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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