The Yellow Cathedral

By Anita Mason

This novel describes what happened in the culture clash between the Indians of Chiapas and the government of Mexico: the Indians seeking a life and livelihood on their land, the government seeking to repress them and ultimately control their land. The government control is but part and parcel of the new global economy.
The Yellow Cathedral comes out of the time the author spent in Mexico in 1994-5, during the Zapatista uprising. Set in the impoverished southern Mexican state of Chiapas in the early 1990s, at the time of the rebellion by the indigenous population and Zapatista activists (the EZLN) against the wealthy landowners and the political establishment.

The narrative switches between a number of characters who represents different aspects of the conflict: the indigenous, who may or may not be in sympathy with the revolt, but are in some way on a level with it, and members of the governing class, trying to deal with this revolution and its effects while the economy is spinning out of control.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jun 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781448208968

Anita Mason

Anita Mason was born in Bristol, England. She read English at Oxford, lived in London, and worked in the publishing field for five years. Mason is the author of multiple novels as well as a number of short stories. Her novels include The Illusionist (1983), The War Against Chaos (1988), The Racket (1990), Angel (1994), The Yellow Cathedral (2002), and The Right Hand of the Sun (2008). The Illusionist was nominated for the 1983 Booker Prize in the UK.

Book preview

1

Today we say, Enough!

—Zapatista Army of National Liberation, Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle. 2 January, 1994

It was a Friday evening when the men who didn’t like what Rafael was doing stepped out from the undergrowth at the side of the track.

The track went up the hillside past some stone-walled maize plots. The maize had been harvested, and the rustling stalks stood there like ghosts. A few silk threads from the cobs still lay bright on the ground. As he walked, Rafael was listening to the way the candles he had just bought clinked in his knapsack as if they were talking to each other.

Then the two men stepped out from the undergrowth and began to walk behind him. He’d glimpsed them as he passed. They wore jeans and fancy-looking nylon jackets over their white shirts, and were bareheaded. They didn’t come from Chamula, and he had never seen them before. As soon as he had gone past, they stepped out right behind him.

The three of them walked up the track. Rafael could hear the men breathing. He was conscious of the hammering of his heart.

One of them spoke. In a hurry, Rafael? He felt the words on the back of his neck.

Where are you going? asked the other.

The track was deeply cut away by rain, and a layer of dust lay on the polished stones. Although his feet knew it well, he nearly slipped several times in his clumsy plastic sandals.

He’s going to his grandmother’s, said the first one, which caused Rafael’s heart to jump, because that, in fact, was where he was going. He had lived with his grandmother for the past five months since relations with his father became too difficult.

He’s taking her those candles he bought, said the second. Aren’t you, Rafael?

They must have followed him. They must have seen him in Vicente’s shop buying the candles.

She’ll never get them, said the first. She’ll never see him again.

He went on walking automatically, one foot after the other.

She’ll be upset when they find him.

If they find him.

I wouldn’t be surprised if she went to the magistrate.

Both chuckled.

He had reached the point where the track widened, just below the ridge. When he got to the top, he would turn and face them. He knew he couldn’t get away. Whatever was going to happen, he wanted it to happen up there where the mountains and sky would see it.

A few more steps and his feet touched the grass of the ridge. He rounded on them, summoning anger from somewhere. What d’you want? he demanded.

They stepped back, surprised, and for a moment didn’t know what to do next. They were out of breath from the climb. He thought how ugly they were, and how silly the gringo jackets looked on them.

Then they moved heavily towards him, and the only thing he could do was retreat. They pushed him back and back, and he stumbled on the stones that lay littered over the ridge. They went on pushing him back until he was standing against an outcrop of rock. Then they moved in close, almost touching his chest.

Why are you making trouble, Rafael? It was always the same one who spoke first.

I’m not making trouble, he said, trying to keep his voice firm.

We don’t like what you’re doing. You tell people to join the PRD, don’t you?

Perhaps.

You tell people to join the PRD and vote for Mateo Méndez. Isn’t that right?

Why shouldn’t they vote for Mateo Méndez? He’s a good man.

Tell them that if they vote for Mateo Méndez their houses will be burnt, and their animals will die, said the second one, and they will be driven out of Chamula.

If you tell them that, we won’t do anything to you.

There was a pause. Rafael heard a bird singing in a bush.

But if you don’t— went on the first one.

If you go on making trouble—

We’re going to kill you.

He saw in his mind a newspaper photograph: a man lying by the roadside in a pool of blood. Two weeks ago.

The man who always spoke first put his hand inside his fancy jacket. It came out holding a pistol. He placed it against Rafael’s head.

Like this, he said.

Benito Trejo celebrated his seventeenth birthday carrying one of the poles of the co-operative’s banner along the road to Tuxtla. The banner had been sewn together out of pieces of old sheet, and some parts of it were better than others; but it would last until Thursday, which was as far ahead as anyone could think. The lettering on the banner said "Corazón de Cielo?," which was the cooperative’s name.

