“Viva Mexico!”
“Fire!” shouted the capitan.
The volley crashed. There was a spurt of dust where the bullets struck the wall after passing through Joselito’s body.
Joselito’s lips rolled back over his clenched teeth. His eyes squeezed shut. His arms stiffened in a spasm. He fell backward stiffly. As his body struck, a huge chunk of plastering ripped loose from the wall and fell beside him.
The capitan of the firing squad stepped quickly forward. He brought out his pistol. He stooped over and placed it at the head of Joselito Sanchez. The tiro de gracia. The mercy shot. Through the temple.
The capitan bent to remove Joselito’s spurs. He picked up the sarape, with another scowl at the little bugler. The little bugler had fastened the topaz and silver concho on the scarlet and gold cord of the dented bugle.
The firing squad hurried forward. First the shoes, about which there was a dispute among the barefooted ones. But there was enough for all. The jacket of leather, the hand-carved belt, the orange neckerchief—these were all attractive.
The capitan assembled them for the march back. Their feet scuffed up the dust as they trudged from the cemetery. It was getting hot. Far in back of them, the little bugler walked. He was ardently practicing new and involved calls.
POLITICAL ECONOMY
El Humoristo arrived early at the cemetery where the execution was to be. The colored crosses on the graves had the air of furtive shame achieved by bunting still festooned the day after a celebration. They seemed tawdry in the emotional splendor of the desert morning.
Besides, it was chilly and El Humoristo had not had breakfast. He was sorry that he had allowed his casual friendship for Jesus Lastro to persuade him into this appointment. Jesus Lastro had promised something novel in executions. It was likely now that he would display nothing more unusual than compelling the condemned one to dig his own grave——
Jesus Lastro was serving as capitan of the firing squad, while waiting for nobler tasks. Jesus Lastro was ambitious in a day when there was still much that an ambitious bandit might accomplish in Mexico.
It was gossiped darkly that he sought the post held by Fierro the Butcher. It was scarcely a secret that he felt within him a genius for violence. That he was director of wholesale executions did not give him full opportunity for the expression of his art.
“It is always the same thing, amigo,” he said to El Humoristo in the saloon called The Spring of Golden Dreams. “The same march to the cemetery. The same ceremony. The man who is to die always does the same things.
“Mind you, I do not complain. I do my duty as a soldier. Don Pancho has been most kind to me. But one day, I hope, he will give me duties making greater demands on what poor cleverness I may possess. Ah, amigo mio, I would do such things as would make men always remember Jesus Lastro. Such things, amigo, as men do in books or on the stage.”
Lastro made it clear that he longed for more intricate murder; a more refined manner of dealing sudden death. The knife concealed in the folds of a black mantle. The quick shot fired as Don Pancho signalled with a nod of his head. The strangler’s swift, sure talons in the shadow of the narrow calle. The muffled shrieks of a kidnapped señorita——
He was politician enough not to criticise Fierro the Butcher. But he looked on the formidable killer as a struggling, unrecognized artist regards a successful hack.
At the far end of the cemetery was a vague shape of dust. Through it El Humoristo caught the flash of a canary yellow sash. He recognized it as the sash of Jesus Lastro. He was heading his firing squad through the morning haze. He came along on saddle-warped legs. The rowels of his spurs had the circumference of dollar watches. From their hubs hung little metal balls on chains. They made cheery music.
Three men marched between the two files of the firing squad, El Humoristo noted. But mere numbers was not a novelty. Nor was there any sign of the extraordinary in the beginning of the ceremony. If anything, El Humoristo felt that Lastro’s voice, reading the decreto of death, lacked the emotional quality which was with Lastro a point of pride.
Jesus Lastro turned and winked. It was the deliberate, exaggerated facial contortion with which a burlesque comedian warns his audience that he is about to assail the soubrette with something very smart, indeed.
Lastro walked up to the three men standing against the scaly, pocked wall. El Humoristo heard them protesting and stepped closer.
