by Hector Camín
“Then you’ll have your chance,” Pizarro said. He returned to his chair behind the desk and resumed fidgeting with the rubber band. “Give me two weeks to tell you where and how,” he added in a tone that made it clear the interview was over.
The encounter ended with a handshake. Young Echeguren left, and Roibal stood at attention before Pizarro awaiting further instructions.
“Let’s find out what this young stud is made of,” Pizarro said, sounding mildly sympathetic.
“Yes, Lacho.”
“Get Imelda after him, and once she’s got him milked out, make sure they hear about it at Chito Mandujano’s house. Have a talk with him. Tell him my godson’s father came to see me, tell him about Imelda, and, if he’ll listen, get him to understand.”
“Yes, Lacho.”
“Then, after he breaks up with Chito’s daughter, find him something to do. He may be mean enough to be useful. Who’s next?”
The brother of a woman whose son Pizarro had baptized came in to ask for a temporary job in the oil fields then opening up near Villahermosa, where his wife was from.
“Write a letter to the local in Villahermosa,” Pizarro told Roibal. “Have them give him a temporary job. I’ll sign it tonight, and they can pick it up tomorrow. Who’s next?”
A woman brought in tamales, as she did every week, because Pizarro had pulled strings to get her son a scholarship for the Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City.
“I hear you were by last week and didn’t come to see me,” Pizarro complained. “Tell him I don’t care about him, just his grades. When he gets them, I want to see them. Next.”
Two farmworkers from the El Álamo cooperative came in to see if Pizarro could help with a heretofore impossible tangle of red tape in the Veracruz governor’s office in Xalapa. “Have them see Idiáquez. Tell him to get it all straightened out and put it on the local’s bill. Have him get back to you right away. Who’s next?”
A woman from the red light district came in to complain that the mayor’s office wasn’t letting her work due to the whim of a councilman who wanted her all to himself. She asked Pizarro to do something about this obstacle. “Call the distinguished councilman and tell him the young lady’s working for us from now on. Tell him the right to work is inalienable. Who’s next?”
A PRI youth leader sought help in buying ten sewing machines and ten typewriters to raffle to his constituents. He got them. A mother of three children whose husband worked in the oilfields and had abandoned her asked Pizarro to guarantee payment of her food allowance. The union was resorting to legal maneuvers to deny her benefits, she said. Pizarro gave her a memo to give the union. A group of striking workers asked for help because their strike fund had run out, and management was sowing dissension with handouts of cash. They got 300,000 pesos.
By ten o’clock the heat in the office was unbearable.
“How many more?” Pizarro asked as if about to shut up shop.
“Ten or twelve.”
Pizarro headed for the door and signaled me to follow him. The guards in the entrance stepped out in front of us. In the blinding light and heat of the orchard, beneath the jagged shadow of the huge oleander and the row of banana palms behind it, was Lázaro Pizarro’s waiting room. Two Indian women from Zongolica rushed to kiss his hand as if he were a priest. A widow clung to the arm of her adolescent son. Also among the waiting were a group of temporary PEMEX workers, two representatives of the local Red Cross, a municipal police officer, and a circle of peasants. They held their hats to their chests, and their hair either stuck up from their heads in sweaty spikes or lay plastered to their foreheads by the heat. Pizarro greeted them one by one and explained they could either leave their requests in writing with Roibal or come back tomorrow. “You can go to union headquarters,” he told the temporary workers. “And you’ll get your full pension, don’t worry,” he said to the widow.
He lowered his voice to address the Indian women from Zongolica. “You don’t have to kiss anybody’s hand.”
Minutes later we were in the main patio. Ahead of us were some four, six or eight men who served as his escorts in the vehicles Pizarro used to get around in. His car waited at the entrance to the main house. Pizarro and I climbed in back, and Roibal got in front.
“Dinner party at Mostrador,” he told the driver over the intercom. “L-1 on Zero. Expect fifteen casings at Mostrador. All on the way, in 4.”
A vanload of armed men pulled out in front of us, and two Galaxies fell in behind.
