The Forgotten Heart of the Homeland

By Doug Byrd and Diana Maldonado Guiliani

The idea for this novel was conceived in the spring of 1996, at Casa Bonita Restaurant in Denver, Colorado; the title derives from a political tract circulating in that city at that time titled The Fourth Declaration of the Jungle. The forgotten heart of the homeland is a line from that tract.
Casa Bonita---also known to fans of TV's South Park as Cartman's favorite restaurant---occupies a large cavernous space decorated to look like a Mexican village, with grotto-like nooks in the walls for a cozier dining experience and high cliffs from which athletic young people dive into limpid turquoise pools. I was having lunch there with my friend Diana, the first time I had been in that place. What struck me as more than a coincidence was its remarkable similarity to a place I had dreamed of, just days earlier. So it came as no surprise when she said:
Douglas, we need to come up with something that'll make us some money...a project we can work on together.
What did she have in mind? I asked, though an idea was already burbling around in my brain. Since we both did some writing, why not co-author a book? Hey, if Larry McMurtry and Diana Osana can do it, why not us? What kind of book? And sitting there in the warm light of tiki torches, working on a plate of enchiladas, I had a sudden inspiration. In my younger days I had enjoyed travels in Mexico. Also, I'm a history buff, and have always been interested in the era of the Mexican Revolution. And as the unrest that spurred the 1910 revolution persisted up until our own time, the conflict was still relevant in the year 1996. Many volumes have been written on the subject; but---what if a person from our time (a woman, in our case) could travel back into the past and experience it first-hand. It would be the story of a young woman, an investigative journalist, who travels into Mexico in search of the truth, and finds more than she bargained for. It would be a historical romance/science-fantasy epic, part recorded history and part fiction.
The deal we agreed upon went like this: I would research and write the book; she would give me the woman's point of view, what a woman would think and feel and how she would react in any given situation; so that whenever a woman speaks in this novel, it comes from a woman's mouth.
Once we had agreed on the subject matter for our opus, we paid a visit to the Tattered Cover Bookstore, where Diana purchased two volumes, John Womack, Jr.'s Zapata and the Mexican Revolution and Pancho Villa the Mexican Centaur, by Oren Arnold; these books would be my main source of information about Zapata and Villa. I also made extensive use of The Wind that Swept Mexico and 500 anos del Pueblo Chicano, a pictorial history, to get more of an overview and a flavor of the era. In time I read entries from the diary of Rosa King, owner and proprietress of the Hotel Bella Vista, an important person in this book. I read the stories of the Generals, of rich landowners, of artists and writers and engineers, politicians and radical reformers, and all these have their say. I took stories from each of these and included them in a single volume, my own panoramic picture of the Mexican Revolution.
This book is a work of fiction within a true historical context. Wherever possible I have retold the history as I found it, only changing the wording around some to avoid outright plagiarism. In only one instance did I use an author's exact words to describe a person: when John Womack described Pablo Escandon as the last frail twig of his line---I wracked my brain searching in vain for a better way to put it but in the end found the line too delicious to resist. My apologies and thanks to Mr. Womack.
I should add that the ideas of the very clever Mr. Dooley are not mine at all but the intellectual property of Chicago-based humorist Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936).
In regards to historical authenticity, there are things whic

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483654690

Doug Byrd

Doug Byrd is an artist who writes, paints, builds, creates a world not unlike our own. He loves and lives in San Antonio, TX

