Jungle of Stone

by William Carlsen

  Walker, on the other hand, devoted only a few pages of his official report to the ruins, something he—and especially Colonel MacDonald—would come to regret. He acknowledged in the report, however, that he was disappointed they had spent so little time and had not gathered more information. A year at least was needed to do it justice, he said. But they had taken too long to get to Palenque through the Petén, and he was worried about what they were thinking back in Belize. He “judged it prudent” to cut their investigation short and start for home.

  In the end, their rush to leave would only add to their eventual undoing. In a journey that had already lasted more than three months, they ended up devoting only two weeks to the object of their mission. Even in his official report, Walker sometimes seemed confused as to the expedition’s real purpose. He devoted far more space to the agriculture, geography, and politics of the Petén than to the ruins. As a result, they left with too few descriptive passages and illustrations. But more important, their reports conveyed little of the wonder the ruins inspired in other explorers—or any sense of urgency to tell the world. This may have reflected the fact that, unlike Stephens and Catherwood, neither man had initiated the expedition. They had been drafted for the project by Colonel MacDonald, and no matter how dutifully they tried to carry out their assignment, they were still only following orders.

  They came out of the ruins, however, with one clear goal. They were determined not to return home to Belize the way they had come. It had been too grueling. They planned, instead, to take the Usumacinta River down to the Gulf of Mexico and return to Belize around the peninsula, by the sea. For a now-unknown reason, even that plan failed.

  10

  Crisis at Hand

  Colonel Juan Galindo was dead, cut to pieces. Stephens heard the news shortly after he arrived in Grenada. According to the report, the colonel fell to machete-wielding Indians after a battle near the Honduran city of Tegucigalpa. In his desire to save the republic, the Irishman had joined General José Trinidad Cabañas of the Liberal party and at the end of January their small army was routed at Hacienda del Potrero by Conservative Honduran forces and an army from Nicaragua. “The records of civil wars among Christian people nowhere present a bloodier page,” wrote Stephens of the battle. “No quarter was given or asked. After the battle, fourteen officers were shot in cold blood, and not a single prisoner lived as a monument of mercy.” Cabañas managed to escape. But Galindo, accompanied by two dragoons and a servant boy, was recognized in a nearby Indian village and cut down.1

  Stephens was deeply affected by the news. He had hoped to meet Galindo, in whom he saw something of himself. Both were adventurers, political idealists, modern men possessed with great curiosity about antiquities. Stephens was carrying a letter of introduction to the colonel from Forsyth, who had met with Galindo in Washington. Galindo no doubt would have been interested in Stephens’s experiences in Egypt and the East. And Stephens, in turn, would have credited him for inspiring him to visit Copán, as he would later do in his book. Now, at the age of thirty-eight, the colonel was dead, his plans and dreams annihilated by war. And Stephens lost his chance to talk with the only person to have explored both Palenque and Copán.2

  Meanwhile the war clouds were darkening. El Potrero was only a first skirmish. Stephens learned in Grenada that Morazán had quit his post as El Salvador’s chief of state to take full command of his forces and had sent his family by sea to Chile for their safety. Armies were on the march in Honduras and Nicaragua. “The crisis was at hand,” Stephens concluded, adding that he had to get to Guatemala “while yet the road was open.”

  He mounted his macho for El Salvador, stopping on the way at León, then the capital of Nicaragua. He found the town smoldering in ruins, half of it razed to the ground in a furious struggle between the local Liberals and Conservatives. It was now occupied by the same Nicaraguan army that had defeated Galindo and Cabañas in Honduras. Stephens watched as six hundred of the soldiers marched out of town, headed not for El Salvador to battle their archenemy Morazán, but for their sister city Grenada, which had refused to contribute to the expenses of the last campaign in Honduras. “War between the states was bad enough,” wrote Stephens, “but here the flame which had before laid the capital in ruins was lighted again within its own borders.”

  Stephens crossed the Gulf of Fonseca by boat and entered El Salvador. When he landed at La Unión with his two mules and baggage, he learned that Morazán had left the port only days earlier after sending his family aboard a ship to safety. He was told that the general was planning an immediate attack on Guatemala. Stephens set out at once to catch up with him, hoping he could cross into Guatemala under his protection.

