come by force of arms. Do you want to serve like a peon under the spurs of the gachupines and pass on that heritage of enslavement to your children?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “The winds of change are blowing in the colony. Men speak openly of rebellion. I hear it from other officers throughout the Bajío.”

  “This has to be thought out carefully. Even loose talk can bring the viceroy down upon us.” Aldama was a brave man, but he lacked Allende’s willingness to surge ahead despite all dangers.

  “We’re trained soldiers,” Allende said, “as good as any the gachupines can field. If we declare for change and prove we can win, our people will join us. Honor demands that we stand up to the gachupines, that we fight, and if necessary that we die. My blood is as pure as that of any gachupine and I will not be enslaved by them.”

  Allende grinned at his friend. “Remember, amigo, to the victors go the spoils. If we are the ones to drive the gachupines from New Spain, we will enjoy the fruits of victory—high rank and honors.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  RAQUEL MONTEZ SAT quietly on a coach seat and looked at the woman sitting across from her. Doña Josefa Domínguez was the wife of Don Miguel Domínguez, the corregidor of Querétaro. As corregidor, Doña Josefa’s husband was the chief judicial officer for the town and surrounding area. While Raquel had been visiting the señora, a message came from the curate of Dolores, Father Hidalgo, asking to meet privately with members of the Querétaro literary club. Like Doña Josefa, Raquel had attended meetings of the social club to lament the injustices of the colony’s political and economic systems.

  Raquel and the older woman had spent the night in San Miguel at a friend’s home and then set out in the morning for the clandestine meeting. She enjoyed the company of Doña Josefa, a woman of great intellect and moral quality. Raquel also admired Josefa’s husband, Miguel Domínguez. Born in Guanajuato, Don Miguel had risen to a high rank for a criollo. He reminded her somewhat of her father because both men had an intense interest in literature and ideas.

  While Don Miguel tacitly supported social change, his strong-willed wife—“La Corregidora,” as she was called—actively joined in the literary society’s secret meetings. Doña Josefa had lamented the colony’s struggles and Spain’s troubles in Europe for some time. “Napoleon is a madman driven by insatiable ambition, and no one in Madrid can stop him. He is devouring Europe, advancing to the east now, but he already has a death grip on the peninsula. And that court jester Godoy cannot even slow him down.”

  “I agree,” Raquel said.

  Raquel was as knowledgeable and as disgusted with Spain’s feckless foreign policy as her godmother, who had inspired her political awareness. While attending school in Querétaro, Raquel had lived with the doña and her family, and Doña Josefa had given her a free run of their library. More important, she engaged her continually in provocative discussions of art, philosophy, history, literature, and the political struggles of their day.

  While Raquel’s father had encouraged her to study and inquire, Doña Josefa viewed politics and letters as a fiery commitment, and the doña’s personal example ignited Raquel’s passion for learning as much as the doña’s lavish trove of titles, a literary passion that Juan de Zavala had found so sin
gularly unattractive in women.

  Raquel’s own mother was indifferent to literature but loved music and bequeathed that sensibility to her daughter. A wounded soul, her mother had endured life’s vicissitudes with failing health and a weakening will, a tragic fate Raquel was hell-bent to avoid.

  Her father’s interests, on the other hand, were bolder, more energetic. Loving all forms of the arts—literature, music, painting, and philosophy—he had possessed the finest private library in Guanajuato, an asset that had not served him well when the Inquisition knocked on his door, charging that he was a secret Jew.

  An only child, she had joined in her father’s intellectual pursuits despite the social convention that women lacked the intellect for serious learning. Recognizing that a woman like Doña Josefa—with her intelligence, erudition, and social status—would exert a positive influence on his daughter, her father encouraged their friendship and asked her to godmother his child. Although Raquel was a mestiza Doña Josefa insisted that Raquel be widely read and demanded a determining role in educating Raquel. Raquel’s father acceded to all of the doña’s demands.