Book preview

PROLOGUE

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I T WAS THE Age of Porfiriata. This was the era in which José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori ruled the country of Mexico. By the turn of the 20th century, Don Porfirio had been president of his country for more than two decades. During that time, he had brought a new prosperity to Mexico. He had brought his country into the modern age. Before him all had been chaos. Bandits freely roamed the countryside. Then Don Porfirio had come, and with him his police, and had restored law and order, what was known as the Pax Porfiriana. My people are children, he declared. They need a strong man to lead them. Now he was an old man. There were grown people then who could not remember when he was not their president. But they knew that, sooner or later, the old man must go. They grew restless, the people. The president who had campaigned on the platform of no re-election had become a tyrant. He did not do the will of the people. If his police pursued the bandits, the people still were getting robbed. Porfirio must be made to understand. If the old man refused to relinquish the office, he must be forced to do so. Mexico stood teetering on the brink of revolution; and the generals were mounting up. Veteran soldiers, former supporters of Díaz, jockeyed for position. One soldier, an old Indian fighter, who had quit the field to be a math teacher and who had his own successor in mind. Another soldier reported to have great skill at the poker table. And in the north of the country, a politician who had been told by a Ouija Board that he would one day be the president of Mexico. The list of potential successors went on.

On a late summer’s day in the year 1909, the residents of the village of Anenecuilco gathered behind the church for a meeting. José Merino, then the chief elder of the village council, had called the meeting. Do not ring the church bell, he cautioned them. Do not tell the hacienda foremen. The word must be passed around in secret. And so the message was relayed by word of mouth to the four hundred inhabitants of Anenecuilco.

José Merino was nearly seventy years of age now. He had been president of the council for many years. Once… so long ago now… once, when he was a young man, he had been vigorous and full of hope. As chief elder it had been his responsibility to protect the land titles of his people. As a young man he wore the mantle proudly. Those were the green years, a time of plenty. Then, as everyone knew, the hacendados, rich landholders had come. With them came engineers to measure the land. It was ruled that all land for which the proper titles did not exist belonged to the hacendados. The titles, therefore, were the greatest defense they had from those who sought to rob them, the collected testimonies of all the chiefs who had come before in a human community stretching back nearly seven centuries. But José Merino was tired. All too often now he found himself thinking of the old days. There was no way around it, it was time to relinquish his duties, to pass the torch to a new generation.

So it was that on that summer evening, the shadows lengthening, the people met. They gathered under the arcades behind the church, the men in loose fitting white pants and shirts, the women in brightly colored skirts, coming from the ninety houses that comprised the village to hear José speak. These people were puro indio for the most part, of Nahuatl ancestry, a strange ancient race. José looked out over the crowd, the brown indio faces—his neighbors and his legacy. He was father, grandfather, uncle or cousin to many of them. He spotted his nephew Eufemio Zapata y Salazar and noticed that he was drinking again. José frowned; this would bring trouble on Eufemio. And he saw Eufemio’s brother Emiliano. The young man stood out in the crowd. He did not wear the white pajama type clothing like the others but a skin tight jet black ranchero outfit. Both of the young men were striking and handsome. José wished for a moment that their father Gabriel, dead these many years now, could see how they had grown.

When the crowd had quietened, José began to speak.

There will always be those who will try to take from us what is ours, he told them. We tried to arrange a meeting with Governor Alarcon and the hacendados but had no success. Land is still being taken. Where we have grown corn and beans, now they will grow sugar cane. They say it is good for the Mexican economy. Those in power still refuse to recognize our claims. Someday there may be a legitimate government that will, but that time is not now. José alluded to the Díaz government. At that time Díaz had been president for over thirty years, longer than a lot of people lived. In that time he had built a powerful political machine. While in office he gave political power to the mestizos and the elite Creole hacendados. The indio puro he totally ignored.

Now I am tired, he told them. The others too, I think. In the last year it has gotten too much for us to handle. I for one have spent too many years traveling back and forth to Cuernavaca and the Federal District. As your leader, it is I who have dealt with the hacienda managers and lawyers and the rest. But now the time has come to elect new men to protect your rights.

And so the election was held. The first name in nomination was that of Modesto Gonzalez. Then Bartolo Parral nominated José’s nephew ‘Miliano Zapata. Zapata nominated Parral. When the votes were counted, Zapata had won.

Zapata wasted no words in his acceptance speech. His finely chiseled cheekbones and prominent brows and stubborn chin stood out in the light of the torches that lit the arcades, an impressive figure in his ranchero outfit. He is said to have been tall and to have spoken in a thin, high voice. He said that he accepted the responsibility with which he had been entrusted. All I ask is that you back me.

