The scribe records: He is again admonished. Says he has no more to say than what he has said.
Second turn of the wheel. Third, fourth, fifth.
(28)
1569: Havana
St. Simon Against the Ants
Ants harass the city and ruin the crops. They have devoured more than one heavy-sleeping Christian via the navel.
In extraordinary session, Havana’s authorities resolve to ask the protection of a patron saint against the bibijaguas and other fierce ants.
Before the Reverend Alonso Álvarez, lots are drawn among the twelve apostles. The winner is St. Simon, whom they take as advocate so that he may intercede with Our Lord God, that He may remove all ants from this community, the houses and haciendas of this town, and its environs.
In return, the city will throw an annual party in honor of the blessed St. Simon, with sung vespers, Mass, compulsory-attendance procession, and bullfight.
(161)
1571: Mexico City
Thou Shalt Inform On Thy Neighbor
From the balconies hang coats of arms, gay carpets, velvets, banners. The armor of the knight of the Order of Santiago, who dips his standard before the viceroy, glitters. Pages raise their big axes around the immense cross nailed to the scaffold.
The inquisitor general is arriving from Madrid. Kettledrums and trumpets announce him. He comes on the back of a mule with jeweled trappings, amid countless lighted candles and black capes.
Under his supreme authority heretics will be tortured or burned. Centuries ago Pope Innocent IV ordered assassins of souls and robbers of the faith of Christ to be rewarded with torments; and much later Pope Paul III prohibited the torture to last more than an hour. Since then, inquisitors take a small break from their work every hour. The inquisitor general newly arrived in Mexico will see to it that green wood is never used in the executions, so that the city will not be choked with noxious smoke; and he will order them for clear days so that all may appreciate them. He will not bother with Indians, since they are new in the faith, feeble folk, and of little substance.
The inquisitor general takes his seat beside the viceroy. An artillery salvo greets him. The drums roll and the town crier proclaims the general edict of the faith. The edict orders everyone to inform on anyone they know or have seen or heard, not excepting wives, husbands, fathers, or anyone else, no matter how intimate. All are obliged to denounce live or dead people who have said or believed heretical, suspicious, erroneous, reckless, offensive, scandalous, or blasphemous words or opinions.
(115 and 139)
1571: Madrid
Who Is Guilty, Criminal or Witness?
The face itself, or the mirror that reflects it? The king does not think twice about it. By decree he orders the confiscation of all the manuscripts left by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas so that they may not fall into the hands of bad Spaniards and enemies of Spain. Especially worrying to Philip II is the possible publication or circulation in some manner of the extremely voluminous History of the Indies, which Las Casas could not finish and which survives, a prisoner under lock and key, in the San Gregorio monastery.
(70 and 90)
1572: Cuzco
Tùpac Amaru I
He comes dragging his feet on the cobblestones. On the back of a dwarf donkey, a rope about his neck, Túpac Amaru approaches the scaffold. Ahead of him, the town crier proclaims him tyrant and traitor.
In the main square, the clamor swells up.
“Inca, why do they take you to cut off your head?”
The murmurings of the throng of natives become an uproar. Let them have us all killed! shriek the women.
High on the scaffold, Tupac Amaru raises a hand, rests it against his ear and calmly lets it fall back. Then the throng falls silent.
There is nothing but silence when the executioner’s sword cleaves the neck of Huaina Cápac’s grandson.
With Túpac Amaru, four centuries of the Inca dynasty and nearly forty years of resistance in the Wilcabamba Mountains come to an end. Now the storms of war, the harsh rhythm of the conches, will no longer fall on the valley of Cuzco.
(76)
The Vanquished Believe:
He will come back and move about the earth. The highest mountains know. Being the highest, they see the farthest.
He was the son of the sun and a simple woman.
He took the wind prisoner; and tied up the sun, his father, so that time might endure.
With harness and lash, he brought stones to the heights. With those stones he made temples and fortresses.