“But it is an outrage!” exclaimed one of the three. “That is not how such things are done!”
“I am of the best people!” declared the second. “I have a right to expect decency.”
The third seemed impressed by what Lastro had said.
“At such a time,” he argued, “it is not seemly that we quarrel like boys in the street. The plan seems strange. But Don Jesus has been most courteous. It would only be courtesy to do as he desires.”
There was a little more grumbling. But the appeal to their courtesy was clinching. Lastro turned to El Humoristo with another wink.
At his direction the three lined up in single file. They stood very close together.
“I myself will take the forward position,” volunteered their arbiter. “It will be a poor enough token of my respect for Don Jesus.”
The argument was about to begin again. But Lastro already was thanking the man who had chosen the forward position.
“It is nothing, señor,” the first man replied. “We are ready, my capitan.”
The eyes of the three followed Lastro. He took a rifle from one of the firing squad, which stood by, interested and amused. Lastro placed the blunt nose of the rifle against the breast of the first man. It struck against a watch in the man’s pocket.
“Would you be so kind as to put it in your pants pocket?” requested Lastro. “Up here it might——”
“It is a small enough thing to do,” answered the first man and made the change.
“We proceed,” said Lastro. He placed the rifle against the empty breast pocket.
“Viva Mexico!” shouted the trio.
They were filling out the required form. But they were more interested in what Lastro was doing. The foremost man looked down where the rifle prodded into his chest. His face expressed a skepticism that the gun would shoot under such irregular auspices.
The second man raised on his toes to look over the shoulder of the first.
“Do not move so much, please,” instructed Lastro. “You will spoil everything.”
The man at the rear began to speak. Probably to make claim to a better view. As he reached the first syllable, Lastro squeezed the trigger.
Still with the look of consuming curiosity on their faces, the three toppled over. They fell together, like a trio of eccentric acrobats. Because their bodies had pressed forward in curiosity they fell forward.
Lastro waited only long enough to take the watch from the trousers pocket of the foremost man. As his squad rushed forward for their share of the salvage, he hurried after El Humoristo, already at the cemetery’s edge.
“Why do you leave so quickly?” asked Lastro.
“I have not yet had my coffee,” said El Humoristo. “The morning is cold. And what great novelty was there?”
“Do you not grasp the beauty of the idea?” replied Lastro. “You know the orders from our fearless general. The Americanos threaten an embargo on ammunition. Don Pancho has ordered the saving of every possible shell. Let me count for you what I have saved:
“Three men against the wall and six men in the firing squad. Each man shot separately. That would be six shots to a man. To say nothing of the tiro de gracia—an extra shot for each.
“Instead of all this a single rifle shot. Ought not such a report go to the ears of the valiant Don Pancho, amigo? Will not some one surely speak of what I have done and go with my praise to Don Pancho——”
WORDS AND MUSIC
Mexico’s iron despot sailing into exile. It was fitting that his ship should leave from the port establ
ished by Cortez and his fanatic ruffians. The exiled ruler was a more methodical Cortez. He had handled his people as a Mexican handles a horse. There are no horsemen more cruel.
On the shore ten thousand men and women. They assembled to parade the hate of their country for the man who sailed. Ten thousand men and women with bitterness in their hearts and a curse on their lips
As the great ship moved to sea the gray-haired ruler stood at the rail. An aide spoke to him. The ship’s bandmaster desired to know what his excellency wished to have played in the hour of parting.
Over the porcelain blue of the sea drifted the music of La Golondrina.
La Golondrina! The song that translates for each man his sorrow; that reaches in each man the deepest spring of his heart. It is the song that has in it the wordless longing that comes at sunset to the wanderer. That tries to say that the time of suffering is a purification to make him ready for rest in a loved place.
La Golondrina across the hushed sea. It reached for ten thousand hearts. On shore they saw the bowed figure of the exiled despot. He was, after all, an old and weary man. His hand was raised over his gray head. As if he blessed his people.
