Death in Veracruz

by Hector Camín

  “There were also casualties on the other side,” my contact pointed out. “Pizarro and his chief aide left the country on Tuesday to seek treatment for their wounds.”

  “What wounds?” Anabela asked.

  “The attack nearly succeeded, ma’am,” my contact said. “They got all the way to Pizarro’s office, and they held him for half an hour.”

  Anabela took another long drink of cognac.

  “That’s the information I have for you,” my contact said. “What do you have?”

  He looked not at me but at Anabela, who stared into her cognac.

  “Pizarro’s leather warning pouch arrived yesterday,” I said. “They had it delivered via the mayor’s older child.”

  The news appeared to disconcert him. He asked to see the pouch, and I went to the bedroom to get it. I placed it in his hands with the motto Whoever knows how to add...directly in front of him. He opened and closed the dividers, running his manicured nails and his fingertips bathed in rosewater over the leather.

  “Does it mean the usual?” He sounded annoyed as if his assumptions had turned out to be badly flawed. “Is it addressed specifically to you, ma’am?”

  “My son brought it home from school,” Anabela answered drily.

  “That’s not what I’m asking,” my contact said. “I’m talking about the name of the addressee.”

  “Us,” Anabela said.

  “Was there anything written inside?”

  “No,” Anabela said. “But you know perfectly well what the message is.”

  “No, I don’t,” my contact said. “I need to know exactly what you received.”

  Clearly, he was confronted with a fact that went beyond his expectations. He couldn’t have been more upset by the appearance of this piece on the chessboard.

  “I must tell you this.” My contact struggled to maintain his self-control. “Edilberto Chanes and his men almost killed Pizarro.”

  “Pizarro left the hospital yesterday,” Anabela said.

  “To go to another hospital,” my contact replied.

  “And on the way he sent us the pouch?” Anabela said sarcastically.

  My contact got to his feet and hastily traversed the space from his chair to the bar.

  “I don’t mean to offend you,” he said, “but as an objective outside observer, I need to tell you some things that should help guide your decisions and let you understand what’s at stake. Bear in mind that early Monday morning an attempt was made on the life of the most important mid-level leader of the most powerful labor union in the country. It was the work of a hired gun named Edilberto Chanes, who lost his life in an automobile accident while fleeing to Tulancingo. Due to the indiscretion of an accomplice,”—he looked at me as if asking leave to continue—“the Mexican government is now in a position to discover that Chanes was in the pay of the widow of the former mayor of Chicontepec.” He looked at Anabela as if he were now asking her leave to go on. “The widow had long attributed the lynching of her husband by the people of Chicontepec on June 9, 1978, to the machinations of the oil workers’ boss. The main propagator of this tale is a well known journalist who turned out to have been the widow’s lover in the year prior to the mayor’s death, the very columnist who had been the mayor’s friend since both were in their teens.”

  “I’m not putting up with this, Negro,” Anabela said.

  “This is how things stand politically.” My contact brushed the protest aside, and unbuttoned his jacket. “For over a year and a half the widow and her then husband, Francisco Rojano, had been renewing their friendship with the journalist in order to convince him that the union leader had risen to power through a series of politically motivated crimes. Those crimes, disguised as accidents, were intended to facilitate the union’s takeover of choice lands in the municipalities of Tuxpan and Chicontepec in the state of Veracruz. To convince the journalist they were right, the couple created false files complete with photos and coroners’ reports. However, the labor leader actively promoted the political career of his accuser, Francisco Rojano, and helped him gain the coveted post of mayor of the impoverished municipality of Chicontepec, Veracruz, where Petróleos Mexicanos was expected to invest heavily in coming years. Lust for power, political carelessness, and a dissipated lifestyle led to increasing friction between the mayor and an already sullen, hostile and ignorant community. Finally, the townspeople took matters into their own hands, and in their own crude way, protested the imposition of a dissolute and disreputable outside ruler by publicly lynching him. And all because of his boundless ambition. After just a year in office, the mayor’s local landholdings had grown from 300 hectares to nearly 2,000 and his wife’s from less than 400 to almost 3,000 hectares of the best irrigated land in the municipality.”