Wherever he went, the birds went. The birds greeted him and gladdened his steps. From much journeying his feet spilled blood. When the blood of his feet mixed with the soil, we learned to cultivate. We learned to speak when he told us: “Speak.” He was stronger and younger than we.
We have not always had fear in our breasts. Not always bumped along, like the ups and downs of our roads. Our history is long. Our history was born on the day we were hauled from the mouth, the eyes, the armpits, and the vagina of the earth.
Inkarrí’s brother Españarrí cut off Inkarrí’s head. He has been. The head of Inkarrí turned into money. Gold and silver spurted from his shit-filled entrails.
The highest mountains know. Inkarrí’s head is trying to grow toward his feet. The pieces of him will surely come together one day. On that day he will walk the earth followed by the birds.
(15 and 162)
1574: Mexico City
The First Auto-da-Fé in Mexico
Ever since the town criers spread the edict of the delations, denunciations have rained down against heretics and bigamists, witches and blasphemers.
The auto-da-fé is celebrated on the first Sunday in Lent. From sunrise until dusk the Holy Office of the Inquisition passes sentences on the scarecrows dragged from its cells and torture chambers. High on the sumptuous scaffold, surrounded by lancers and cheering crowds, work the hangmen. No such multitude can be remembered at a public celebration or at any thing of very great solemnity ever offered on earth, says the viceroy of New Spain, who attends the spectacle on a velvet throne with a cushion under his feet.
The punishments of vela, soga, mordaza, abjuration de levi, and one hundred and two hundred lashes are meted out to a silversmith, a cutler, a goldsmith, a scribe, and a cobbler for having said that simple fornication is not mortal sin. Various bigamists suffer similar inflictions, among them the Augustine friar Juan Sarmiento, who with his back one raw wound marches off to row in the galleys for five years.
The Negro Domingo, born in Mexico, and the mestizo Miguel Franco receive a hundred lashes each, the former for having the custom of denying God, the latter because he made his wife confess to him. A hundred, too, for the Sevillian apothecary Gaspar de los Reyes for having said it was better to cohabit than to be married and that it was licit for the poor and afflicted to perjure themselves for money.
To the galleys, hard prison for the mischievous, go various Lutherans and Jews, who sucked their heresy in their mothers’ milk, a few Englishmen of the pirate John Hawkins’s fleet, and a Frenchman who called the pope and the king poltroons.
An Englishman from the mines of Guanajuato and a French barber from Yucatan end their heretical days in the bonfire.
(139)
1576: Guanajuato
The Monks Say:
She came to Mexico twenty years ago. Two doves guided her to Guanajuato. She arrived without a scratch, although she crossed the sea and the desert, and those who carried her lost their way. The king sent her to us in gratitude for the wealth that never stops spurting from the bowels of these mountains.
For more than eight centuries she had lived in Spain. Hidden from the Moors, she survived in a cave in Granada. When Christians discovered and rescued her, they found no wound on her wooden body. She reached Guanajuato intact. She remains intact, performing miracles. Our Lady of Guanajuato consoles both poor and rich for their poverty; and she shields alike from the cold those who
sleep outdoors and in a sheltered palace. In her infinite mercy she does not distinguish between servants and lords. No one invokes her and fails to receive divine favor.
By her grace many Indians of Guanajuato who go to her with repentance and faith are now being saved. She has stayed the sword of the Lord, who with just fury castigates the idolatries and sins of the Indians in Mexico. The afflicted who brought their supplications to her and paid due charity have not been touched by the pestilence.
In other areas, the Indian whom typhus does not kill dies of hunger or hardship. There are corpses in the fields and in the plazas, and there are houses filled with them in which all died and no one remained to tell of it. Throughout Mexico the pestilence is raising such a stink of putrefaction and smoke that we Spaniards have to go about holding our noses.
