In May 1977, the national desks at newspapers began receiving lists of possible candidates for mayoral elections around the country, including the 207 in Vera Cruz. Rojano’s name didn’t show up, but I took the liberty of calling him a shoo-in for mayor of Chicontepec. The following day I underlined his name and sent the clip to Pizarro with a note saying, “He wasn’t on any of the lists. I put him in on the basis of our conversation. Is that right or has there been a change?” Days later, on a Friday, a messenger showed up with the answer, “It will be Rojano, as we said. Almost all the rest of your list is wrong.” There followed a city-by-city line-up of PRI candidates in the northern part of the state. In closing, Pizarro wrote, “It doesn’t matter how you sound. What counts is what you do. It’s like a horse race, there’s no such thing as a bad start if you’re ahead at the finish.”
I looked for Rojano in Xalapa, but he was out of town. I found him in Vera Cruz.
“You’re confirmed by your godfather in Poza Rica,” I said. “Just like we said in March.”
“You called him?” Rojano’s voice was full of excitement.
“I have it in writing.”
“Then it’s a done deal?”
“It’s a written promise. But if you want my opinion, I hope it gets broken.”
“It’s our only chance,” Rojano insisted heatedly.
I had the impression he wasn’t exactly talking about his feud with Pizarro.
“You’re the one who discovered Pizarro, remember?” I said.
“Exactly, brother. That’s what I mean. It’s our only chance to stop him.”
“How are your kids?” I changed the subject on purpose.
My question wasn’t exactly about his kids either.
“Fine,” Rojano said. “Anabela left for Mexico City this afternoon. She has a bunch of people to see. Check with her for the latest details. She’s staying at the Hotel Regis. Tell her the news, and see if you can arrange to be here for the candidates’ coming out. If you can swing it, take her to the Museum of Modern Art like you did the last time. She loved the Toledo iguanas.” I understood that the purpose of Anabela’s trip was to make sure my agreement with Rojano stayed on track. Could there have been any other reason for her previous visit? The idea that Rojano and Anabela might be working as a team cast her in a different light, an unpleasant and entirely new one in my eyes. Still, it wasn’t that much of a change. Simply put, she remained his stalwart supporter, his messenger, and his public relations agent. Or, to be simpler still and even more blunt, his partner.
I didn’t call the hotel. I waited for her to come to me. Despite what Rojano said, I was certain that I was the only reason for her trip, the one contact in a position to serve their purposes in Mexico City. She neither called nor came to see me that Friday, but on Saturday she made her presence felt via a taxi driver who delivered a blue envelope with the first message from Anabela. “If you know I’m here, why are you being so stubborn and refusing to come?” I paid the taxi driver to go back and tell her there was no one home. That night another blue message arrived. “If the mountain won’t go to Mohamed, then Mohamed’s going to the Champs-Elysées tomorrow, Sunday, at three. Then we’ll go where you want.”
She really did go to the Champs-Elysées at three, but the restaurant didn’t open Sundays. She was forced to wait nearly an hour. First she stood on the corner, then she strolled up and down the tree-lined sidewalk on Reforma. Later she took a seat on a bench near the restaurant, keeping constant watch on the entrance. I observed her from the car for nearly the whole hour. She was less than at ease in the city, and I liked watching her grapple with uncertainty. She was tall, lithe, and a sight to see as she negotiated the red tiles of the sun-dappled sidewalk. She still wore her hair short, like Mia Farrow, as she had at university. She was wearing dark stockings and high heels. A jumble of necklaces cascaded down her chest. At certain points along the sidewalk the sun shone through her light dress and thin shawl revealing the fullness of her legs and the upright silhouette of her breasts. When she looked about to leave, I drew nearer by a half block and, while staying in my car, sounded the horn. She trotted happily towards the car, her hips and shoulders swinging with childlike enthusiasm. She was a couple of kilos lighter. Her face had thinned out, and her features, though sharper, showed no sign of fatigue. She looked as if she’d slept peacefully for days, as if long rest had cleared and even refreshed her complexion.
