Tacho had been chosen by the macaws’ and the opal’s spirits; for better or for worse, he had to take the spirits with him, like wives. Tacho had soaked up some of the blood with a handkerchief to show his brother. In the mountains, El Feo or some of the others initiated by the old priests might know more about a bundle such as this. All the spirits ate blood that was offered to them. But where had the blood that leaked from the bundle come from?
The unborn baby drank the mother’s blood; unborn chicks grew from delicate halos of blood inside the egg. The spirits of the mountains had to have their share; if people did not sacrifice to the mountains willingly, then the mountains trembled and shook with hurt and anger. The dead bodies strewn across winding mountain roads after head-on collisions provided blood to calm angry mountain spirits. Particular curves on the mountain roads not only had shrines and altars, but special feast days to pacify the spirits who inhabited the curves or crossroads.
Blood: even the bulletproof vest wanted a little blood. Knives, guns, even automobiles, possessed “energies” that craved blood from time to time. Tacho had heard dozens of stories that good Christians were not supposed to believe. Stories about people beaten, sometimes even killed, by their own brooms or pots and pans. Wise homemakers “fed” goat or pig blood to knives, scissors, and other sharp or dangerous household objects. Even fire had to be fed the first bit of dough or fat; otherwise, sooner or later, the fire would burn the cook or flare up and catch the kitchen on fire. Airplanes, jets, and rockets were already malfunctioning, crashing and exploding. Electricity no longer obeyed the white man. The macaw spirits said the great serpent was in charge of electricity. The macaws were in charge of fire.
THIS CUBAN SHOULD RETURN TO CUBA
EL FEO AND ANGELITA had moved permanently from the village to El Feo’s camp high in the mountains, out of the reach of federal police and army patrols for illegal refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala and points south. The Mexican president had declared a state of emergency as thousands and thousands of war refugees from the South were spilling over Mexico’s southern boundaries. The United States demanded that Mexico stop the refugees. Rumors circulated about desert-camouflaged U.S. tanks deployed along the entire U.S. border; other rumors accused the Mexican president and his cabinet of being U.S. CIA agents since kindergarten. The fair-haired sons of Mexico’s elite had been given Ivy League educations in the U.S. to prepare the puppets for their jobs. The rumors spread unrest like wind spread wildfire. The U.S. president would offer the Mexican president military aid when rioters shot police protecting U.S.-owned factories in Juárez and Tijuana. The Mexican president would not accept U.S. military aid until the rebels had dynamited high-voltage lines, blacking out all of Guadalajara, and much of the Federal District.
El Feo laughed whenever he saw newspapers or satellite television because the government thought the saboteurs, rioters, and looters were part of a single group or organization. The government wanted groups because they hoped for leaders to crush or to buy off. But this time the story was going to be different because the people no longer believed in leaders. People had begun to gather spontaneously and moved as a mob or swarm follows instinct, then suddenly disperses. The masses of people in Asia and in Africa, and the Americas too, no longer believed in so-called “elected” leaders; they were listening to strange voices inside themselves. Although few would admit this, the voices they heard were voices out of the past, voices of their earliest memories, voices of nightmares and voices of sweet dreams, voices of the ancestors.
All across earth there were those listening and waiting, isolated and lonely, despised outcasts of the earth. First the lights would go out—dynamite or earthquake, it did not matter. All sources of electrical power generation would be destroyed. Darkness was the ally of the poor. One uprising would spark another and another. El Feo did not believe in political parties, ideology, or rules. El Feo believed in the land. With the return of Indian land would come the return of justice, followed by peace. El Feo left the politics to Angelita, who enjoyed the intrigues and rivalries between their so-called friends. All that mattered was obtaining the weapons and supplies the people needed to retake the land; so Angelita had lied to all of them—the U.S., Cuba, Germany, and Japan. But to their African friends they were truthful. They didn’t lie because Africans were tribal people who had taken back a continent from the Europeans. Always they were poor, struggling Indians fighting for their way of life. If Angelita was talking to the Germans or Hollywood activists, she said the Indians were fighting multinational corporations who killed rain forests; if she was talking to the Japanese or U.S. military, then the Indians were fighting communism. Whatever their “friends” needed to hear, that was their motto. The Indians’ worst enemies were missionaries, who sent Bibles instead of guns and who preached blessed are the meek. Missionaries were stooges and spies for the government. Missionaries warned the village people against the evils of revolution and communism. They warned the people not to talk or to listen to spirit beings.