La Golondrina—on shore ten thousand men and women sobbed and wept. Until the great ship dissolved in the far mists.
Touch the Mexican heart anywhere and there will respond a chord of music. There is always music. Sad songs that tell the hopeless misery that has held the land in slavery since the vague dawn of its history. Rollicking songs that only a true fatalist could sing in a land that is a beautiful, broken dream. It is amazing that there is any song left in a people so scourged and oppressed.
Always music. A white-haired minstrel at the side of a dusty road singing a hundred stanzas to celebrate a battle. Don Pancho’s dorados singing La Cucaracha as they ride the raid. The band concert in the Plaza. “Carmen” by a military band in the brilliant, sun-washed mosaic of the bull ring. A boy herding goats and extemporizing songs to extol their goatish virtues.
Minstrel Singing the Battle of Tierra Blanca
A serenade under the cool, slim bars of a tall window.
No tiny pueblo big enough to have a plaza with a church at one edge but boasts a band. No tribe of outlaws but has musicians riding in its ranks. No rancho without its favored minstrel.
Leaders of warring factions have bid for the clarinet of a skilled and popular player as feudal lords sought the blade of a trusted and doughty mercenary.
No wilful atrocity—in a desperate campaign known for its wilful atrocities—caused horror equal to that which swept the country at the execution of a whole band of forty pieces. The forty musicians, captured in the rout of Don Pancho’s army, were hanged in a grotesque group. In a grove of dusty gray cottonwoods. As a final infamy their instruments were hung around their necks for the buzzards to wonder at.
The forty were hanged because they had played La Cucaracha——
There are two verses of La Cucaracha which may be sung promiscuously. The first picturesquely states that the singer will weave Carranza’s whiskers in a hatband for the sombrero of Don Pancho. The other states that, while the girls of Chihuahua will not grant kisses to the singer, the girls of El Paso, Texas, break their necks for the privilege. The second verse is considered a subtle appraisal of chastity north of the Rio Grande.
Andresito, seven-year-old son of the Mexican consul in El Paso, usually as delightfully mannered and courteous as is the way of Mexican children, was parentally rebuked once for singing this verse in the presence of gringo visitors. Shockingly undiplomatic ! He apologized prettily and with a twinkle in his black eyes.
The other hundreds of verses are more picturesque but less—oh, much less—printable. One by one they take up the major enemies of Don Pancho. Item by item they go over their family history and intimate characteristics; their personal habits and eccentricities. Some of them are boasts for Don Pancho, too. Usually quoting one of Don Pancho’s favorite claims, having to do with a real or fancied excess of masculine virility.
Reputation blasted in a laughing line. Immoral caricatures sung in a vivid phrase. Good naturedly vicious——
And all to such a defiant, rollicking tune. The chin goes up with the song. It is impossible to sing with the head hanging.
The name means “The Cockroach.” The chorus says, in effect: The Cockroach is unable to stagger around any more because he has no more marijuana to smoke. Marijuana is a form of drug that brings false heart to the user. “The Cockroach” is the name Don Pancho’s followers had for Huerta. The song outlives its subject. But, then, Don Pancho shouted “Viva Madero!” as his battle-cry long after that president, Don Pancho’s chief, had been slain.
La Cucaracha lives and echoes with the voices of brave men who died singing it. It is the song of songs for stout hearts. If its words are not quite polite—well, life wasn’t quite polite, either, when the cockroach was staggering around.
To jaded but hungry emotions songs must be highly spiced no less than food must be highly spiced for jaded but hungry stomachs. La Cucaracha was born in a day when death came with less excuse than is offered by a woman’s love; when tragedy was as regular and as violent as the rising of the desert sun.
To the gringos who arch delicate eyebrows over the flavor of La Cucaracha there is the reminder of the “Lulu Gal” song. “Lulu Gal” is part of the tradition of the West, the favorite of gringo traditions. Writers of frontier day romance often mention casually that the hero rode over the ridge singing “Lulu Gal.” They always refrain from indicating, if they know, that “Lulu Gal” is one of the dirtiest songs ever composed by the mind of lonely men, whose songs seem to run in the direction of such things.