We’ll back you, Miliano, came a voice from the crowd. We just want a man with pants on, to defend us.

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A cheer went up. Emiliano Zapata was well respected in his community. He had the reputation for being honest. He was said to be fair, efficient, cautious, yet forceful and resolute; above all, a man who always kept his word. Ordinarily shy and reserved, unlike his brother, he was not a man to speak much—but when he did his words were smart and to the point.

And so it came to pass. José Merino gave over to his nephew the strongbox which held the sacred papers. Zapata accepted them gravely. He knew that what lay ahead was a long, uphill battle. And one other thing he knew without a doubt: that in accepting these documents into his keeping, he had committed himself and the village of Anenecuilco to revolution.

Zapata buried the titles somewhere in Cuautla and set about recruiting spies. The storm was coming. That year rumblings came from deep within the earth, perhaps from the Seven Caves themselves, the home of the Old Gods. Ash rained from the sky and a pillar of fire rose to the heavens, smoke by day and fire by night, moving among the foreigners, who said they had come to dig wells…

Chapter 1

THE FOURTH DECLARATION

OF THE JUNGLE

Y OU’RE WRONG, CHILD, her father had said. He said it gently enough, almost apologetically, but She looked up in surprise. It was the first time she could recall, at least since she had been an adult, that he had ever said that. And to add insult to injury, he had called her child. She was no more of a child than he was, and his saying it rankled.

In his hand he held a copy of The Rocky Mountain Times. So that was it: something about her article, which had appeared in the morning paper. Hmmp. It hadn’t been much of an article anyway, not after her editor got hold of it, and it had been buried on a back page, nestled inconspicuously among the advertisements and fillers. She hadn’t even been particularly interested in the assignment, but… it was a job.

Wrong? she asked, returning his sad, earnest stare. Wrong about what? About what I wrote?

The aging man, Father, glanced down at her column; he was a man who always thought carefully before he spoke. The piece he referred to concerned the unrest that had broken out in the Mexican state of Chiapas, two years earlier, in January of 1994. The instigators were a bunch of disgruntled peons who, dissatisfied with their lot in life, had taken up arms against the Federal Government, major corporations in Mexico and the United States, as well as all others they considered to be their oppressors. At the heart of the issue, the recent free trade agreement between the two countries, known familiarly as NAFTA. The agreement, Cecelia judged, would benefit both countries; the rebels’ demands, she had concluded, amounted to a kind of red-ass atavistic communism.

I think, her father finally said, that you’re missing something very important.

Which is? she asked, trying to suppress her impatience.

You say here, her father said, tapping the paper with a meaty forefinger for emphasis, . . . you appear to be saying… that the root cause is economic.

Well… isn’t it?

Her father nodded. In part, yes. But only in part. There is something here of far more importance.

Okay… she’d bite.

‘What. Is more. Important?"

Her father opened his mouth to speak, but her mother spoke first.

It’s just… we didn’t send you to good schools… a better life for you… for you to abandon your people.

My people? Cecelia registered her surprise in the astonishment on her face. My people… she said again, wonderingly. It had never occurred to her to think of a bunch of illiterate dirt farmers from a Mexican backwash her people. Granted, her ancestors had come from down there somewhere. Her grandmother had been born in Chihuahua, right across the border from Texas. Her parents had both been born in the United States, as she had—they were Americans. Her parents were middle class, moderately prosperous, not overly conservative but not exactly radicals either, and their attitude now puzzled her.

Cecelia dismissed her mother’s words as too preposterous and turned to her father. Sometimes he spoke in riddles.

All right, Dad, she sighed. What is at stake? Tell me and then we’ll both know.

Her father ignored the impertinence, smiled fondly at his daughter. At once the smile disappeared, his face grew serious. What is at stake, he said, is a way of life centuries old. Something is dying in this world. Like the rain forests. Like productive land. Once they are gone, they are gone forever.