(79 and 131)
1576: Xochimilco
The Apostle Santiago versus the Plague
Here even nursing babies have paid tribute, in money and in corn. If the pestilence goes on, who will pay? Local hands have built the cathedral of Mexico. If the plague does not stop, who will sow these fields? Who will spin and weave in the workshops? Who will build cathedrals and pave streets?
The Franciscans discuss the situation in their monastery. Of the thirty thousand Indians in Xochimilco when the Spaniards came, four thousand are left, and that is an exaggeration. Many died fighting with Hernán Cortés, conquering men and lands for him, and more died working for him and for Pedro de Alvarado, and the epidemic is killing more.
Fray Jerónimo de Mendieta, the monastery guardian, comes up with the inspiration that saves the day.
They prepare to draw lots. An acolyte, blindfolded, stirs slips of paper in the silver dish. On each slip is written the name of a saint of proven prestige at the celestial court. The acolyte chooses one, and Father Mendieta unfolds it and reads: “It’s the Apostle Santiago!”
From the balcony it is announced to the Indians of Xochimilco in their language. The apocalyptic monk speaks on his knees, raising his arms. “Santiago will defeat the pestilence!”
He promises him an altar.
(79 and 161)
1577: Xochimilco
St. Sebastian versus the Plague
During the tough years of the conquest, the clash of arms was heard from the tomb of Santiago on the eve of each battle; and the apostle fought with the invading hosts, lance in hand, on his white horse. Clearly the apostle Santiago has the habit of killing Indians but not of saving them. The plague, which barely scratches the Spaniards, continues massacring Indians in Xochimilco and other parts of Mexico.
From his cell as night falls, Father Mendieta hears shrieks and moans louder than the choruses of angels.
Someone has to intercede with the Lord, since the apostle Santiago is not interested, or Xochimilco will soon be Indianless. The Franciscans talk it over and decide to draw lots again. Fate picks the blessed Sebastian for saint-advocate.
They promise him an altar.
(79 and 161)
1579: Quito
Son of Atahualpa
Beto, Indian priest of the Archidona region, saw a vision of the Devil in the shape of a cow, who told him God was very annoyed with the Christians and was not going to defend them. Guami, Indian priest of Tambisa, spent five days in the other world. There he saw marvels and listened to God, and now he has the power of rain and the power of resurrection. Beto and Guami announce that Indians who don’t join the rebellion will reap toads and snakes in eternally sterile fields.
The two prophets put themselves at the head of many lances. Southeast of Quito, the Quijo Indians rebel. They attack various towns and vainly await a rising in the mountains. The Inca’s son, Francisco Atahualpa, captain of Spanish troops, imprisons the mountain plotters and staves off the insurrection. The Quijo Indians are left all alone.
After some battles comes defeat. The Spaniards oblige all Indians of the Quijo region and the surroundings of Quito to attend the execution of the prophets Beto and Guami. They parade them through the streets of Quito, torture them with hot pincers, hang them, quarter them, and exhibit the pieces. From the royal box, Captain Francisco Atahualpa watches the ceremony.
(156)
1580: Buenos Aires
The Founders
Nearly half a century ago, a Spanish captain sailed from Seville for these unrenowned shores. He sank the whole fortune he had made in the sack of Rome into the expedition. Here he founded a city, a fortress surrounded by huts, and upriver from here he went hunting for the silver mountain and the mysterious lake where the sun sleeps.
Ten years earlier, Sebastian Cabot had sought the treasure of King Solomon sailing up this Plate River—so innocent of its silvery name—which has only mud on one bank and sand on the other and leads to other rivers that lead to jungle.
Pedro de Mendoza’s city didn’t last long. While his soldiers, maddened by hunger, ate each other, the captain read Virgil and Erasmus and made pronouncements for immortality. In short order, the dream of another Peru having vanished, he wanted to go back to Spain. He didn’t get there alive. Afterward came Alonso Cabrera, who set fire to Buenos Aires in the king’s name. He could and did return to Spain. There he killed his wife and ended his days in a lunatic asylum.
