THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

CHAPTER ONE

"It is exceedingly doubtful if the present generation can be civilized, so refractory are they to civilized pursuits and so indolent and thriftless..."
-	R. L. Oliver, United States Consul in Merida on the Maya sublevados (National Geographic, February, 1896)

A cavalry company trotted briskly down a dusty Yucatecan road eleven months into the new century (or - to one sharing the vision of Andre Barzon, the last November of the old). Such road was little more than a trail made wide by the coming and goings of hundreds of men and horses and, at its head, rode Major Juan Pena Santurce, a short, stout Sonoran whose brushy moustache and rough manners resembled another of his state... fated for notoriety but, at this time, still a bandit of little distinction... Pancho Villa.

Santurce was not a bandit, though it may be allowed that... in the past... he had not refused such opportunities as legitimately present themselves to an officer of the Federales de Mexico – a goodly number of whom were of a dubious past, but rehabilitated according to a favorite dictate of President Porfirio Diaz: “one sets a thief to catch a thief”.. The immediate campaign, it must be admitted, lacked opportunities for plunder, as well as most other amenities, even that of good companions... the Major's party consisted of eight young lieutenants of a middling pedigree; freshly polished and graduated from Chapultepec, eager to reach the war zone and begin their careers. These chattered like birds and, now and then, tumbled off their mounts or wandered off into the monte. Santurce and his fifteen enlisted men… laconic, dark-skinned soldiers inured to long days in the saddle and hard beds under the stars… had somehow contrived to keep the young officers from harm and the sweating Major was all but beside himself with relief at the journey's end and the prospect of fresh water, if not beer. Presently, the company reached the crest of one of the low hills that the Yucatecans of ironic bent call "mountains" and it was from there that Lieutenant José Macias, late of Chapultepec, Idznacab and Merida, looked down for the first time upon the Federal encampment at Yokdzonot.

"There it is," the major proclaimed, with a notable lack of spirit; José stared and stared down at the scene below in which the Federal forces, like so many ants suddenly exposed, scurried to and fro on missions whose nature he couldn't begin to imagine. A bird brilliantly plumaged in azure with a bright orange breast soared past and José leaned back, gasping, tears erupting from his eyes. It was not the beauty of the creature, however, nor even the sight of the encampment that had so affected the young officers, but a fly that had lodged itself in his nostril. He gave a violent sneeze and the insect dropped to the neck of his horse.

"Does it look that bad?" asked Santurce, turning, misinterpreting José's response. Cadets! "Too late, now that we've seen it from above it's time to ride into the center of the beast and meet the Comandante. The Lord be with your spirits."

General Ignacio Bravo, lean and browned from six relentless months of Yucatecan sun, saluted the Major and the new recruits with a hand overgrown and tensed as a strangler's. "Out of school at last," he said. "No algebra and no gymnastics here nor, sad to say, no señoritas. And a word to the wise... keep hands off the soldierettes. My men work hard and risk their lives for the Republic, even my Colonels have no claim upon their wives and daughters. Think pure thoughts instead. Now there is the officers' camp - that one. We've others from Chapultepec here, some died, some resigned their commissions. A few even remain." He gestured to Santurce, dismissively. "Adios."

And the General turned his back, leaving the novices to their own device, drinking in the signs and smells of the Yokdzonot encampment. To José, it still seemed like an anthill violently overturned, with men rushing to all sides and also women; women struggling with big clay jars hanging from the sides of sad-visaged mules or handing hot tortillas to the soldiers and their children also, screaming, leaping, running through the brush.

American and European custom would not hold a Mexican division together. Here, soldiers enlisted when the crops were poor or in the rainy season, and deserted when called home by custom that antedated Cortez. Decades ago the army had capitulated, decreeing that families would henceforth be permitted to follow their soldiers from place to place. Lo! it became possible to maintain the troops again and, in fact, some of the dirty children who traipsed from camp to camp had grown up to be among the best soldiers in the Republic. They had followed their fathers into a profession, like farmers or shoemakers.

Consequently, President Diaz had obtained, with no cost to his treasury, the services of uncounted "soldierettes" who foraged for food, cooked and cleaned for the troops, served as a medical corps and even... on occasions when the bullets flew without regard to sex, and when a fallen soldier's rifle lay at hand... proven their worth in combat.

Rarely, however, was an officer accompanied by soldierettes; it was a breach of military class traditions. Consequently many a captain or lieutenant, lacking either the personal aide of superiors or the soldierettes of inferiors were reduced to coaxing or cajoling services from the men under their command to share a portion or meal. The direction of patrols, subsequently, and the composition of the forces for more disagreeable tasks such as clearing trails or guiding carreteras through early summer's mud were often settled in informal negotiations over a kettle of food.

