Lucia Zarate

By Cecilia Velástegui, M.S. Ed.

Lucia Zárate is based on the poignant, real-life odyssey of the world's smallest woman. Pretty and gregarious, Lucia Zárate was just twenty inches tall. A celebrity after her 'display' at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial International Exhibition, Lucia's extraordinary, heartbreaking story is one of exploitation by greedy sideshow hucksters and a fishbowl existence on the road, from New York to Victorian London. We follow the adventures of diminutive Lucia Zárate and her devoted governess as they grapple with life and death, finding joy and adventure in their bumpy sideshow journey of more than fourteen years. This is an artfully balanced novel that is a mesmerizing tale of survival, resilience, and the uplifting force of friendship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Libros Publishing Llc
• Release date: Jun 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9780998703107

Book preview

265.

The day Zoila ran away, all she carried was a vial of Felipe’s blood.

That day, the usual fragrant bouquet of vanilla did not waft across the foggy hillsides. The chronic buzzing of the Melipona bees that pollinated the vanilla orchids was eerily absent. Even the raucous black crows—for which the town of Papantla was named—were hiding mutely among the thin, yet incredibly profitable, vanilla-orchid vines.

But Zoila’s whimpers and the internal cranking and thumping of her own clockwork-like brain seemed to fill the thick tropical air with dread. She trudged downhill across the muddy and uneven terrain, panting and struggling to keep her balance. She was attempting to wind her gears of reason and logic, to find a logical solution to her predicament—but in Zoila’s state of panic and despair, the gears in her mind weren’t working. Papantla had been her only home, her own balmy Melipona beehive, but now she had no choice but to flee.

Although Zoila knew every corner of this vanilla-growing region of Mexico, she had no plans to hide anywhere near Paplanta: she had to run as far away as possible. Even the port city of Veracruz, more than a hundred miles away on the Gulf of Mexico, didn’t seem far enough. It was all her father’s fault. Zoila had always known that her itinerant vanilla-trader father was a wily interpreter and a shady government ombudsman, but this time she’d been blind-sided by the extent of his double-dealing.

When her father died a few months earlier, in January of 1876, Zoila had discovered that he owed money to everyone in town. He’d pretended to have high-level government connections, and promised foreign arrivals that—with a bribe, of course—they would be awarded hectares of state land. The bribes traveled no further than his own pockets, and none of the hopeful foreign growers got a single piece of land. So nobody respected her mourning: instead, each and every lender couldn’t wait to accost her and threaten to collect payment from her, one way or another.

But what stung Zoila the most was her father’s betrayal of the ethics of language interpretation. Ever since her childhood, when he began teaching her several languages, he insisted that anyone who wanted to be a well-respected interpreter must exhibit ethical behavior and possess knowledge of each language’s culture. Zoila, he often said, must adhere to these rules because he was teaching her life-long linguistic skills few men possessed. He never tired of reminding her of this: that he was bestowing upon her a unique talent—especially for a young Mexican woman.

All you have in this sorry world are your quick mind and your knowledge of languages, he used to remind her, giving her a thump to the back of her head if he was in a generous mood. So pay attention to everything I say.

When he was drunk, which was often, he’d slap her wide backside.

No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t find you a husband, could we? he’d say, erupting into roars of laughter. "Couldn’t even charm that scrawny French widower, n’est-ce pas?

Then her father would slobber on her plump shoulder and wink at her with his rheumy grey eyes. Zoila pretended she didn’t care, that she didn’t mind if she wasn’t the prettiest girl in Papantla, or the most slender and delicate. By the time she turned twenty-five, not long before her father’s death, she’d reconciled herself to never finding a husband.

One morning, guilty and hungover, he apologized in his usual boastful way.

I’m sorry, Zoila, but don’t worry–when I die you’ll be glad that I made you the finest interpreter of English, French, and Italian.

"And don’t forget that I also speak the Totonac language, papá," Zoila reminded him, just as proud as her father: the fruit didn’t fall far from the tree. She wasn’t pretty, but she knew she was clever and quick to learn.

Well, yes. I suppose that could be useful, her father agreed, "but the Totonacos don’t own the land where the vanilla grows. If there is no compensation for us, no mordida, no tiny morsel of payback—"

"Surely you don’t mean to take a bribe, do you, papá?

The wheels of progress require greasing, you silly girl He thumped her forehead to knock some sense into her.