  “You gave him all that information,” Anabela said evenly. She regained her self-control by staring into her empty goblet, then holding it up to the light. She stood up, walked to where my contact was leaning on the bar, and held out her glass. “Pour me a double,” she said. “Your version of what happened made my hands cold.”

  My contact obliged. Anabela smiled and returned to her royal seat. The minister for internal security resumed from his post by the bar. “The oil workers’ union agreed to acquire the widow’s holdings for the inflated sum of 32 million pesos, which came to about 1.5 million dollars in a single payment during the month of November, 1978. A year later the widow hired Edilberto Chanes to assassinate the union leader, whom she blamed for her husband’s death. What else did she blame him for? For having thwarted the further expansion of the couple’s domains in Chicontepec? Probably. Was the nationally known columnist in on the scheme to get even richer? Maybe he was.”

  “And Pizarro was the living hero of the Mexican Revolution?” Seated on her peacock throne, Anabela had fully regained her self-control

  “Pizarro is a legitimate leader in the eyes of his followers,” my contact said. “He’s given back to the oil workers more than he’s taken from them. That’s the bottom line on his political balance sheet.”

  “Abuses and murders included?” I said.

  “Yourselves included,” my contact replied.

  “Those are the facts as you see them?” I said. “That’s what happened, according to you?”

  “No,” my contact said. “If that’s what I thought, I wouldn’t be here. I’ve given you the political version, the objective version. It’s not the truth, but it’s the reality you have to face just as if it were the truth. Objectively and without fooling yourselves.”

  “Your words leave me cold, counsel.” Anabela was being sarcastic. “My hands are frozen. The only evidence you left out is the day Edilberto Chanes slept with the widow in Chicontepec and the recording of her saying, ‘Kill him, boy’.”

  “I’m not making any accusations,” my contact said. He took a cigarette from his spotless gold case. He’d left his cigar on the table in the middle of the room. “What I’ve given you is a simple reconstruction based on the facts of the case. I’m not interested in putting you on trial. That’s not my job.”

  “Isn’t justice your job?” Anabela said.

  “No, ma’am. My job is keeping the peace,” my contact said.

  “So what are you trying to get at with all this?”

  “I want to reach a negotiation.”

  “We already negotiated,” Anabela said.

  “And the terms of the agreement were blatantly violated,” my contact said. “Because, among other things, you defied a power greater than yourself. You even launched an attack on the life of that power, and now your own life is in danger.”

  “I didn’t attack a thing,” Anabela shot back, rejecting the confession implicit in the way my contact framed her behavior. “For three years I’ve been defending myself against a nightmare named Lázaro Pizarro, your reborn hero of the Mexican Revolution, your born leader, your good warlord. Pizarro has cost me my husband, my peace of mind, my inheritance, and the chance to lead a normal life. And t
he safety of my children. Now, to top it off, that man’s craziness has left a permanent scar on my life. What do you want me to negotiate? How to commit suicide in a way pleasing to Pizarro?”

  “I’m not saying you didn’t have your reasons,” my contact said. “What I’m saying is you don’t have the power to confront Pizarro.”

  “If you people cared more about justice than keeping the peace,” Anabela said while getting to her feet. “We’d have had the power to contain Pizarro.”

  My contact inhaled and released an even stream of blue smoke from his nostrils. He seemed saddened and mildly annoyed.

  “If you had chosen justice and fairness,” he said, looking down at the floor, “You’d never have approached Pizarro in the first place. Pizarro would never have given you his support, and you’d never have gotten into a land dispute with him in Chicontepec. You wouldn’t have needed backing from the national press, you wouldn’t have broken your first agreement with Pizarro, and you wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get rich. The mayor of Chicontepec wouldn’t have been lynched, Pizarro wouldn’t be wounded, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  Clearly, impersonally and mechanically, he’d played back a history of savagery regulated by a system of checks and balances beyond the understanding of its lesser actors. Its moral was competence in the service of stability and preserving the polished outer surfaces of the institutions.

  “What do you propose?” I asked.

  “That the lady and her children leave the country immediately, tomorrow if possible,” my contact said. “Then let’s try to renegotiate with Pizarro and settle the conflict. You may want to write something, get some sort of compensation from us.”

