THE INSURGENCE of
CHAN SANTA CRUZ
BOOK FIVE:
THE BOOK of STONE
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Now, in
fact, it was well past midnight when the slave trader grasped another bottle of
the warm beer and barked "Prepare me a room!" La Siria
grunted as the slaver shot the top off of the beer, causing a third of it to
spill over as foam, but Baltazar merely laughed
through his rotten teeth before turning back to José.
"Look,
Major," he said, "it has been... six months?
Yes, that sounds about right. I remember that because of the bad lot you sold
to me, friend, the kind of men one keeps in chains."
"Weren't
they going to Cuba? Well, what of it? Certainly your voyage couldn't have been
disturbed by a few resentful debtors, could it?" José taunted him.
"Of
course not!" said Perez, tipping the bottle angrily and so hastily that
his lip was cut by the broken glass. He flicked his tongue over the dripping
blood and savored this. "It is said that those born under Mars seem
particularly weakened under the influence of Neptune. I swear the hold still
stinks with that lot, and the purchaser gave me the Devil's own time before I
could convince him that a few days on solid ground would return these fellows
to their old ways."
"Why
anyone would wish that escapes me," the Major said.
"Well
the purchaser was not Cuban but Colombian. He is... or perhaps was, by now...
raising some sort of private army. Havana's a den of lunatics. It pleased me,
Major, to be able to return with my ship and my profit to an orderly nation,
secure under our estimable President. Let's drink to Don Porfirio!
I hope, by the way, you new bunch isn't of such a nature."
"A
little of this and a little of that," admitted José, with a reluctance
that alerted the slaver.
"How many?"
José
swallowed a little beer. "You know the way it is when the chicle gathering season is on. Fortunately there has been
some trouble between indians
who are reasonable and those who aren't and I was made a gift. Sixty men."
"Sixty!"
Perez shook his head. "Even if my purse permitted, the boat would not. I
can take no more than forty this time. Send the rest to cut chicle."
"I
can't, these ones would know where to hide. Sell the rest of the beer,"
José suggested, pounding a bottle against the table and frowning, "it's
mostly glass anyway."
"Since
there is so much product, I gather that you will be
lowering your usual price."
"No,"
the Major said. "Thirty pesos the head."
"Thirty!"
Baltazar mopped his brow. "That's a fair price
for fighting men, but for your lot of this and that..."
"Nonsense,
old friend," José smiled. "You'll easily get eighty."
"Sixty,
God willing. And there is my problem with shrinkage." Baltazar Perez had done business with some of the most
upstanding and reputable merchants in the Caribbean and he could talk their
language, when he wished. It was even said that, on one of the nameless little
English-speaking islands between Cuba and the state of Florida he used for his
retreat, he kept an accountant, a German with one eye to keep track of what he
sometimes called his "capital".
"The
Yaquis have given some of these people ideas," he added.
A few
years earlier, a number of Yaqui indians
from Sonora had been shipped overseas from Veracruz to the port of Progreso, a part of the so-called relocation instigated by
Ramon Corral and pursued so vigorously that the great hacendados
of Coahuila, Sonora and Chihuahua petitioned Diaz to call off his creature,
lest their supply of labor be utterly decimated. Among these were a number of
women including, it was alleged, the daughter of a Yaqui chief. The prospect of
their slavery and the attentions of the sailors upon their princess so provoked
the prisoners that they demonstrated their displeasure by throwing themselves
into the sea, resulting in considerable loss to their contractor.
"These,"
José swore, "are not Yaquis. They have no pride, nor do they realize that
death by suicide would preferable to their fate."
"What
about women?" Perez persisted.
"Three."
The trader scowled. "If you can't take sixty, you at least can find room
for fifty," José suggested.
The
slaver thought this over. "I do not have a boat so
large as Diaz," he said, referring not to the President but to Valentin Diaz, contractor for the Colonization Company who
sold debt laborers by the hundred to chicle
companies. "And with so many people, there is even more threat of disease.
Fifty," he said again, swallowing more beer. "I will do it, if I can
choose my own fifty. Out of any lot there are bound to be at least ten who have
sickness or who will otherwise prove more trouble then they are worth."
"You
may choose your fifty," José consented. What was the matter to him... he
would never see any of these men again! They cemented their deal by cracking
bottles together, then forced the empties into the
sand, neck down, which was the way that floors were constructed in Vigia Chico.
"Will
you want a contract for these."
"No,"
said the Major. "It might leave a trail. The troubles are continuing
around Valladolid and, I suspect, that there will soon be another of those
incidents Quintana Roo is famous for... a
massacre."
"What
a shame." Perez made a sign of the cross. "The sublevados?"
"I
think rather it will be deserters this time, with a few Maya... or at least,
people in white clothing... at their edge. The General wishes to make an
impression upon the capitaleños that it is not just a
matter of indians, but that renegade Mexican soldiers
are capable of conspiring to obstruct the development of the territory. He has
his objectives."
"Well,
they're no business of mine." And the trader shook his head. "Too bad, in a way. I went to a great deal of trouble
to prepare contracts. I even had them drawn up by a printer. Who ever could
question the legality of a printed contract."
"Someone who cannot read?"
Perez
laughed. "I even gave them a raise," he said, passing a sample page
to José. "Well at least that's a space where the purchaser can give them a
raise, if he desires. It's almost the same thing."