  Five days later, after dodging Hondurans forces invading El Salvador from the north, Stephens reached the earthquake-ravaged capital of San Salvador. But Morazán was gone. He had already left with his army for Guatemala. That evening Stephens met again with Vigil, the republic’s vice president, and his aides, and was stunned by their optimism given the chaos of the situation. “It was a higher tone than I was accustomed to,” wrote Stephens, “when the chief men of a single state, with an invading army at their door, and their own soldiers away, expressed the stern resolution to sustain the Federation, or die under the ruins of the capital. All depended upon the success of Morazán’s expedition. If he failed, my occupation was gone; in this darkest hour of the Republic I did not despair. In ten years of war Morazán had never been beaten; Carrera would not dare fight him . . . and out of the chaos the government I was in search of would appear.”

  Stephens thought it necessary to get to Guatemala City as quickly as possible. Despite repeated warnings not to proceed, he set off for the Guatemalan border. The way was treacherous; bandits roamed freely. Mounted, heavily armed soldiers were commandeering every mule and horse they could lay hands on, and pressing boys and old men into service. After several days Stephens arrived at Ahuachapán, a Salvadoran border town with close ties to Morazán. He entered just before dark and found shelter with a widow whose late husband had been a personal friend of Morazán and whose son had joined the general’s army for the invasion. A second son was imprisoned by Carrera in Guatemala City.

  Stephens, weary from the journey, settled in for the night—but there would be little sleep. First, he was awakened by a report that Carrera had crushed Morazán in Guatemala City. The news created immediate panic in the town. Morazán apparently had escaped and was headed back to Salvador with Carrera’s army in pursuit. A few hours of sleep later, a second report came that armed men on horseback were approaching Ahuachapán. The church bells began tolling and the townspeople began to flee the city. It was a pathetic sight, Stephens recalled: sick and disabled old men and women huddled on the steps of the church. Stephens was warned to escape while he still could. “We did not know whether the whole army of Carrera was approaching, or merely a roving detachment,” he wrote. “If the former, my hope was that Carrera was with them and that he had not forgotten my diplomatic coat.” Stephens returned to the house with one of his companions and waited anxiously. He smoked, went out, and looked around but there was nothing to see. The bells had stopped ringing and a ghostlike quiet fell over the town, now nearly empty. “We became positively tired of waiting; there were still two hours to daylight; we lay down, and, strange to say, again fell asleep.”

  General Francisco Morazán’s much-acclaimed invincibility disintegrated in the early morning hours of March 20, 1840. He barely escaped Guatemala City’s blood-soaked central plaza with his life. Much had transpired since Stephens left Guatemala more than two months earlier. In January Carrera rode out of the city with some one thousand men and invaded the liberal stronghold of Quetzaltenango, the breakaway district in western Guatemala allied with Morazán. With two quick strikes, Carrera and his small army routed the Liberals. Carrera returned to Guatemala City in triumph, riding into the capital on February 17 under flower-decked arches, with bands playing, flags flying, and cannons fi
ring. With the Quetzaltenango Liberals vanquished and the military threat from the rear removed, all that remained was the long-awaited showdown with Morazán from the east. Carrera then turned to face his most dangerous foe with virtually all his forces intact and battle hardened.

  Morazán finally obliged. He crossed the border into Guatemala on March 12 at the head of a column of only 1,500 men, with the expectation that Guatemalan liberals would quickly rise up and join him and the republican cause. Carrera, meanwhile, rode out of the capital with nearly a thousand of his most loyal Indian and Mestizo fighters and took up a position about five miles away on a nearby plantation. He left eight hundred men digging in and fortifying the city under the leadership of one of his chief officers.3 Carrera’s plan was to catch Morazán and his army just as they approached the city, and like a hammer and anvil, crush them between his men and those waiting inside the city walls.4 But Morazán struck more quickly than expected, attacking at 3 A.M. on March 18 through the Buena Vista gate and taking the Conservative forces in the capital by surprise. After a series of vicious battles, the defenders fell back and Morazán captured much of the city by noon. He immediately opened the city’s jails and freed more than forty Liberals who had been imprisoned by Carrera. They included the humiliated commander of the Quetzaltenango army, who had been so badly abused as a prisoner that he was unable to take up arms when his chains were removed. Then Morazán ordered his men to take up defensive positions as Carrera, reinforced by Indians from the countryside, circled the city.

