THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

 

BOOK EIGHT:  THE SECOND of the BOOKS of CHANGE

 

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

 

          In precise, tiny penmanship of that sort Dr. Freud, in far-off Vienna, was currently associating with disorders of the mind and bowels, Alvarado began listing those works which the indians must learn or avoid, were they to become the civilized, progressive people that no less a man than Porfirio Diaz envisioned fifteen years ago.  Those which the white guardians of the mazehualob prohibited their possession of (and so... inadvertently, of course... created an interest in where none had dwelt before) predominated. At the top of that list of those to be withheld from them... beneath, of course, the Bible but ahead of Adam Smith... was, of course, the Viennese freethinker's "Interpretation of Dreams". August Comte was another so anathematized, supplanted by Marx and Engels.  The lines of permitted and forbidden thought between Alvarado and the Cientificos, however, converged frequently... the classic authors being greatly represented; Livy, Pliny and the noble Aristotle, as were many of the social theorists of the preceding century. The diversity of Europe was represented... Darwin, Hegel, Descartes… and Alvarado frowned a while, chewing the edge of his pen before adding to the list the name of a certain Englishman of promise, H. G. Wells. Having taken this bold step, he reconsidered and crossed such name out... for it was not only the convention of scientific socialism, but of the civilization of the times, that only the dead are suitable to teach the living. And he deliberated once more on the merits of change and tradition and, finally, allowed his hand to write this name again and then, so to balance the scales, banned no less than a dozen of the living, including Spanish pessimists, French symbolists, British and Irish occultists and three Americans, Mark Twain, the diabolist and Villista Bierce and Edgar Allen Poe... whether the last still lived was uncertain, to the mind of the Governor, but that he would object to the discipline necessitated by scientific socialism was, from his scribblings, incontrovertible.

          In Yucatan, not even Alvarado's prohibitionism and his fiesta of the rope had so enraged the privilegiados as his determination to open the schools to females. The fears of the montes were that a suffrage movement, such as that now raging in the northern Colossus, might arise, but Alvarado's intent had turned out a dozen times the worse! "This is our beautiful Masonic doctrine," the Governor had declared upon initiating sexual education in the schools, "that if woman was born to conceive and bear she should not be ignorant of anything."

          The predictable outcry from the Archbishop and his minions had had an equally predictable result... the clergy were rounded up and deposited in the Penitenceria Juarez and the churches shuttered. Alvarado had often deliberated their future, this was brought to mind again at the sight of the cathedral of Santa Cruz del Bravo which, for its size, was seldom out of the Governor's vision.

          Like Bravo, Garcilazo had used it as a barracks and prison; Alvarado had scarcely mounted its steps before a prickly feeling appeared at the base of his neck. Next the General began to sweat profusely, his temples ached and he felt faint. He went no further. A proud and militant atheist, the General despised most Spiritualists, deeming them charlatans, but did not go so far as to exclude the possibility of scientific influences still to be discovered. If there were such, plenty of them about hung about this church and they were harmful to the Territory's health... when Reynoso and others told the little that they knew, Alvarado's loathing increased. For a few minutes he resolved to knock the ugly thing down, but the territory was already overpopulated; he had nowhere to house those who would be displaced. Later, this would be done.

          He had one of his Colonels enter the structure, instead, and bring forth the band of highwaymen who had been captured in a village ten kilometers away and brought to Santa Cruz to be confined in the church on the day after the General's arrival. "Take them to the plaza," Alvarado said from the steps, "and shoot them all." This was quickly accomplished and the fragrance of the powder carried off the General's headache.

          Now refreshed, he drew question marks to the side of his paper of instructions, asking himself what sort of teacher would leave the safety and attractions of the cities for such place... certainly not the European-educated gentlemen of Merida. Perhaps it would be necessary to train the indians to teach each other.

          "I am thinking like Zapata," Alvarado realized, "like a Pancho Villa." He threw his pen across the office. There are some matters than cannot be settled by the rope or gun, and Salvador Alvarado had just stumbled over one of these.

          The eighth of June was the last day that Alvarado passed in Santa Cruz del Bravo. He had arrived like a hurricane and, almost as swiftly, had gone. The ancient Carlos Plank was left as Territorial Governor, Reynoso retained as second-in-command, which left him rubbing his hands at what seemed the precipitous health of the octogenarian jefe. From one of the basements of the government building a disturbed memory was brought forth in the person of Arturo Garcilazo... pale, disheveled in aspect and incoherent in his speech, but clearly alive for the world and the territory's witness. Three days previously he had tried to bargain for his life, revealing the existence of a treasure hidden in a dead tree several kilometers to the east, near the rail line to Vigia Chico. Alvarado had promised nothing but inspected the booty... only a few gold and silver coins, but paper money in profusion... worthless bilimbiques printed by Villistas, the pathetic and haunted paper pesos bearing the profile of Madero, the defiant but equally worthless Huertista currency; finally a few moldy American dollars and British pounds. Garcilazo was vigorously questioned as to the existence of other troves, but offered up only some papers and a handwritten book which, the disgraced General averred, had been passed from Governor to Governor. He swore that the crimes detailed therein would somehow absolve him, by comparison to his predecessors, but Alvarado had already decided the guilt of these predecessors and, so, dumped the book, the papers and the money into a box to be taken back to Merida along with the rest of the evidence to be presented at trial.

          "Some will hold that our Revolution we have made here is but the substitution of one man and establishment for another," said Alvarado to Santa Cruz, assembled en masse in the plaza to see him off. "But it is more than that. What we have done this week is a noble, virtuous thing, raising not only the rifles of Quintana Roo but its spirit."

          His last gesture, more amiably received, was to declare that a pension of thirty pesos monthly would be extended to veterans of the Caste War. And then Salvador Alvarado, with his entourage and prisoners, departed Santa Cruz del Bravo, never again to pass through this portion of the world... not even to be present when the whispers began rising into cries... "Whose thirty pesos? Obregon's? Carranza's? Villa's?"

          The General from Sonora had gone back to Merida, leaving behind forever that simple world where one's wealth could be tabulated in blocks of chicle and the sincerity of a bargain tested by one stroke of a machete.

 

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