Higher ranking state officials and other VIPs were seated in the center directly behind the podium. The Jefe from the roadblock attack on the van came up on the stage with the other leaders, but sat on the far side of the stage, away from Ramos. Ranya also recognized the stern-faced female comrade from the drumhead tribunal at the mini-storage detention facility, the one who had taken her Glock pistol. The governor and the other leaders lined up across the stage, their hands raised high, basking in the crowd’s adulation.
***
Alex Garabanda adjusted his video camera on its tripod, bracketing the center of the stage area around the podium. Once the state leaders had settled into their seats, an Albuquerque Spanish-language TV news anchor served as Master of Ceremonies. Taking his cue from the state political leaders, who were all wearing Latin-style guayabera shirts, Francisco Chavero had taken off his jacket and tie and left them on the back of his chair. He had his own portable microphone, and moved around the stage like the professional he was. “¡Bienvenidos! Welcome, people of Nuevo Mexico, to our Rally for Social Justice! Can you believe it? Just look at us today! ¡Sí se puede, Albuquerque!” This “impartial newsman” gushed on in typical crowd-pumping emcee fashion for a minute before finally introducing the first speaker. His muffled voice was understandable through the tinted double-pane window, even with the inevitable echoes bouncing off the buildings surrounding the Civic Plaza.
“Now, let’s begin the Rally with a special benediction by Albuquerque’s own ‘first padre,’ Father… Antonio… José… Mar—tínez!”
A plump middle-aged man with slicked-back hair bounded up from a front row chair and strode to the podium. The only hints that this obviously well fed man was (or had ever been) a priest were his black short-sleeve button-down shirt and matching black slacks. There was no Roman collar under the shirt, which was open at the neck. The TV emcee Francisco Chavero stepped back and took his seat, when Martínez approached the array of microphones atop the podium.
“Thank you Francisco, thank you esteemed guests, thank you people of Nuevo Mexico, and especially, thank you Gobernador Deleon.” Martínez paused, while the crowd erupted again. After a minute of basking in the reflected adoration, he used his hands to settle the spectators down, so that his amplified voice could again be heard.
“It’s hard to believe that it was thirty years ago, that I was attending the trial of a so-called ‘Chicano radical’ named Agustín Deleon in that courthouse, right over there.” Martínez pointed to the Bernalillo County Courthouse to his right front, and the crowd roared. “And wasn’t he a prisoner in the jail a few blocks behind us for a time as well?” Martínez quipped, “In fact, was there a prison in Nuevo Mexico that did not count Agustín Deleon among its guests, at one time or another?” and the crowd roared again.
“But seriously, like Jesus and the apostles, Agustín Deleon has spent his entire life struggling to reclaim the lost dignity and the stolen rights of the poor and oppressed of our state. All his life, the governor has fought to bring dignity and honor to all of God’s children in Nuevo Mexico, by fighting the rapacious forces of Yanqui imperialism and neo-colonial exploitation, which have been imposed from outside upon our native peoples for over a century and a half.
“But instead of simply mouthing worn-out platitudes, Agustín Deleon has spent his entire life actually living the gospels, in a way few humans ever find the courage to do. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus warned that eternal condemnation awaits those who do not feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoners. Well, who can deny that Agustín Deleon has lived according to these commands of Jesus himself?”
“Father Tony” went on for several more minutes, but Alex Garabanda tuned him out. He had no time for the defrocked ex-priest’s liberation theology, which wrapped the traditional terminology of Christianity around Marxist dogma, in order to resell it to a gullible population long steeped in Catholicism.
***
Luis Carvahal endured the convoluted preaching of the excommunicated priest, Tony Martinez. He smelled the same old socialist snake oil, and he wondered how many in the audience would buy it with the new Jesus Christ label slapped on the bottle. Martinez had been officially defrocked years before, but this had not stopped him from serving as the new state government’s semi-official “chaplain.” His off-brand of “base community” Catholicism might not have been popular with the Pope in Rome, but he seemed to retain currency with New Mexican leftists who fancied themselves as religious—when it suited them.
Carvahal, bored by the stale liberation theology rhetoric, looked around him. He knew many of the others now filling all of the rows of folding metal chairs on the stage behind the podium. He saw Basilio Ramos, the smooth-shaven Hollywood version of Che Guevara, looking quite dashing with his brown beret sporting a silver falcon. Ramos, sitting in the first row and several chairs to Carvahal’s left, was accompanied by an attractive young woman who was wearing a brown beret, but not a Milicia t-shirt. Ramos, perhaps feeling Carvahal’s gaze upon him, turned and held direct eye contact with him, causing a shudder to pass through the old reporter. Carvahal didn’t notice the end of the benediction, or when Father Tony took his seat.
***
Ranya half-listened while the priest without a collar gave a brief sermon: it was Karl Marx, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. When the so-called priest finished, he introduced Vicegobernador Félix Magón, who stood and walked briskly to the podium. His black pompadour was combed back; he was wearing black pants and a white guayabera. She was close enough to see his acne–pitted face in fetid detail. Ranya noticed from her position behind him that Magón was standing on a small wooden crate for a step. This step was hidden from the crowd’s view behind the podium. Magón launched into a fiery speech, full of rage and invective against Yanqui imperialist domination, neo-colonial exploitation, wars of genocide and oppression, and numerous other Anglo-Zionist sins.