  The next day Carrera launched an all-out attack. According to accounts Stephens later compiled from eyewitnesses, the battle raged all morning in savage, bloody street fighting.5 Carrera and his men fell first upon Morazán’s reserves on the edge of the city. Morazán left the main plaza with a small force to join the fight. The two sides clashed in hand-to-hand combat and a large number of Morazán’s best officers were killed or badly wounded. Carrera later boasted that he had personally encountered Morazán during the battle and nearly split the general’s saddle in two with his saber. Morazán and his men retreated through the streets to the plaza, leaving behind nearly four hundred dead and wounded, three hundred much-needed muskets, and all of his army’s baggage and equipment. By ten o’clock in the morning they were penned up in the plaza, surrounded by the enormous mass of Carrera’s Indians. Morazán stationed men on the rooftops of the surrounding houses and buildings but his men in the square were under fire from all corners. By noon, the firing slackened as Carrera and his men gradually ran out of ammunition, or began hoarding it for a final assault. Carrera himself, it was reported, sat down to roll cartridges. A sinister quiet descended over the plaza as the firing stopped. “Pent up in this fearful position,” Stephens wrote, “Morazán had time to reflect.”

  But a year before he was received [by the city’s residents] with ringing of bells, firing of cannon, joyful acclamations, and deputations of grateful citizens, as the only man who could save them from Carrera and destruction. [Now] among the few white citizens in the plaza at the time of the entry of Morazán’s soldiers was a young man, who was taken prisoner and brought before General Morazán. The latter knew him personally, and inquired for several of his old partisans by name, asking whether they were not coming to join him. The young man answered that they were not, and Morazán and his officers seemed disappointed. No doubt he had expected a rising of citizens in his favour, and again to be hailed as a deliverer from Carrera.

  Dead bodies clogged the streets and lay scattered across the floor of the plaza. It was already a scene of great slaughter. The silence was broken only by Carrera’s Indians shouting jeers and catcalls from the corners where they massed along the approaches to the square. At sunset, the Indians fell to their knees and took up the prayer “Ave Maria.” The chant swelled to such a volume it sent chills through Morazán and his trapped men, who now fully realized the odds they were facing. The hymn was followed by the thunderous roar of “Viva la religión! Muera el General Morazán (Death to General Morazán)! Viva Carrera!” and the bullets poured into the plaza once again with more ferocity than ever. The fighting went on for hours; finally, at two o’clock in the morning, Morazán’s men made a desperate attempt to cut their way out but were driven back. The plaza was now littered with piles of the dead, including Morazán’s eldest son and forty of his most loyal veteran officers.

  Main plaza of Guatemala City in 1860, with market stalls filling the square.

  What happened next is the subject of debate. According to the official record of the battle—meaning the victors’—Morazán stationed a hundred men at each of the plaza’s three corners and ordered them to open fire at 3 A.M. Then, while attention was diverted, the general and five hundred men shouting “Viva Carrera!” made their escape in the darkness via the fourth corner, leaving the other men to fend for themselves. The French consul, Auguste Mahelin, however, noted that there was a bright moon that night, which lent little credibility to the report of Morazán sneaking off in the darkness.

  Whether Morazán fought his way out or escaped by ruse, the official “victor’s” record is largely silent about the horror that followed. While Morazán fled the city, many of those in the plaza who were taken prisoners were summarily shot by Carrera’s men. Wounded men were bayoneted as they lay on the ground. “Carrera stood pointing with his finger at this man and that,” wrote Stephens, “and every one that he indicated was removed a few paces from him and shot.”6 A dozen survivors dropped down from their rooftop perch and took refuge in the courtyard of the British vice consul’s house, located near the plaza. Somehow Carrera found out—possibly alerted by British consul general Chatfield, according to one account. Carrera demanded the men be turned over. Chatfield agreed but only on condition that they be tried legally. The men were taken and several minutes later executed around the corner.7

  As the massacre in the plaza continued, Morazán made his way over the mountains to the town of Antigua. A faction of the townspeople still loyal to the Liberal cause implored him to declare martial law and launch a new attack on the capital. He refused, noting that “enough blood had been shed.” He stayed long enough to write a letter to Carrera asking him to treat the prisoners with mercy. Then he retreated along the coast to El Salvador.