“Leave me at union headquarters, and go back to take care of those people,” Pizarro told Roibal. “I’m taking our journalist to La Mesopotamia, and we’ll be back to eat this evening. That’s all. When we get back we’ll have dinner with Cielito and our journalist if he’s willing to dine with us. One more thing. Find out if the piece in the paper came from the governor or from his asshole security chief.
Rojano worked for state security in Xalapa. I got the message without blinking an eyelash.
Chapter 4
AROUND THE PYRAMID
Pizarro’s escort blocked off the street in front of the union headquarters before he got out of the car. Roibal opened the rear door for us, and I walked towards the entrance at Pizarro’s side. His bodyguards closed ranks around us as we stepped indoors. As if setting up guard rails for an oncoming vehicle, they deployed in pairs before each doorway in his path. The instant barrier set off a magnetic stir. He attracted greetings and pledges of loyalty from every office he passed. Secretaries stood on tiptoes. Lowly staffers looked on respectfully while others eagerly extended hands to be shaken as he made his way toward a thick glass door of the sort most often used on public restrooms. The wood paneling in the entry to Pizarro’s office was painted battleship gray. On the glass in peeling letters was the inevitable admonition: Whoever can add can divide.
Pizarro’s office was on the fourth floor at the center of a large rectangle. A wide hallway set it apart from the other offices all of which had clear glass in the doors, making it easy to see inside. By contrast, Pizarro’s office had cement walls from floor to ceiling and artificial climate controls that blew mechanically cleaned air in and sucked stale air out. In front of the door were banks of chairs like the ones for waiting travelers in a bus station. Here visitors sat under the watchful gaze of aides who wrote their names on cards noting the reasons for their presence.
Like his house, his union office was furnished with a rustic table—no drawers, no papers—that served as his desk. Behind him was another photo montage: Pizarro flecked with confetti in an auditorium; Pizarro in a throng of petroleum workers embracing their maximum leader, Joaquín Hernández Galicia, La Quina; Pizarro atop a tractor holding an enormous papaya over his head; Pizarro greeting President Echeverría at the foot of a speakers’ platform; Pizarro holding aloft the arm of presidential candidate López Portillo as if he were a victorious prizefighter; Pizarro escorting a frail and decrepit ex-President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines; Pizarro in the midst of a group around ex-President Cárdenas. And an enlarged photo of a youthful Cárdenas in full dress uniform (gloves, cape and sword) gazing into infinity with the languid expression Pizarro seemed so taken with. In the blanks and white spaces of the photo a hand that hadn’t fully mastered the art of penmanship had written:
For Lázaro Pizarro, last spawn
of the Mexican Revolution
L. Cárdenas
November, 1958
In the office, a male secretary minded a red telephone which rang constantly. Pizarro again had me sit next to him, and I witnessed a second session of Lacho’s court of miracles. The procession of supplicants included an injured worker who needed special surgery to avoid loss of mobility in his right thumb, a soon-to-be-married couple who wanted the union band to play at their wedding, a widow who demanded a lot in a union subdivision about to open on the outskirts of Poza Rica.
Most of the supplicants asked for money. Roibal placed slips of yellow paper on the desk for Pizarro’s scribbled sig
nature authorizing loans and advances to the workers. Pizarro controlled and kept tabs of these vouchers himself, account by account. He put one, two, or three check marks on each slip before signing it at the bottom. One check meant: Tell him to watch out. He’s already had one loan. Two meant: This person hasn’t made any payments. This is the last loan he gets. Three meant: Make sure he pays in person because he’s spending too much and falling behind.
Around 12:30, a leader of the teachers’ union came to ask for Pizarro’s support in his bid to become mayor of Altamira, a municipality two hundred kilometers north of Poza Rica in the state of Tamaulipas.
“That’s too far away,” Lacho said. “It’s out of my territory.”
This was true. It was the domain of the maximum leader, Joaquín Hernández Galicia, La Quina.
“I have lots of support in the municipality,” the teachers’ union leader, one Raúl Miranda, insisted.