  But that world was gone. The father Raquel adored had been carried home on a door, passing from their lives with merciful quickness. God had not been so kind to her mother. A fragile woman, she had suffered unbearably when her husband died amidst disgrace, suspicion, and tragedy. After his death, her mind and body succumbed as well. She had passed away a month ago. Until her passing, Raquel had cared for her and struggled with the creditors to save something of her inheritance.

  The financial struggle was mostly lost, and she was alone in life. Her friends assumed she would enter a convent, the only path available to women who lacked a man’s protection and support. A woman could avail herself of no other opportunities except to function as a wife, a whore, or a servant. The convent offered protection, both financial and physical, sheltering many women plagued by an impecunious dowry.

  Had Raquel sought the church’s protection, she would not have felt alone. She would have followed the path of the historical figure she admired most, a poetess who had died over a hundred years before: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

  Sor Juana, “Sister Juana,” entered the convent not for spiritual solace but for study and contemplation, the kind of life only a convent could provide her. Sor Juana’s exact birth date was not clear (probably around 1648), though at birth she was unquestionably a “daughter of the church,” meaning illegitimate, a bastarda.

  Sor Juana had been an intellectual prodigy, composing a loa, a brief dramatic poem, at the age of eight. While other girls applied themselves to pleasing men, Sor Juana pleaded with her mother to disguise her as a boy so she could attend a university. Denied an education because of her sex, her grandfather provided the bulk of her instruction.

  Despite her beauty, intelligence, and compelling personality, her low birth and her poetic aspirations held her back. Only life in the convent allowed her to write poetry and plays, experiment with science, and develop a large library. When a bishop restricted her studies, however, she rebelled, defending her right as a woman to seek after truth. She was known even in Spain as the “Méjican Phoenix” and the “Tenth Muse.”

  Ultimately, she was not able to continue her intellectual pursuits; the dogmatists in the church assailed her. Persecuted for her writing and her worldly thoughts, she gave up her books and signed a confession in her own blood. After her famed reply to the bishop, she withdrew from the outside world. She died in her mid-forties after she became ill while nursing the sick during an epidemic.

  Lines from Raquel’s favorite Sor Juana poem summarized Raquel’s views on her own life.

  The pain and torment of this love

  that my heart cannot conceal,

  I know I feel, but cannot know

  the reasons why it’s this I feel.

  I suffer greatest agonies

  to reach the heights of ecstasy,

  but what commences as desire

  is doomed to end as misery.

  And when with greatest tenderness

  I weep for my unhappiness,

  I only know that I am sad

  but reasons I cannot express.

  First forbearing, then aroused,

  conflicting grief I am combating:

  that I shall suffer much for him, but with him

  I shall suffer nothing.

  She wondered how Sor Juana felt going into a convent. Never to love or be loved by a man. Never to unite with a man, to be in his arms, breast to breast, to be intimate.

  She remembered the feeling of having Juan inside of her, his lips on hers, caressing her. She remembered the fear and awe when Juan made love to her, but most of all, the pounding of her blood.

  Raquel had told Josefa that she lacked Sor Juana’s courage. She could not endure a convent’s discipline, abstinence, and abnegation.

  She had enough money to leave Guanajuato and its loathsome memories. She would move to Méjico City and purchase a small, respectable house, all that she needed for the solitary life she planned for herself. And she had financial prospects there. A Portuguese businessman who had been a friend of her father’s was broadminded enough to ask her to teach his three daughters liberal arts. She might be able to expand her tutelage, though few parents wanted educated daughters. Her best hope was to teach the children of foreigners living in the capital.

  It would be a fresh start, getting her away from the Bajío and its memories, while preserving the independence to use her mind. Doña Josefa supported her desire for independence.

  The older woman’s voice brought Raquel back to the present.

