by Hector Camín
As we got out, we fell in with the contingents pouring from the bus to add their numbers to the welcome. They also added the clang of cowbells, the howl of a siren, and enough extra cheering and shouting to drown out the violins in the bands. Behind them came townspeople, awed men and timid women who smiled and excused themselves for getting in others’ way as they scurried from their barrios towards the stone street.
Flanked by the bands, Rojano and the PRI party members advanced towards the two blocks of the town with pavement and street lighting. Here the large, single-story houses had high roofs. Their walls were covered with faded pink, green, and blue paint, and the large doors in their entries displayed battered photos of Rojano. Whatever wealth Chicontepec had was concentrated on these two rustic streets, which ended at a wide plaza. Its gardens and walks were perfectly manicured and maintained, and at each corner there was a gigantic poinciana. The trees were in bloom, and their wide red crests overpowered the prevailing brown of the modest plaza. Around it there clustered a church with a single bell tower, a town hall that had seen better days, a string of shops selling groceries and household goods, and the police headquarters. “I put those in.” Pizarro was at my side. “I brought the grafts from La Mesopotamia.”
A speakers’ platform decked in red, white, and green had been set up on one side of the plaza. From it an announcer sang the praises of Rojano and, as members of his retinue mounted the platform, called out their names. Pizarro’s oil workers stepped up the beat of their chants, alternating cheers for Rojano and, in the very next breath, Pizarro. At the foot of the platform, the sandwiches and drinks that came in the bus were handed out, and the meeting got under way.
Young Echeguren, the teenager I’d first seen during his March audience with Pizarro, was at Rojano’s side as the two climbed the steps to the platform. He had a kerchief around his neck and was wearing a cowboy jacket with a visible bulge of pistol underneath. He cleaved to Rojano, opening a path for him and issuing orders through one of the bodyguards, while also shoving his platinum bracelet to a more comfortable spot on his muscular arm. I drew close to Roibal in the Platform’s second row.
“That’s the Echeguren who wanted work so he could marry?” I posed the question in the form of a statement the way Pizarro did.
“He’s working,” Roibal answered.
“As Rojano’s bodyguard?”
“He’s the security detail for His Honor the mayor,” Roibal said.
“And who taught him to use a pistol?” I persisted.
“Real men learn to use pistols when they have to,” Roibal asserted.
There was pride in his answer, and he watched young Echeguren with obvious satisfaction.
“Did the woman you got after him do her job?” I continued.
Roibal looked pleased by my impertinence. With a facial gesture he directed my gaze to the foot of the platform where the sandwiches and drinks were passed out by a very young and dynamic looking mulatta woman whose red dress was impossible to overlook. With her shoulder-length hair and prominent breasts, she stood out from the crowd. She regarded her surroundings with a look of disdain and, at the same time, fulfillment.
Rojano read a speech about the new era in Chicontepec. Anabela sat next to him, unblinking and solemn as stone as if at attention for the playing of the national anthem. The oil workers’ siren and cowbells punctuated the speech, which lasted half an hour. The final paragraph brought forth an especially vigorous response with a musical exclamation point from the bands.
Then, from one moment to the next, the sky went dark. Thunderclaps rolled down from the sierra. The wind swept dust and fruit rinds through the streets. The poincianas shuddered, and large drops of rain slapped down, stinging before they wet. They landed randomly at first, hitting the ground one by one. Then they came in torrents. People scattered to shelter in the narrow doorways while young Echeguren and two other guards herded the notables off the platform towards a large discolored house on one corner of the plaza. It had double doors in the entry and three windows with grill work that reached to the roof. Inside there was an orchard of orange and guanábana trees surrounded by large clay planters with hydrangeas, camellias, and dwarf banana palms. The floors were red brick and the whitewashed walls slightly uneven. We proceeded to a large room with heavy wooden furniture where two portraits hung. The larger one was of a man with a white mustache dressed in the garb of a nineteenth-century guerrillero. His pose afforded the painter a three-quarter view of his face, and the look in his clear eyes seemed both arrogant and humorous. It was old Severiano Martín, Anabela’s grandfather. With a shiver of recognition I grasped that we were in the house of the widow killed in Altotonga. It was Anabela’s legacy and Rojano’s headquarters in Chicontepec.