  “More concessions?” Anabela asked.

  “Probably more concessions, ma’am.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Anabela said haughtily.

  “Let me explain something,” my contact said. “You appear to have won the last battle in this war because Pizarro is never going to recover fully from his wounds. He lost three quarters of his stomach, and a bullet left him paralyzed and half blind. The paralysis is progressive. He’s got about a year to live.”

  “In Houston?” Anabela asked.

  “He was transferred to the Medical Center in Mexico City following emergency surgery in Houston. What I’m telling you comes from the Mexico City hospital report.”

  “And how do I know you’re telling me the truth?” Anabela smiled as if the news made her feel better.

  “You don’t.” My contact watched her, sizing her up. “You have to believe me. But I am telling you the truth. You can leave the country and wait until your enemy’s corpse passes by your doorstep or you can stay here and be an easy target for Pizarro’s last blow, which could be aimed at your children.”

  “And if I still won’t go?” Anabela said. Her cheeks were red, and her eyes were on fire.

  “Then you’re on your own with no support from us. No guards, no protection.”

  “So you’d just throw us to the wolves?” Anabela stared into her backlit glass.

  “A guard detail isn’t going to keep Pizarro at bay,” my contact said. “My job at the moment is to make you leave. It’s the only way to guarantee your safety and, as a result, the only way we can do our job effectively.”

  “How do you know Pizarro won’t come looking for me wherever I am?”

  “We haven’t negotiated with Pizarro yet,” my contact replied. “Once the crisis passes, he’s more likely to prefer concessions. Despite what your experience may suggest, Pizarro is above all a politician, not a killer.”

  “The latter day hero of the Mexican Revolution.” Anabela shook her head, her eyes aglow, her hair floating youthfully down over her shoulders. “I need a week to get ready,” she said at last.

  “A week may be too long,” my contact answered. “I can get you your tickets in Mexico City and take care of all the details. Visas and so forth. If you need a little money to tide you over while having your accounts transferred from here, we can also help you with that.”

  “Under those circumstances, we could leave Monday,” Anabela said.

  “Thank you for understanding,” my contact said. “It’s strictly temporary, an emergency measure, believe me.”

  “I believe you, sir, but you need to believe me about another thing in exchange.”

  “Whatever you wish, ma’am.”

  “You seem sure I sent Mr. Chanes after our benefactor in Poza Rica.”

  “That’s the information I have direct from the source, yes,” my contact said.

  “The information from our journalist.” Anabela pointed playfully and sarcastically at me.

  “That’s right,” my contact said.

  “What I want to tell you and him is this. I didn’t send Edilberto Chanes anywhere. Chanes approached me in the street one day in Cuernavaca after I’d left the children off at school, and he told me about his designs on Pizarro. I didn’t say yes or no. I just listened and kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t my idea, it was his. I didn’t try to stop him, but I didn’t put him up to it.”

  “Chanes had a score to settle with Pizarro,” my contact said. “I understand what you’re telling me.”

  “Sir, I’m not asking you to understand.” Her spirits had risen, and at the moment, perhaps with help from the cognac, she was radiant. “What I’m asking you to do is believe me.”

  “I believe you, ma’am,” my contact said.

  “I’m also asking you to make our journalist believe me.” Looking at me, she turned the goblet around and around in her hand and smiled. She seemed inspired, even happy.

  They left for Los Angeles on Monday, December 12, 1979, on Mexicana’s early evening flight. That morning she’d transferred money to First National City Bank of California. It remained for me to rent The Hideaway, sell the van, and pay the monthly credit card installments. We got to the airport at 3:00 in the afternoon in two large cars with antennas and polarized windows. Traveling with us were the guard detail, Anabela’s large trunk, and six more suitcases. Doña Lila held Mercedes’s hand. The little girl was wearing a plaid outfit, a cap, and a scarf. Tonchis, who was nearly as tall as Anabela, joked with Comandante Cuevas. Anabela and I walked behind them in silence through the airport corridors, and behind us was the remainder of our escort.

