Death in Veracruz

by Hector Camín

  “Never mind the widow,” I said. “Help me with the official investigation.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “That’s what I say.”

  “All right. How do I get back to you?”

  I gave him my phone numbers and re-dialed Veracruz looking for Anabela. I found her this time, or I almost did. She’d returned home, but it sounded as if she were somewhere else. Her voice was cold and her reflexes slow and subdued as if they’d been buried under a landslide of obstacles and barriers.

  “I want to go to Mexico City with my children,” she said at last. “I’m thinking of taking a plane tomorrow. Can you pick me up?”

  Naturally, I said yes. I hung up and again tried to reach Internal Security. One of my contact’s aides answered. He wanted to know exactly where I was, how long would I be there, and if I could stay put for an hour. The hour was nearly up when Doña Lila answered the door. The aide was outside with my contact standing behind him.

  “I’m about to receive another set of doctored photos from Chicontepec,” I told him before he could sit down.

  “A terrible occurrence,” he said expressionlessly. He unbuttoned his jacket and made himself comfortable on the sofa. “There’s one fact about all this that makes us extremely uneasy.”

  “I warned you about this more than a year ago, sir. I warned you when it had just begun.”

  “With skewered information, paisano.”

  “It was true.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” my contact said. He took out the gold cigarette case where he kept his aromatic, dazzlingly white Dunhills. “It came to be true, but it wasn’t at the time.”

  “How many deaths do you need to make something true?”

  “None, paisano. What I’m saying is that your case turned out to be true in light of the fact we find deeply troubling.”

  As was his custom, he reached for an envelope in his coat pocket and handed it to me. In it were photos of Rojano’s body lying in the cobblestone streets of Chicontepec before the town government building. His nose was broken, his forehead looked out of line, and there was blood on his exposed teeth. One eye was open. The other was swollen into a welt resembling a pear sitting on a chopping block formed by his eyelid. The skin had peeled off on parts of his head, his collarbone had been broken on one side, and the arm connected to it was sectioned into three pieces.

  “This could have been avoided if your people had acted in time,” I said, dizzied by the sight of the ruined remains on the stone street.

  My contact observed a brief silence.

  “Do you see the detail? I’m referring to the hole in the mayor’s left temple from the final bullet.”

  I looked again, and there it was. Part of the impression created by the smashed face in the photos was attributable to an impact that deformed the forehead and left side of the skull.

  “That must be a photo doctored by his wife to trick you into blaming Pizarro.” A knot formed in my throat. I was nauseous from looking at the mutilated corpse.

  “It’s a shot from a .357 Magnum, a collector’s item. Nobody in Mexico has one. It’s hard to see how anybody could own one in Chicontepec.”

  “Then you already have a report with the facts?”

  “We have a report with the facts.”

  “And what does your report conclude?”

  “Our conclusion could be exactly what I’m telling you. The things your photos lied about came true in these. The mayor of Chicontepec was finished off by a shot in the head, and he was shot in the head without the least need to do so. That final shot is a kind of signature, the work of people that had nothing at all to do with the lynch mob, people in a position to own such oddities as a .357 Magnum.”

  “I want a copy of the report,” I said.

  “Fine. I’ll just need to review it.”

  “Go ahead and review it, but my war in the paper begins this afternoon, and I don’t care where it leads.”

  He lit the cigarette he’d taken out and held it between his manicured fingers. There was something soothing about the symmetrical flame from his gold lighter. He inhaled and exhaled while leaning back in order to return the lighter to his pocket. Then he leaned forward again.

  “In my eyes,” he said, “you and I are friends. Professionally and politically I respect you. And I personally admire the way you handle yourself politically, and professionally. And your human qualities. So don’t misunderstand what I’m going to tell you. Consider it the opinion of a friend who wants the friendship to continue and grow in the future. What I want to tell you is this. Your wars in the newspaper have a way of becoming shooting wars in real life. I’m not saying that was the only reason, but your column about Pizarro contributed to the lynching of your friend the mayor of Chicontepec. A saying that applies equally to politics and war is that the ground in hell is paved with good intentions.”