Bottles of cider were opened for the toast followed by a chest stocked with other forms of liquid refreshment. Young Echeguren set up the bar together with two guards and women from the household staff. Along with the drinks came trays laden with toasted tortilla disks with assorted toppings, crisped pork rinds, stuffed chiles, and steaming cups of lamb consommé.
The gathering consisted of some twelve people, the outgoing mayor and town council, PRI and state government notables, the platform announcer. Pizarro took up a position in one corner of the dining room. To his left he had Rojano and the state government representative. Little Darling was at his side, and Roibal was behind him. People circled in from the sala seeking to join the conversation, but Pizarro said nothing. He raised his glass of thin yogurt to others’ toasts and, instead of consommé, ate figs and chicozapotes. Liquor continued to flow and barbecue was served, but the occasion’s center of gravity never wavered from its single magnetic pole. Outside, the rain pounded down with an intensity I’ve encountered nowhere else. It was about six in the evening when Pizarro spoke in a voice that filled the room.
“We have celebrated the well deserved victory of our friend, attorney Rojano Gutiérrez. Those returning to Poza Rica will be unable to do so today. They must wait until tomorrow due to darkness and because the road will be impassable after the rainstorm. We will thank the gentlemen of the town council for offering us their hospitality.”
The town council members left with the party notables who were to be their overnight guests. Pizarro didn’t budge. When they had gone, he spoke to Anabela. “Now, ma’am, if you would kindly offer us a glass of cognac, we’d be grateful. We’re family now.”
A small circle gathered about Little Darling and Pizarro. Rojano, by now somewhat drunk, remained at Pizarro’s side with Anabela and me facing them. Roibal disappeared along with Echeguren. Pizarro handed his glass to Little Darling and began to speak.
“People around here say we all have doubles in the animal world. The ones who never give up are tigers, the cowards are rabbits, the strong are lions, the gullible are colts, and the peaceful are deer. I want to tell each of you what I think you are because it’s a way to tell you what I expect from all this.”
He pretended to take a sip of the cognac Little Darling was holding. Though he feigned a swallow, he only wet his lips.
“The Guillaumín girl is a part tiger and part deer,” Pizarro declared, looking past me as if I didn’t exist. “I’m not saying she’s wants war, but she’s no peacemaker either. His Honor the mayor of Chicontepec is a mix of tiger and chameleon, which means exactly what it seems to mean. Don’t interrupt me,” he said when Rojano tried to defend himself (he didn’t sip the cognac, he drank it). “Our journalist friend,” Pizarro went on, “is what’s called a wa’ yá in Totonaca, a hawk or vulture. He glides along looking for a meal, then soars back into the sky. Cielito here is a maquech.”
“I’m your maquech,” Little Darling said, clinging to his hand.
Pizarro explained that the maquech was a species of cricket or scarab found in Yucatán. People decorated the living insect with stitching or precious stones three or four times its own weight. Thus burdened, the maquech remained so strong and well trained that it would pe
rch on shoulders and necklines, serving as a brooch on a woman’s blouse or bosom without releasing a drop of its poison.
Once again Pizarro feigned a drink, then continued his lecture. “This town of Chicontepec will be, or ought to be, like Noah’s arc.”
“At least it’s raining enough,” Rojano said in alcoholic jest.
“My point is we must learn to live together without hurting each other,” Pizarro paid no attention to Rojano. “Like any ship, this one must be kept upright and there has to be someone at the helm who knows where the ship’s headed. Together we’ll bring Chicontepec back to life and rescue it from backwardness and injustice. Even if others don’t care, we’ll do the caring for them. That’s our goal.”