Such bartering brought a hollow gourd of black beans to Major Santurce from a corporal who acknowledged the major's influence over eight new lieutenants, any of whom might return the favor tenfold some day. And so, with tinned fish to accompany the beans, José passed his first supper in the encampment in the company of Santurce, two of the newly commissioned cadets, Armando Castro and José Valero, and a grizzled master-sergeant, Waldemar Martinez, whose career spanned nearly forty years, dating back to the days of Maximilian and the Constitutionalist army of Benito Juarez.

Most soldiers of Martinez' generation had retired, died, or been promoted to Colonel or General; the sergeant's curse was a looseness of tongue and a willingness to mix it up with anybody, regardless of rank. Fresh lieutenants were merely ears to be filled with such wisdom as Martinez could provide until the speech spilled over and slopped upon Yucatecan earth. "When I was your age," the sergeant declared, "they worked us seven days a week, twelve hours, in a mine near Monterrey. For a month or so in the middle of summer there was oh... an hour left of sun at the end of the day. Otherwise I worked in the dark and slept in darkness too. But I was making good wages and had some pesos saved up in the Banco Baja Tierra," and he laughed and slapped the earth, that agreeable banker for all Mexicans whose wealth is not of such magnitude to interest Barclay's.

"Well," Martinez continued, "they say nothing lasts forever and the damn thing is... they're usually right. When the war arrived, a French general, not a very good one, lost most of his men in a skirmish nearby and sent out spies with dynamite to blow up the mine while we slept. The next morning, as we miners were standing about, wondering what next, the French recruiters showed up and, since the mine was filled with rubble and, in fact, was never opened again, I became a part of Maximilian's army. Don't worry yourselves, the luckless French general remained so, and we were captured, one and all, within weeks. The choice was to join the Constitutionalists or be shot and, as you see, I chose the former. Benito Juarez himself, ah... the water is boiling."

Martinez left off his tale to open a pouch of coffee and, to José's surprise, shook the coarse powder into an old sombrero he may once have worn in the depths of the long-closed mine. Wrapping his handkerchief around the handle of the pot, the sergeant poured the boiling water into the sombrero, and coffee began to drop out of its bottom into a cracked clay bowl.

"I don't suppose any of you thought to bring tin cups from the capital?" The new lieutenants, with rueful glances, admitted that they hadn't. "Never mind," Martinez volunteered, "a Turk who deals in such things the Army never thinks about hangs 'round selling tin cups, forks, bits of string, buttons, nails. Only be sure to boil well anything that you purchase from him."

"Why?" puzzled Armando Castro, the fifth son of a wealthy hacendado from Chihuahua, whose four older brothers had graciously given him the choice between Army or Church upon his father's death and, being a gullible lad, had followed the logic that a young and dashing officer would have his choice of the fairest ladies of his posting, while a priest….

Sergeant Martinez dipped his own cup in the brew and handed it across to Santurce. "Just as I left," the major told the newcomers, "there was a spell of fever. Nothing too severe, I believe only six who died."

"Nine," corrected Martinez. "That old bird with the missing finger passed to God. Vicente's woman. And somebody else, I... no..." he shook his head, failing to remember, and shook the last of the liquid into the bowl. "Whoever it was, gone to God as well." He made the sign of the cross, picked up the sombrero and tipped it upside down, the coffee grounds dropping to the dust. "What I am trying to tell you, the Major also, is that the Turk collects these things from those who have left us, one way or another. So beware. You seem fine, educated officers, and it would a pity if the fever were to take you before you had the chance to test yourselves on the Cruzob."

José gulped. The major, seated to his left, offered him the cup and he gallantly waved it by.

"Now, how fares the campaign?" asked Santurce. "I see that, in the six weeks it has taken to bring these gentlemen from Merida, we have advanced, at most, a kilometer. That's even slower than during July. Are we going to start marching backwards?"

As the major had had the opportunity to explain to the cadets as they traveled out of Merida towards the encampment, Bravo's boasts of a quick capture of the rebel capital had melted like butter under the hot, Yucatecan sun. His predecessor, General Lorenzo Garcia, had refused to relinquish his command, departing with a sneer only after the arrival of a messenger with papers from Diaz. There were rumors that the General, who had begun by killing indians and who, like many before, had ended up conspiring with them, had paid a sorcerer to put a curse upon the old man who'd replaced him. And this was given credence when Garcia, whose discharge and disgrace Bravo had haughtily predicted, was made Military Commander of Oaxaca, don Porfirio's home state.