  “But what makes this country a living hell are the things the government overlooks,” I said. “So you’re right. The rest of us only pave the way.”

  I picked her up at the airport, and Doña Lila went with me. She appeared on the stairway to the baggage claim area wearing gold-rimmed glasses and lipstick as bright and pink as a bougainvillea. She had outfitted herself in a tailored orange suit set off by a scarf that fluttered about her collar as she walked. Her children trotted along behind the scarf, spurred on by Anabela, who strode purposely forward on a minimal pair of flesh-colored shoes.

  “She’s making no secret of her grief,” Doña Lila murmured over my shoulder while we waited for them to reclaim their checked luggage which consisted of an enormous old-fashioned trunk, three sets of suitcases, and four cardboard boxes.

  Francisco Rojano Guillaumín, nicknamed Tonchis, was eight, and bore a disconcerting resemblance to his father. He had the same long straight eyelashes that had the effect of making him look cross-eyed and slightly drunk, the same thick, very black hair that combed without a drop of oil, the same slightly protruding chin, and ears without lobes as if they were simply extensions of his jaw. His torso was a bit longer than his legs, and there was a magnetic sparkle in his bright eyes. They seemed alert and insatiable as if nothing in his surroundings escaped them. While awaiting their bags, he talked to his sister Mercedes, making her laugh, and held Anabela’s arm as if he were escorting her, the mildly comedic gesture of support yet another reminder of Rojano.

  At seven, his sister Mercedes was a child whose sculpted features suggested the beauty to come. She wore a cyan blue dress, and there was not a single bulge of baby fat on her face or body, which already showed signs of replicating, upon reaching adolescence, the appearance of her mother. Doña Lila greeted Anabela, planted a kiss on Francisco, and drew close to Mercedes, playfully instructing her about how young ladies ought to behave. Everyone coming and going in the wide airport passageways, she said, kept an eye on young ladies arriving from Veracruz, especially the ones in blue dresses.

  “I’d rather not go to a hotel,” Anabela said as we started on our way to the parking area with a parade of porters behind us.

  “We can look for a furnished apartment,” I said.

  “We can set up the rooms you’re not using on Artes,” she told me.

  There were, in fact, two rooms on Artes where I had nothing but file cabinets, books and junk. Doña Lila kept them clean and turned one into a sewing room with a Singer, a dress dummy, a cutting table, and an ironing board.

  “I need to be someplace safe,” Anabela said. “A known place. I can’t be alone with the children in a hotel. Just thinking about that is out of the question. Do you understand?”

  “I do.”

  “And do you want to?”

  “I understand, and I want to. I’m in mourning too.”

  “I’m not in mourning, Negro,” Anabela said. She increased her pace to catch up with Mercedes, who was holding onto Doña Lila’s arm. She put a curl that had escaped the little girl’s ponytail back in its place. This left Tonchis on his own by my sid
e. He quickly closed the gap between us and took hold of my arm.

  “My mom’s been crying for four whole days,” he said without being asked. “Her eyes were like this: look. She wouldn’t come out of her room. She kept it dark the whole time, and she wouldn’t even watch television.”

  It was 11:00 in the morning. We left the trunks and boxes at Artes and went shopping for things to put in the vacant rooms. The rattan furniture Anabela wanted was very expensive. She bought two small beds for the children, a chest of drawers, two chairs, and a bed for herself. She paid with a sizable check which nonetheless left a substantial balance in her account.

  I got back from the newspaper about 10:00 that night. The house smelled of chocolate and toast. My papers had been organized to where you could see the desktop beneath them. The furniture was rearranged to make the sala look larger, and pictures and photos previously strewn about the vacant rooms now hung on the walls. Lamps and sofas had been moved, and a set of individual place mats adorned the diningroom table. The children had gone to bed, and Doña Lila and Anabela were cutting the baggage tags off the last of the cardboard boxes.