  When Stephens woke in Ahuachapán, a boy came running with the news that Carrera’s men were coming toward the town. A short time later a cavalry detachment appeared at the end of the street. Stephens went out to face them. More than a hundred lancers filed by, two abreast, red pennants on the tips of their spears, shouting “Viva Carrera!” They were led by a general named Figueroa. The lancers were followed by the infantry, mostly Indians, many in rags, carrying machetes and old flintlocks. They too cried “Viva Carrera!” with a ferocity that demanded equal reply. “There was no escape,” Stephens wrote, “and I believe they would have shot us down on the spot if we had refused to echo the cry.”

  Stephens, ever the diplomat, invited the general to breakfast. But before long, Figueroa and his men were mounting up and dashing off to investigate a report that allies of Morazán were lurking not far outside the town. In the afternoon, they returned apparently unsuccessful in finding anyone. With General Figueroa billeted in the plaza once again, Stephens prevailed on him to draw up a passport that he hoped would give him safe passage on the road to Guatemala City. Then word came that Morazán himself was approaching the city. Figueroa and the lancers immediately took to their horses and headed out of the plaza to face him. Straggling behind ran the long line of Indian infantrymen. Next came a volley of gunshots, followed by a riderless horse galloping through the plaza. Several more followed, and soon bullets were flying in every direction. Figueroa and thirty or forty of his lancers came dashing down the street. They rallied, turned, and attacked up the street again. Stephens and several traveling companions, along with an old servant woman, scurried back into the house they had been occupying, and as the battle raged in the street outside, they sought refuge
in a small inside room closed off by a door three inches thick. “In utter darkness,” he wrote, “we listened valiantly.”

  Finally, the firing died down, and they heard a blast of a bugle and the hooves of the cavalry. They went to the front door and carefully peered out as they heard the cry “Viva la Federación!” Night had fallen. A passing lancer asked for water, which they provided. Within no time, a group of Morazán’s men trooped into the house, which was well known to them because of the family’s connection to Morazán. They had been on horseback for six days zigzagging through enemy country to avoid pursuit. “Entering under the excitement of a successful skirmish,” Stephens recalled, “they struck me as the finest set of men I had seen in the country.” Wiping blood from their swords, they explained that they were taken by surprise by Figueroa. Morazán, who had been riding in the lead, dodged two bullets before he could even draw his pistol. Had their horses not been so tired they would have killed every one of Figueroa’s men, they claimed.

  Morazán put out word that he and his soldiers would be resting in the plaza. Stephens seized the opportunity to finally meet the famous general. He stood conferring with some of his officers when Stephens entered the cabildo.

  A large fire was burning before the door, and a table stood against the wall with a candle and chocolate-cups upon it. He was about forty-five years old, five feet ten inches high, thin, with a black mustache and week’s beard, and wore a military frock-coat, buttoned up to the throat, and sword. His hat was off, and the expression of his face mild and intelligent. Though still young, for ten years he had been the first man in the country. He had risen and sustained himself by military skill and personal bravery; always led his forces himself; had been in innumerable battles, and often wounded, but never beaten. From the best information I could acquire, and from the enthusiasm with which I had heard him spoken of by his officers, and, in fact, by everyone else in his own state, I had conceived almost a feeling of admiration for General Morazán, and my interest in him was increased by his misfortunes. I was really at a loss how to address him; and while my mind was full of his ill-fated expedition, his first question was if his family had arrived in Costa Rica, or if I had heard anything of them. It spoke volumes that, at such a moment, with the wreck of his followers before him, and the memory of his murdered companions fresh in his mind, in the overthrow of all his hopes and fortunes, his heart turned to his domestic relations.