CHAPTER 4
Soldaderas
As the soldiers got closer to the Sierras, the melancholy officer realized that the Chihuahua peasants judged them with boundless rage and surly disdain while exalting the sons of Tomochic beyond all measure. He was stung to the quick.
Meanwhile, the soldaderas, women troop followers who alternately trailed their guys like slaves and hurried ahead to obtain food for them, told astounding tales.
Like a migrating horde, those dirty, dusty women, dressed in rags and shod, like the men, in huaraches, resembled wild dogs as they trotted ahead of the marching column hefting enormous baskets full of cooking pots and utensils on their shoulders.
The soldaderas! Miguel both feared and admired them; they provoked terror and tenderness in equal measure. In truth, he found them repugnant. Their gaunt, dark faces, harpies’ features, and predatory hands tortured and befuddled him. He had seen them in the teeming squares of Mexico City’s poor districts, where they seethed in their own filth and lust and hunger … not to mention their drunken stupors of sotol and pulque.1
Oh, he had seen them all right. Witnessing their senseless vices and crimes had wrung his heart and turned his stomach. And now he scrutinized them in wonderment. Their rough-hewn features stood out in epic relief as he contemplated their tranquil selflessness, undaunted stamina, and inexhaustible tenderness for their long-suffering “Juans,” their men, who would live and die in abject suffering, oblivious to their fate.
On the road, the officers prohibited the soldaderas from fetching water for the soldiers. But they disobeyed and obstinately carried canteens full of water to the troops and laughed in the face of authority. The sweaty, breathless men drank and were envied by all who, beneath the implacable sun and enveloped in clouds of dust, had not been so fortunate.
The soldiers grumbled among themselves in their uncensored, ignorant conversations. “If they give water to the machine to keep it going,” they would say, “why wouldn’t they give some to the troops?”
In the terrible heat of the marches the soldaderas carried out works of mercy of the highest order. Openly defying the corporals’ truncheons and even the officers’ sabers, they went on giving drink to their thirsty lovers who, with the candid black eyes of the acquiescent Indian, gave their thanks in the ecstasy of their sated thirst. Every swallow of cold water was like manna from heaven!
Miguel turned a blind eye to these transgressions of the captain’s strict orders and on the sly observed the relief of the troops and the staunch persistence of the women bringing them canteens and pitchers full of water.
Second Lieutenant Mercado liked to listen in on their conversations during the rest periods, in camps lacking even a single tent. The improvised encampments were roughly marked off by rows of stacked rifles bunched in symmetrical steel bouquets. The men flung themselves down in the shade of craggy overhangs, amid their gear and gusts of billowing smoke, indistinguishable from the women lying beside them.
“Just imagine, Don Chema,” he heard a tall, gaunt woman say to a strapping lad who was wolfing down thick tortillas, the only food she had to offer. “Imagine! Teresita herself blesses the rifles, and every shot fired is a dead man, and the gringos have given them piles of artillery. Loads of it. Ay! My dearest …”
Don Chema stopped chewing and reflected a moment on the implications of all this. Then he resumed eating, as though resigned to his fate. “You’re right! Why do we have to go? They’ll kill us all, and here we are, marching on and on, just to die like sheep.”
But others, disbelieving, countered this. The Fifth was beaten, all right, but the Ninth was different! They weren’t going to be caught with their pants down. They’d see if the guys of the Ninth turned tail and ran!
As they descended the steep slope that snaked circuitously along a mountain ridge and made a switchback on a cliff jutting out over a dark chasm far below, Miguel learned what had happened at that site two months earlier. The 11th Battalion of Guerrero needed more munitions, and headquarters sent the shipment to them with an escort of a few men. Four or five Tomochic fighters routed the escort party and took possession of the munitions. Later on, the boxes had been sent back to the colonel of the 11th Battalion headquarters with the cartridges empty.
Whenever the little Hotchkiss cannon, which brought up the rear of the column, dropped out of sight, Miguel thought of this anecdote. Given the audacity of these mountain fighters, wasn’t it logical to fear a similar assault? The roads were deserted. Why didn’t they launch a surprise attack?