She was angry when she left the house. A way of life, her father had said. Your people, her mother had said. Were they getting backward in their old age? Yes, deforestation bad. All kinds of modern stuff bad. All that stuff that was getting so much press lately.

Throwing her jeep into gear, she drove aimlessly, no clear destination in mind, through the streets of Denver. She needed time to sort out the jumble of conflicting ideas and emotions that were running through her head. She was looking for a restaurant, some place where she could sit and cool off, have a glass of ice tea and a smoke, and allow reason to reassert itself. Ahead of her lay the state capitol building, with its walls of Colorado-mined rose onyx, its dome sheathed in gold.

She knew her parents loved her. Her father especially would have faced a stampeding herd of bison to save the life of his beloved daughter. He and her mother had always been supportive of her in anything she really wanted to do. They had, as her mother said, sent her to good schools (where she had been taught to think independently). Which was why she was so confused about her parents’ criticism… and even more so, her own response. She had lost her cool; that was not good.

Then something happened that was so unexpected that she would later be tempted to say it never happened. The early evening sun had been playing peekaboo with flocks of clouds as they passed across its surface—when suddenly, as if in benediction, a single ray of sunlight struck the dome of the capitol building, which exploded with light against the ragged sky. In that instant the whole world, everything in sight, was suffused with a golden glow. It was if before her she saw the fabled city of El Dorado. Simultaneously, she was seized by a feeling she could only describe as déjà vu—and a voice, sounding as clearly as if it came from some invisible passenger sitting next to her, transmitting an unmistakable message:

Turn around.

Such an odd occurrence was not something that happened every day. Nor would she want it to. Cecelia thought of herself as a hard nosed realist, not a mystical bone in her body. And yet a voice—a disembodied voice—had spoken to her, with such clarity, such authority, that she felt she had no choice but to obey.

Shifting gears, she made a left turn at the next corner; then another left turn onto a one way street. And there, standing on a corner, was a girl. By the looks of her, Cecelia would have called her an old hippie. In the girl’s hands was a stack of flyers which she was passing out to whoever would take one. Since a grocery workers’ strike was going on at the time, she guessed the flyers might have something to do with that. Curious, she pulled over to the curb.

The girl had seen her. Smiling, she walked over to the jeep. Hello, she said simply, and laid a piece of paper in Cecelia’s outstretched hand. It was some sort of a newspaper. The headlines at the top of the page read:

Fourth Declaration of the Jungle

She tossed it on the seat beside her and put the jeep in gear.

She hadn’t gone too many blocks when she found a place to sit. After ordering her tea, she lit a cigarette (she said she only smoked when she needed to think) and turned her attention to the paper in her hands. And this is what she read:

TODAY WE SAY:

WE ARE HERE!

WE ARE REBEL DIGNITY, THE

FORGOTTEN HEART OF THE HOMELAND!

January 1, 1996

TO THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO:

TO THE PEOPLES AND

GOVERNMENTS OF THE WORLD:

BROTHERS AND SISTERS:

The flower of the word will not die. The masked face which today has a name may die, but the word which came from the depth of history and the earth can no longer be cut by the arrogance of the powerful.

We were born of the night. We live in the night. We will die in her. But the light will be tomorrow for others, for all those for whom death is a gift, for those who are denied life. The light will be for all of them. For everyone everything. For us pain and anguish, for us the joy of rebellion, for us a future denied, for us the dignity of insurrection. For us nothing.

Our fight has been to make ourselves heard, and the bad government screams arrogance and closes its ears with its cannons.

Our fight is caused by hunger, and the gifts of the bad government are lead and paper for the stomachs of our children.

Our fight is for a roof over our heads which has dignity, and the bad government destroys our homes and our history.

Our fight is for knowledge, and the bad government distributes ignorance and disdain.

Our fight is for the land, and the bad government gives us cemeteries.

Our fight is for a job which is just and dignified, and the bad government buys and sells our bodies and our shames.

