THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

 

BOOK SEVEN:  THE SECOND of the BOOKS of CHANGE

CHAPTER ONE 

 

          Victoriano Huerta, President of Mexico, raised his copita above the table at El Globo, one of those few cafes replacing the Palacio and Congress as places in which the business of Mexico was now transacted. At his table sat a doctor and a barber, a young American aide to Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, a General, a German, some of Huerta's sons and nephews and some of the sons and relations of his confederates. Lastly, there was a tall man in a light tan overcoat and slouch hat standing, a man who seldom smiled but watched the President's back, glancing from the patrons of the cafe to those passing on the street, searching them with the keen, pitiless eye of a raptor.

          "To some," Huerta toasted, "I am an extraordinary man.  To others," he admitted, "an intelligent bandit. But to all Mexico, I am President and so," he ordered, "let's drink another."

          How had this man, this little General...whose early success as a scourge of the indians of the Southwest and as the strong arm of Ignacio Bravo in the Southeast had been followed by disappointment, decline and even exile when the magic of Porfirio Diaz finally evaporated... climbed out of his bureaucratic coffin and into the National Palace?

          "Madero! Der Federgeist!" sputtered Ehrenberg, attaché to the German minister, raising his glass to Huerta before tapping the side of his head in a gesture of translation.

          But after wiping away his mirthful tears, Huerta wagged a finger at the German. "Not true!" he said. "Not true! The little mooncalf is a dead saint in some few quarters, but those are not here and comprise only such unhealthy gatherings where the weak are woven mats of virtue. But it was not weakness alone that doomed the ligerza..." (and Huerta used this world as had Ehrenberg meaning, literally, a feather-head) "... he was a man of chronic dishonesty. I despise a Socialist, yet Madero planted only ground the Magonistas plowed, and he betrayed them to the Yankees. Zapata, a bandit to be sure, never would have revolted if the dwarf hadn't wasted his time with lies and insults... a situation I, of course, used to my advantage and that of all Mexico with the help of my Chacol..." and, here, the standing man placed two fingers on the brim of his hat and pushed it further down to hide his face.

          "Nor would Pascual Orozco have turned without such insults, and the promises of money Madero had no intention of keeping..." Huerta declared... "thus depriving myself of great victories at Rellano and Bachimba and that of Blanquet at El Oro, causing the Colorados to flee across the border into El Paso. Did you know that an elderly hotelier in her eighties, there, would have nothing of Orozco's drunken and defeated troops? Take your disreputable friends and go," Huerta said, mimicking the voice of an old woman, "I keep a decent hotel. And Orozco went! He was a murderous one, sent whole trains loaded with dynamite crashing into the Federals... and the little dreamer made this man his enemy by refusing to pay him! Why? If a few pesos will keep a Pascual Orozco loyal to Mexico, who am I to refuse him? I can always issue more Peace Bonds. Look at the Generals Madero had... he finally had to fire Garibaldi when the Yaquis refused to accept his orders and the one before myself, Gonzalez Salas, was so ashamed of his incompetence at Escalon that he shot himself in the head on the retreat from Corralitos to Torreon."

          Huerta shook his own head. "Another instance of Madero's miserliness... he would not tithe your great Ambassador Wilson," Huerta added, addressing the young American by lifting his glass. Wilson's aide was a lanky fellow not yet out of his twenties with a shock of straw-colored hair low above one eyebrow, his name was Barlow and Wilson had set him to the task of representing the American mining interests in the north, primarily towards the effect of making labor troubles disappear.

          In turn, Wilson was Huerta's advocate in Washington... but this was a task lately subject to foul winds; the schism among American Republicans between President Taft and his pugnacious predecessor Teddy Roosevelt had effected the election of Woodrow Wilson, an unknown pedagogue so far distinguished by a crimped and crabby moralism, seemingly compelling him to withhold diplomatic recognition from Huerta. The President drank and set his copita down, tapping it on the table. "I have always admired Americans. When I returned from Quintana Roo to assume my engineering duties, I sent thousands of cattle from my ranches north to Chicago. I have purchased a fine suit - a silk hat, as the Maderistas wore, tails, pantalones de raya." Victoriano Huerta referred not to the shoddy trousers peddled by such as Armando Feliz but the attire of diplomats... those words for striped cloth, the boundaries of estanciónes, and the stores that service the captive market of such estanciónes are the same. "Maybe the fall of Diaz could raise one like Madero up for a while, but America? How could a man like Woodrow Wilson be lifted over them?"

          And, shaking his head, he looked to Barlow for explanation.

          "There was, also, an exceptional situation," said Barlow, measuring his words... for the standing fellow had the appearance of someone's spy. Barlow was a creature of Henry Wilson who counted on this young man to escort him back to the Embassy when he'd had too much to drink. Wilson shared a portion... not, only, of Huerta's tithe... but of the greater gratuities of Guggenheims and other American mining interests, besides those Mexican dynasties like the Creel and Terrazas families who'd turned to Huerta after he had routed their creature, Orozco. Barlow expected to be recalled at any moment... that Henry Lane Wilson remained in the capital was but another instance of Woodrow Wilson's incompetence. Fortunately, the young man had already secured important and wealthy friends, not only north and south of the Rio Grande but in Europe, even the Far East.

          "It arose because Africa, with all of its game, could not contain the zeal of Colonel Roosevelt," Barlow sighed. "Hunting merely whetted the Colonel's appetite for the greater game of politics, and his ambition would not permit the continued peaceful rule of William Howard Taft. And when some non-entity fired a shot that bounced off of the spectacle cases in the Colonel's breast, Teddy began to think himself immortal; even after Taft secured the nomination, there was such hullabaloo about the delegates from Arkansas and Alabama that Roosevelt went to Syracuse in September and pitched the Progressive candidate LaFollette out of his own party's nomination. So Roosevelt took votes away from Taft, LaFollette withheld votes from Roosevelt and Wilson was elected."

          "Yes... yes... but who is this fellow?" Huerta insisted.

          "Who was Madero before gaining and losing office? Wilson was a Professor of some sort, President of a University, a Governor for a while. His was the party of Bryan, who was going to support Roosevelt until Wilson promised to appoint him Secretary of State."

          "He sounds like a Madero, this maker of deals," Huerta fumed. "Why doesn't Roosevelt do as I did, or some other military man... Pershing, Wood, one of those?"

          "Because Americans don't do things like that," Barlow replied, priggishly, and the German, Ehrenberg, patted him on the shoulder.

          "Yes," Huerta said, "yes, yes... he's right. And by turn, your Presidents... except this Wilson, maybe... leave military matters to their Generals. Do you know the cause for which Madero had me cashiered and replaced by José Maria Vega? Vega! That musico I knew from my days in Quintana Roo? It was for standing that bandit Villa against a wall. A common horse thief... and Madero pardons him, but did the President appreciate my sparing that plump, windy cockroach. No!"

 

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