“That’s right, my love,” Little Darling blurted sweetly.
“Fate is an arc,” Pizarro said. “Think about it. The animals we know about are the ones who got off Noah’s arc, not the ones who got on. Because on board, someone had to get rid of the ones who rocked the boat. Someone put an end to that animal world to make way for the one we have now. And no one knows how many of the animals that got on the arc never got off. But we all know the job was done right, and nobody misses the ones that wouldn’t help keep the ship upright and on course. They tried to make trouble and weren’t around to tell the tale when the storm cleared. They didn’t get off. As the saying goes both here and elsewhere, whoever can add can divide. Which is another way of saying that whoever is going to unite must know how to weed out anything that disunites.”
He spoke in the flickering yellow light of the oil lamps. The poorly hung doors let in drafts of damp outside air that wafted through the big house, chilling its interior. We began to sweat as a stifling brew of humidity and embarrassment permeated the atmosphere. While speaking, Pizarro’s eyes had remained focused on Anabela. Then his gaze turned to me and, finally, to Rojano who managed to station himself where Pizarro could barely see him out the corner of his eye.
“That’s what I wanted to explain to you,” Pizarro said while again pretending to sip the cognac.” Rather than drink it, Little Darling discreetly, though in plain sight, poured the liquor onto the floor. “And I ask you to understand my comparisons.”
When his speech ended, I asked Pizarro which animal was his double. He paid no attention. I heard Roibal open the door behind me at almost the same moment that Pizarro got up and began to leave. He let Little Darling go ahead of him while saying a ceremonious goodbye to Rojano and Anabela. Upon shaking my hand, he ventured a smile that ended just below the cold sparkle of his eyes in the semi-darkness. “I don’t play this game,” he said. “I, my journalist friend, am the dealer.”
They left, and Rojano served himself another cognac before letting himself collapse triumphant and relaxed onto the rustic sofa. “Pizarro is the hyena,” he said before taking yet another long drink. “A political hyena.”
“I need to get your rooms ready,” Anabela said as if avoiding a disagreeable subject. Her face was suddenly overcome with fatigue. Her mascara had smudged, the bags beneath her eyes had swollen, and her high cheeks had paled.
She picked up one of the oil lamps and made a solitary retreat into the depths of the big house.
Chapter 6
THE SACRIFICIAL DOE
In November 1977, the daily unomásuno made its debut with René Arteaga as its economics correspondent, a post he held to the day he died. We gathered in the early morning hours to toast the first edition, and everyone got drunk on liquor and incredulity. We drank until noon with a group of reporters. Arteaga and I kept at it until nightfall, then he pressed on by himself until dawn of the following morning. I found this out that same day when he showed up at my apartment on Artes with bloodshot eyes and the shakes. He hadn’t shaved or changed his clothes, and he couldn’t remember where he’d left his glasses. I served him a Bloody Mary in the bathroom where he spent more than half an hour under a steaming shower. An hour later he appeared before my work table poached, freshly shaven, fragrant, and clean. He demurely asked for another Bloody Mary. I got up to make it, but we’d run out of tomato juice. Doña Lila wasn’t around, so I went down to the Rosas Moreno store for more. When I got back I heard the typewriter going full blast. I prepared the Bloody Mary and took it to Arteaga who was just about to finish his three-page news story.
It was a gem of a piece, a scoop of the agreement the government had signed with the International Monetary Fund the previous year. It went on to sum up in two dry and succinct paragraphs how the discovery of oil and its earlier than stipulated sale on the world market violated key clauses in the agreement. The energy sector alone had borrowed more than the three billion dollars approved by the IMF. Up until then, no one knew the exact nature of the agreement with the IMF though it was known that some sort of agreement had been reached. Nor did anyone know until then that in the two preceding months PEMEX on its own had borrowed more than the whole Mexican government in all of the preceding year. It was, as the years would come to show, the first journalistic foray into the inner workings of the López Portillo administration. It laid bare the machinations and expectations that would come to characterize the new government over the next six years. Where, I asked, did this come from.
