The Eagle's Throne
From now on things start to go downhill, my darling disciple Nicolás Valdivia. Now, the comptroller general, don Domingo de la Rosa, is known to many as “the Flamingo” because he never knows which leg to stand on, the left or the right. Since our current president’s government is one of so-called national unity, sometimes it has to appease the conservatives, sometimes the liberals. The trouble is that both sides are honest only when they’re the opposition. The minute they take over the government, they soon learn the saying coined by that very colorful character from our country’s extravagant past, César Garizurieta, aka “the Possum”: “He who does not live off the public purse lives in error.”
But I can tell you now that the man who, like him, tries to be everyone’s friend by granting concessions left, right, and center will never have enough money. And if the comptroller doesn’t have enough money, how can the republic?
You’re right, my darling Nicolás. Education Secretary Ulises Barragán is a perfect disaster. They say he lies more than a dentist and that his perpetual and endless monologue has but one virtue: It has the power to turn practically any audience catatonic, which is useful when it comes to dealing with the Educational Workers’ Union and its two million frightful members when they all gather in the Elba Esther Gordillo Auditorium. The bad thing about Secretary Barragán is that his speeches are so boring that he doesn’t just put his audiences to sleep, he puts himself to sleep, too! At one particular event, for example, a prolonged silence aroused the suspicion of the porter at the Colegio Nacional, who found everyone in the lecture hall asleep: the sixty-six people in the audience plus the lecturer, Secretary Barragán himself.
The health secretary, Abundio Colmenares, performs his job with a certain aplomb, panache even. He’s an incorrigible lech who uses his political position to get his jollies, all under the pretext of healing. Quite a piece of work, but he can be awfully nice when he wants to. They say he’s both tough and passionate: Neither the men he hates nor the women he desires stand a chance when they’re in his clutches.
The environment secretary, Madame Guillermina Guillén, sparkles with good intentions. She’s so full of fantasy that all she has to do is the opposite of what she thinks in order to be realistic. She protects bird sanctuaries by fumigating them to the point of killing off anything and everything that flies. She hands out logging licenses, turning a blind eye to the fact that soon there’ll be no more forests to protect. Problem solved. She recently divorced her husband because she discovered that the good man only put on his false teeth when he visited his lover.
The labor secretary, Basilio Taracena, is exactly the opposite of what he appears to be. Just look at his eyes, the eyes of a criollo straight out of Guadalajara—light, but not serene. Hooded, clouded over, misty, and if there’s anything that gives him cause for labor, it’s his own body. Notice the copious collection of nervous tics, the way he constantly scratches himself, his neck, his armpits, his inner thigh, as if he were plagued by lice. . . .
The agriculture secretary, don Epifanio Alatorre, has been a fixture in national politics ever since the days of López Mateos and is famous for his predictions regarding crops and weather: “Depending on the rains, crops this year might be good, they might be bad, or they might be the very opposite.”
Since he’s been in politics for over half a century many people have asked him how he’s survived so much change, from López Mateos to Fox to Terán. And don Epifanio just licks his index finger and raises it in the air as if to say he always knows which way the wind blows. Don’t ever get into a debate with him. It’s like arguing with a mariachi band.
You should also be careful not to trust the communications secretary, Felipe Aguirre. You’ll notice that his face is the same color as his socks, a sure sign of a vile nature. Or at least a lack of imagination. His famous adage about marriage just about sums it up: “Want to become an old man? Then spend your whole life with the same old woman.”
While the advice may be amoral, his conduct is not. He’s grown old with the same old woman, a voluminous matron who inspires terror in all who cross her path because she walks with her eyes closed, like a fat vampire blinded by the sun. Proof that our head of communications communicates best via silence and darkness, and by awarding contracts that provide him with some very lucrative commissions. Now, why does the president tolerate him if he knows that the secretary sees nothing and steals everything? A singular and ancient theory, my dear Nicolás: No government functions without the grease of corruption.
