Tío Damián was Father’s favorite brother, as well as his protégé. He was short and had a frail constitution. When he was born the doctors diagnosed a delicate heart—it didn’t pump blood as effectively as it should. Asthma attacks worsened his condition, because every time he had to inhale cortisone, his heart felt the blow.
He had thinning blond hair and blue eyes like Tía Celia, and his skin was very white. He had a delicate beauty, and when he was a child, Ulises, Celia, and Adela affectionately called him White Jasmine. But Amparo and Roque liked to tease him and dubbed him the White Mouse. He always wanted to be good, and when he went to confession on Saturdays and the priest asked him if he had misbehaved that week, he’d whisper guiltily that Ulises had slapped him, Amparo had tripped him, and Roque had yanked his hair.
When Damián arrived in Boston to study at Northeastern, Aurelio helped him with everything. He steered him through registration and showed him how to pick out his courses, settled him in his dorm, and gave him half his sweaters and woolen socks because he was terrified Damián might die of pneumonia. But what really saved Tío Damián from perishing in the merciless Boston winters was the yellowish-brown muskrat coat Aurelio bought him. Father had only one overcoat: an ugly green army greatcoat he stuffed with newspapers every time he had to cross the bridge over the Charles River by foot because he couldn’t spare the ten cents for the trolley. So he walked over to the Salvation Army on Commonwealth Avenue and asked if anyone had donated any fur coats recently. He was told that the one person who had had been shot twice in a barroom brawl; the coat might bring bad luck. Since Tío Damián didn’t drink, Aurelio purchased the coat for a dollar and took it to his brother. When Damián put it on, it fell to his heels, and with his balding pate and long nose it made him look like a ferret. “No one will say you look like a white mouse anymore!” Aurelio told him.
Tío Damián had long, slender fingers and what he liked to do most in the world was play the violin. When he was a boy, he sometimes played while Aurelio accompanied him on the piano, but Aurelio always drowned him out. Damián’s violin notes were blown away like gossamer threads in the hurricane of Father’s music.
As grown men, Aurelio lived for politics and statehood, Ulises to make money and conquer women, and Roque to sniff out the trail of the Taínos. But Tío Damián lived for beauty. A poem, a sonata, or a sculpture was good only if it was beautiful, but evil if it was ugly. And the same was true of people. There were those who were able to feel beauty and those who couldn’t—the hardened, the indifferent, and the selfish.
When Tío Damián went to Northeastern, he put aside his beloved violin and dove into his studies. He emerged four years later a full-fledged chemical engineer, but without having played a single note on his instrument. He didn’t have the energy to pursue two careers at the same time. Aurelio couldn’t understand it. When Damián returned to the house on Calle Esperanza, Aurelio scolded him roundly for not having graduated with a degree in music as well as in engineering, as he had.
Damián went to his room and locked the door. Soon a sad, beautiful melody began to filter from under his door like a long sigh of regret.
THIRTY-SIX
La Teclapepa
THERE WAS QUITE A gulf between Abuelo’s dream of a cement plant and reality. The first thing the brothers did was pool their capital. The family had around half a million dollars saved; Vernet Construction was mortgaged for another half a million; Tío Arnaldo Rosales, Tía Amparo’s husband, put up two hundred thousand; and Aurelio invested Clarissa’s two hundred and ninety thousand, which was sugar money and originally came from one of the colmillús, or “long-fanged ones,” the sugar barons Abuelo Chaguito hated so much. But since the Plata had gone bankrupt, Chaguito didn’t mind. The family still needed another two million, and they knew they would have to go to the PRERA. Every time Abuelo Chaguito thought about it, he cringed.
With the outbreak of the Second World War, the U.S. Army and Navy desperately needed cement produced in Puerto Rico. Moreover, with Germany carrying out massive air attacks on London, the British asked Washington for a bay large enough to harbor the Royal Fleet in case the Nazis invaded England. Puerto Rico was pinpointed as a likely haven. A search was begun, and finally the U.S. Navy decided to build a dry dock on the eastern coast, near the town of Fajardo. It would be one of the largest dry docks in the world. Thousands of tons of cement would be required, and the navy needed them in a hurry.