  “All I’ve done was follow orders,” Doña Lila said by way of explaining the renovations.

  Two pages with lutes emerged from the box along with the rest of our newly acquired population of porcelain figurines.

  Doña Lila got ice and served two vodkas with quinine water. “If you don’t need anything else, I’ll take my own bottle to the attic and see you in the morning,” she said on her way to the door.

  Anabela set her porcelains aside, embraced her, and thanked her. They walked down the hallway to the door with their arms about each other exchanging words that culminated in another longer embrace.

  Anabela went to the bedroom and returned in sandals. She had wrapped herself in a blue eiderdown robe with big shoulder pads and a high collar. She took a long drink of vodka, settled into the sofa with her knees under her chin, and regarded me with round, exhausted eyes.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Though her deep-set eyes grew moist, she shed no tears.

  “Mercedes is gorgeous.” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “And your son really looks out for you.”

  Again she said yes, and broke into tears.

  “They didn’t see or hear anything,” she said. “They just know their dad died. The don’t know any of the details.”

  “It’s better that way.”

  “There’s no such thing as better, Negro. It’s horrifying.”

  “It is. I spent yesterday investigating it. It doesn’t end here. At least not as far as I’m concerned.”

  She wiped her eyes and smiled before finishing the rest of her vodka. “Give me another.”

  I made her another drink and refilled the vodka and ice in my own half empty glass.

  “Where were you?” she asked. “I heard you called in from New York, but nothing else.”

  “I got my share of the oil windfall,” I said.

  “How many New York girls?”

  “No New York girls.”

  “How many New York boys, then?”

  “Boys, yes. Around seventeen.”

  “I knew there was something the matter with you,” she said smiling. “After all, why let them go to waste? Right? Have you heard the latest revelation from the historians of the Mexican Revolution?”

  “No.”

  “They proved Pancho Villa was a lesbian. That’s why he was so fond of women.”

  She laughed softly with a naturalness born of fatigue. She drank more vodka, this time just a normal sip. She tilted her head to one side on her knees and slowly, mechanically began rubbing her shin through the fabric.

  “What is it that you investigated?” she asked, massaging herself.

  “The death of the headman Yacomán, the death of the boy with the ox, the crowd in the plaza.”

  “What else?”

  “That a deal had gone down. They’d gone into the town hall, they’d negotiated, the atole had been served.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And then someone fired.”

  “Yes.”

  “It was Roibal and his people. They fired into the air, round after round to get the crowd worked up and angry all over again.”

  “Yes,” Anabela said. “But they didn’t just fire in the air. They shot at the people too.”

  “From where? Where were they located?”

  “All over the place, on the roofs. But the only ones who shot at people were the ones on the roof of the town hall.”

  She spoke in a low hoarse voice as if she’d been drugged.

  “That’s why the crowd attacked the building?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was told you were kidnapped by one of the headmen and his sons.”

  “That’s what happened. They were actually saving my life, but I didn’t realize that until later. During all the hours I was shut in and the momentary outburst of violence, I was certain they were going to take care of me the way the crowd took care of Ro. I also wondered if they’d hand me over to Roibal’s people. I wasn’t scared. It made me angry but not scared. Powerless and angry.”

  She took another drink. She re-accommodated herself with her thighs drawn up next to her body, her long thighs.

  “They told me about Ro and what happened to Arturo Echeguren when he tried to defend him. Do you remember Echeguren? He turned against Roibal and Pizarro. He was on our side now. They hung him naked from a tree.”

  The image of the poincianas came flooding back to me like an orange wave from the day of Rojano’s swearing in.