Comes now Juan de Garay from Asunción. Santa María de los Buenos Aires is born again. With Garay come a bunch of Paraguayans, sons of conquistadors, who have received from their Guaraní mothers their first milk and the native language they speak.
The sword of Garay, stuck into this land, outlines the shadow of the cross. The founders’ teeth chatter from cold and fear. The breeze plays rustling music in the treetops, and beyond, on the endless plains, Indians and phantoms silently spy on them.
(74, 97, and 99)
1580: London
Drake
“Three cheers for the gold of the galleons! Hurrah for the silver of Potosí!”
The Dragon is coming! cried the women, and church bells pealed out the alarm. In three years Francis Drake has circumnavigated the world. He has twice crossed the equator and sacked the Spanish Main, stripping ports and ships from Chile to Mexico.
Now he is returning with only one ship and a moribund crew of eighteen, but he brings treasure that multiplies by 120 the capital invested in the expedition. Queen Elizabeth, chief shareholder and author of the plan, converts the pirate into a knight. On the waters of the Thames the ceremony is performed. On the sword that dubs him is engraved this saying of the queen’s: Who strikes you strikes me, Drake. On his knees, he offers Her Majesty an emerald brooch stolen in the Pacific.
Towering over the fog and soot, Elizabeth is at the summit of a nascent empire. She is the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, who for having produced a daughter lost her head in the Tower of London. The virgin queen devours her lovers, uses her fists on her maids of honor, and spits on her courtiers’ clothes.
Francis Bacon will be the philosopher and chancellor of the new empire and William Shakespeare its poet. Francis Drake, captain of its ships. Scorner of storms, master of sails and winds, the pirate Drake moves at court as if climbing masts and rigging. Squat but hefty with fiery beard, he was born by the sea and has been brought up in the fear of God. The sea is his home; and he never launches an attack without a Bible pressing against the chest beneath his clothing.
(149, 187, and 198)
1582: Mexico City
What Color Is a Leper’s Skin?
The lamp advances violating the darkness and pulls faces out of the murk, faces of specters, hands of specters, and nails them to the wall.
The official touches nothing, his gloved hands hidden beneath his cape, half closing his eyes as if fearing to infect them. He has come to check the implementation of the new order concerning San Lázaro Hospital. The viceroy has ordered that male patients should not mix. Whites and mestizos have to occupy one room, blacks and mulattoes another, Indians another. The females, however, are to be all together in one room whatever their color
or condition.
(148)
1583: Copacabana
God’s Aymara Mother
They cross Lake Titicaca in the cattail boat. She travels by his side, dressed for a fiesta. In the city of La Paz her tunic has been gilded. When they land, he puts his cloak over her to shield her from the rain; and with her in his arms, covered up, he enters the village of Copacabana. The rain stings the crowd that has come to receive them.
Francisco Tito Yupanqui enters the sanctuary with her and uncovers her. She is taken up to the altar. From on high, the Virgin of Copacabana embraces them all. She will protect against pestilence and sorrow and the bad weather of February.
The Indian sculptor has modeled her in Potosí. He has worked for nearly two years to give her appropriate beauty. Indians may only paint or carve images that imitate European models, and Francisco Tito Yupanqui did not want to violate the ban. He had intended to make a Virgin identical to Our Lady of Candelaria, but his hands have modeled this Andean body with big lungs hungry for air, large torso, and short legs, and this broad Indian face with fleshy lips and almond eyes that stare sadly at the bruised land.
(47 and 163)
1583: Santiago de Chile
He Was Free for a While
He raises himself on his hands and falls on his face. He tries to lean on an elbow and slips. He manages to bring up one knee and sinks into the mud.
Face down in the mud, beneath the rain, he weeps.
Hernando Maravilla had not wept under the two hundred lashes he received in the streets of Lima on the way to the harbor; and not a tear was seen on his face while he received another two hundred here in Santiago.
Now the rain lashes him, drawing off the dry blood and the mud.
Genesis Page 16