“The Negresco Bar,” Arteaga answered with no hesitation. He finished his report and recounted its history. He’d run into a former treasury official at the Negresco. The man was as drunk as Arteaga himself but was far more distraught. The ruin and disaster awaiting Mexico had brought him to tears.
“He had a copy of the IMF pact in his jacket pocket,” Arteaga said. “He was carrying it around like a Dear John letter from his girlfriend. He left it behind for me to read while he was taking a leak. He’s still looking for me.”
“And the bit about PEMEX?”
“I’ve had that since last week. All I needed was something to confirm it. The IMF stuff isn’t exactly relevant, but it will do. It’s as good as an admission from Díaz Serrano.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“If you don’t understand that, you’ll never make it as a reporter,” he said.
Tremulously, he held out his glass. It was empty again, and he wanted another Bloody Mary. “I’ll trade you for the document,” he said, and I took the deal.
That afternoon the first fissure in the López Portillo administration came with the resignation of Carlos Tello and the firing of Rodolfo Moctezuma, respectively ministers of planning and finance and among those closest to the president. For the first time in many years, a genuinely political resignation letter reached the news desks of the dailies. Tello offered a tart explanation of his differences with the López Portillo regime. Only unomásuno ran it in an exclusive that, fortunately for me, blunted the impact of the piece Arteaga composed in my apartment while I plied him with Bloody Marys. I underlined the document he’d given me and that evening began a gloss of it for my own column. A sensation came over me as if I were entering a different world, one where you could see with absolute clarity what had happened to the country and its people during those months. An agreement signed almost a year ago had gone unreported in the Mexican press until the previous day when Arteaga disclosed and expanded upon it in copy he cranked out on my typewriter. Beyond transcribing the agreement, I did little more than interlinéate a few sarcastic remarks to avenge the feeling of powerlessness that overcame me as I wrote. For at least twelve months, according to this evidence, the country had been ruled by deceit, its future in hock to an accord which had never been made public but which nonetheless dictated the rules the new administration was bound to follow. It was to our obsessive observation, praise, and deciphering of this regime that we, as Mexican columnists, journalists and reporters, owed our spurious slice of glory. (“The stuffed envelope, a higher state of commentary,” Arteaga said, parodying Lenin. It was his way of referring to columnists and to the bribing of journalists as practiced in the days before moral renovation—after moral renovation the practice continued but under a different
name.)
My disconsolate summary ran to three columns. I sealed it in one of the envelopes I used to send columns to the paper and had Doña Lila deliver it by taxi. A half hour later Doña Lila returned, but she wasn’t alone. Francisco Rojano walked in behind her. His big mustache was back, and his hair was long and loose. Having also dispensed with his glasses, he looked as ostentatious and overbearing as ever. He had two bottles of aguardiente and a sackful of cheeses slung over his shoulder and a blindingly white Panama hat on his head. Folded over his arms were a garish huipil blouse and a muslin shirt with the colors of the flag embroidered on the front. He also had a wicker basket with pre-Hispanic statuettes from the Olmec region. He placed these presents on the floor with a theatrical flair worthy of Marco Polo and with due ceremony announced, “Brother, let’s get shitfaced.”
He was wearing an extravagant linen outfit and a cowboy-style shirt with pink stripes and yoke. A perfectly knotted and triangulated silk tie filled the gap between the collar points. As he hugged me, I caught the sharp yet delicate scent of the old Jean Marie Farina lotion we regarded as the quintessence of elegance and good taste during our university years.
He extracted from his pants a wallet bulging with bills and from his jacket inside pocket a billfold from which he released a torrent of credit cards. “Tools of the trade, brother. I’ve come to work with you because big things are happening beneath the skies of Chicontepec.”