“You owe me one, Negro,” she said as she got in the car. “I should have known those French queers don’t work Sundays. That’s why they came to Indian country, right? To goof off, as they say on the street. So let’s see where you take me now because I’m dying of hunger. And you owe me one. You could’ve told me, you creep. Couldn’t you? What are you laughing at?”
“I’m taking you to a place called the Virgins’ Hideaway.”
“God help us, why?”
“Because that’s where they all lose it.”
“So how many rooms do they have?”
“How many virgins are there?”
“You mean they don’t have any rooms? You’re just dragging me into the woods? Don’t laugh. What are you laughing at?”
I went up to the Palo Alto Motel on the road to Toluca where I requested a suite, a meal, and two cold bottles of French Chablis. However, their only Chablis was from Hidalgo, not France. We had a drink at the bar, then went to the suite. We had fresh asparagus, hearts of palm, and shrimp sautéed in garlic butter. We drank all of one bottle and half of the other before making love or something, based on the pats and gestures, quite similar, once around 5 pm and after about 5:30. We fell asleep briefly, then left the place at 7:00. Night had already fallen, and the highway was choked with a long line of cars returning to the city. We fell silent, and Anabela turned on the radio. At 8:00 I parked the car in front of the Hotel Regis. “Where do you have the information?” I asked.
I’d have liked it if the question surprised her. It would have been nice not to be so blatant about her role as a messenger, but she replied with utter nonchalance.
“Here in my bag.”
Then she added, “The bar here is quite pleasant. Why don’t you come in for a drink?”
“I’ve got to go to the paper.”
“After the paper then.”
“It depends on the time, but I doubt it.”
“All right. Marc Antonio and Cleopatra saw even less of each other.”
She handed me a wad of papers. Folded in half, they had all but filled her woven Huichol handbag.
I gave her photocopies of my column, my message to Pizarro, and his reply. We kissed, she got out, and I went to my apartment on Artes to read the papers she’d given me. They turned out to be a lengthy memo from the PEMEX Office of Projects and Engineering to the Office of the Director General. It outlined an immense federally subsidized project to be centered around a prehistoric waterway near Chicontepec called the paleocanal. According to the memo, the area’s potential oil reserves equaled the sum of all prior discoveries in the country put together. Under the planned project, Chicontepec would within four years become the biggest oil and petrochemical complex in the Americas and one of the biggest in the world. It would be surpassed only by Kuwait’s facilities on the Persian Gulf and the ones then becoming operational in the North Sea. The project called for phase one investments totalling 1.5 billion pesos beginning in 1978; 5 billion in stage two from 1979 to 1981; then 12 billion in phase three after 1981. Pumping an expected 10 billion barrels of light crude would require the building of a complete system of primary and secondary petrochemical refineries and processing plants. Four instant cities of 80,000 each would spring up, and local farming and cattle-raising capabilities would undergo major expansion in order to feed this new demographic. All that. And right on time to make Francisco Rojano Gutiérrez’s craziest dreams of riding the crest of the wave to wealth and power come true.
Doña Lila came in at ten and proceeded to fix herself a late-night snack. Looking pale with her hair somewhat uncombed, she sized up her current state by muttering to herself. “You look like a rooftop cat. You’re never satisfied till you’re scratched bare.”
She made me sandwiches, and I turned on the television to watch the Channel 13 news, then anchored by Verónica Rascón. About 11:00 someone knocked. “I want to sleep with you,” Anabela said when I opened the door.
I gave her a vodka and tonic and one of the sandwiches Doña Lila made, and we finished watching the news. She removed her makeup, donned a transparent nightgown, and clipped a toenail. We carried on a conversation with the television still on just like a married couple. Later we made love until very late as if we hadn’t seen each other for a long time. In the early morning, half asleep with our arms intertwined, I wondered if this was her way of celebrating the victory my photocopies confirmed for Rojano.
Doña Lila woke us up by opening the curtains and shouting that the whole apartment smelled like sin. “This is going to take papal absolution,” she said as she approached the bed with a tray of orange juice and coffee. “It looks like every jot and tittle of the sixth commandment has been broken here.”