The first loan from the federal government for the Vernets’ cement plant—half a million dollars—came three months later, with the endorsement of both the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army. Aurelio and Tío Ulises traveled to Pennsylvania and bought a used cement kiln, a mill to grind the clinker, and an electric generator. But German U-boats patroling the Caribbean sank the ship carrying the equipment before it reached the island. The operation was repeated three times, and three times the kiln and the mill ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The fourth time the brothers were successful. The mill and the kiln arrived safely, but the electric generator and the mill’s driving gear, which were transported in another ship, did not. The submarines sank that too.
Chaguito’s sons were about to give up, but he was adamant. “There’s nothing impossible for a Vernet!” he reminded them. “We can build the equipment ourselves.”
Machinery as large as the cement mill’s driving gear had never been built at the foundry. Four feet in diameter and one foot thick, it would weigh several tons. The foundry’s oven, where the Vernets cast the crushing mills for the sugarcane centrales, wasn’t big enough and would never stand the weight. But Abuelo Chaguito’s capacity for improvisation was endless. He ordered his sons to solder two-inch iron sheets together into a four-foot-wide cylinder and then cut out the pinion’s teeth by hand, one by one. When the handmade driving gear was finished, it was a jewel.
Father would be in charge of the plant’s electrical equipment, Roque of the mechanical side, and Damián of the chemical end. Ulises would scout the banks for a loan to begin production. Soon, thanks to the persuasive commercial abilities he had inherited from Adela, the Federal Financial Reconstruction office lent Ulises a million dollars at very low interest, accepting as collateral the plant itself. Chaguito was elated. From then on, Tío Ulises was known in La Concordia as El Mago de las Finanzas, the Financial Wizard.
The family purchased a sugarcane plantation on the outskirts of La Concordia, at the foot of a small, rocky hill where the Vernets could extract lime. The cane was stamped out and the plant’s first kiln—the one that had escaped the German U-boats—was put in place. A small kiln, it measured only 189 feet in length and 10 feet in diameter, and it arrived in two segments, which the brothers riveted together at the foundry. They also bought a secondhand mill in Pennsylvania that had originally been used to grind flour. It was much larger than they needed, but it was being sold on the cheap at a flour-processing plant in Philadelphia.
The mill’s motor was a 1,000-horsepower Allis Chalmers. It operated with an unusual system of switches, which Aurelio found fascinating. The stator—the stationary part of the motor—and not the rotor, was what made it begin to roll. Father fell in love with it the minute he saw it. He named it La Teclapepa and often took me to see it when I was a child. We would walk up the four concrete steps, a little iron door like the visor of a helmet would open, and Father would hold me up in his arms, placing a mask with round purple glasses before my eyes. Inside the revolving inferno, liquid cement rolled around in waves.
The kiln reminded me of the hell the nuns and priests were always talking about in school to make us behave. If the devil existed, his gut would be like La Teclapepa’s. When he swallowed up the souls that died in mortal sin, they’d fall into a cement mill and spend an eternity going round and round in a white-hot mess, sliding down the brick-lined cylinder, unable to get out.
Whenever Mother got angry at me, she’d tell me I was going to end up in La Teclapepa. This scared me at first, but I sto
pped being afraid when I saw how well Father took care of La Teclapepa: any time there was a breakdown, even if it was at three in the morning, he’d run to the plant to fix it himself because he could work faster and more efficiently than any of the engineers and a few hours of stoppage meant thousands of dollars down the drain. I was sure La Teclapepa was a benevolent monster. Instead of sin and punishment, I associated it with the family’s economic well-being, because it turned clinker stones into gold.
When the plant opened, La Teclapepa produced 4,000 sacks of cement a day. By 1944 three more kilns had been installed, and the Vernets’ cement plant was producing 1,626,059 sacks of Portland cement a month, most of it destined for the U.S. army and navy bases on the island. By 1945, when I was seven years old, the four Vernet brothers were millionaires.