“I’m telling you it’s too far away, and it’s not my territory. You know the saying: ‘In heaven God, but in Tamaulipas, La Quina’. What’s more, it’s been agreed that Altamira belongs to a district controlled by the workers’ sector of the PRI. You get your support from the CNOP. So even if it were my territory, I’d be disloyal to my own sector if I backed you.”
“That’s all been taken care of, Lacho,” Miranda went on. “The people are behind me, I can’t lose. You’re more important than La Quina. That’s what everybody says in Tamaulipas, as well as here.”
“Stop bullshitting, brother. It’s important not to shoot your mouth off,” Pizarro said as he got to his feet. “What I’m telling you is this. You know what your chances are if you run, but, remember, no one backs a loser. In other words, play politics the right way, and forget about settling personal scores. Don’t break party ranks. Help your people get ahead. I’ve said time and again that you don’t just win by winning. Especially if you’re plotting against Joaquin. Loyalty is what comes first in life. Didn’t they teach you that?”
“But everyone’s behind me, Lacho.”
“I’ve told you what I know. Now. it’s up to you to learn what’s good for you. If you don’t, then just carry on, and at the end of the day we’ll see who’s right. Meanwhile, this show is over, and it’s time to hit the road.”
As soon as he spoke, he bolted for the door. Roibal yanked my arm and lodged me squarely back into the scrum near Pizarro. His bodyguards piloted him through the gauntlet of instant barriers and walky-talkies, hallway by hallway to the elevator and the street.
Instead of Pizarro’s car, we now climbed into a large van. Its interior was outfitted with chairs upholstered in burgundy velvet and a table where Roibal placed a report with blue covers for Pizarro. He spoke to the driver in their odd code: “L-1 in zero. Leaving for G-23 in two casings.”
L-1 was code for Pizarro, zero referred to the vehicle we were in, G-23 was for our destination, in this instance the union’s farming operation. Casing meant minute.
“Let him know R-1 is staying at Dinner Party,” the driver went on “until L-1 arrives at 05. And everyone on 4. Over.”
R-1 was Roibal, Dinner Party was Pizarro’s house, 05 meant 5 p.m., and 4 meant all points bulletin. It was a complicated and ridiculous code that changed every three or four months. At the time, 61 meant “wait”, 53 was “be advised”; 57 was “affirmative” and 75, “negative”. 58 meant “outsiders listening in”, 34 meant on assignment. Hummingbird 007 meant “danger: prepare to fire”.
“To La Mesopotamia,” Pizarro said when we had settled in.
Another guard climbed in the front. From under the seat he pulled out a submachine gun and a pistol whose holster he left on the seat. A black Maverick pulled out in front of us with three guards inside, and a Galaxy fell in behind us with two more.
We made our way through the streets of Poza Rica towards the road north to Tuxpan. The noonday sun seemed to melt the asphalt beneath the tires of tanker trucks, trailer trucks, and dump trucks parked at the corners. Passenger buses unable to negotiate the narrow streets lurched to a halt, spewing out plumes of black smoke from poorly refined diesel fuel. In the distance, a homely array of squat buildings crept along the horizon in an astonishing display of money and bad taste topped by a clear blue sky riddled at intervals by smoke from the gas flares surrounding the city. Flames from the stacks made the air around them shimmer and punctuated the skyline with small dashes of soot. We crawled past imported eighteen-wheelers, pickups, and cranes, symbols of a kinetic petro-civilization, its machinery, and its debris. A bulky accumulation of wealth had grown up with no traditions or culture of its own. The city was full of junkyards piled with drills, pulleys, and the rusting hulks of cast-off vehicles and the high-priced vulgarity of first class hotels with polarized windows set in gold frames. Broad thoroughfares were puddled with oil stains, clogged with junk cars, and lined with upscale restaurants with fried food stands in the doorway. The same streets served as a stage for fire-eaters displaying their prowess among the passersby. On the way out of Tuxpan a pair of young girls stood by the side of the road in short white skirts with burst zippers. They were sun-burnt the color of cinnamon and as thin and taut as two pieces of wire. They sucked on wedges of oranges and threw the rinds into a ditch filled with beer cans and garbage next to the sidewalk.