It has little of the true lift of La Cucaracha. The only real thing they have in common is the startling falsetto in which they are sung. This thin tenor is a trick the cowboy of the northern republic borrowed from the vaqueros across the border.
There was another song sung by the rebels and forbidden by the federalistas. That was “Adelita.” Not at all like La Cucaracha. “Adelita” is an innocent song in which the singer tells the object of his love that if she will be his woman he will buy her a silk dress. Not only that, but he will take her to a ball at the cuartel militar. The second verse is a lover’s threat. If she does not become his woman he will pursue her, “at sea with a ship of war and on land in an armored train.”
It wouldn’t have been barred, at all. But there was a hasty federalista retreat after a whipping. Some of the refugees fled through a town. The villagers, from the housetops, shouted in derision: “Adelitas!”
It was as if in an English-speaking land they had shouted: “Lizzies!”
Don Roberto, later, caused a minor riot by requesting an orchestra to play “Adelita.” It was at a state function in Ciudad Chihuahua which Don Roberto attended in disguise. He escaped the same way.
Another favorite song of the desert fighters was “Marietta,” the coquette song which had for its last line rather a symbolic colloquial pun. Colloquial puns in Mexico are something to know very well indeed or to leave alone entirely. They are a constant menace to the welfare of the person who attempts speech in Mexico with no other preparation than “Spanish Easily Acquired” in a red book. Such a person never understands, for instance, when his inquiry for eggs or milk in a restaurant is taken as a direct insult. A commercial traveller who asked a girl in a curio shop if she had a portrait of Carranza still must be puzzled at her impassioned retort.
Incidentally, Castillian Spanish is always an inspiration to suspicion in Mexico. The hate planted by Cortez still bears a crop.
The singing of street peddlers and newsboys is common. So common that it has been noted even by such observers as tourists made in the days before touring was considered unsafe.
Women sing as they bathe in the waters of the Rio Santa Maria. Their songs make a glorious accompaniment for the play of wet, brown bodies glistening under the sun.
Minstrels’ songs are noted for
their length. They are historical recitations, tender ballads of love or ditties of the “snappy” variety. Depending on the audience.
A whole town will sit motionless in the morning sun, listening to a Wagnerian rehearsal of its beloved band.
Orchestras for home affairs are selected as carefully as guests—more carefully, often.
A sentinel, posted deep in hostile territory, will sing all through the night. Sentinels have been known to fire a shot at a suspicious shadow by way of challenge rather than interrupt their song. Even their challenges, though, are sung dramatically.
Always there is music.
In many lands—in all lands, no doubt—there is a counterpart of Mexican serenades sung under windows with bars as slim and cool as a woman’s fingers. But in Mexico the tribute of song is not confined to the serenade of protesting love.
Thorough lovers, even when jilted, are the Mexicans. Tradition has a song to be sung by the unsuccessful suitor—the abandoned one. It is considered a decent and courteous thing to make a final surrender in music.
Under the same window and under the same moon the abandoned one appears. With the same guitar. To the honor of the young lady and to the delight of the watching windows of nearby houses. It is considered good form to bring a flask of liquor to such ceremonies. And a friend to help with the singing—and the liquor.
The abandoned one recites the lady’s undoubted charms and his own black despair because she has found him unworthy. He declares in a fervent passage that he will seek death as the only consolation and as the only real tribute to her beautiful spirit.
Having mentioned the subject, he goes into it thoroughly. First, he sings that he will die of thirst in the heart of the desert and describes such an end minutely. Yet it may be, he goes on, that it would be more fitting that he perish as a gallant soldier. And he details an atrocious end met after his capture by the bloodthirsty enemy. Another excellent plan, he suggests, would be drowning. The sensations of a drowning man are related faithfully. And so through a dozen other very miserable forms of death.
The Little Tigress: Tales out of the Dust of Old Mexico Page 7