Magón whipped the crowd into a frenzy, and at the crescendo of his oratory, he pulled out what amounted to a theatrical prop from within the open-backed podium: a machete which had been chromed to a brilliant silver. He waved it around above his head like a pirate’s cutlass, declaring that the era of the Yanqui oppressor was over at last! Today the Anglo exploiters had been given their first “Spanish lesson,” and more hard lessons were coming! The workers and peasants of Nuevo Mexico were going to cut the chains of domination, which unjustly bound them to Washington! The Vicegobernador didn’t come out explicitly for formal secession; he left just enough room not to force the federal government’s hand. Even so, his intentions were clear to the massed crowd in front of and around the stage, and they went wild with excitement as his amplified voice boomed and echoed off the surrounding buildings, and his machete flashed in the sun.
After several more violent machete thrusts at the sky, Magón replaced the blade in the open back of the podium. He calmed himself with visible effort while holding both sides of the podium, and in a reverential tone he introduced the next speaker, the old Mountain Lion himself, the founding father of the new state of Nuevo Mexico, his most excellent and esteemed Gobernador…Agustín Deleon!
The governor rose from his chair to thunderous applause, and was greeted by his vice governor at the podium with a hearty and prolonged abrazo or embrace, complete with mutual back thumping. The assembled thousands again thundered out their approval, as a sea of flags and banners waved with renewed fury. Félix Magón then returned to his front row seat, several yards to the left of the speaker’s platform.
***
Gobernador Deleon held onto the sides of the podium, and launched into his speech. It seemed as if El Gobernador was beginning by reading a slightly revised version of El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan, the credo of the radical reconquista crowd. Well, thought Alex Garabanda, why not? El Plan de Aztlan had been written in 1969 during Deleon’s heyday as a Chicano leader. If he was not the actual father of El Plan, he had been there when it had been born.
<
br /> Like Hitler’s Mein Kampf, “El Plan” was quite explicit in its goals. Like Mein Kampf, the plan was ridiculed as a bad joke for years. Also like Mein Kampf, it had been brutally honest in its aims, and most importantly, it had never been forgotten, renounced or abandoned by the true believers.
Every year, another generation of Hispanic university students, members of FEChA, Nuestra Raza and the Nation of Aztlan, rededicated themselves to putting El Plan into action. By the turn of the century, scores of these former student radicals had become judges, mayors, governors and congressmen. Today, El Plan de Aztlan suddenly seemed to be within the reach of reality, and it was a natural point of connection between Deleon and the younger people, mostly students, in the crowds. It occurred to Alex Garabanda that the reading of El Plan at the rally today sounded almost like the recitation of the Apostles’ Creed in a Catholic Mass.
“In the spirit of the new people, that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage, but also of the brutal gringo invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlan from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call for our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.
“We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for us by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlan belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent!
“Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggle against the foreigner gabachos who exploit our riches and destroy our culture. With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our Mestizo nation! We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of Nuevo Mexico, before all of our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos; we are Aztlan!
¡Por La Raza, Todo! ¡Fuera de La Raza, Nada!
For The Race, Everything! Outside of the Race, Nothing!
***
Deleon began his speech by reading, word for word, the prelude to the Plan de Aztlan. Louis Carvahal had not been invited to help him to write it, Deleon had prepared it on his own, as he had written all of his own speeches over the last three decades. Still, it surprised him to hear Deleon begin by reading El Plan. Many of the people in the crowd were obviously familiar with the words, and a hush fell over the Civic Plaza, broken only by the amplified voice of the governor, echoing off the walls of the buildings surrounding the plaza. When he arrived at the concluding phrases, the crowd erupted in cheers, and recited along with him:
¡Por La Raza, Todo!
¡Por La Raza, Todo!
¡Por La Raza, Todo!
They picked up the chant and made it their own, repeating it over and over until their thousands of voices joined, swelled, and reverberated around the plaza. Finally, Gobernador Deleon was forced to put up his hands and implore them to quiet down, so that he could continue, now with his own words.
“When the Anglos came to Nuevo Mexico, they found a new culture already in place, a culture born of a new race created in the land of the sun, the Mestizo race, the bronze race of the Indohispano people. Neither European nor exclusively Indian, this new race, was born of the soil more than three hundred years before the Yanqui robbers and thieves invaded our homeland!
***
Carvahal considered Deleon’s peddling of the Indo-Hispano fairytale to be almost comedic—the delusional pretense that the Native Americans had greeted the Spanish conquistadors as some kind of long-lost soul brothers. In fact, the first time the Spanish met the Indians living in what was to become New Mexico had been during Coronado’s gold-seeking expedition in 1540. Some horses were stolen, perhaps the first horses ever introduced to the American west. In retaliation, Coronado ordered over 200 of the closest Indians his soldiers could find to be burned alive in their dwellings. That was the bitter reality of the brutal Spanish conquest of New Mexico, not Deleon’s “Indo-Hispano bronze race” fable.