Our fight is for life, and the bad government offers death as our future.

Our fight is for respect for our right to sovereignty and self-government imposes laws of the few on the many.

Our fight is for liberty of thought and walk, and the bad government builds jails and graves.

Our fight is for justice, and the bad government consists of criminals and assassins.

Our fight is for history, and the bad government proposes to erase history.

Our fight is for the homeland, and the bad government dreams with the flag and the language of foreigners.

Our fight is for peace, and the bad government announces war and destruction.

Housing, land, employment, food, education, independence, democracy, liberty, justice and peace.

These were our banners during the dawn of 1994.

These were our demands during that long night of 500 years. These are, today, our necessities.

Our blood and our word have lit a small fire in the mountain and we walk a path against the house of money and the powerful. Brothers and sisters of other languages, of other colors, but with the same heart now protect our light and in it they drink of the same fire.

The powerful came to extinguish us with its violent wind, but our light grew in other lights. The rich dream still about extinguishing the first light. It is useless, there are now too many lights and they have all become the first.

The arrogant wish to extinguish a rebellion which they mistakenly believe began in the dawn of 1994.

But the rebellion which now has a dark face and an indigenous language was not born today. It spoke before with other languages and in other lands.

They want to take the land so that our feet have nothing to stand on. They want to take our history so that our word and we will be forgotten and die. They do not want Indians.

They want us dead.

The powerful want our silence. When we were silent, we died, without the word we did not exist. We fight against this loss of memory, against life and for death.

We fight the fear of a death because we have ceased to exist in memory.

When the homeland speaks its Indian heart, it will have dignity and memory.

Cecelia laid the paper aside and sipped at her tea. There was a lot more, fairly bristling with rhetorical teeth but with very little of what she would have called hard information—pretty standard propaganda for the most part. The waiter approached her table and refilled her glass. She sat drinking, her mind in idle, enjoying the air-conditioning and listening lazily to the tinkle of ice cubes in her glass. But her mind kept returning to it. Okay, these people had a right to their grievances. But there was nothing in this inflammatory piece to suggest even the possibility of compromise with the ruling party. Maybe because it never worked before. Hell, whoever said that life was fair? Any such militant group, say in the United States, armed and presumed dangerous, would be met by a show of force equal to or greater than the presumed threat by the government and its duly appointed officials. How else could it be? The rebels needed education all right; they needed to understand to some degree the complexities of modern civilization and how their adherence to the old way of thinking was a stumbling block in the path of progress.

Draining her tea, she snuffed her cigarette and rose to leave. Then she saw the other paper—how she had missed it before she didn’t know. It was shorter and pithier than the two-page Fourth Declaration of the Jungle. The headline read: Let’s not do to Mexico’s Indians what we did to ours! Quickly she scanned the page, taking in its major points.

On New Year’s Day, 1994, the Chiapan revolution was launched—the same day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. The cause: the scrapping of a certain article, number 27, of the Mexican Constitution. On that day some 15,000 Mayan Indians, armed with carbines and machetes, seized an armory and liberated a prison full of starving, tortured souls, then marched into 7 cities. The Mexican Army (carrying weapons manufactured in the U.S.) slaughtered hundreds during the next 10 days. But the Zapatistas, using faxes and the internet, got the ‘whole world watching’ through the assembled international media. The army pulled back but has since conducted ‘low-intensity’ warfare, with U.S. advisers, helicopters, tanks, etc. Starting last fall, media people like our own Kerry Appel are being evicted from Mexico. Denver’s NBC news producer Rick Salinger couldn’t use Kerry’s story, saying, ‘We have a business relationship with the Mexican government-controlled TV channel and we wouldn’t want to offend them.’ An official of the ruling PRI party admits on Kerry’s video that ‘the application of justice in Mexico is based on torture.’

She was familiar with the name of Kerry Appel, something about his connection with the so-called Zapatista Front for National Liberation and how he had been booted out of the country by the government there. All right, she begrudgingly admitted to herself, maybe she wasn’t getting the full picture. She had never met this Appel person but she could picture him: long and lean, long hair—drove a VW bus.