El Progreso had been in a ferment for days before they set off. The women had risen very early to make quantities of tortillas and pack them in squares of cloth. The streets were full of animals being led somewhere or other to be looked after while their owners went on the march. It seemed as if half of El Progreso was going to Tuxtla. Benito’s uncle Hernández, who had begun by encouraging people to go, had ended up looking worried. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to leave the town half-empty, with only the old people, the children, the priistas and a handful of dogs, he said.

However, what was going to happen in Tuxtla was so important that you couldn’t possibly tell people not to be there. And anyway, the Army would surely be concentrating all its troops in the city, Benito reasoned. This was not a pleasant thought, but it was better than the thought of the Army in El Progreso. However, just before they set out, he suddenly became frightened about that. He decided it was his duty to stay behind and look after his mother, sister and two small brothers.

When he told his mother this, she gave him a look which saw so deeply into him that he shifted his feet. Hernández is the one who needs you, she said. You mustn’t let him down.

It was true. The reason he wanted to stay behind was that he was afraid of going.

I’ve made you some tamales, she said. Sweet ones. For your birthday.

He put them in his knapsack; and when they stopped for their meal on the first day of the march, he shared them with Hernández. At first Hernández said he didn’t want any. But when Benito spread them out on the cloth his mother had wrapped them in, each still perfectly enclosed in its leaf envelope and smelling of warm maize, Hernández’s hand went out and took one.

They ate and rested. Someone played an accordion. Benito listened, feeling happy. Now that they were actually on the road, his apprehensions were gone. Or mostly. It wasn’t so much the Army that preyed on his mind, because he had a sense of fatalism about that; and, in any case, there was nothing he, personally, could do about it. It was the part that came after Tuxtla that worried him: would he be able to cope with it? He had never been out of El Progreso and the few small towns around it. But he supposed that if Hernández thought he could do it, then he could.

Hernández rolled a cigarette, lit it, and lay back on the grass.

Are you tired? asked Benito.

No, said Hernández. This was a lie and they both knew it.

How is your leg? asked Benito.

All right. His tone said that further questions of this nature were forbidden.

Some compás came over. Covertly, Benito watched his uncle talking to them.

Hernández was his mother’s brother, and the leader of the cooperative. He had founded it twenty years ago with three other men from El Progreso. At the time, many people in the country side were forming unions and co-operatives because together they were stronger, they could get bank credits and stand up to the big landowners. But shortly after the co-operative had been founded, the four of them were ambushed as they walked back to the town after a meeting. One of them had died. Hernández had got a bullet in the left knee.

The leg had mended but it slowed him down, and Benito knew it sometimes hurt him. But Hernández had refused to consider not joining the march. He was going to Tuxtla, and he was going the way everybody else from El Progreso was going—on foot, with a knapsack.

Benito took off his sneakers and inspected the soles. The left one was not in too bad a state, but the right one had split all the way across. He ran his thumbnail along the split. Then, unable to resist it, he bent the shoe so that the crack opened up, because he wanted to see how deep it was. Well, it was deep, and now it was a bit deeper.

He put the sneakers back on. He tried to imagine walking for five days on a knee that had had a bullet in it. He looked again at Hernández, leaning on his elbow and talking to the compás in the calm way he always had, whatever was going on and however tired he was. Benito was tremendously proud to be Hernández’s nephew, but sometimes he wished his uncle would manifest some ordinary frailty. He must be afraid sometimes, thought Benito. And he must feel impatient sometimes, but you would never know it.

Lacing up his battered shoes, Benito thought about Hernández’s patience. It was something beyond him. It was like a country he knew he would never get to. He had always thought this didn’t matter. He wondered, for the first time, whether it might matter in the work they were going to do together in San Cristóbal.

The trouble was that, although Hernández didn’t know it, Benito had lately found himself disagreeing with his uncle.

Don Bernardo de Cevallos gazed at a distressing sight.

The floorboards of the modest building had been wrenched up. Windows had been broken. A filing cabinet had been emptied of its files and then tipped over. Several large plant tubs had been thrown into the cabinets steel casing, filling it with earth and roots. The files were strewn over the floor. A damp discoloration on some of the papers and a sharp smell in the air, suggested that someone had urinated over them.

There was a crayoned note pinned to the wooden cross that faced the door. The Bishop went over and removed it. It made him angry that they had stuck a drawing pin into the cross, and he thought again how stupid these people were, blundering about, alienating absolutely everybody.

He turned to the two policemen who had come with him into the building. Their jaws moved rhythmically on their chewing gum; they stared without a glimmer of understanding at the scattered papers.

When did it happen? he asked.

"Early hours of this morning, Monseñor"

No witnesses?

They smiled.

You have no idea who might have done it, then?

The note says they were looking for firearms, one of them volunteered.

Presumably, said Cevallos with a complex use of irony, that was some sort of joke.