The
emergence of the legal contract as a tool of slavery was a practice dating to
the end of the Caste War. It was initially used by those who wished their
reputations preserved as being something other than that of keepers of and
traders in slaves, for such had been especially singled out by the indian justice that prevailed in
Yucatan's countryside through the 1850s. No document could fend off a
determined brigade of sublevados, but the assistance
from abroad that Mexico required demanded at least the pretense of a legal
system, especially after both the expulsion of Maximilian and the end of
slavery in the United States. In the interest of presenting a civilized face to
the world, Mexico had enacted a system of documentation that any so-called
slave was, in fact, a free man who had sold his liberty for the settlement of
past debts or future benefits. Perez had reprinted one of the more imaginative
ones, leaving space to spell out a salary and even various items charged
against wages; food, sandals, a hat...
"May
I keep this? The General will be amused."
Perez
waved his approval. "Anything Bravo desires is his, of course. By the way,
how is the old fox doing? Does he still have a mortal fear of eggs?"
"Oh
yes," José said. "He will not abide them being brought into Santa
Cruz! However, he has been appointed Inspector General of Primary Instruction
by the Superintendent of Education."
"Isn't
he already Superintendent of Education? Well, I suppose there is nothing in the
Constitution that prohibits him from appointing himself to inspect himself. As long as the salary is right. How many posts does that
make now?"
José
made an appearance of counting upon his fingers. "Civil Governor, Jefe Military, Superintendent of Health..."
"Superintendent of Health? What in the devil does that
pertain to?"
"Actually
it's a post at which he spends more than a little time. Ordering graves to be
dug, ditches made to drain water that could breed mosquitoes, signing orders
quarantining lepers, shooting stray dogs... that I have seen him do
himself."
"Well,
old Ignacio has always hated dogs, long before he developed this hatred of
eggs. So now he is Superintendent of Health," Perez added, taking another
mouthful of beer. "Is he expected to develop a cure for lead
poisoning?"
"You
had better give me a good price on this bad beer," said the Major.
"Otherwise, I've a mind to tell the General what you said."
The
slaver made an obscene gesture.
"He'd
sell you to Pancha Robles..."
"She
already has my heart," sighed Baltazar.
"I'd be a happy pirate if the rest of my poor frame could follow into such
bondage!"
Pancha Robles was the chief competitor to Perez and, also,
the lover to whom he had proposed marriage a dozen times without avail. A
famous horsewoman, reputed for bringing her pistols with her to bed and... it had been said... employing them upon those who failed to
satisfy, she ransomed prisoners from the state and local jails and sold them to
the hacendados.
"I
could take the place of her son," Perez dreamed. "She needs a man to
help... she beat him so badly that he has been abed for weeks."
"That's
terrible," José said. "How could a mother do that to her own
son?"
"Gerardo
is a dashing fellow, but he has the vice of killing slaves. Well, don't we all?
It's as natural as taking a sip of rum now and again; I could tell you about
the last poor devil who could not keep from throwing up below deck until the
rest couldn't sleep from the stink and they began to howl. It was either murder
or mutiny. But still, amigo, it's money lost. That boy
was given nine men in chains to escort to Asturias del
Sur, and arrived with only two alive. He'd shot the other seven! I don't know
what the first was for but the others complained about dragging dead men along
and they got it for that. Two hundred eighty pesos wasted!"
"Well,
with such associates, Doña Pancha
can't afford much competition now.
"Bah!"
said Perez, bringing up another bottle. Too drunk, by now, to bother shooting
the cap off he pounded it against the table and broke its neck on the third
attempt. "We're just small fry. Those gentlemen with contacts, those
kind... they have the walk of President Diaz's jails or else they can just
snatch up Yaquis by the thousands and drop them in Yucatan. Nobody thinks of
insulting them as slavers, no... they quote Aristotle
and show themselves in fancy dress where the Ministers and Deputies knock one
another aside to kiss their feet. The Vice President, Luis Torres, that
kind..."
He
removed his hat and slapped it on the table. It seemed, to the Major's clouding
mind, a form of homage to a giant among rogues.
"The esteemed General Torres! He'll send a train of
eighty cars up to Sonora with supplies and weapons to sell to the rebel Yaquis.
Then he sends the same cars back, filled with his same Yaqui customers. How he
isn't caught and hanged... by somebody, anybody... I cannot understand. I can
only drink another toast to his exploits."
"No,
that's not a thing I could picture you doing." The great eagle rarely
visited José when he was drinking, but the little one was possessed by an
unreasonable desire to taunt the slave trader. Perez, however, was beyond
insult.
"You
can count on that! Sonora's locked up, tight as a virgin's strongbox. Besides,
I don't want Yaquis on my ship... when they're not killing themselves or trying
to kill you, they're trying to escape. And they're damned good at it. Give a
Yaqui a head start and he'll find his way back to Sonora as well as any dog.
Five thousand kilometers, that's true. One of Corral's men in Campeche tried to
sell a hacendado a Yaqui who had escaped from that
very estanción, gone back to Sonora and was caught
again. His own indian."
"Naturally
the fellow paid," José concluded.
"Of course. If the Vice President wishes to be paid
twice for the same Yaqui, then a hacendado has to
pay. Later, he can raise the price of his exports or cut his wages. Most likely the latter."
"That's
an amazing story," José had to admit. "Where do you learn of such
things?"
Perez
leaned back, assuming an air of affronted dignity. "Why Major, I am a
pirate from a reputable family of the same. My grandfather sailed with the
great Francisco Marti himself."
José
uncapped another bottle. "Tell me about it," he said.
And so
he did.
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