The Uncomfortable Dead

by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

  At this point in time, the Russian has before him Elías Contreras, Investigation Commission of the EZLN. Elías is not talking; he’s just eating his tortilla.

  “Them fuckin gringos, they stole half our country in a war and then they persecuted Pancho Villa but couldn’t catch him, and now they’re tryin to steal the other half of the country with their fuckin transgenic hamburgers and hot dogs and radioactive waste.”

  The Russian went on preparing tortillas and Elías eating his.

  “Then the fuckin French deposed Don Juarito Juárez, who had really big cojones, not like this little prick who has his photo taken with Don Juarito’s picture behind him. But Don Juarito went into the resistance and he fucked the fuckin frogs. Then came the fuckin Japanese with their goddamn peanuts and their takechi and koyi and all their sweet food.”

  A bite by Elías into his tortilla.

  “Nothing doin, my friend. What did you say your name was on this mission? … Well, okay, Elías, Elías Contreras. El Sup probably gave you that last name. I used to know a guy called Contreras back in 1969, a bastard who cheated at dominos. He carried a marker and made spots on the tiles, and it was a mess because then you’d get two or three rounds and no wins.”

  Another bite out of Elías’s tortilla.

  “No, the Chinaman went to Mexico City. I think a relative of his died, I don’t rightly know. Goddamn Chinese. First they screw us with their Bruce Lee movies, then with their strange food, and now with their tools, which break at the first squeeze.”

  Next-to-last bite out of Elías’s tortilla.

  “So if you want to wait, be my guest. The Chechen will be coming in a while because she’s going to take these tortillas to the those Altermundista kids they’ve got in prison. They want to break them and castrate them and bring them into El Yunque, but with these tortillas I’m sending them, full of vitamins and minerals and hydrocarbons and all, they’ll be able to resist and nobody’11 be able to break them. Here comes the Chechen … So what’s happening, my beautiful Chechen? Mr. Elías here is looking for that goddamn Chinaman, cause he’s got a message from El Sup. I already told him the Chinaman isn’t around.”

  The girl the Russian called “the Chechen” to Elías: “Don’t you believe this goddamn Purépecha Indian Russian, my name is Azucena. He calls me the Chechen because he’s trying to start something with me and he figures it’ll be easier with a bit of geographic determinism, but he hasn’t got a chance. The Chinaman just returned from the capital and I’m off to see him right now. If you like, I can give you a lift.”

  The tortilla finished disappearing into Elías’s mouth, the napkin no more than a piece of greasy nostalgia.

  The Russian to Elías: “The thing is, this Chechen wants to get it on with an intellectual, and I keep telling her that I AM … but that I’m an organic intellectual and not a transgenic one.”

  The Russian to Azucena: “Don’t go getting lost again in the Glorieta de Minerva … and don’t eat the tortillas … and don’t give any to that goddamn Chinaman!”

  The Russian to Elías: “And if you run into El Sup, tell him to quit screwing around with his stories and his novel and just plain tell us outright how it all ends.”

  Azucena, with her bag of saved tortillas, and Elías Contreras got lost in the Glorieta de Minerva.

  “Watch your hands!” the Chechen said, irritated about being lost. Elías sneaked a peek at his hands and wiped them on his pants. It took them an hour to find their way out. They parked two blocks away from La Mutualista. “Just in case we’re being followed,” Azucena said. “I’ll go in first,” she added.

  Elías waited in the car. A while later Azucena returned. “He’s there. He’ll be waiting for you at the lockers,” she said. Elías didn’t know what lockers were. Azucena explained. “They’re like gray steel boxes with locks on them. There’s a mess of them in several rows. That’s where the Chinaman will be.”

  They said goodbye and Elías entered the public baths. Sitting on one of the benches facing the gray steel boxes with locks was Fuang Chu.

  The Chinese man said hello and asked how everyone was doing. Elías said okay, that he was on an Investigation Commission, and handed over the envelope. Fuang Chu opened it up, checked the documents, and noticed a picture.