“Twenty years ago there were explosions around here every couple of months,” Pizarro said. “When there was a gas leak, the whole town would run because you never knew where something was about to blow up. You didn’t have to worry about that where you come from.”
“No. All we had to worry about was malaria and polio.”
“And decent land, my friend, which is the worst disease of all.” Pizarro sounded distracted as if he were reciting a lesson learned by rote. “That’s been the main cause of death in Veracruz throughout its history.”
“Before oil?”
“Before and after oil, my friend. People come here from the farm every day with the same old story. A guy got killed for refusing to rent. Another guy got killed for refusing to sell, and still another for planting a crop on someone else’s land. And then there’s the guy killed because his cattle got into somebody’s cornfield. The death toll is beyond counting.”
“Which is why you travel in an armored van?”
“The van is armored to protect you,” Pizarro replied ironically. “My people look out for me, the ones behind us and the ones in front. But nobody’s looking out for you, and nobody’s going to.”
The question annoyed him. He sat up straight in his seat and began shuffling the papers Roibal had given him, underlining them with an emphasis that made it clear he was ignoring me. Through the window I saw eroded fields, flaring smokestacks, the footprint of the oil industry on the outskirts of Poza Rica, and several kilometers of factories, oil spills, machine shops and open space buried under a proliferation of metallic trash. I took out a notepad and passed the time writing in it. When I looked up, I found myself gazing into the cold stare of Pizarro, his eyes implacable and lifeless, sizing me up before re-immersing himself in Roibal’s report. Forty minutes later, on the far side of El Álamo, we turned down a dirt road. An afternoon wind blew in from the north, bringing with it a blanket of clouds and a blast of heat and humidity left over from the rain that had turned the road to mud the night before.
Five kilometers ahead we pulled up at the gate to La Mesopotamia. It was an enormous, 5,000 hectare agro-industrial complex, surrounded by wire fencing and ocote pines that first hove into view at the beginning of the dirt road. We entered along a robust stand of mangroves that gave way to a corral some 500 meters wide. The guardrails of its whitewashed fences stretched out of sight from east to west, and the center-pivot irrigation system watered some areas while leaving others dry. From the corrals, our dirt road led past housing units, warehouses and the maintenance shops that kept La Mesopotamia humming. We came to a stop before a row of prefab offices with huge red letters on their sides: Mesopotamia. An achievement of work
er power for the people. Don’t criticize, work. Oil Workers’ Union.
A noisy group of women awaited us. Its leader was a bleached blonde with rolls of flesh overflowing her tight pants. “A cheer for Lacho,” she shouted as Pizarro emerged. The women unleashed a cacophonous full-throated cheer for Pizarro. “You didn’t think we’d make it, did you?” The blonde spoke in a style that was part stump speech and part whorehouse. “Well, we’re here for Lacho, like it or not. We’re here to complain to you about the bastards that wouldn’t let us in. Those assholes really know how to treat women.”
It sounded as if their complaints stemmed from recent grievances. Several guards smiled and so did Pizarro.
“Who’s the leader of the oil workers’ union with the biggest balls?” shouted the blonde without missing a beat.
“Lázaro Pizarro,” was the dissonant response.
“And the biggest stud?” shouted the blonde.
“Lázaro Pizarro,” they all shouted back.
“And the best looking?” shouted a young girl from the rear.
“Lázaro Pizarro,” shouted the others.
“Thank you,” Pizarro said with amusement, “but I can’t praise you for your good taste.”
“You’re as good as it gets, boss,” the blonde said. She emphasized her words by slapping her hips with the palm of her hand.
Altogether there were about thirty women, some young and some not so young. They clustered about Pizarro. They reached out their hands to touch him and took turns posing for photos with him.
“Thank you,” Pizarro said, “but I’m busy right now. Have a look around the farm. Take them to the pyramid so they can sightsee. We’ll get together at dinnertime.”
“We traveled all night to see you, Don Lázaro,” one of them said.
“And we haven’t had a bit of sleep,” added another.
“The bridge was out, and the ferry sank,” said a third one.
“Do what I tell you,” Pizarro said. “If you need to sleep, the sheds are over there, and we’ll meet later on. Where’s the journalist?”