Bartolomeo had complained about the absence of study groups and evening classes for adult instruction. Bartolomeo had a number of complaints that he termed “serious.” Beside their failure to organize Marxist instruction and study sessions, there were more disturbing issues. Bartolomeo had been doing his own investigating throughout the entire region. He had talked to some good Indians for a change, not to treacherous tribalists. Angelita pretended not to notice his choice of words. Bartolomeo had been snooping through their files and logbooks since his arrival earlier in the week. He had insisted on following El Feo on his rounds in the remote villages. When Bartolomeo and El Feo had returned from the trips, Angelita sensed trouble from El Feo’s stiff posture. El Feo refused even to look at Bartolomeo. El Feo was furious. Whatever had happened, Bartolomeo was involved.
Bartolomeo considered himself a policy expert now. One more big ideological victory here, and Bartolomeo was certain the central committee in Havana would reward him with promotions and a post in Mexico City. Bartolomeo was tired of the remote Indian camps; he was even more sick of bourgeois Tuxtla, of the phony rich bitches who sat on their bony butts—such as Alegría, that great whore! Bartolomeo knew he was destined for higher positions; Bartolomeo was nearly ready for his triumphant return to the capital.
Bartolomeo bossed everyone who came within range of his loud, Cuban mouth. Orders! Orders! But these village people had gathered because they were finished with big bosses and orders. Bartolomeo had never understood Indians. A squad of village women had told Commander Bartolomeo to shove his orders up his ass. Bartolomeo had then called in the disciplinary committee to punish the offenders.
Punish these warrior women? Angelita laughed. This Cuban should return to Cuba; from there, Europeans should return to the lands of their ancestors.
“This army belongs to the people, remember?” she said to Bartolomeo; she enjoyed watching Bartolomeo’s temper heat up. Bartolomeo motioned for her and El Feo to follow him inside the tent that served as their office. Inside, El Feo handed Angelita a pink handbill he had pulled from inside his T-shirt.
“These were scattered all over Tuxtla last night.” The handbill was a dark, smeared copy of the newspaper photograph of Menardo’s corpse.
“You know what this does to Tacho,” Angelita said in a low, angry whisper.
Bartolomeo waved his hand as if to brush aside her words. They had already ruled Menardo’s death accidental. “Tacho needed to get out anyway. He was about to lose his cover.”
“How do you know? Who told you?” El Feo was furious. Bartolomeo did not bother to look up; he had been leafing through a stack of blank squad reports that squad leaders El Feo and Angelita had refused to complete.
Bartolomeo droned on and on. The committee in Mexico City had sent warnings before. Blah, blah, blah! Unless Angelita and El Feo and the others completed reports on their activities, Bartolomeo would have no choice but to report them again. Other tribes obeyed committee directives
concerning reports. Another negative report would cause an automatic cutoff of valuable Cuban aid; worse yet, the word would get around to all the other “friends of Indians” and they’d halt support. “I have suspected something all along,” Bartolomeo continued. Angelita thought to herself, “This is it. Adiós, Bartolomeo, you are one dead Cuban,” and while he blabbered on, Angelita made plans. Bartolomeo would be tried before a people’s assembly for crimes against the revolution, specifically for crimes against Native American history; the crimes were the denial and attempted annihilation of tribal histories. Bartolomeo continued with his recitation of suspicions and accusations. The Cubans had received unconfirmed reports that these mountain villages were hotbeds of tribalism and native religion. Marxism did not tolerate these primitive bugaboos!