Maybe it was time to meet him and see what he had to say.

Chapter 2

THE INTERVIEW

I T WAS A day late in the month of May, another perfect one, weatherwise, on the front range. Kerry Appel squatted beside a row of tender young milpas—corn—that grew in two straight lines down the borders of his driveway. Meditatively he pulled weeds from around the milpas and the feathery fronds of the Indian yellow flowers called cempoalzuchil by the ancients, the Little Flowers of Death. Kerry took a good deal of satisfaction from tending the soil; it helped to remind him of the connectedness between himself and his Lacondista brothers and sisters, so far to the south.

Earlier in the week he had received a call from a woman requesting an interview. Reporter, she said. It was almost time for that interview. He was curious. She had a very nice voice, very mellifluous—very feminine. If she was as pretty as her voice, this could turn out to be a very interesting interview indeed.

Cecelia was early for the interview. There was not much traffic on the street and she found a parking spot right in front of the place, a graffiti covered storefront on a block of other similar businesses, all of which had seen better times. The large plate glass window had been opaqued so she could not see in. A little apprehensively she knocked on the door. No answer. She knocked again, louder, again without results.

I hope he didn’t forget.

Returning to the jeep, she sat for a moment, thinking. He wasn’t answering the front door. All right, she’d try around back. Pulling away from her parking spot, she rounded the corner and turned into the alley behind the row of shops. And there, behind one of the shops, she saw it. It was an old, dull red VW bus. She smiled at her own prescience—that’d be his all right. Then she saw him. Squatting there by his plants. It was a reassuring picture. In her time as a reporter she had learned the value of seeing a person in his natural habitat, doing those things he liked to do. It was curious how well he fit the description she had conjured up in her mind, a longhair who liked to garden and drove a VW bus.

Are you Kerry? she called.

Kerry looked up at the woman in the jeep. I’m Kerry. And you’re Cecelia? Yes, she was pretty, and by her looks a person of Indian ancestry.

He led her past the bus to the rear entrance to the shop. Watch that step.

Stepping one step down, she entered a large room. The whole place was one large room. Taking in at a glance its furnishings, she saw video equipment and shelves of videotapes, a desk, various odds and ends. Paintings hung on the walls, all indigenous Indian art from the looks of it. And, at the far end of the room, a bed. This was not only the place where Kerry conducted his interviews; it was also the place where he lived.

He motioned her to a chair on one side of the desk. Sit down, he said, and sat down in the chair across from her. He had an angular, somewhat craggy face and pale blue eyes. For some reason her mind returned to that bed across the room.

Behind him, on a wall, she saw a large portrait of one of the heroes of the Revolution of 1911, Emiliano Zapata.

Cecelia had trained herself, in such situations, to be prepared and unflappable. She found now that she was neither. Her job was to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and here she was thinking thoughts totally irrelevant to her reason for being there.

Finally Kerry broke the ice. Do you mind if I smoke?

Not at all, she said, and gladly accepted the cigarette he offered.

In an unconscious gesture, he ran his fingers through his shoulder-length hair. He wore a T-shirt with the logo for Telemundo, a Mexican broadcasting network on the front.

After a few puffs Cecelia found her wits. I was interested, she began, in what you were saying over the phone about the Third World Coalition.

Ah yes, he said, shifting in his chair. Well, the Third World Coalition is a part of the American Friends’ Service Committee. They’re funded by Quakers. They deal with peace and justice issues concerning people of color.

And what is their take on the Mexican situation?

You know— Kerry cleared his throat. NAFTA was passed against the will of the majority of the people. Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution was gutted in preparation of its coming. What that means is that land guaranteed to the people has once again been taken away. The coalition is ag’in it—and all the other government shenanigans.

As interested as she was in what he was saying, Cecelia was having trouble staying focused on what she had come for. All of a sudden she felt really stupid and annoyed at herself. She was afraid to look at him directly, afraid he would see right through her, to see what she really wanted which was to jump his bones.