I’m just saying that we won’t be interacting with the Totonacos as much in the future, will we? He rubbed the palms of his hands together, as if shaking out days-old tortilla crumbs onto the floor.

But Felipe and his mother have spoken to me in Totonac since I was a child, Zoila protested. And they say that the land and the vanilla vines belonged to their people since before the Spanish arrived in Mexico. That was hundreds of years ago.

Her words fell on deaf ears. Her father never listened to her. He regarded Felipe as Zoila’s one-time childhood playmate, and his mother as a reliable sitter, nothing more. To Zoila, Felipe was like an older brother. He’d shown her how to use the remedies found in nature, and also how to defend herself. He helped her to see the invisible and benign beings guiding them, and he showed her how to sniff out danger. Sometimes, to test her reactions, Felipe would leap out at her when she least expected it, delighted when Zoila flipped him over her back and pinned him to on the ground with her hefty body.

You’re the strongest of us all, he’d tell her, clambering to his feet and shaking his head in admiration.

To Zoila’s father, Felipe was a nobody. He had bigger fish to fry, more important men to manipulate. He changed into a less-stained linen shirt and left their rented room, in a hurry to get to town to wheel and deal with friend and foe alike. He wanted to take full advantage of everyone before the vanilla beans were harvested and the real price-gouging and backstabbing began in earnest.

The machinations of Papantla’s lucrative vanilla trade confused all its participants. No one truly grasped the precise quantity of vanilla beans that were picked, let alone the back-room deals already made for stolen pods—not even Zoila’s father. But still, he huddled in the secret meetings between the Italian and French immigrants who had elbowed their way into the business. His role was to arrange opportune marriages with the daughters of Mexican owners of the vanilla-curing houses, painting a vivid, colorful picture of how the local owners could expand their foreign vanilla trade through alliances with these new immigrants. His multi-lingual gift of the gab was legendary —and venomous.

The Totonac growers trusted no one, not even Zoila. They were astute in this regard, for Zoila’s job was one of interpreting subterfuge. Her father forced her to eavesdrop on Totonac conversations, so she could pass on any juicy pieces of information. Once she revealed their secrets to her father, he would devise a way to twist the Totonacs’ words and get the upper hand in business dealings.

Everyone in the vanilla trade in Papantla was a hypocrite. They all questioned and argued over the correct ownership of the vines, but really they knew full well that the Totonac people were the ones who owned the land. The Totonacs had given this precious gift to the world through the calculating hands of the Spanish crown, back in the 1520s. The Totonac called vanilla caxixanath, hidden flower, but the Spanish named it vainilla, or small pod. Hence the species, vanilla planifonia, that very same ambrosia that everyone now coveted and fought over. The true reason Zoila had been chased out of her paradise, mistrusted and rejected for simply being her father’s daughter.

Because of this dark seed of corruption and greed, the treasured vanilla pods would always be tainted with malfeasance. At the beginning of every year, vanilla rustlers stole the still-unripe beans and sold them to the curing house owners. More ominously, these same rustlers were frequently found murdered—and stripped of their soon-to-be aromatic loot—before they arrived in town. This irony was not lost on anyone. The conundrum of the fragrant vanilla was that the ripe beans stunk of nothing more than moist soil. They were a pungent reminder to the greedy that tropical soil doesn’t make anyone salivate with tasty anticipation. In fact, the enigma of vanilla is that it hoards its own scent, its very essence, and makes humans work hard to extract its aura. It knows that people are desperate to make a killing in the vanilla trade, so it forces them to kill the vanilla beans with heat before the pods release their very marrow, their soul—their liquid-amber gold.

Zoila picked up her pace, scrambling down the steep hill side, conscious of the vial of blood pressing against her stained blouse. Her face was twisted with pain—pain at the memory of her father’s behavior. His actions had been a total contradiction of his most-beloved dictum that an interpreter always behaves ethically. In fact, as Zoila had discovered, his behavior with the entire community—the Totonac people, the Mexican vanilla-curing houses, the newly arrived French and Italian vanilla growers and merchants, and the ubiquitous American traders—had resulted in a Tower of Babel free-for-all after his death. Not one single person or company involved in the vanilla trade trusted what her father had said on its behalf to the other parties, so after his death they all retaliated with impunity. Allegations of vanilla rustling, price-gouging and price-fixing torpedoed throughout Paplanta and caused suspicion and conflict in every enclave.