“Us? Not us! Their spies are liars! We are internationalists! We are not just tribal!” Angelita argued vehemently. She was thinking about all the “friends of the Indians” who had sent them aid from all over the world. Millions had come from a crackpot German industrialist who wanted to see the tribal people of the Americas retake their land. Millions came each year from Japanese businessmen who wanted to avenge Hiroshima and Nagasaki any way possible. They were internationalists all right! Tribal internationalists! They wanted to keep the Cubans in the dark about their true objectives for as long as possible. They wanted to keep aid flowing to the people’s army. “Arrest this man!” Angelita had called out in tribal dialect so Bartolomeo would not try to escape. He had still been frowning over the stack of uncompleted forms and reports when the warriors seized him by both arms.
Representatives and people from the mountain villages had been invited for Chinese orange soda and parched corn compliments of the People’s Revolution in Cuba. Meetings of the villages had traditionally cleared the air during local disputes and prevented bloody feuds. The meeting had been called to update the people on the most recent developments. Luckily some days would pass before police authorities would react to the pink handbills and reopen investigations into Menardo’s accident.
Bartolomeo begged for his life; the handbills were trivial, he said, the handbills claimed no responsibility for Menardo’s death, which authorities had ruled accidental. Bartolomeo denied he was a double agent. Bartolomeo denied he was CIA. The handbills could not be traced to the villages. The handbills had merely been part of the people’s “reeducation.” El Feo shook his head and left the tent to call the meeting to order. “There is a more serious charge,” Angelita said. “You are guilty of crimes against history, specifically, crimes against certain tribal histories.”
“You can’t do this! You’re crazy! The committee—!”
“The committee? Why do you think they sent you here?” Angelita smiled. The charges against Bartolomeo made her feel nostalgic. She remembered the first time she had seen Bartolomeo, so handsome with his brown eyes and light brown hair; in the bedroom his body had looked just as good. What a pity! Comrade Bartolomeo had outlived his usefulness. There wouldn’t be any more free Chinese soda pop or Russian anti-tank missiles from Cuba; but foreign aid from the Marxists had been drying up anyway. Angelita looked out at the people who had come to the meeting for free popcorn and soda pop; what would they think? Most of the village meetings had included discussions about obtaining more “gifts” from “friends of the Indians.” El Feo and the others were still plugging the speakers into truck batteries, while latecomers got in line for soda or wandered through the market where business was brisk.
ANGELITA LA ESCAPÍA EXPLAINS ENGELS AND MARX
COMRADE ANGELITA stepped up to the microphone and announced she was not afraid to talk about anything the people wanted to know. She had no secrets and nothing to hide, so there was nothing to be nervous about; there was nothing they couldn’t talk about. Was Comrade Angelita trying to get the villages to join up with the Cubans? How much were the Cubans paying her? Had they promised her Japanese motorcycles? What about chain saws? Wasn’t communism godless? Then how could history, so alive with spirits, exist without gods? What about her and that white man, Bartolomeo? To questions about her private life Angelita was quick to snap back, “What about it?” with her jaw set so hard, the questioner was afraid to open his or her mouth again. Comrade Bartolomeo, she explained, was under arrest, about to be court-martialed for betraying the revolution with capital crimes against history.
“More about the traitor Bartolomeo afterwards, but first . . .” Angelita launched into a lecture.
“Questions have been asked about who this Marx is. Questions have been asked about the meaning of words like communism and history. Today I am going to tell you what use this white man Marx is to us here in our mountain villages!”
But right from the beginning, Angelita explained, she wanted no misunderstanding; nothing mattered but taking back tribal land. Angelita paused to sip orange soda and scanned the crowd for her “elder sisters.” The “elder sisters” had complained that Angelita was hardly different from a missionary herself, always talking on and on about white man’s political mumbo jumbo but never bothering to explain.
“Are we supposed to take what you say on faith?” the elder sisters had teased Angelita.