She stopped to watch Anabela sip her coffee. Though still sleepy, she looked fresh and relaxed. Doña Lila paused in the doorway on her way back to the kitchen. “Blessed child,” she said. “You can tell me later what disgrace brought you to this den of iniquity because this is the first time I’ve seen the man you’re in bed with wake up next to a woman who wears shoes.”
We bathed, drank the juice, and then ate the breakfast Doña Lila prepared for us. I’d already gotten to the coffee when I looked up from the newspapers I was going over and found Anabela looking at me over the rim of her cup. She was sitting perfectly straight with her elbows on the table. She’d put on a long-sleeved blouse with frills at the wrists and neckline and small pearl earrings. A very thin film of makeup redefined her eyebrows and lashes. She’d dusted shadows onto her eyelids as wide as her mocking eyes. She blew on the coffee before drinking it, holding the cup at the height of her lips.
“So how many hectares did you inherit in Chicontepec?” I asked.
She sipped her coffee and waited a moment before answering.
“From the widow Martín?”
“From my grandaunt, yes.”
“And that makes how many hectares that you own in Chicontepec?”
“I told you everything I inherited.”
“But how many do you have?”
“Maybe another fifty.”
“According to my sources, you have around two-hundred-fifty more”
She took another sip.
“About that, three hundred or so in all.”
“Four hundred in all.”
“Yes, more or less.”
“And how many does Rojano have?”
“So far as I know, the farm at El Canelo, about a hundred hectares,”
“And that you don’t know about?”
She finished her coffee and poured herself more.
“I don’t know. Probably another sixty.”
“Another three hundred, according to my sources.”
“That could be,” Anabela said. “Why the interrogation?”
“For information purposes only.”
“Well, I feel like Mata Hari in the clutches of the Gestapo.”
“Don’t feel that way. Does El Canelo share a boundary with your lands?”
“Partly.”
“Which part?”
“All of it except a twenty-eight-hectare wedge that belonged to my Uncle Arvizu, the one who was shot in Huejutla.”
“Executed by Pizarro, according to Rojano.”
“Yes.”
“It’s in litigation.”
“With whom?”
“With Local 35 of the oil workers’ union.”
“The local headquartered in Poza Rica?”
“Yes.”
“Then with Pizarro?”
“Well, yes.”
“So why do you want those other twenty-five hectares if you already have eight hundred?
“I know nothing about that, Negro, so stop pestering me. Get Rojano to explain it to you.”
“I’m asking you. You’re the one who interests me, not Rojano.”
She stood up and began walking in circles as she spoke.
“There’s a spring on those twenty-five hectares. It’s the main source of the Calaboso River.”
“And?”
“I’m telling you I don’t really understand. But having that spring is the difference between irrigating those lands or not. Otherwise, watering them would cost a fortune.”
“But you two are supposed to be getting another fortune.”
“Don’t play games, Negro. You’re making me very nervous. Feel how cold my hands are.”
She lay a hand on my neck. It really was cold, but no colder than they’d been one night ten years before, because Anabela was a woman with cold hands.
“You’re going to rule the municipality that gets the most federal money during this administration.”
“That’s enough, Negro. You don’t know the area. It’s an inferno without a single passable road. Going there is a punishment, not a reward. But it’s all Ro was able to get. Don’t you understand that?”
“Which is why you’re so critical of him?”
“All I want to do is live in peace and preserve my children’s inheritance.”
“And you look down on Rojano because he failed as a politician?”
She was in the sala when she spun around towards me, clearly a bit out of sorts. Though furious, she maintained her self-control.
“Rojano’s just beginning, Negro. Don’t talk about failure. You know about politics, about the ups and downs. It’s like a wheel of fortune. Who was José López Portillo six years ago? He was an out-of-work loser who played his cards wrong. And now he’s president of the republic. What’s political failure? It’s an excuse for small-minded people. A real politician never fails. He’s always in the game. It’s a wheel of fortune, and the most important thing is never to let go. Sometimes you’re up, sometimes down. But that’s not what’s important. The important thing is to keep spinning the wheel, to hang on and not let go, damn it. Not let go.”