Hushed treachery saturated the town like the region’s humid mist. The Totonac people understood its message and decided to perform their ancient flying ritual, appealing to the gods for harmony. The men climbed up the one-hundred-foot pole to perform their symbolic dance, the dance of the flyers that represented the elements of earth, air, fire and water. They circled high above the people watching below, each flyer attached to the top of the pole by a single rope, offering up a prayer to the sun and rain deities. Four of the men, known as the birdmen, wore bright red, ribbons and mirrors dangling from their costumes, their chests draped with embroidered cloths that symbolized lifeblood. The flying birdmen prayed fervently for the well-being of the people and for an abundant vanilla crop, and then launched themselves from the top of the pole to begin their descent.

Zoila wasn’t there to see this ceremony, even though the fifth man in the group, the leader of the flyers was Felipe. Because of his athletic prowess and his powers of concentration, Felipe had been trained in the most difficult task of all: to play a reed flute, while he balanced on the top of the soaring pole. Felipe had an unwavering faith in the time-honored meaning of this ceremony, and he gave his all to the execution of his role, combining complex footsteps with an intricate, lilting musical accompaniment.

From the top of the towering pole, Felipe’s heartfelt tune was a melodic, bird whistle. He bowed first to the east, then towards the three other cardinal directions. Then, still playing the flute, Felipe bent backwards in a fluid, supple move to acknowledge the sun. To balance this awkward and most difficult of poses, and hold himself steady on his narrow perch, Felipe fixed his upside-down gaze on a high branch of a nearby tree.

But this time, Felipe saw more than a blur of green. An owl—a notoriously bad omen to the Totonacs—stared directly back at him with glowing eyes, daring him to do the unthinkable. There was something hypnotic about those eyes, something evil. For the first time in his life, Felipe faltered. The flute slipped from his shaking hands and he tumbled, silently and swiftly, one hundred feet to the ground.

By the time Zoila heard the news and ran from town to the spot where Felipe died, there was nothing left to see but a pool of blood on the bare ground. His limp, broken body had been taken away to an unknown location for burial in the centuries-old traditions of his people. She wept, not caring who saw or heard her, circling the tall pole. Round and round she walked, counter-clockwise, as though she could wind back time and return Felipe intact to the celestial pole he so honored.

Still sobbing, Zoila walked slowly back to Paplanta. In a patch of shrubs she spotted a remnant of Felipe’s embroidered chest cloth, caught on a spiky branch. She held it up to her face and inhaled the scent of her beloved Felipe. The cloth was wet with his blood, so saturated that drops trickled down Zoila’s arms.

Now Zoila was running, rushing back to her shabby rented room. There she squeezed the remaining drops of Felipe’s blood into a tiny glass vial and placed it safely between her ample bosom. With every breath she took, the vial of Felipe’s blood seemed to beat in time with her own heart.

But still, even after this terrible sadness, Zoila stayed in Paplanta. It was the third catastrophe that unhinged her. While she mourned both her father’s death and Felipe’s tragic demise, the town was hit with a terrible crime: Don Francisco Naveda*, the heir to a major vanilla-curing house, was found murdered.

The passel of possible culprits was extensive, but as each one proved his or her alibi, people started whispering about Zoila. Some said that she murdered Don Naveda out of revenge for her father’s mysterious death, while others muttered that she was acting irrationally, like any lovelorn woman, ever since the death of Felipe. No one really believed that Zoila had either the motive or means to kill Don Naveda, but still, before long she was the prime suspect. The real reason was that she seemed too astute and too talented, too clever by half for a woman. And without any family, Zoila had absolutely no one in Paplanta willing to defend her.

Enough was enough. Zoila knew she couldn’t stay in her home town another day. That’s why she was running down this foggy hillside, getting as far away as possible. The gears in her mind started to turn slowly again, and she began to feel like her former clever self. She avoided the crossroads, even though the mule train could have taken her to Xalapa. That nitwit of a mule driver would betray her, she knew, in exchange for a cheap jug of intoxicating pulque. Nor did she fool herself into thinking the Italian immigrants would help her. Sure, they’d said they were beholden to her father when he attempted to intervene on their behalf with the Mexican government—the government that had left them high and dry after bamboozling them into settling in the region. But Zoila knew that the Italian immigrants were settled now, having made many strategic marriage alliances within the vanilla trade. They wouldn’t risk helping her.