Corruption lubricates, but look at the pained face of our national oil company’s chairman, don Olegario Santana. He welcomes U.S. capital without denationalizing the industry, but when we defend the price of oil, the U.S. government penalizes us, thus penalizing its own investors. That’s Washington’s eternal contradiction, caught between the sweeping international claims and the small local interests: The textile factory in North Carolina will always win out over the Brazilian factory and the World Trade Organization, since the latter two don’t vote in U.S. elections. As you’ll see, the chairman has got the expression of someone who goes around raping ten-year-old girls. How can he allow himself to appear in public with such a guilty look on his face? He is a man to be pitied.
Now turn your attention to the two military officers sitting together. The one who looks like a Prussian Junker is, as you know, the defense secretary, Mondragón von Bertrab. Educated at the Hochschule der Bundeswehr, the German military academy, he has an excellent relationship with the Pentagon and has read and memorized all there is to know about the campaigns of Caesar in Gaul and Bonaparte in Italy, he can recite Clausewitz by heart, and there isn’t a single page in Tacitus’ Germania or Livy’s History that he hasn’t studied closely. He’s the finest example of the kind of educated, responsible, serious, and loyal officer that the heroic military academy has been turning out for generations. But don’t rush to stick your neck out for him, my dear Nicolás Valdivia. Precisely because of his education and professional competence, von Bertrab is a disciplined automaton who fulfills his obligations down to the letter: loyalty to the president, as long as the president remains loyal to the institutions of the republic, but he’s more loyal to the spirit of the nation—whatever that means—than to the president himself if he thinks the president hasn’t fulfilled his mandate to the nation. And we know exactly what that means! Nevertheless, our admirable local Junker never soils his hands, Nicolás, he leaves that to the vicious individual seated at his side, Cícero Arruza, chief of the federal police.
Be very careful with this one, I mean it. Von Bertrab is the friendly face of force. Arruza is the despicable one. His motto is “Blood, death, and fire.” He’s a wolf in wolf ’s clothing. His only obstacle is von Bertrab, who said of Cícero, “Giving Arruza any power is like putting a pyromaniac in charge of a fire department.”
And yet nobody—and I mean nobody—has any doubt that Arruza can be utterly indispensable at the right moment. He knows it, and he anticipates that moment with the stealth of a panther in the jungle. They say that General Cícero Arruza could have forced Benito Juárez to confess that he was working as a double agent for the French. I’m not saying that Arruza isn’t constructive, it’s just that for him being constructive means turning intimidation into a public service.
I believe I can dispose of the housing secretary, Efrén Iturbide, in a few short sentences. They say he’s the best-dressed idiot in the world. He boasts about being the descendant of that preposterous emperor we had at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Agustín I. This is not true. Our dear Efrén uses his looks to falsify his pedigree. Naturally, one can’t have such translucent skin without belonging to the “decent people.” Decent, my friend? This is what public opinion has to say about him and his position: “Efrén Iturbide is the secretary of state for the housing of Efrén Iturbide.”
That’s precisely it. He’s built but one house: his own.
That man with the dumbfounded look on his face i
s Juan de Dios Molinar, secretary for information and media, who, thanks to the work of our powerful neighbors, has been effectively stripped of his informative capacity, apart from being able to write letters, as I have decided to do (and may they all follow my example). Look at him, how badly designed he is, poor thing: saturnine air, timid smile, the eyes of a tiger, the hands of a carpenter, and the torso of an Italian tenor. Mother Nature can be such a bitch sometimes! And to top it all off, mouth shut like a padlock. He’s the living image of moronic stupor and I feel sorry for him. My friend Herrera says it’s better this way. Since the secretary for information doesn’t inform, the interior secretary can manipulate the news as he sees fit.
In contrast, look at the smiling attorney general, Paladio Villaseñor, who goes around saying “That’s great, that’s great” to everyone. It’s no wonder he’s nicknamed “Mr. That’s Great,” but I think he’s a lot sharper than he seems and that his reputation as a fool saves him from making crucial decisions or publicly offending the people he screws under the table. As you can see, that has its virtues and its drawbacks. Not for nothing, depending on the circumstances, can he be an eel or a clam.