She was standing in the middle of the apartment’s huge sala with her clenched fists pressed to her body. “And not let go,” she repeated with fierce conviction.
I thought I understood where the motor was that drove Rojano.
The following week, PEMEX director Jorge Díaz Serrano attended the regular Wednesday lunch meeting of the Ateneo de Angangueo, one of the most popular political discussion groups during the López Portillo years. Every Wednesday a senior government official—on several occasions the President himself—showed up for these sessions to talk about current events with columnists and writers. Since a regular member of the group was going to be absent, I was invited to the luncheon with Díaz Serrano on June 17, 1977, in the gray months preceding what would become the Mexican oil boom. All the talk in political circles—among reporters, government officials, business and labor leaders—was glum, focusing on austerity and crisis, the country’s disastrous financial situation, the breakdown in productivity, lagging investments, waning confidence, etcetera.
The first surprise was that everything Jorge Díaz Serrano had to say was just the opposite of glum. He spoke of an end to poverty in Mexico, the dawn of an historic new opportunity for the country to confront its incredible backwardness with regards to basic necessities, income distribution, and the general welfare. Oil, Díaz Serrano said, had the potential to reverse once and for all the low rate of domestic investment that was the number one determinant of our underdevelopment.
Mexico, whose colonial rulers squandered its mining wealth in the 17th and 18th centuries, was getting a second chance. In the austere and melancholy 1970s, Mexico could look forward to the possibility of controlling its own destiny, thanks to resources to be extracted directly and indisputably from beneath its own territory. These resources belonged to the Mexican people, according to the country’s noblest political tradition, national control of the oil industry.
Díaz Serrano was a man of limited eloquence, tall, lean, and healthy looking despite going gray. His heated insistence that Mexicans lived atop riches as yet to be explored was contagious. By the year 2000, he said, this resource of mythic proportions would bring economic development and justice to Mexico. There was something touching about the simplicity and ingenuousness of his optimism. Instead of our traditional resignation to the idea of an unproductive Mexico doomed to failure, mediocrity, and exploitation by foreigners, Díaz Serrano spoke of a country on which nature was about to bestow a brilliant future. It was a speech that sought unabashedly to convert, to be both profoundly and superficially flattering to all of us by putting a charge of positive energy into the idea of national pride. It offered real hope that we could overcome the kind of defensive nationalism born of resentment and jealousy. It evoked visions of collective euphoria and an achievable utopia; of a rich, sovereign and desirable Mexico no longer crippled by the brutal deformities of its past; a new, noble, and generous country like the one we’d always believed in and longed for; a great country worthy of our nationalism and hitherto unrequited love.
I took advantage of the occasion to ask about plans to invest in Chicontepec, and Díaz Serrano confirmed that there were such plans. I followed up immediately by asking if he knew Lázaro Pizarro. He nodded. I then asked about his corps of escorts and bodyguards and his strong-arm approach to leadership.
“He’s a solid, longtime oil worker,” Díaz Serrano replied. “He started at the bottom with PEMEX when he was a kid. He’s a master welder who will be entitled to a generous pension when he retires. He’s a born organizer and leader. Go to Poza Rica and take a good close look at him. I challenge you to show me a single enemy of Lacho Pizarro’s anywhere in his area.”
“I’ve been in his area,” I said. “Everybody loves him, and everybody’s afraid of him.”
“That may be. But we don’t work with saints or devils, we work with flesh and blood human beings. We didn’t elect them. They were there when we arrived. And I can tell you that, whatever their defects, Mexico’s oil workers are an even greater source of wealth than the oil itself.”
“They say the machinery is very expensive to lubricate,” Manuel Buendía broke in. He was Mexico’s most widely read columnist until he was shot from behind and killed on May 30, 1984. His remark alluded to the fact that the union was notoriously corrupt. “Petróleos Mexicanos reputedly spends millions of pesos to keep those gears well oiled. How much do those exemplary leaders cost you, sir?”