In Guerrero City the two companies of the 9th Battalion set up camp along the Alameda, eager for the order to push on into the Sierra Madre, whose dark silhouette undulated majestically just ahead.
CHAPTER 5
The Hand of General Díaz
That afternoon, after leaving the inn, as he was crossing the deserted plaza on his way back to camp, Miguel carried the memory of the lovely girl from Tomochic with him. He was still under her spell when he arrived at the Alameda, where stacks of arms had been set up to form an enclosure in which the troops could eat and rest.
It was a gloomy spot, dotted with spindly pine trees and crisscrossed by sewer pipes filled with fetid water. Stone benches lined the rectangular perimeter of the square, where cold winds from the Sierras bent back the ancient branches of the trees intoning reproachful laments in a single monotonous chord. It was a scene as irremediably forlorn as Miguel’s soul.
Word spread that the federal forces had arrived, and the deserted Alameda came to life again as women selling meat, bread, flour tortillas, gordas,1 peaches, apples, and sweets flocked to the area near the stockpiled arms.
That night, when the officers gathered at the inn for dinner, there was sensational news: the brash mountain fighters of Tomochic had unconditionally released the man who had been injured and taken prisoner in the September 2 battle, Lieutenant Colonel José M. Ramírez of the 11th Battalion.
This was astounding. What did it mean now, when they were planning a serious attack? In the event they were defeated, wouldn’t a hostage be useful to them? Was it weakness, cowardice?
Certainly not! Anyone who had witnessed the courage of that indomitable people knew as much. No, certainly not!
The news—brought by the commander himself—indicated that they were more determined than ever to wait out the attack. They were well armed, and their ranks were swelling by the day with political refugees and the increasingly restless inhabitants of the mountain towns; even outlaws like Pedro Chaparro joined their ranks with money and men, drawn by the booty alone.
Their overture could only be seen as a noble, honorable gesture; they had thrown down the gauntlet in a challenge to their adversaries, like the fabled knights of antiquity.
Multiple versions of the event circulated freely. Some said that the Tomochic fighters had been swayed by promises of money; others maintained that Ramírez had spoken with Cruz and then fallen to his knees before the image of the girl saint of Cabora. After praying for days on end, he pretended she had miraculously converted him, after which he was given his liberty to go and spread the word.
The official story was that Ramírez, unable to endure his treatment any longer or sustain himself on a regimen of roasted corn and water, had appealed to Cruz to shoot him rather than subject him to a slow death. The astonished Cruz had then provided him with food and four armed men and escorted him to the entrance of Guerrero City.
In any event, here he was among them to corroborate the rumors about the number of rebel forces, which he calculated at three hundred men or more. But all agreed that, without exaggeration, each rebel was worth ten ordinary fighters.
Suddenly a cold shock went through the heated atmosphere of masculine breath and a few officers went pale, when General Staff Lieutenant Réndon informed them that General Márquez had given the command to General Rangel. The latter would be operating on broad instructions from the general, who would be on the alert in Guerrero City, sixty miles
away from the tragic scene.
“Lucky for him he’s an honorary commanding general, with his name on campaign communiqués just for show,” an indignant captain dared to remark, breaking the timorous silence of the men around him.
And in truth, in a confrontation with Tomochic, there was no need for that commander’s presence. General Díaz would command the operations of the minor campaign via telegraph from his offices in the capital. “The president of the republic knows how to run these things while he drinks his mug of chocolate in Chapultepec Park,” Mercado allowed.
“So why send important generals into combat?” put in Castorena.
“Right. It’s enough to have General Rangel, who knows the terrain, receiving precise instructions from above. When you have men who know how to obey orders, what more do you need?”
The major who had spoken earlier in the morning chimed in, “What’s more, Guerrero City is the center of a base of operations. In a formal campaign, if other mountain towns and mining settlements joined the uprising in support of Tomochic, it would be very useful to have General Márquez here to defend the plaza until reinforcements arrived from Chihuahua. To abandon Guerrero would be inexcusable!”