  “Godoy has us allied with Napoleon against the British. That’s like a mouse warring on a cat. Already we have lost our fleet. How will the colony be defended against an invasion by the British? How long will Napoleon wait before gobbling us up?” She sighed and shook her head. “My dear, not so long ago Spain was a great power. That our leaders betray us breaks my heart, especially when our enemies proliferate, when war festers and spreads in Europe like the pox.”

  Raquel had only been half-listening to her godmother’s lament. They had received word that morning about a subject closer to her heart. She stared out the window of the coach, deep in thought, when Josefa read her thoughts.

  “You’re thinking about him, aren’t you, my dear?”

  She didn’t need to tell her grandmother his name. “Yes. I was thinking about what María said last night. Months have passed but still people talk about him.”

  “And why not? Has anything so scandalous happened in the colony before? I’ve never heard anything like it in my lifetime. An Aztec baby switched for a Spanish one? A peon growing up to be a much admired gachupine caballero? Now he has escaped from jail, and there are reports he has turned highwayman. Oh, how horrified are the gachupines. The irony is exquisite, except for your love of this unfortunate young man.”

  “I don’t love him.”

  “Of course you do. He’s a bad man, and your misfortune is to care for him.”

  “That he was a changeling isn’t his fault.”

  “Of course not, but his treatment of you is. He exploited, then abandoned you in your time of need.”

  “I don’t blame him. It was an arranged marriage. He never loved me and would never have married me if it had not been arranged for financial reasons, not if I had been the most beautiful woman in the colony, because I’m a mestiza. Besides, he’s in love with another woman, one who is said to be the most beautiful woman in the colony. My father’s misfortunes and loss of the dowry allowed him to escape a miserable marriage and an unhappy life.”

  Doña Josefa scoffed. “He’s a fool. Her reputation as a flirt and social climber is common gossip, even here in Querétaro. The woman has a face men find attractive, but her husband-to-be will pay dearly for her charms when she demands the most scintillating jewels, the most extortionately expensive houses, only the finest clothes and coaches.”

  “
Well, he need not fear that now. He need only fear the viceroy’s constables.”

  Raquel’s tone was neutral as she spoke about Juan, but her heart was not. She loved him from the first moment she had seen him. Because of that love, she had given him the most precious and valuable thing a young woman could give a man, her virginity. He broke her heart when he walked away from her and the planned marriage.

  Her stoic features cracked, and she fought back tears. “I do truly love him. I will never love another man. I’m just afraid that I will never find happiness and that I will die in a convent writing regrets with my blood like Sor Juana.”

  The older woman suddenly chuckled. “I’m sorry, my dear, it’s not funny, but I wonder how people would react if they knew that the infamous Juan de Zavala had escaped the Guanajuato jail wearing your father’s boots.”

  AVENIDA DE LOS MUERTOS (STREET OF THE DEAD)

  THIRTY-THREE

  MY PLAN, AFTER I left the hacienda—with a live dog strapped to the chest of a dead man—was to head northwest, in the direction of Zacatecas. I had hunted in the Zacatecas area and in the wild country north of it before. At some point, the people at the hacienda would join the viceroy’s constables in their search for me. The less populated, ill-protected North was the logical route for a fleeing bandido to take.

  Zacatecas was the second richest silver-mining region in the colony. Money flowed there like beehive honey, and the town was wilder and more untamed than Guanajuato. I might even flee farther north; it was hundreds of leagues to the Río Bravo and the settlements beyond. Towns were often weeks apart, and one could journey for days without seeing strangers. With saddlebags full of stolen silver one could stay lost forever.

  Yes, going to Zacatecas was a fine plan, and one I carefully avoided. Instead, once I left my tracks for a route north, I did a wide circle of the area surrounding the hacienda and headed south. Zacatecas was the first place my pursuers would look. Even worse, many of the mine owners and suppliers had visited our hacienda and knew my face. They would recognize me the first time I walked down a Zacatecas street.