Though somewhat annoyed, Díaz Serrano answered with a smile.
“That may be so, Manuel. I don’t deny that there may be something to what you say. But I came here to talk about the good news from PEMEX, about its greatness, which is what matters to me, and not the deficiencies that are never in short supply anywhere. What you’re unlikely to find elsewhere in this or in many other countries is what oil can give Mexico, a doorway to enter the 21st century as a strong country, as a major player on the world stage.”
In mid August, Rojano was named the PRI candidate for mayor of Chicontepec. He took the candidate’s oath in an auditorium in the port of Veracruz. He appeared the following day on the front page of El Dictamen with his hand raised and with an ascetic pair of glasses he didn’t need. He looked very focused and stern. My telegram read, “Congratulations. Excellent step towards greatness and disaster.”
That night he was on the phone to me. “Brother, you have to come. You can’t leave me alone now.”
“How are the kids?” I asked.
“Anabela’s pleased,” Rojano answered. “She wants you to come. We want you here. The governor didn’t know we were friends. He wants to speak with you too.”
“And what does your godfather say?”
“Pizarro was at the ceremony. He’s very supportive.”
“I’m pleased for the children of Veracruz. But don’t forget you’re a bantamweight, and your godfather’s a heavyweight.”
“In politics weight is relative, brother. What counts is being able to seize the moment, the opportunity.” Rojano sounded triumphant and sure of his future. “Just a minute. Anabela wants to speak to you.”
There was a moment of silence broken by the voice of Anabela. “Negro?”
“How’s the land baroness?”
“Very happy, Negro. Are you coming to celebrate?”
I did not go celebrate. Rojano won the election unopposed (“electoral legitimacy is basic, brother”). Thanks to the local Indian population, which abstained, not a single vote was cast against him. The swearing-in took place in mid-September. There was no paved highway to Chicontepec, which lay a hundred kilometers from Poza Rica over a dirt road that was not always passable. It turned to mud in the rain and was susceptible to washout where rivers and streams crossed the right of way. Lázaro Pizarro organized a small convoy of three vans, a bus with four-wheel drive, and portable winches. The logos of the PRI and the oil workers unions adorned the doors of each vehicle and all the tents. A jeepload of Pizarro’s guards headed the convoy, followed by the van with Rojano and members of the PRI. Then came a second van with a group of Chicontepec notables who had traveled to Poza Rica in order to accompany Rojano to his swearing in. Anabela, Pizarro’s Little Darling, his aide Roibal, Pizarro, two bodyguards, and I climbed into the third van. Behind the vans a special bus carried 50 male and female oil workers who were along to enliven the political ceremony with cowbells and cheers. Bringing up the rear was another jeep with four more guards. The campaign tents were folded and stowed in two of the vans and the bus.
On September 18, 1977, this outlandish safari set out from Poza Rica as if for a trip to the moon. Pizarro sat in front with Little Darling between him and the driver. Anabela and I occupied the middle bench with Roibal and the bodyguards in back. We made good time until we passed the pyramids and left the pavement on the dirt road to Alamo, the same route I’d taken with Pizarro in March to visit La Mesopotamia. It had rained torrents the day before, and the road was largely mud except for the long stretches of flooding that had to be negotiated at a crawl. The Vinazco River, whose tributaries bordered La Mesopotamia, was on the rise. A fleet of tractors and dredges was hard at work trying to open a drainage channel. We followed the river, then started towards the northeast foothills as they climbed towards the Sierra Madre. The jagged mountaintops rose through blue haze and clouds in the distance. The volcanic accidents that built them had also produced the fertile tablelands and valleys where rivers flowed and springs bubbled incessantly out of the ground.
“The peaks you see over there are the seven peaks of Chicontepec,” Pizarro said without turning around. “Around here the Indians speak of the will of the seven peaks. For them seven is a sign of bad things to come. It’s the dark side, as they say, because cold winds blow down from those heights bringing storms and lightning.”
“I like thunder,” said Little Darling.
