NINETY-ONE

FOR THE NEXT two days, the army of liberation ransacked the city, attacking and looting the homes and businesses of the Spanish. Allende had once again ridden into the crowds, slashing at his own troops with his sword, demanding that order be restored. Again, he failed, and this time I didn’t join him. The padre ordered the troops to pass over the homes of married Spanish, but didn’t curb the looting and celebrations. He understood the great passions that the Aztec victory had ignited. Allende and his officers, though brave and intelligent men for the most part, didn’t understand the indio. They expected them to act like trained soldiers.

¡Ay! If they had acted like trained soldiers, they would never have charged the granary fortress almost bare-handed. Over five hundred Spaniards had died in the attack. They took with them two thousand indios. The carnage was so great, a long trench was dug in a dry riverbed to accommodate the bodies. The indios had achieved victory not through military stratagems but through cojones and blood.

I was not a spiritual person or even a sensitive one. As I walked through the streets of Guanajuato, I thought about how the battle had affected me. Even after I fell from grace with my Spanish ancestry and lived as a lowly peon, I disrespected the Aztec blood in my veins. I had been raised to believe that a drop of that blood polluted my system and gave me the dreaded blood taint, a social and racial disease as repugnant to “people of quality” as the pox.

Seeing the peons as people who were innately subservient to the wearers of spurs, I had believed implicitly in the myth of their inferiority. But as I watched the way the peons had fought, bled, and died for liberty, I realized that the padre was right: that three centuries of oppression had left the lower classes morose and defeated but that a true leader could reawaken their courage and resolve. That person was the padre, of course. They loved, admired, and revered them. He believed in them. They in turn showed extreme courage under fire, charging the lethal volleys with crude weapons and bare hands. Some, like Diego, had given his life not just for the cause but for a friend.

Did I have the courage to die for a cause? In my entire life, no cause had inspired me to risk my life. These peons didn’t give up their lives for possessions or bedroom passions. They gave up their lives for a dream of freedom.

We’d all been baptized in blood and fire, and the images of what I witnessed haunted me.

Engrossed in my thoughts, I strolled past several of Allende’s officers, who were standing in the street, watching the indios’ rampage. One of them called the indios “filthy animals.” It was the same man who said that a pig dressed in silk was still a pig. Without thinking, I drove my steel-toed boot into his groin. Clutching his crotch, he dropped to his knees in sobbing genuflection. His two comrades reached for their swords.

“Touch those swords,” I told them, “and I will kill you all.”

Marina joined me, shaking her head. “You are the animal, not the indios.” She squeezed my arm. “But I know that was for Diego.”

“For all the Aztec warriors who fell today. A piece of land, food for their children, freedom from slavery, not to die in some Spaniard’s mine or under the hooves of a gachupine’s horse or under his coach or whip—that is all they wanted. And they died for the dream.”

She pretended to examine my skull. “Juan, a cannonball must have creased your head. This is not like you.”

“Woman, you have always misunderstood me.” I tapped my temple. “Don Juan de Zavala is not the mindless caballero you think him to be. Soon I will be reading books and writing poetry.”

I shook my head at the anarchy around us. People who wore rags before were parading around in silks. Indios were ransacking inns and pulquerías, looting stores, setting fires.

“It’s not good,” I said. “We’ve won the battle, but we’re losing the peace.”

“What do you mean?”

“The people of the city are hiding, even the common people. They’re terrified of the indios who were supposed to liberate them from the gachupines.”

“The anger of our army will subside in a while,” she said.

“Yes, but will the fears of the people of Guanajuato? Mark my words, Señorita Revolucionaria, we will see few volunteers from this great city. No regiments of trained soldiers, no criollos bringing muskets.”

“Then we will win the way it was done today: with the courage of our men.”

“They faced hundreds today. God protect us when they must face thousands of trained troops with cannons.”