  “So you guys are looking for this Morales too? Sounds like an epidemic. In Mexico City, I ran into a guy calling himself a detective who was also looking for him. I got a fax from some comrade who’s already dead. I met a guy named Morales when I was in prison. A real prick, he was. But he didn’t look like the one in the picture. I’ll write this all down for you.”

  While Fuang Chu wrote, Elías strolled down the aisles of lockers as if he were looking for something. On one of the lockers, behind an old poster announcing an event in honor of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán at the International Book Fair, there was a little piece of paper stuck on the metal. Elías read it and lit a cigarette, then returned to where Fuang Chu had finished writing.

  The Chinese man gave Elías the papers and the picture, shook his hand in farewell, and said, “You give my best to Moy. And if you run into El Sup, tell him to quit screwing around with his stories and novel and just plain tell us outright how it all ends.”

  A Hacker in the American Union

  Paris, Texas, U.S.A., December 2004. Natalia Reyes Colás, 100% Ñahñu Indian, wetbacked it over to the other side in 1944 when the Second World War was still going on. At the age of twenty, she married some meatball who she soon sent packing because he beat her. She recently turned seventy-five and has been an Internet junkie and ham operator for the last fifteen years. With a lot of reading and practice she became a skillful and respected web hacker, signing herself NatKingCole. Cruising the ether very late one night, she broke into a satellite electronic surveillance system known as Echelon, one she had been following for years. NatKingCole downloaded and decoded a message. Running it over in her mind, she thought: Damn Zapatistas, they just won’t keep still. Let’s give them a little hand and screw the hawks and the doves! She keyed in her own encoded message and attached a little present. A few more strokes and the Echelon transmission was amended. At the Medina Annex earth station, they received a nonsense message: Over in the fountain/the spout was in the middle/the stream first got real big/and then it got real little. The disconcerted operator ran the tape over and over again. The virus that would come to be known as Bitter Pozol slowly infiltrated the operating system and spread throughout the entire Echelon network. It took the experts three weeks to sweep the system clean of the complete works of Francisco Gabilondo Soler, alias Cri-Cri, whose ideological persuasion was not on file with the Central Intelligence Agency. To correct the “accident,” Bush had to reorganize his intelligence services, and the State Department issued a press release accusing Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden of cybernetic terrorism.

  NatKingCole, better known to the former migrant workers of Tlaxcala as Doña Natalia, turned off her computer, caressed her cat Eulalia, and said, “Well, what do you think? Have we earned some warm milk and cookies?”

  “Meow,” Eulalia answered.

  “Me too,” said Natalia Reyes Colís, neo-Zapatista of Paris, Texas, U.S.A., as she opened her refrigerator door.

  La Magdalena

  Sometimes even God makes mistakes. The other day, I was roaming around the Monument to the Revolution—that is, I was exploring the terrain, cause you gotta know which way to run when the thing (or the case) gets nasty. So I had spent some time in a little park called San Fernando, which is right there by the cemetery. And I stayed awhile facing the statue of General Vicente Guerrero, the one where they have the motto of the Zapatista National Liberation Army: Live for your country or die for freedom.