“Is this Marx another Jesus?” Jokes had circulated about Angelita’s love affair—not with Bartolomeo or El Feo but with Marx, a billy-goat-bearded, old white man. The elder sisters laughed; here was the danger of staring at a photograph. A glint of the man’s soul had been captured there, in the eyes of Marx’s image on the page. The elder sisters said Angelita should have been more careful. Everyone had heard stories about victims bewitched by photographs of strangers long dead, long gone from the world except for a trace of the spirit’s light that remained in the photograph.
It was time to clear the air, especially now that Bartolomeo was about to be court-martialed by the people. Angelita set down the empty soda bottle near her feet and pulled the microphone stand closer. She glanced at the elder sisters standing at the back of the crowd; they nodded at her, and Angelita took a deep breath and began:
“I know there is gossip, talking and speculation about me. I have nothing to say except every breath, my every heartbeat, is for the return of the land.” The teenage troops yell and whistle, girls and boys alike; the dogs bark and the crowd applauds.
If they could agree on nothing else, they could all agree the land was theirs. Tribal rivalries and even intervillage boundary disputes often focused on land lost to the European invaders. When they had taken back all the lands of the indigenous people of the Americas, there would be plenty of space, plenty of pasture and farmland and water for everyone who promised to respect all beings and do no harm. “We are the army to retake tribal land. Our army is only one of many all over the earth quietly preparing. The ancestors’ spirits speak in dreams. We wait. We simply wait for the earth’s natural forces already set loose, the exploding, fierce energy of all the dead slaves and dead ancestors haunting the Americas. We prepare, and we wait for the tidal wave of history to sweep us along. People have been asking questions about ideology. Are we this or are we that? Do we follow Marx? The answer is no! No white man politics! No white man Marx! No white man religion, no nothing until we retake this land! We must protect Mother Earth from destruction.” The teenage army cheered and even the older people had been clapping their hands.
“Now I want to tell you something about myself because so many rumors are circulating. Rumors about myself and Marxism. Rumors about myself and the ghost of Karl Marx!” There had been laughter and applause, but Angelita did not pause. “I will tell you what I know about Marx. His followers and all the rest I don’t know about. This is personal, but people want to know what I think; they want to know if I’m Marxist.” Angelita shook her head.
“Marxists don’t want to give Indian land back. We say to hell with all Marxists who oppose the return of tribal land!” Market transactions had slowed as Angelita warmed up; and the people listened more attentively. Angelita could see El Feo and the other
s working their way through the crowd, recruiting people’s volunteers to feed or hide their people’s army regulars. “To hell with the Marxists! To hell with the capitalists! To hell with the white man! We want our mother the land!”
Cursing the white man along with free soda pop put the people in a festive mood; they were accustomed to listening to village political discussions that continued for days on end. “Marxism is one thing! Marx the man is another,” Angelita had said as she began her defense of Marx. So-called disciples of Marx had often disgraced his name, the way Jesus was disgraced by crimes of his alleged “followers,” the popes of the Catholic Church.
Angelita announced she would begin with her early years at the mission school on the coast where she had first heard the name. The old Castilian nuns at the mission school had called Marx the Devil. The nuns had trotted out the bogeyman Marx to scare the students if the older students refused after-school work assignments, free labor for the Catholic Church. Avowed enemy of the priests and nuns, of the Baptists and Latter-day Saints—enemy of all missionaries, this Marx had to be Angelita’s ally! She had understood instinctively, the way she knew the old nuns had got the story of benevolent, gentle Quetzalcoatl all wrong too. The nuns had taught the children that the Morning Star, Quetzalcoatl, was really Lucifer, the Devil God had thrown out of heaven. The nuns had terrified the children with the story of the snake in the Garden of Eden to end devotion to Quetzalcoatl.
Angelita paused to scan the crowd for reactions. Spies for the federal police or the army would use up the batteries of their little hidden voice recorders before she was finished. The people’s army units could have vacated the village within a few minutes anyway. Screw the Christians! Screw the police and army! Angelita didn’t care. They would not take her alive. Before she died, she must explain to the village people about Marx, who was unlike any white man since Jesus. For now—screw Cuban Marxists and their European totalitarianism!
The Almanac of the Dead Page 61