And now, my darling Nicolás, come the serious players. The treasury secretary, Andino Almazán, is a steely technocrat who refuses to budge an inch from his convictions about the economy. He’s a theologian of Economics with a gothic and capital “E.” For Andino, devaluing our currency would be like having a prostitute for a daughter. What the poor man doesn’t know is that his wife, whom everyone calls “La Pepa,” is a slut who cheats on him day and night. But more about that later, darling.
I am anxious to get to the worst, to end this presentation with naked horror itself, the most inexplicable voice in this republican choir: President Lorenzo Terán’s chief of staff, the fawning, despicable, grotesque Tácito de la Canal. Look closely: He shouldn’t be seen in daylight. His head is like one big scar, from chin to occiput, both areas covered with prickly stubble that does little to hide his egg of a bald skull. Look at how he rubs his hands together in an effort to appear humble. He cultivates the look of the perpetually destitute, as if always on the point of begging. He’s the doormat, the paillason, the president’s rug in every sense. He controls access to the executive office and volunteers to clean the president’s soles before the chief executive sets foot in the Office of Offices. Tácito de la Canal is the kind of man who looks as though he’s never breathed fresh air in his life. That’s what they say about him. But I know better. Tácito de la Canal is the man who watches me from a certain spot in the woods every night as I take off my clothes. He’s the voyeur who beat you to my window, the repulsive peeping tom you saw the other night. . . .
That is the cast of characters in this little show. I’ll wait for a better time to give you the lowdown on another singular group of characters: the third-rate legislators, the congressmen and senators who, pulverized into tiny minority factions, leave the management of Congress in the hands of the inept president of Congress, Onésimo Canabal, while preventing the passing of essential laws, which forces the president and Secretary Herrera to act with a pragmatism that is occasionally legal, occasionally not, but occasionally, like now (Colombia, the oil issue), one that must invoke principle as a way of making up for the pragmatism forced upon them by Congress’s fragmentation, which they have had to accept as part and parcel of the system.
And now the good news, my beautiful prince of the night. My very close friend, Interior Secretary Bernal Herrera, has asked the president for a personal favor: to appoint you adviser to the presidential office at Los Pinos, where you’ll be working for none other than Tácito de la Canal.
Am I giving you a poisoned chalice? No. I’m giving you the opportunity, my love, to bring me a golden apple from the very heart of a subverted Eden. Make the most of it, Valdivia. Any questions?
8
XAVIER “SENECA” ZARAGOZA TO PRESIDENT LORENZO TERÁN
Oh, Mr. President! How could I ever forget what you said to me twenty-four hours after entering office?
“They swear you in as president, Seneca, they place the tricolor sash over your chest, you take your seat on the Eagle’s Throne and—you’re off! It’s like being on a roller coaster, they send you down, you grab hold of the chair as best you can and a shocked expression etches itself onto your face, a tight grimace that quickly turns into a mask that you can’t remove. The expression on your face that day will stay there for six years, no matter how many different ways you may try to smile or look serious, pensive, angry—you’ll always be stuck with the look that was on your face that terrifying moment when you realized, my friend, that the presidential seat, the Eagle’s Throne, is nothing more and nothing less than a seat on the roller coaster that we call the Republic of Mexico.”
From the moment you said those words to me, Mr. President, both of us understood that you had called me to your side because you wanted someone who would be honest with you, who would offer you objective advice, and who would help you hide the bewildered look on your face that comes from the feeling of being thrown into the void from the steep slope of that fairground ride known as the presidency of the republic.
“They elect you, Seneca. From that moment on, you lose all real contact with people. Not even your best friends are willing to criticize you anymore.”