  Then it got a little late and I walked off down the street called Puente de Alvarado, and right there the police got me—that is, the Judiciales. They asked who am I and what am I doing and said that I should fork over what I had and a lot of other strange things, cause those
Judiciales talk real strange. So they were trying to push me into the police car, and then a girl comes over with a really, really short skirt and a tiny blouse—that is, she was practically naked even though it was cold. Then she talked to the Judiciales and they sort of let me go. And then she came over to where I was and we talked and she said her name was Magdalena and she asked where I was from cause I talked real different and, seeing as how she must be a good person cause she shooed the Judiciales away, I told her I was from Chiapas, so she asked me if I was one of those Zapatistas and I said I didn’t know what Zapatistas are, and she said I must be one cause real Zapatistas don’t go around saying they’re Zapatistas. So then she told me she had been in the Zapatista National Liberation Front, the FZLN, but she hardly didn’t have time to go to meetings and all, and then she started to explain how she wasn’t a she, but a he, and there I was not understanding much, and she picks up her skirt and I see plain as day that there was something under her bloomers making a big bump. So I asked how it was that she was a he but dressed like a she, and he/she explained that she’s really a woman but got born in the body of a man. And then she said that since there was no clients around that we could go up to her room, and when we were there he/she told me the whole story about how she needed to save money to have the operation to make her a woman’s body and that’s why she was street-walking, and I said I walked a lot of streets and she explained how street-walking was a kind of job to save money, and then she fell asleep. So I made myself as comfortable as I could in a corner with my jacket and a blanket Magdalena loaned me. But I didn’t hardly sleep at all cause I got to thinking how God makes mistakes, cause Magdalena, who is a woman, got put in the body of a man.

  The next day we had some coffee, but almost at noon cause Magdalena didn’t get up. And I started talking about the Zapatista struggle and about how we’re organized in the resistance towns, and she was real happy listening. But I didn’t say I was on an Investigation Commission or nothing, and she didn’t ask what I was doing in the Monster, that is, Mexico City. And I looked at her and thought she was a good woman, cause she was discreet and didn’t go around asking what a body was doing. And she said that if I had to, I could stay in her room however long I needed. So then I thanked her and I went out and bought her a bouquet of red roses and gave them to her, and I said that as soon as we win the war we were going to set up a hospital to put right everything that God got wrong. Well, right there she started crying, maybe cause nobody ever gave her flowers, and she went on crying for a while. And later she went out to do her street-walking and I went out to find that there place Belascoarán works at.

  Fragments of a Letter from Álvaro Delgado (reporter for the Mexican magazine Proceso), Addressed to Sup Marcos, Late 2004:

  There is definitely a connection between El Yunque in Mexico and at least one fascist organization in Spain known as Ciudad Católica. This organization remains loyal to the Franco program and is a hardline detractor of democracy.

  The founder of El Yunque, Ramón Plata Moreno (assassinated in 1979, allegedly due to the work of an inside informer), venerated José Antonio Primo de Rivera, leader of the Spanish phalanx. Aside from Spain, El Yunque maintains relations with ultrarightist organizations in France, Argentina, Brazil, and Peru. Everything about El Yunque smells of the obscurantism of the Middle Ages and the persecution of ideas.

  The Fox cabinet is packed with Yunque members. For example, Emilio Goicochea Luna (alias Jenofonte), private secretary to Fox (and national leader of the Boy Scouts); Guillermo Velasco Arzac, ideologue for Fox and Marta Sahagún; Ramón Muñoz Gutiérrez (alias Julio Vértiz), head of the President’s Office for Government Renovation, and along with Marta Sahagún, the real power behind the throne; Enrique Aranda Pedrosa, director of Notimex; Martín Huerta, federal secretary of Public Security; Alfredo Ling Altamirano (alias Daniel Austin), Institute of Access to Information; Luis Pazos, general director of Banobras and notorious for having misdirected federal funds to Jorge Serrano Limón’s Provida, a “pro-life” group.

  And the PAN is not far behind: Luis Felipe Bravo Mena (national president), Jorge Adame (senator), Manuel Espino Barrientos (general secretary), and Juan Romero Hicks (alias Agustín de Iturbide, present governor of Guanajuato), among others.

  It is not only MURO (University Movement for Renovation Orientation) that serves as a front for El Yunque. There are also organizations such as the Nationalist Integration Vanguard (VIN), Anticommunist University Front (FUA), Christian Movement Yes, National Council of Students (CNE), Comprehensive Human Development and Citizens Action (DHIAC), National Civic Women’s Association (ANCIFEM), National Pro-life Committee, Testimony and Hope Movement, Mexican Human Rights Commission, National Morality Alliance, In Favor of the Best, Citizens Coordination, Iberian-American Unifying Guard (GUIA)—just to mention a few. Father Maciel’s Legionnaires of Christ appeared at almost the same time, so there’s probably some connection.