“Since 1948, the Yanqui imperialists have championed the cause of the Jews to illegally occupy what they call their land, 2,000 years after they abandoned it. Yet the same Yanquis have been deaf to the cries of the Indohispano peoples, to reclaim their rightful lands only a century after it was stolen from them! Only the long-suffering Indohispano peoples, who have never left their land, who have never renounced their legitimate claims to their land, only they are ignored! Why do the Yanqui bosses in Washington and New York always hear the cries of the Jews in far off Palestine, but they never hear the cries of the Indohispano people of Nuevo Mexico?
“Why? Because for hundreds of years, the Anglos have always been thieves and pirates and despoilers, ever since the first Pilgrims stole the land from the native peoples of so-called New England. Even at America’s birth, God Almighty Himself put the mark on that wicked country, by cracking its so-called Liberty Bell the first time it was rung. Yes, the broken liberty bell, which rang for African slavery, and the genocide of the Indians, and the theft of Aztlan from the Indohispano people! What other nation goes to war just for corporate profit? What other nation has dropped atomic bombs on defenseless civilian cities? Only America, the wicked, America, the destroyer, America, the Satan of the world!”
***
Comandante Ramos was seated in the first row of folding chairs, but well to the side of the podium, with Ranya seated next to him in turn. Deleon had been speaking for approximately five minutes. What was taking Genizaro so long? Genizaro had been briefed to execute his mission soon after Deleon began, just in case the governor might give an uncharacteristically short speech and leave. His speech was another collection of clichés and half-truths about Aztlan, but it seemed to work on the crowd, silencing them. Even many of the flags and banner were still, just rolling softly in the breeze.
What was Genizaro waiting for? Had he gotten cold feet? Had he been compromised and deserted his mission, or possibly even been detained or arrested, somehow? Ramos checked his watch again, and then searched the Regent Hotel with his eyes, looking across the Civic Plaza for any sign that Genizaro’s seventh floor location had been discovered. Deleon droned on—at least he showed no sign of quitting any time soon.
“But now, our long period of humiliation has ended! Finally, the Treaty of Shame, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which was broken by the Anglos from the very first days, will at last be thrown into the trash heap of history where it had always belonged! The Anglos have never honored their part of the treaty, and now it is only justice that we, the rightful inhabitants of Aztlan, will put it aside. As promised in the Treaty of Shame, the Spanish Land Grant territories will be returned to the rightful communal ownership of the entire people of Nuevo Mexico. This time, our sacred land will not be carved up as so-called private property, to be raped and plundered for corporate profit. This time, the land will be held communally, for all the legitimate, rightful members of La Raza, the new bronze race, the Indohispano peoples born of…”
***
Ranya, Basilio Ramos, Luis Carvahal, Vicegobernador Magón, Alex Garabanda and every other person on the stage was watching Deleon when, without the slightest hint or warning, a red fountain sprayed out of the back of his yellow guayabera shirt. He immediately crumpled and fell backward, his heart turned to pulp and his spinal column severed. The muzzle blast of the assassin’s rifle, muffled inside of the sniper’s lair two hundred yards away, was no louder than a truck’s backfire. The sonic crack of the single bullet passed unnoticed, lost among the echoes of the governor’s last amplified words.
After a few seconds for the reality of what they had just witnessed to be absorbed, most of the people on the stage sought cover from any following shots by simultaneously attempting to duck behind one another. Under most
conditions, this hopeless exercise would have been comical, but there was nothing funny about their visceral fear during those first moments after the shooting.
Vicegobernador Magón, unlike the others who were cowering in huddles and fleeing off the stage, rose from his seat and advanced directly to the side of his fallen superior. He sat on the stage by Deleon’s body and cradled his lifeless head and chest against himself. After a quick check to determine the governor’s absolute, unambiguous, and irrevocable state of death, Vicegobernador Magón bravely stood in the open, with Deleon’s blood visibly staining his own white guayabera with dark red splotches.
In complete disregard for the hidden assassin’s possible next shots, Magón once again took to the podium to calm the crowd. This time, he forsook his usual overheated rhetoric, and his trademark theatrics with the silver machete. With his voice low and solemn, he informed the assembled masses that the governor, their hero, had been shot and tragically, it appeared that he had been killed. The thousands of clamoring protestors let out a collective gasp and wail of No-o-o! Magón let them moan for a little while, and then he used the microphone to address the people, urging them to disperse peacefully, in memory of the late Gobernador Deleon. They should go home, and await further events…
Basilio Ramos, the Comandante of the elite Falcon Battalion, also bravely stood beside Magón with his pistol drawn, as if to personally defend him from the unseen assassin. After a few moments, a squad of Milicianos armed with M-16s surrounded the vice-governor, pulled him off the stage and led him away to safety. Later, observers would remark on Magón’s incredible composure and state of calm in the seconds and minutes after the assassination. It was almost as if he sensed, somehow, that no second bullet would touch him on that fateful day.
Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista Page 32