I see, she forced herself to say. And how did you become involved in all this?

Well, he said, warming to his subject, I’ve always been interested in Central American issues. When the debate on NAFTA was going on I wanted to know more. How would it affect the people? The environment? I hadn’t heard much in the way of a negative response so I thought—okay, free trade, I wouldn’t be to opposed to that. So I was surprised when, the day after NAFTA went into effect, the Chiapas uprising began. Coincidence? I don’t think so. So I studied the thing more closely. Analysts were saying that what the people were rebelling against was their poverty. But something occurred to me—the people had always lived in poverty—

Los pobres de la tierra…

Right. They had always been poor. So what was different now? Nobody seemed to have a satisfactory explanation for what was happening. Then one night I saw a short piece on one of the channels. The reporter was in Chiapas, interviewing some of the indigenous people. ‘Do you eat much meat?’ I remember him asking. Never." A guy I know, who was watching the interview with me, said, ‘Well, meat’s not good for you anyway.’

"I went out to the Safeway that night for a jar of coffee. I was struck by the contrasts between the people I had seen on the TV and what I saw in the market. Choice cuts of meat in shrinkwrap plastic packaging. Thirty-two kinds of gourmet cheese. Fifteen brands of coffee. I got a jar of Taster’s Choice—$1.23 an ounce. And I began to wonder how much the poor campesino who picked the beans got paid for his labor. And right then I made my decision. I was going to Chiapas.

"That was in March. By June I had gotten together enough money for a cheap airline fare. What was going on in Mexico? There was only one way to find out.

It didn’t take me long to find out. The U.S., International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, American corporations and the Mexican Government—which is not the representative of the people—had screwed them. Oh no! I said. Here we go again. Another century, another U.S.-Indian war.

Cecelia reached for another cigarette, in hopes of getting her thoughts—and emotions—under control. She managed to knock over the ashtray and the clipboard on which she was supposed to be taking notes but had somehow forgotten. Kerry helped her pick up the butts, and he couldn’t help smiling to himself as he wiped up the ashes. He raised his eyes to find her staring at him, that look in her eyes. He knew what she was thinking (or more precisely feeling) and the thought did not displease him. Opening a drawer in his desk, he got out another pack of cigarettes. I think we’re gonna need these, he said.

"But what you want to know is, how did I become committed to the cause. Okay. I knew I needed more information and that one short trip would not be enough to investigate what was going on down there. I also decided I should travel by land, see more of the country. For that I needed a vehicle of some kind, one for which I could readily find parts in the interior. That’s how I decided on El Relámpago Rojo.

Chapter 3

EL RELÁMPAGO ROJO

A ND SO HE had bought the VW bus, itself a relic of the past, packed a few things and set a course for Mexico.

From crowded, industrialized Juarez he traveled south… Chihuahau, Torreon, Zacatecas; a land of vast horizons, tan and brown, with strange cacti jutting out of the earth like alien beings. Craggy mountains in the distance. On he traveled, across the eroded limestone landscape of Oaxaca, to the border of Chiapas, the southernmost Mexican state. Also the poorest.

The ‘Welcome to Chiapas’ sign, he noted grimly, was riddled with bullet holes; brown rust bled from the wounds. On the heights of Mateus Romera, so he had been told, a Federal regiment of artillery kept an eye on the valley below. Helicopters flew overhead, and he would have been willing to bet they were not people-friendly. This area was commonly known as ‘the Conflict Zone.’

His destination was San Cristobal de las Casas, the epicenter of the revolt. Here soldiers patrolled the streets. When he trained his camera on them, many flashed the peace sign. But if it was peace they wanted, what were they doing there?

He had been prepared for the soldiers. What he had not been prepared for was the people themselves.