“The Indians say the seven hills of Chicontepec unite heaven and earth,” Pizarro went on expressionlessly, “and that the forces of evil pour down those rock columns.” He laughed. “It’s a land full of superstitions. There are ghosts and the evil eye and practicing witch doctors.”
“My grandaunt used to talk about these things,” Anabela said, channeling her memory of the widow executed in Altotonga.
“Your grandaunt Martín?” Pizarro said, countering the allusion. “I’m willing to bet she didn’t know the story of the light of the plain.”
“She knew all the stories,” Anabela stated. “She grew up learning these things, and the poor old lady believed what she heard.”
“Extra poor if she died unloved,” said Little Darling.
“Did your grandmother tell you about the light of the plain?” Pizarro insisted.
“According to my grandmother and her sister, the light of the plain foretold the death of my grandaunt’s husband.”
“All I heard was that it told fortunes,” Pizarro said.
“Well, my grandmother told the story about her sister,” Anabela continued. “Her husband was killed in a land dispute here in Altotonga. And it was the light of the plain that gave her the news. It came spinning and whistling into the corral, and when it left, a colt lay dead. A bat was clinging to the back of its neck, and it was bleeding from the ribs. There was also blood coming from the print left by its shoe. It was her husband’s favorite colt, so she said ‘they killed Juan Gilberto’. And the following day, she learned it was true. The light had appeared just at the moment he was shot.”
“From then on she must have lived without love,” Little Darling said, embracing Pizarro.
“The light of the plain only discovers treasure,” said Roibal, who rarely said anything.
“Your grandmother didn’t tell you the tale of the giants, did she?” Pizarro said.
“No, she didn’t,” Anabela said.
“They got what was coming to them,” Pizarro said ominously. “The Indians say giants once lived around here, and they discovered fire. They decided to dispense with the sun and tried to light up the moon instead by hurling balls of fire at it. The spots you see on the moon when the sky is clear are from the impacts. The gods retaliated with a lightning bolt that incinerated everything. The giants’ burnt blood became the oil and tar deposits you see all over these parts. The whole region seethes with the anger of the vanquished giants, especially in Chicontepec from where it is said the giants could reach the sky.”
A flock of chachalacas flew up from a marsh, then we passed a tar pit where ten men were tugging on ropes. They were trying to free a pinto cow that had sunk up to its belly in the black muck. It was submerged head and all in the swamp with only the curves of its dappled haunches sticking up. Pizarro took advantage of the scene to remark, “If horseflies and hoof infections don’t get them, then the tar pit does. One minute they’re grazing, the next they’re mired in the swamp with no idea how they got stuck. As they struggle to climb out, they put their heads in the oil and start to swallow it. They thrash desperately about until finally they’re upside down. And all because they got into something they should have stayed out of. Sing us something, Cielito.”
On command, Little Darling broke into song.
Praise God for letting me have you in life
so I don’t need to go to heaven, my love.
All the glory I need is you.
She proceeded to run through a repertory of border corridos and forlorn love songs that lasted nearly the rest of the way.
We arrived around three following two stops to haul the bus out of the mud with the help of the portable winches and the traction of the vans. Chicontepec barely passed for a town. It was more a jumble of rock-walled barrios. The paths snaking through them were lined with huts made of reeds and palm fronds for roofs. Each hut had its own ragged orchard and a small patch of corn to feed its occupants.
Tattered PRI party banners were draped over the rock walls along with some freshly printed posters with Rojano’s picture on them. A misspelled cardboard sign read: Wellcum Mayor Rojano Gutierres. Clusters of onlookers—kids with bright eyes and bare feet, women with market baskets—watched the convoy go by. We wound past the huts for another half kilometer before coming to a wide cobblestone lane where the stone houses had corrugated zinc and tile roofs. Here the music and civic jubilation began. Everyone in the small crowd that greeted us had a placard or hand flag to wave to the frenetic beat of a string band playing out of tune. A small man with a loudspeaker orchestrated the cheers and gave uninhibited voice to the emotion stirring the citizens of Chicontepec de Tejeda on this banner day.
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 perch 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.