None of the Vernet men was drafted during the Second World War; their plant was deemed essential to the national defense. Army, air force, and navy bases went up all over the island, and they were all built with Star Cement.
More important, the Vernets had made their fortune cleanly, without taking anything away from anyone. Theirs was a very different situation from that of Abuelo Alvaro, for example, who had made his money by fighting tooth and nail to keep his precious acres of land from his neighbors, the powerful American sugar mills.
Once the military bases were built, a second project came along that helped consolidate the Vernet brothers’ fortune: the Federal Housing Administration announced that it would issue thirty-year home loans but that the houses had to be built of cement. That way they could be used as collateral for the loans. Cement homes began to mushroom all over the island. In San Juan, two major new thoroughfares surrounded by middle-class projects were built on what was then the outskirts: one was wide and palm-lined and named Avenida Franklin Delano Roosevelt; the other was a narrow, busy street that ran parallel to it, the Eleanor Roosevelt. One could imagine the four Vernet brothers standing at the ends of these avenues, smiling from ear to ear, selling paper sacks full of cement.
Aurelio never forgot Adela’s blessing on her deathbed. As soon as the Star Cement plant was running, he implemented the same Masonic principles he had enforced at Vernet Construction: he saw the plant’s three hundred employees as his personal responsibility and established a health-care plan for them. He also set up a retirement fund. He made Star Cement the first Puerto Rican enterprise to pay its workers the federal minimum wage, a dollar an hour at the time. The workers at Star Cement were considered part of the Vernet family. Every year at Christmas its members would assemble at the foundry grounds—the site of the Vernets’ original business—and the Vernet children, dressed in their best clothes, would share with the workers’ children the toys Santa Claus had brought them.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Statehood and Sainthood
“MY STRUGGLE AGAINST THE pressures of being a Vernet began in 1944,” my mother told me. “That’s when Star Cement gave your father the opportunity to fight for statehood. Aurelio had enough money to enter politics then, and he ran for mayor of La Concordia on an independent ticket. He was soundly defeated, but it didn’t daunt him in the least. He was willing to bide his time.
“Aurelio had inherited your grandfather Chaguito’s ardent belief in statehood. It was Chaguito’s friendship with the Stone and Webster engineers that had given him the idea of sending his four sons to college in Boston. The American government had lent him about half of the money needed to build the cement plant, and then they had bought the cement from him to build the new military installations on the island, as well as the New Deal housing projects.
“But Aurelio’s faith in statehood had an older, deeper root. When he was seven years old, he told me, he was standing next to Adela on the balcony of 13 Calle Esperanza when he saw Chaguito riding toward the house. Sitting next to him in the horse-drawn carriage was Don Francisco Pasamontes, Adela’s uncle, who had given her family a helping hand when they emigrated from Guadeloupe. Tío Francisco’s face was covered with blood, and he was pressing a handkerchief to his forehead. Adela ran to the sidewalk and helped Chaguito carry Tío Francisco into the house. Fortunately, a doctor was able to stop the hemorrhage, but for several hours Tío Francisco’s life hung in the balance.
“‘What happened to Tío Francisco, Mother?’ Aurelio asked in a terrified whisper.
“‘He was stoned at a statehood rally by an independence sympathizer,’ Adela answered. She brought out her best sheets for Tío Francisco, who stayed at 13 Calle Esperanza for several days. Adela recited the Rosary by his bedside, comparing Francisco to Saint Stephen, Christianity’s first martyr, who had died by stoning. Aurelio knelt beside her and said the Rosary also, and since that time statehood and sainthood had remained strangely yoked in his mind.
“Cement, the foundation on which our family’s well-being rests, made your father’s battle for statehood possible, but it was at odds with Emajaguas’s credo. Faith in inspiration, the importance of aesthetic experience, and love of nature—these were beliefs I had acquired as a child. When Aurelio began to get drawn into politics I immediately saw that statehood would mean dozens of shopping centers, more cement roads, and urbanization all over the island. ‘Developers have no respect for the land, for growing things!’ I’d say to him when still another forest was razed to make way for a new project on the outskirts of La Concordia. ‘Everything is interconnected. If we destroy our environment we’ll never be free!’ But Aurelio never listened to me.