Weeks passed before the General could properly turn his attention to the campaign. Everywhere was disorder, comparable to a waiting room of Hell. Women and children were everywhere and underfoot; it was impossible to beat or shoot them because then the soldiers would refuse to work. Mules sat down beneath their loads. Artillery broke down so often that a permanent party had to be dispatched to Merida for replacement.

But even these were minor problems compared to the difficulties Bravo encountered from his subordinates.

The soldiers and the soldierettes, not to mention the officers, had grown accustomed to the leisurely progression of the expedition under General Garcia's command. They had plenty of time to hunt for food, to roll their cigarettes and drink a second cup of coffee in the morning, to sleep in their hammocks in the hot hours after lunch.

How to restore discipline? Bravo pondered, then issued orders to prohibit singing as the troops advanced, the reason, he declared persuasively, was that the Cruzob might no longer learn of the army's position through its songs. As if, Santurce had reflected at the time, a party consisting of five battalions of six hundred men apiece, and with their mules and families too, was expected to cut a silent, secret swath through the monte, sneak up upon the rebels on their own lands and effect an ambush! The soldiers continued to sing, defiantly, and some of their officers joined them.

The prohibition was duly rescinded, but the old General had gained some valuable information - a knowledge of the trouble makers and malingerers among his ranks, and even some of those whose loyalties still lay with Garcia. With the expeditionary forces settled in at Ichmul, Bravo began weeding out malcontents according to their rank - discreet transfers for valuable officers or those with familial connections, accidents for the rest. What with the firing of telegrams to the capital and back and the shuttling of officers, Independence Day arrived and fled, the General no closer to the rebel capital than Garcia. Hardly a shot had been fired in anger, except those discharged in drunken disputes over money, women or for no reason at all.

The crafty Bravo largely achieved his objective of removing most of Garcia's men for his command, and not a few careers were ruined or, at least, derailed. By the time that this transfusing of officers was finished, however, the rains of late spring and summer had settled in. Traitors and blackguards had been routed, but mud and rain arrived to implement the Devil's orders. Soldiers slipped and fell in mire, mules refused to proceed, and the boots and saddles of the company acquired mold to match the fresh rust on their guns.

José, advanced through the intercession of don Antonio's Capitaleño friends, to the status of a third-term cadet, meditated over maps of the campaigns of Napoleon and Alexander, Hannibal (the Carthaginian General, not the Yucatec hound) and his nemesis, Scipio Africanus. In Paris, his old university colleagues staggered from cafe to salon, stupefied by that thunderbolt hurtling west from Old Vienna, Sigmund Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams".

Finally the rains had tapered off and the company advanced out. One by one, the Cruzob villages were overwhelmed and held... by leaving a small guard to maintain the indian villages of women, children and old men as Federal forts. The sublevados, disdaining open battle, sniped at Bravo's forces from the monte and from trenches by the road... which in truth was little more than an animal path except at the approach to villages... picking off a man here, three there, but always retreating, always falling back towards Chan Santa Cruz, as Bravo's dispatches to the capital portrayed the Campaña...

His optimism was, however, misplaced.

The sublevados had begun to double back, striking at captured villages strung one behind the other like pearls on the trail from Ichmul. Federal soldiers were killed in their sleep or whenever they stepped out beyond the perimeter of their enclosures. Weapons and equipment were stolen, later turned against the forces of the Republic and of civilization. Even the road from Ichmul west, almost, to Merida became unsafe.

"And then," Santurce told the coffee drinkers, "General Bravo made an important and difficult decision, but one which had presented itself as the only logical alternative. After all, he already has failed his President... although to be entirely honest the timetable that was drawn up in Mexico City was one that assumed a bare and level terrain, a desert like that of the north. It was unrealistic... and Bravo suspected don Porfirio knew it too. At any rate, he had nothing left to lose."

"What happened?" José asked.

Sergeant Martinez, who had offered only occasional comments or interruptions on the order of "That's so!" and "That's how they did it!" now lifted a finger. "Listen, tenientes, listen and then decide if you'd rather join the convoy back to Merida tomorrow. You have studied great wars in Chapultepec. The campaigns of Napoleon in Russia? The Spanish conquest? This, this is war in the monte. It is like no other war... not even the campaign against the Yaqui. Do you want me to tell you?" The lieutenants sat expectantly, bright-eyed as rabbits. "Very well." He put his fingers to his chin, rubbing the stubble of his beard. "No, that wasn't it, it was Dzonotchel. That little flytrap, Dzonotchel. Well!"

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