  We got through immigration and customs. At the duty-free shop Anabela spent a 1,000 dollars on a watch for her sister Alma, who was providing them a place to stay in Los Angeles. The guard detail took us all the way to the crowded waiting area. I said goodbye to Mercedes. “Call me whenever you feel like it and tell me you miss me. I’m going to visit you next week.”

  To Tonchis, I said, “Take care of your mom. If she tries anything crazy like taking up with a Gringo, let me know right away. I have some hired guns in Los Angeles who can make her change her mind.

  “And if she takes up with a Mexican?”

  “Grab him yourself and kick him out. I’m leaving you in charge. Let me know everything.”

  I then took Anabela to the adjacent waiting area, which was empty. She was dressed for winter in a black fur hat, high boots, a flannel skirt, and an emerald green scarf. The outfit made her seem comfortable and soft. Below the hat her eyes looked placid, and her lips and teeth were brilliant over the scarf. Diamond earrings accented her beautifully formed ears.

  “It won’t be for long,” she said, brushing my cheek. Her hand wasn’t as cold as usual.

  We stood looking at each other. Her eyes were crystal clear in the intense light streaming through the huge window.

  “No one knows where you’re going,” I said or, rather, repeated on instructions from my contact. “And nobody knows the address of the place you’re going. Don’t write, don’t phone. Let some time pass before you go out.”

  “I already know that,” Anabela said.

  “I repeat so you won’t forget,” I said in a low voice.

  “You’re repeating so you won’t have t
o say goodbye,” Anabela said.

  “That too.”

  “Well, you’re not getting rid of me that easily, Negro,” Anabela said, turning playful.

  “Nor in any other way.”

  “Get yourself a boyfriend that kicks and scratches. You’re going to be alone on Artes the way you were when I went looking for you in ’76. Remember?”

  I remembered.

  “I said a boyfriend because if I catch you with a little lady reporter, I’m coming down from Los Angeles to chop off your prick.”

  “I agree.”

  Comandante Cuevas stepped into the waiting room where we were and said, “They’re boarding, sir.”

  “It’s time, ma’am,” I told her.

  “Goodbye, Negro.” Once again she caressed my cheek. Her hands were warm now. She looked at me a moment, then added, “I’m coming back, just like I did before.”

  I kissed her lightly but just firmly enough for the flavor of her lipstick to permeate my mouth.

  “I’m uneasy about the children,” Doña Lila said on the way back. “I get the shivers, I just don’t know.”

  “They’ll be all right,” I told her.

  “You’ll be on the loose and surrounded by pussy, but the children… May God watch over them.”

  “So long as their mother watches over them,” I said.

  “Doña Ana has her mind on everything except her children. I can imagine the kind of protection they’ll get from someone who got mixed up with you.”

  “Are you coming to Artes or shall I leave you in the market?”

  “You’re changing the subject, but what I said goes.” Doña Lila stared out the car window. “The two of you should have let me raise them as good healthy Veracruzans in Tuxpan far from all these entanglements. Are you expecting company tonight?”

  “No.”

  “You’re at least letting a day go by?”

  “At least.”

  “The body makes its demands just the same. I’m not going to criticize you. You’d better leave me in the market.”

  I let not a day but several months go by before the reporter from El Sol again crossed the threshold of my apartment on Artes. I didn’t go to Los Angeles for Christmas as I’d promised, and my only communication with Anabela was two letters from Mercedes. Time passed in a sort of relaxed professional rush. I concentrated on my column. I updated and expanded my files and hired an assistant. I fell into an impersonal rhythm on the job with a full calendar, working breakfasts, lunches and dinners, and weekend excursions to different parts of the country where I’d discovered stories worth covering myself. I got results. Every day in the month of February 1980 I succeeded in offering a well documented exclusive of some sort. I was on a roll. In quick succession I disclosed ahead of any other medium PEMEX’s unilateral decision to boost crude exports without bothering to consult the economic cabinet, the emergence of a new far-right group in Guadalajara named Fuerza Nueva, the business ties that generated million-dollar earnings for the head of the Rural Credit Bank, the name of the top CIA operative in Mexico, a summary of a confidential U.S. State Department memo in opposition to Mexico’s Central American policy, the testimony of a chief of police fired for corruption, and the involvement of top Mexico City police authorities in the drug trade.