  “We could hear the mob from the house.” Anabela’s voice was slow and measured. “The lit torches passed by the window, but they wouldn’t let me look out. They had me tied to a sofa, and only the headman—Sebastian—and his sons watched through the window. Two of them minded the door. We heard the machine-gun fire and people screaming. They all screamed in Totonaca, but it might as well have been Swedish. I didn’t understand a thing except that they were shouting and screaming.”

  Once again the tears welled up. She simply and involuntarily cried without sobbing, with no lump in her throat. The tears flowed from her eyes and down her cheeks in thin bright streams.

  “The army came in the morning. By then, there was nothing left to be done. The town was deserted. The monkeys in the mountains were noisier than ever. So were the cicadas and the crackle from the burning remains of the town hall. The soldiers came to my house, a Captain Lerma. He was wearing camouflage fatigues. You know the kind, mottled green to blend in with the jungle. Sebastian’s sons went to get them. They handed me over to them and left. I must have been in really bad shape because, you know what the captain did first?”

  “No.”

  “He asked if I wanted him to get the priest. He’d already been told who I was. I asked him if he’d found Ro. He said yes, and I said I wanted to see him. It wasn’t a pleasant sight, he told me. I’m not asking your advice, I said. I’m telling you to let me see my husband’s body. So he took me to see it.”

  “I have photos,” I said. Or tried to say since I’d lost my voice.

  “They were so awful,” Anabela said, also losing her voice.

  “I saw photos,” I repeated, this time audibly.

  “He was tied up face down in front of the building,” Anabela went on. “They were taking pictures when I got there. Two soldiers carried him into the house and laid him out on the big table, remember? My great grandfather brought that table from New Orleans the year Porfirio Díaz took power in the revolt at Tuxtepec. That’s where they put him. I put water on to boil. I did it myself because all the women on the household staff had left the night before along with the rest of the town. The priest actually did come by, but I forbid him to do anything. I cleaned up Ro’s body myself, washing away the blood, dissolving the clots in his hair, the dirt, and the injuries. I stood vigil by bathing him. He had a day’s growth of stubble, h
is beard was very thick. I’ll tell you something that’s going to sound crazy to you, but it’s true. By the time I finished bathing him and wrapping him in his white huipil, two hours had gone by. But by the end of those two hours, I swear he had more stubble. It grew, Negro. And that was more than I could take. The sense that he was alive, that under that cadaverous pallor, he was still alive. I fainted.”

  She closed her eyes, her legs still folded against her upper body. Then she was still. She barely breathed for several long minutes. “Come on,” she said at last, inviting me to sit next to her where she was on the sofa. “It’s been a very long day. I can’t thank you enough for everything you did today.”

  She leaned back onto my chest so I could put my arm over her shoulders. Her hands as always were cold, but her whole body trembled like a rabbit when you hold it in your arms. We spent an hour in silence, united by her trembling.

  Chapter 8

  THE EMISSARY

  The day after Anabela arrived in Mexico City, June 17, 1978, I wrote up the Chicontepec story and the lynching of Rojano using all the information I’d been able to gather including my off the record interviews with my paisano at Internal Security. It took up five columns—nearly thirty pages in all—and ran on successive days from Monday to Friday, June 19 to June 23. It was my first ever act of unfettered free expression, no self-censorship, no weighing of interests and sources. All the cards went on the table face up.

  Inevitably, there was a furor, a barrage of phone calls, alarms and explanations. Fists were pounded on tables in government offices in Veracruz. There were debates in the state legislature and calls for a political investigation from the opposition. Incidents from the violent past of the oil workers’ union were exhumed amidst a welter of threats and disclaimers. A cyclone of words and paper riled the atmosphere for three weeks, after which Rojano was still dead, the investigation of his death plodded on, and the state legislature named as interim mayor of Chicontepec a Pizarro loyalist. Now more than ever I was a national opinion maker, and Anabela continued to sleep alone in her rattan bed in a room of my apartment on Artes Street.