Then cocky Lieutenant Torrea asked disdainfully, “Come now, major, how likely are they to take Guerrero City?”
“With a leader of Cruz’s intelligence and that pack of devils behind him, why not? It’s a good thing for us that they have no strategy or military training, so they can be polished off quickly. But it will cost us dearly because they’re brave as devils.”
Meanwhile, the overburdened Cuca carried plates back and forth to the officers who, having washed up and combed their hair, calmly ate dinner. Their conversation had turned sober, with the most knowledgeable taking the lead while the rest listened in.
There were occasional moments of pained silence. Dark thoughts passed over the faces of the young men, who had no real grasp of the dubious drama fate had assigned them. Fate and the iron hand of General Díaz, sure and swift to act, merciless in meting out punishment.
The mere mention of the name Porfirio Díaz, who conveyed his thoughts and power from his headquarters in Mexico City, kept the unruly in check; he was quick to extinguish any errant spark, smother the faintest crackle, catch any drop outside the channel he had designated for the revolutionary torrent. The invocation of his name was enough to subdue the men’s spirit, and they resigned themselves as victims of Duty.
The men understood vaguely that this was necessary, decreed by fate. They would go wherever they were sent, go and die, so that throughout the great Mexican nation others could flourish. To sacrifice oneself without protest, without uttering an angry word. One had to be prepared to render up body and soul, and the bodies and souls of loved ones as well, in their faraway homes. Sad, ingenuous, mute, the anonymous victims of Duty. While Mercado pondered these bitter, melancholy truths, his eyes clouded with defiant tears that evaporated silently, searing eyes and soul alike.
In contrast, Castorena, the short, husky officer with the tawny face and hair, turned everything into a joke. He drank tequila with the same verve that he improvised bad quatrains. He earned hearty applause as he proffered drinks, managing to kindle a senseless glee in the company.
He was a madcap boy of twenty, with a happy vitality that was undaunted by official reprimands, fatigue, or hunger. Playing the mordant buffoon in the officers’ festivities, he made himself indispensable to gatherings and parties.
Though he was always drinking, he was rarely drunk, claiming to be gifted with “brains of bronze.” He was wry, unruly, mocking, and querulous, and he had an inexhaustible eye for the ladies. He was also a late-night partier famous for his guitar playing, plus an atrocious singer and worse poet. He might have made an excellent officer, except that he was always decked out in full-dress uniform, complete with sword and pistol.
Like the jester who arrives on the scene just as catastrophe is imminent, Castorena blurted out fantastically, “They can drop dead with their jolas.2 We’ll show them how to have a good time. How much can you kick in, lieutenant? Grand! And what about you, Mercado? Hey, Cuquita, how much to rent your guitar?”
Good sirs, we’re more chilly by far
And our woes and our worries are realer
Than when we strike up the guitar
And have us a round of tequila.
Basking in the admiration and high spirits of his comrades, Castorena, the official clown, the fool, the “brains of bronze,” rose to his feet and took Cucas’s guitar down from the wall.
The commanding officers had already left, and only the younger men remained. In a haze of cigarette smoke, they uncorked a bottle of tequila, clinked glasses, and took turns toasting, while the melancholy strains of the guitar told of distant sweethearts and love gone wrong. Castorena’s voice sang out desperately, “Do you remember, my lovely, a certain afternoon …”
Meanwhile, outside, cold winds from the Sierras buffeted the desolate little plaza, bringing the rumblings of far-off storms from the high woods, portents of coming disaster.
CHAPTER 6
Ready to Kill or Be Killed
Reveille sounded in the silence of the predawn hours of October 16, waking the camp along the Alameda in Guerrero. Drums didn’t roll. Only the bugles of the 9th Battalion’s two companies blasted their victorious sounds: rapid, nimble, bursting with joy and warlike bravura.