"I wouldn’t know, Monseñor"

The Bishop walked through the disorder into the adjoining room that had been used as a classroom. There was less to destroy, but what there was had certainly been destroyed. The few chairs were smashed, paint had been flung at the blackboard, and the posters had been ripped from the walls and torn up. He picked up some of the pieces from the floor and fitted them together. Irrigation methods. Another about weed control. The Jesuits were keen on agrarian projects.

The Bishop began to feel a queasy disgust with his surroundings. He remembered that his driver was waiting for him in an unshaded street. It would be convenient to leave as soon as possible.

He thanked the police officers and waited while they secured the front door. He was not surprised by what he had seen. Similar things had happened in other parts. Moreover, the disorder prevailing in Chiapas made it almost inevitable that something like this would occur. He had hoped it would not happen in his diocese, however, because once it happened he would have to take a position over it.

In the car he composed his thoughts. He would have to write to the Provincial of the Jesuits and to the Archdiocese. In neither letter could he speak frankly. The Bishop of Palenque was not, by inclination, a devious man, but circumstances forced dissimulation on him almost every day. He regarded it as one of the burdens he had to bear. He thanked heaven for his secretary, Javier, to whom he could open his mind.

Rosas had requested checkpoints on all the roads to the airport and a heavy deployment of troops in the terminal itself. He was glad to see how thoroughly his wishes had been complied with. Everywhere he looked in the terminal building, he saw the reassuring olive green and the glint of hard steel.

The telephone beeped in his pocket as he crossed the tarmac. He switched the attache case to his other hand and pulled it out.

Rosas.

"Señor, a message has just come in from the Presidents office."

It was Fuentes, his personal assistant.

Yes, what is it?

Confirming that the President will attend your inauguration on Thursday.

The sun at once appeared to shine more brightly. Rosas hung back and allowed a hurrying passenger ahead of him up the stairway.

"Señor?"

Excellent. Send an acknowledgement, will you?

"I have done so, señor"

Good. Anything else?

"Señor Pereira wanted to speak to you. I said you were on your way to the airport, so he said he would contact you when you got back from Mexico City."

Did he say what it was about?

Something to do with the ranchers’ meeting next Tuesday.

I told him not to expect me at that meeting. I don’t have time for it.

He could hear Fuentes’s discomfort.

Do you want me to—?

No, said Rosas. Nothing between him and Pereira could ever be delegated. I’ll deal with it when I get back.

"Have a good flight, señor"

Thank you. I’ll be in touch.

Rosas replaced the phone and sprinted up the steps to the practiced smile of a stewardess.

Welcome aboard, Governor. We’re delighted to have you with us.

He took his seat after a searching glance at the other passengers. The purpose of the troops was to guard the airport itself. If the civil disturbances increased—or, worse, if the rebels decided to stage something—the airport would be a prime target. The troops were not there to protect him. His thoughts reverted—as in moments of anxiety they often did—to Colosio, the presidential candidate shot by his own guards while campaigning.

He buckled his seat belt, rested his attache case on his knee, and opened it. He took out a presentation folder bearing an embossed map of the state of Chiapas on its cover. From the folder he took a typed document and began to read it.

The document was the fruit of many months’ careful work, and he knew most of it by heart. He read it now to calm his nerves and refresh his memory as to certain figures. It was the prospectus of the Chiapas Fund, his brain child, an unrivalled opportunity—in his opinion—for an investor. Chiapas, long considered a backward and remote corner of south eastern Mexico, had turned out to be extremely rich in natural resources. He was on his way to the capital to discuss the proposals with a banking group.

The aircraft was starting its take off run. Rosas, who did not like flying, recalled the telephone message and held on to it like a talisman. It was a personal triumph for him that the President would attend his inauguration as Governor. It signalled the PRI’s determination to stand by him in spite of the storm, and it had begun to dawn on him in the previous few days that the PRI might not. There were factions in the Institutional Revolutionary Party—there were plots. Someone had given orders for Colosio’s murder. A politician in his prime.

He felt the wheels lift. The airplane had neither crashed nor exploded. Rosas summoned the stewardess and ordered a Johnny Walker with plenty of ice.

As he trudged along the dusty road, sometimes holding the banner, sometimes walking behind it, feeling the knapsack bump on his shoulders and wondering whether his sneakers would last, Benito mulled over the question on which he had begun to part company with his uncle.

Hernández wanted to carry on the struggle by peaceful means. He said it was the only way it could be won; the other route would destroy them. Queremos la paz said the badge someone had given him in Altamirano, which he often wore—a dove on a sky-blue background, the words in white. We want peace.

But what use was simply wanting it?

Peace was their birthright. Peace was to live in their own way and grow their crops. Peace was that everyone’s opinion was consulted. Peace was a pair of shoes and a school.

Peace had another set of meanings. The armed men came and went, unpredictable like the storm or a visit from the dead. Peace was a kind of defiance towards this violence which you could not openly defy. It was an appeal to whatever gods you believed in, and it drew a circle of protection around the people who invoked it.

The trouble was that it did not protect.

Soldiers had jumped down from their roaring trucks, rushed into