THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

CHAPTER THREE

At Yokdzonot, Martinez raised his cup of tepid coffee and gathered his wits around him to continue his accounting of the campaign. "For a while," he said, "we proceeded as well as might be expected - I mean, of course, when the situation with General Garcia's supporters was concluded. Very deliberately we advanced... as though our Heavenly Father, having challenged our resolve, had seen the way to reward our toils with victory. More of those wretched villages than I can remember we captured for, as the Major has said, there is little of the Napoleonic character in the sublevados. They fire their stolen weaponry from cover until their British ammunition is gone, and then they run, deserting their women and their children.

"The General ordered all advance and searching parties to consist of no less than sixty men and, with that, the cruel massacres which had so often occurred under Garcia - causing, besides the sacrifice of worthy men and officers, the falling of arms and equipment into the hands of the Cruzob - ceased to occur. But as we reached sixty kilometers distance from Peto... ai chingado!" The Sergeant leaped to his feet and spat.

"What was that about Peto?" José asked.

"Another fly sent up from hell!" Martinez peered down into the half-chewed black beans in the dust and saw a wet insect dragging itself along the ground. He brought his heel down and the fly and beans disappeared together into an unrecognizable mush.

"Don't be so picky," advised Major Santurce. "In Morelos, I once ate a whole plate of maguey worms roasted in oil... it was like eating a plate of fried potatoes. The people there esteem them for their phosphorous; they claim it aids in the digestion. And if it makes them glow in the dark... all the better to shoot them!"

Martinez spat again. "I'll remind you of that next spring when this place fills up with grasshoppers," he replied, inspecting the contents of his plate and casting downward glances towards a line of ants already creeping towards the waste. "Now where was I... these villages, that's it! Well, you see, the more of them we captured... the more of them we had to hold. And because these sublevados slip through the monte like these ants, backwards or forwards or even sideways as their whim will take them, the General left fifty men with each village, but by midsummer that number was reduced to thirty, then twenty.

"General Bravo had fallen into Garcia's error, and the place we finally ran out of luck was that little flytrap the indians call Dzonotchel, a lying name if ever there was one." Martinez rinsed his mouth with coffee as if to wash the flavor of memory away. "You've been taught enough of the language about these parts, I hope, to know that cenotes are those stinking wells of poisoned water, and "chel" is some word for beauty or sweetness or such character. Lying indians! At any rate, we took the place without a struggle... everyone had packed and gone, as usually happens. Twenty men we put there but ten days later they put up a fight at Cumil and we lost twelve dead, and another twenty shot up so badly they had to be returned to Peto. There are a hundred different fevers and infections to carry away a man barely nicked on the shoulder or knee. It's hopeless here," the Sergeant mused, unhappily.

"At any rate, Bravo resolved to leave the full fifty at Cumil, and he had to pull a few men from this place, recall others from that. From Dzonotchel, he transferred five men, leaving the garrison with only fifteen, as if inviting the sublevados to attack. On the morning that it happened, six of them were off in the monte, somewhere, and in the afternoon, when the remaining nine were sleeping off their lunch, the insurgents fell upon them. Eight were hacked to pieces, those who returned found only chopped meat, someone's head over there, someone else's hand besides. Only the commander was left alive and he was made example of; his hands cut off, eyes out, and of course they unmanned him too.

"Well, that was the end of the march. Bravo wanted to go forward but the other officers, even his own, refused. Dzonotchel is only twenty kilometers from Peto, less than half the distance to here. There is too much of the monte for our numbers, Major, we are becalmed here and, since you left, things only have worsened. We still await our orders."

The young lieutenants, noses quivering like rabbits now, cast furtive glances into the impenetrable vegetation that ringed the encampment. "Now that the politicians have decided to get into the fray, God knows what will become of us," stated Major Santurce, waving one hand dismissively at civilization somewhere behind the monte.

"On the twelfth of the month, Governor Canton telegraphed his request to President Diaz that Bravo be relieved and command of the campaign turned over to the state. It is the curse of the Republic," he swore, "the politicians all see themselves as military commanders while the Generals dabble in politics."

"Well, what was don Porfirio's reply?" asked Lt. Castro.

The major shrugged. "He has taken the matter under consideration and we are to wait here for his decision. The bad humor of the General is not without reason."

"Governor Canton desires to preserve the state in its entirety," José spoke up, "or, if separation is inevitable, he'd want his loyalists in control. That would be simpler were the sublevados put down under the authority of Merida, not Mexico."

"That seems a political argument," Santurce reasoned, "and so it may well be true. The politicians argue from their offices, going home to their wives and their estates, whether in Yucatan or in the capital... they send their cables flying back and forth, what matters it to them while we wait here on open ground and sleep beneath the stars."

Martinez emptied the unfinished coffee into the dirt. "Looking for wood yesterday morning, I put my hand on a branch covered with those stinging ants. It's still swollen."

"So much for war in the Napoleonic tradition," agreed Lieutenant Castro who, like José, was of an old and wealthy family and had enlisted in the cause of adventure. "Too bad these rebels aren't inclined to stand and fight."

"Agreed," said José, tying his hammock well above the reach of things that crawl to take his afternoon siesta, "but what would you expect from indians? They'd be slaughtered," he assured himself and, lying down, placed his hat over his brow.

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