As soon as the first note sounded, sudden and unexpected as a stab wound, a bustle of grumbling, throat clearing, and laughter could be heard. Tin canteens clanged against steel rifles, and the sergeants on rounds yelled out, “Up! Up! Onward and upward!”
The soldaderas snuggled cozily with their comrades under their serapes, lost in the voluptuous consolation of their fate. Indolently, they stretched while their soldiers leaped up in one bound to carry out orders.
The officers, having slept in their uniforms beneath rough red blankets in the spaces between the rows of stacked weapons, started awake, momentarily flustered. On hearing the first notes of the reveille, they shook off the stupor of sleep, invigorated to their very marrow. They rose ready to command or be commanded.
Imperious voices and full-throated cries crisscrossed in the shadows above the metallic scraping of sheathed sabers. “In formation, corporals!”
“Out of the way, wenches!”
“With your permission, lieutenant, sir.”
“Listen, comrade.”
“To the right. In line!”
Miguel stood in front with the 4th Company, next to the first sergeant who rapidly shouted roll call. Completely enveloped in his cape, his hands gloved, the scarf under his hood wrapped up to his nose to protect him from the freezing night air, Miguel felt like he was on his last legs. Above him, the stars glittered through the naked branches of the trees.
He had gotten drunk the night before and—as he usually did when not on duty—and on waking from his dark binge, he felt diminished, apprehensive, ashamed, and infinitely sad. But the spirit of military discipline quelled all resistance, all rebelliousness, as it did in the others. He shook his aching head, burning from the previous night’s tequila, and soon arrived at the command site, his saber at his side, steadfast and willing, like his comrades, to command and obey. Ready to kill. Ready to die.
To die! Despite the oppressive feeling in his soul on that dark, icy dawn, he knew that deep within there was, and would always be, an uncanny fearlessness. It was a dangerous dagger lying inert in its sheath; at the right moment it would be willing and able to do anything, even to kill!
When roll call was over, he rushed to report to the company captain, Stanislav Tagle. When he returned and marched past the town’s steaming cauldrons, a pale dawn was already soaking up the stars.
It was frightfully cold. Miguel watched the soldiers gratefully receive the hot, sweetened mud they called coffee, the meager compensation that was distributed to the miserable flock in the dull half light of dawn.
Th
e troops were then ordered to wash their clothes in the river. Each man received a bar of soap, and they marched along in the morning haze, turning toward the right, chattering, singing, yelling out orders to their women. The officers kept the march in line as they walked alongside the column, chatting and joking, bundled in their capes, their hoods pulled up and their necks wrapped in the scarves they had bought in Chihuahua.
When they reached the narrow, shallow river that passed west of the town, the soldiers were permitted to break ranks, and each went off to find a stone that would serve for washing clothes.
The intense cold did not let up, and Miguel craved something that would warm his empty stomach, still queasy from the alcohol. He stared weakly at the soapy swirls in the river current and felt faint.
The half-dressed soldiers, their sunburned flesh bared to the cold Sierra winds, sang as they washed their grimy uniforms and shirts. Mingling with the men, the women helped them wring out their tattered garments or washed their own skirts.
Good-natured shouting, bursts of laughter, singing, and whistling traveled back and forth among the launderers. The riverbank, sere and rocky with nothing but a few scrawny bushes, seemed like an impoverished Bajío hamlet, nestled in the rural area around Jalisco, amid the hubbub of a fair.
Unaffected by the glacial waters, a naked Castorena, his golden hairs standing up on his squat body, was more clownish than ever. He looked for all the world like a plump blond monkey and sang as though still drunk from the night before: “Do you remember, my lovely, a certain afternoon …”
Seeing the regiment clown goofing off on the eve of a merciless battle with the wildcats of the mountains, Miguel felt his hatred evaporate. “He’s just like me, like all of us, poor fools; naked, freezing, defenseless, absurd. He is ready … to die.”
CHAPTER 7
The Battle of Tomochic_The Battle of Tomochic Memoirs of a Second Lieutenant Page 7