Everywhere you go in the industrialized cities in Mexico, he told Cecelia, ". . . and in the United States as well—you have to be afraid—afraid of being robbed, of having your car vandalized, of being harassed by the police. Everyone divided, distrustful. In Indian society it’s different. The Indians, you see, still live that communal life that some of the older folks in this country remember as being a way of life, for them also. There is an attitude of respect that exists there as in few places. These people are integrated, connected. They grow their food, they eat their food. They don’t shop at Safeway for this mass-produced food we eat, not knowing how it was produced or where it came from.

Most important, they mean what they say. You don’t have to lock your doors when you go into an Indian village. They won’t hurt you—unless you’ve done something to hurt them. They have a deeper sense of community, deeper values, than most people these days. They have more commitment to ideals. And these ideals are absolutes, not abstract concepts to use when convenient when it isn’t. These people, who have nothing in a material sense, are saying: We are already dead. Or we’re ready to die, the reason being, our deaths will bring about a better life for our children, the future. We’ll go to the ultimate consequence to fight this right now.

They are ready to die… ?

Oh, yes.

Aren’t you afraid of being killed yourself?

Sure. I’ve thought about that. But I realized—this is my country, my way of life. Okay. But my neighbors are trying to destroy the Indians’ way of life. They think they can save the Indian by giving them our way of life. In the meantime they’ve decided that the indigenous people need to be sacrificed. Their land, their communities are not important. So I told myself, if these people are willing to go to the ultimate consequence to preserve their way of life… So am I. Because, Cecelia, what we have in this country is a failure. Not in the material sense, of course. But socially and spiritually we are a failure. I refuse to participate in forcing our failure on these people and will actively fight any attempt to do so. Because sometime, somewhere, you’ve got to take a stand.

He offered her another cigarette. She shook her head; too many cigarettes made her feel sick. So you’re against NAFTA.

"It’s not good for the American worker. It isn’t good for the Mexican people. The only entities that benefit from it are multinational corporations. We aren’t being told the whole story. But David Rockefeller knows. Chase Manhattan Bank knows. It’s all for profit.

There are different forms of warfare, Cecelia. When the rebellion broke out, American as well as Mexican troops were sent down there. When the story began to come out they backed off. But they’re still monitoring the situation. It’s not so much a war of bullets now. It’s a war of advertising. Political and economic persuasion. Isolation of countries and disinformation.

He ground out his cigarette and gave her a long, piercing look. I had a thought. I’m going back down there in a week’s time. If you want to know more, why don’t you come along.

That’s not all he’s asking.

I can’t go down there right away, she said. Some unfinished business. But I have been thinking about just that. Maybe I could meet you down there.

He wanted to kiss her. He wanted it badly. She could feel it. He would have liked to forget all about politics, sweep her into his arms and kiss her luscious lips. So why didn’t he? Just shy, she figured.

Instead, he reached again into his desk drawer and pulled out an album of photos. The pictures were of his Chiapan friends. But what friends! They carried rifles, M1 carbines from the look of them. They all wore cartridge belts, regular Pancho Villa stuff, and most of their faces were covered either with red bandanas or dark ski masks. These were the people this man said he was willing to risk his life for.

Kerry read the expression on her face and chuckled a little. Like a lamb to the slaughter? You know, at first, when you see them like that you think ‘terrorist.’ Or I did. After awhile… you begin to see them as heroes.

The villagers, those same people in the photos, had given his bus a name, El Relámpago Rojo—It means ‘The Red Lightning.’

He could see them now, on the roads or along hidden trails through the jungle, baskets balanced on their heads, arms always at ready. They were after all under a state of siege. He saw them in the fields and orchards; saw their toil-worn hands tending the coffee, cacao, avocado, fruits of all kinds, working for—how much did that campesino make for picking the beans that went into that jar of coffee that cost $1.23 an ounce down at the Safeway? What was that compared to these damned stubborn farmers who walked two or three miles to the milpas fields, carrying their water with them? And he saw them in their humble dwellings, growing out of the earth alongside the stately if pretentious architecture that had taken root five centuries before with the coming of the Spaniards, remaining as echoes of Mexico’s colonial past. The way of life there was slow. It had