“Politics is a sordid arena and I don’t believe in it. I’ve always made fun of the local patriots who have statues erected to them in the middle of the town square, their heads convenient landing spots covered with bird droppings. When I was young I believed political action could change the world and I joined the Liga Social Sufragista and the Liga de la Mujer del Siglo XX. I was exultant when we won the right to vote. But after so much struggle, women didn’t know what to do with the ballot. Most of them voted as their husbands told them to. After the First World War many women on the island became professionals and struggled to lead independent lives—I was one of them. But the independent spirit I had inherited from my grandfather Bartolomeo Boffil didn’t do me any good when I came face-to-face with my brother, Alejandro. ‘Que te parta un rayo y que te pise un tren’—‘May lightning strike you and a train roll over you’—I kept wishing my brother. And when the moment came, he kicked me out of the Plata with Mother’s consent.
“Then I met Aurelio and fell in love. My husband is the kindest person in the world. He believes that statehood is the most effective way to help the poor, wipe out sickness and hunger, eliminate the slums, give everybody electricity, running water, and a deed of ownership to his own house. He’s probably right, but my soul remains tied to the land. I’m Puerto Rican before anything else. For this reason, every time elections come around, I leave a blank space where I should make a cross. But I keep quiet about it because I see how important statehood is for Aurelio, and I’m afraid to lose him.
“From the beginning I saw politics as a fearsome rival competing for Aurelio’s love. My father, Alvaro Rivas de Santillana, lived only for his family: Valeria was his queen, his daughters were his princesses, and Emajaguas was his kingdom. He would never have lent himself to the hullabaloo of politics. My father led a dignified, productive life and reared his family in peace, as far away as he could from the turmoil of the crowd.
“I knew Aurelio had the best intentions at heart, but I couldn’t help feeling resentful. I had given up so much for him. My studies in agronomy and history were diversions, and their effect on me cosmetic, as Valeria had predicted. I was no longer Clarissa Rivas de Santillana, who had once planted Guayamés’s sugarcane valleys and taken responsibility for the family business. I became Aurelio’s comforter, his adviser, the university-educated mother of his children. I lived by reflection, like the moon—basking in the light of my husband’s successes. It was very hard for me.
“After Father passed away, I loved
Aurelio more than anyone else in the world. Aurelio loved me, but I always feared politics would take him away from me.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Fernando Martín’s Mustache
THE YEAR MY FATHER ran for mayor of La Concordia, Mother and I attended our first political rally, and we had to do it on the sly. Women seldom went to political rallies. Meetings—mítines, as they were called—were often held in dangerous barrios where the men ended up getting drunk and whipping out their machetes the moment there was a disagreement. Clarissa was under strict orders from Aurelio not to attend any mítines alone.
But one night, when Father was away campaigning in a distant barrio, Mother took me along to a mítin the Partido Democrático was holding in barrio San Martín de Porres, near Río Flechas. I was only six, but like Mother I wanted to know what the opposition was saying about Father.
Mother wore a frumpy old dress and a wide-brimmed hat, and she made me wear a pair of beat-up overalls and tennis shoes. We elbowed our way into the noisy mass of people milling around a wooden platform on the dry river’s edge. Mother picked me up in her arms so I could see what was going on, and what I saw will remain branded in my mind forever. On the platform, the Democrats had built a wooden gibbet, from which hung a straw doll wearing an old guayabera with an American flag wrapped around its neck like a bib. Every time one of the men on the platform pulled the cord, the straw doll’s head jerked, the crowd cheered, and the doll danced in the air like a drunkard who had been hanged. During one of its turns it faced our way, and we recognized the delicate mustache, the straight nose, the warm brown eyes. It was Father’s image. I started to cry and kicked Mother in the stomach until she put me down. We both ran home, not daring to look up. Now I knew why Mother got so upset every time Father left for a political rally.
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