The nearest village was Jicaltepec, and Zoila considered seeking help there from the French immigrants. Her father had orchestrated influential trade connections on their behalf in the hopes of marrying her off to a certain French widower who’d subsequently—and ungallantly— rebuffed her, returning to France on the next ship across the Atlantic. But she knew that all people would remember was her humiliation, not the help her father had given.

By the time Zoila reached Jicaltepec, she’d long decided to avoid the French settlers there. Instead of dwelling on all that she had lost, she stored her misfortunes in the hardened wooden chest of her soul. The gears of her clever mind turned like a key, until all her woes were locked away in that chest. This was no time to indulge in self-pity or regret. Zoila had to rely on her intelligence now, her ingenuity. Nobody was coming to her rescue. She had to save herself.

In the coast town of Nautla, she scrubbed the stains from her dress, determined to look more respectable. She groomed her long, dark tresses into a

Reviews for Lucia Zarate

[pardamustang · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

***This book was reviewed for the San Francisco Book ReviewWith Lucia Zarate, award-winning author Cecilia Velastegui has woven a beautiful tale of the late 1800s, where superstition still abounded, and life was both freer, and far more dangerous. It was a time when that which was strange and unusual was exploited for profit. It was into this world that our eponymous Lucia Zarate was born. She was a tiny thing, standing the height of a two year old, though she was twelve when she began her adventures in show business. Effectively sold by her family to a 'Yankee’ agent, Lucia was destined to travel around the world, that people might gawk at her diminutive frame. In her home region, Lucia was considered to be chaneque, one of the wee folk said to be mischievous river sprites. Truly, it was better for her family to send her abroad. The story is told mostly from her guardian, Zoila’s, point of view, and it is with her circumstances that we begin. Aged twenty-five, and unmarried, Zoila is put in rather dire straits when her father dies, and his web of lies become exposed. As an interpreter, and vanilla-trader, he had brokered double-sided deals, and breached his own supposed code of linguistic ethics, making promises that would never be kept. When he died, he owed a substantial amount, and that taint passed to Zoila. The death of her one friend, and secret love, Felipe, and being considered a top suspect in a murder she had nothing to do with sent Zoila all the way to Veracruz, where she was lucky enough to discover a unique position that would make use of her sharp mind, her cleverness and knowledge, and the many languages her father taught her. In short, she would travel with Lucia, being her chaperone, to keep her safe, and to teach her. At first Zoila desired to abandon Lucia once in the US. After all, getting to the States had been Zoila’s primary concern. Upon seeing the treatment Lucia received though, she stayed on. Years passed in the sideshow circuit, with Lucia touring first with Frank Uffner and later with PT Barnum briefly. She travelled the US, UK, and throughout Europe, meeting Queens, Presidents, and other important figures. Lucia became rather full of herself, and had numerous conflicts with other troupe members. She was incredibly extroverted, possessed of a playful nature and sharp intellect. A decade passed thus, and her prestige slowly waned. She died shy of age 30, not far past Donner Pass in California, like that ill-fated party so long before, victim to the Sierras’ fearsome winter weather.Velastegui has woven a most interesting biography, full of rich, lyrical imagery. I had never heard of Lucia Zarate and found her life fascinating. Insights into just how grueling sideshow work was floored me. These people were treated to terrible conditions, and crude mockery, as if they were not human at all, at times. Poked and prodded as 'medical curiosities’ and 'missing links’, called freaks, made to entertain audiences for a pittance, while their so-called managers raked in cash. What petty beings are we…Not only did I learn of Lucia Zarate, and gained a greater appreciation for the full nature of exploitative behaviour towards the more unusual among us, the anthropologist in me was treated to a glimpse of Totonac culture, and vanilla cultivation. Threaded through the story is beautiful symbolism tied to seemingly ordinary events. The lore of the owl to the Totonac, as to many other cultures, and what is presaged for Felipe, the flutist Birdman, and later for Lucia herself. The brujo and the mental legacy he left with Lucia and Zoila, that followed them place to place to place, holding them captive in its fear.I enjoy reading authors of other cultures, because culture surely shapes writing. It echoes values and reflects sociocultural framework. This was my first experience with both Velastegui's works, and a Latino author. It comes as no surprise to me that this book should have been among the finals of the 2017 International Latino Book Awards. ????? Highly Recommended