Very well, I’ve tried to prove myself worthy of your trust and, though my advice may not always be the best, you always have the right to consider opposing points of view—and there is no dearth of them in the editorial pages and the political cartoons. My duty (at least as I understand it) is to tell you what I think with total candor. Now, a few days after you have completed your third year in office, Mr. President, my sincere criticism is that you’re perceived as a little ineffectual. People don’t see you as a man who makes things happen. They see you as a man who lets things happen to him. I know what your philosophy is: We’re past the age of authoritarianism, when the president’s will was the only thing that mattered, from Sonora to the Yucatán, like the hats by Tardán that are back in fashion now. How things come and go!
Now we know that the PRI’s soft dictatorship was tempered by a certain degree of tolerance for the Mexican elite and their generally ill-informed opinions, criticism, and scorn. Poets, novelists, the occasional journalist, circus clowns, cartoonists, our ineffable muralists—all of them were allowed to say, write, and draw more or less what they wanted. It was a case of the intellectual elite criticizing the governmental elite, a very necessary escape valve that even extended to comedians—from Soto to Beristaín to Cantinflas and Palillo, they were all granted this very gracious concession. Filmmakers, however, were not, nor were most journalists, to say nothing of the independent trade unions. But then what about governors, small-time mayors, provincial military authorities, the police force in general, even lowly customs officers? A multitude of local powers, Mr. President, acting with corrupt, willful impunity. Only those who were corrupt were free. We created a culture of illegality, even when the president himself worked within the boundaries of the law or launched moral crusades.
For God’s sake, Mr. President! Even in colonial times people in Madrid talked about the unto mexicano, the Mexican unguent, and about mordida—corruption, payoffs and bribes that were used and continue to be used to “influence” people. You know what they say: “He who doesn’t deceive, doesn’t achieve.”
What, then, has happened to you, a pure man who came from the opposition to clean the stables of Augeas? You’ve turned out to be a democratic Hercules who trusts society’s power to do a cleanup job that the mythical Hercules performed with brute force, just as that other divine Hercules—Jesus Christ—drove the merchants out of the temple with lashes.
Morally speaking, Mr. President, you’re to be admired. Let society clean itself up. Let the impure among us be purged by the pure—or let them purge themselves. Once again, forgive me for being blunt, Mr. President, and allow me to qualify my criticisms. You yourse
lf are aware that certain areas of Mexican reality are so dark that only people with dirty hands can effectively control them. At the same time, you’ve gone to great pains to promote honest government officials who can give your regime a pretty public face. Take your defense secretary, a military officer of proven integrity, General Mondragón von Bertrab. Or the interior secretary, Bernal Herrera, an honorable professional who obeys the law but also understands the Latin maxim dura lex sed lex. The law is tough, but it’s the law. But then, on the other hand, both you and von Bertrab know perfectly well that the chief of police, Cícero Arruza, is a violent thug who won’t hold back when it comes to exercising repression with or without justification.
A necessary evil? Perhaps. But there’s another case, Mr. President, that you refuse to consider, and I’m referring to your cabinet chief, Tácito de la Canal. Now I know that by saying this I’m going out on a limb: I accuse and yet I have no proof. Very well. I’ll limit myself, then, to a simple moral observation. Can someone as ingratiating as Tácito de la Canal possibly be an honest man? Don’t you suspect that a deep well of hypocrisy lies beneath his servile fawning? Don’t you think that Tácito de la Canal merits a bit more caution on your part? Or shall I assume that you’re playing dumb on purpose and allowing Tácito to be your disagreeable, sycophantic guard just so that you can live in peace, flattered by your slave and defended by your dog? Believe me when I say that I fully understand the need for a shifty-looking dwarf at the door to the castle to keep the bothersome, the undesirable, and the ambitious at bay. But you might want to consider that the guard dog you put out for show might also be driving away the honest counselor, the loyal friend, the useful technocrat, the concerned intellectual, simply because he rightly believes that they, even more than all the other shameless attention seekers, are his greatest rivals in the battle for the president’s attention.