  Although the right, like the left, is not a single, indivisible monolith (there are differences and even confrontations), the ultraright has real power in Mexico and is working to infiltrate every aspect of society—social, political, and cultural.

  I don’t know if there is any Morales in their structure, but the one thing you can be certain of is that El Yunque, also known as the Army of God, has a paramilitary structure and their indoctrination meetings are run with military discipline. One of their branches is called Crusaders of Christ the King. El Yunque has done everything possible to get close to the Army, though I don’t have any data linking them to the organization of paramilitary groups.

  I’m sending you my book, The Army of God: New Revelations on the Extreme Right in Mexico, published by Plaza y Janes. In it you will find thoroughly chilling facts.

  Piece of Cake

  You cannot live

  with a death inside

  you have to choose:

  hurl it far away

  like rotten fruit

  or be infected

  and die.

  That was how the deceased Digna Ochoa and the deceased Pável González began their communiqué. It was part of a poem by a lady who defended all of us screwed people, and her name was Alaide Foppa. The poem was called “Misfortune” and I knew that the communiqué was going to be released on January 6. Cause the thing is, one day I ran into this comrade Alakazam, who’s a magician—that is, he makes things appear and disappear and he knows what people are thinking. So this Alakazam gave me the message that I should go find the Chinaman, over where I already knew, and he gave me some papers so I’d show them to the Chinaman and he should tell me what he thought about them—that is, the Chinaman should tell me his thinking on it. So then I left for Guadalajara, but I didn’t go directly to where I knew the Chinaman was. No sir! I went first to find the Russian. So there I was, eating tortillas with the Russian, when this woman from Guadalajara comes up, I mean the female comrade named Azucena, the one who took me to see the Chinaman. Then I talked to the Chinaman and I showed him the papers and a picture El Sup sent me with Alakazam. And when the Chinaman was busy writing his thinking, I took a walk around to find something that had to do with Don Manolo—that is, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán—and I found a poster with his name on it, Don Manolo’s, I mean. So I felt around behind it and I found this piece of paper that said, The thing by the deceased appears on the epiphany; when you get the papers, go see the soda man. Now it was clear that on January 6 I was sposed to find the papers for the investigation that we were gonna do with the Belascoarán feller, although at that time I didn’t rightly know if he was gonna come in on it or if he was gonna shrivel up like a flower that can’t take the heat. So when I got back from Guadalajara, I went looking for his workplace—his office, I mean—over where that little card said, the one I got from Mamá Piedra, Doña Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, that is. I already had some kind of idea what this Belascoarán was like, cause the Chinaman told me about him, so I went to that street called Donato Guerra and I played th
e dummy awhile to check if Belascoarán was being watched and to see if he even showed up. It was real late when this feller went into one of the buildings, all loaded down with Coca-Cola bottles. Now I knew right away it was Belascoarán, cause he only had one eye, and besides that, he had a leg that didn’t work too good either. But I stood around awhile cause I says to myself, what if there’s a few one-eyed gimps on Donato Guerra Street, near the corner of Bucareli, over in the Monster. Finally, I figgered there was only one of them and that it had to be that Belascoarán, cause he had one eye and a limp and that’s the way the Chinaman said he was. Besides that, he was loaded with Cokes and that musta been why El Sup called him the soda man. So let me tell you that this Belascoarán was about as old as me—as old as me, that is, before I was deceased, which means that he must be around fifty years old going on sixty. Then I got to thinking how what with being crippled in the eye and in the leg, he was real easy to peg. And then I thought that I had to see him in someplace with a lot of people, cause with so many people maybe he wouldn’t stand out so much. So I figger he sleeps there—in the office, I mean—cause I left there real late and he never came out.

  Then the next day I was on him at the crack of dawn, and I had to wait till about noon before he came out so’s I could slip into the building. Inside, I climbed the stairs looking to find the workplace and ran across a door with a sign that said:

  Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, Detective