Robles Chacón slammed his fist down on the table with such force that his thick aviator glasses almost fell off. “This proves, gentlemen, that there’s a liar hiding behind each one of these statistics. The only truth unspoken in all of what you’ve just heard is that the vast majority of the people in Mexico and Guinea-Bissau are screwed.”
The statistician, like a sleepwalker, went back to his closet, but Minister-for-Life Ulises López, head of the Secretariat for Patriotism and Foreign Undertakings (SEPAFU), stood up in a rage and said that Dr. Robles Chacón’s zeal to disparage the science of economics in favor of old-fashioned gunslinger politics was all too well known.
“The obvious truth about Mexico,” Robles Chacón responded without looking at him, “is that one system is falling apart on us, but we have no other system to put in its place.”
“Yes, we do,” said López, his entire being pomaded, bald, brushed, and gray, “we have a system of economic and scientific competence that will never fall apart, because, after all, economics is an exact science.”
Robles Chacón, who was, after all, Professor Horacio Flores de la Peña’s favorite disciple, took no notice. “The cemeteries are full of statistics. But since you can’t eradicate discontent with statistics, we’ll have to do it with action. But since action is hard to take and since, moreover, actually doing something can lead to chaos, I suggest we utilize neither action nor statistics and use imagination and symbols instead.”
Ulises López said aloud that he would come back to the interministerial meetings when dreamers and people who didn’t have their feet planted firmly on the ground, poets, what have you, were kept out of them. He furiously tossed a mint Life Saver in his mouth and walked out of the meeting room pounding his heels into the floor like an angry flamenco dancer.
But Robles Chacón didn’t even blink. He looked at her again. He perched his glasses on the tip of his nose. He pointed a finger at her, which made her tremble with fear as she had never trembled before, except when she saw the titanic courage of Superminister Ulises López, with his experience and his years facing down the insolence of the young upstart Dr. Robles, so she dropped her pad and pencil out of pure fright when the minister exclaimed: “Look at that girl. Do you see her? What do you see? A miserable secretary. Well, I see the same thing Bishop Juan de Zumárraga saw four centuries ago. I see a little Mexican virgin.”
She blushed. “Oh dear, sir, I’m afraid you don’t know what you’re saying.”
But he was already on his feet, dark and tense, nervous and thin, a kind of bureaucratic Danton: at age thirty-nine, the youngest minister in the regime of President Jesús María y José Paredes (fifty-five years old), haranguing the cabinet with a conviction that demolished his own personal ideas in favor of the system that, devoid of ideas, served the collectivity. He had predicted all the catastrophes: loan after loan to pay the interest on a debt that grew and grew because of the new loans which never put a dent in the principal; devaluation after devaluation, export agriculture to pay off a bit of some other debts in a declining world market; lack of hard currency to import food for a growing population; a money printing machine with inflation at Brazilian, Argentine, at Blue Angel levels; pressures, dismemberments, and finally—he collapsed in his chair, exhausted—the need to save something, whatever could be saved.
“Are we going to be a Weimar without democracy or a utopia with symbols?”
Robles Chacón maintained a religious silence for an instant. She said she believed she actually crossed herself and covered her eyes. But the minister broke the silence with a roar, again pointing to her, my God a thousand times over, at her, at her, so modest in her pants suit from the Iron Palace, with her ribbons in her hair, the ones her boyfriend from the funeral par …
“I say it again: look at her. Look at that girl.”
“At me? At me, sir? Why look at me?”
“What do you see, fellow ministers? Don’t bother telling me. A secretary from the pool. I know. But take a good look at her braids, her tricolor ribbons. What do you see written on them? I know. Don’t bother telling me. You blind men see RIP. But I, maligned though I may be, I see PRI.”
He breathed deeply. “For starters, we’re going to make her queen of the office. We’ve got to do all this without haste but without pause. But remember one thing. The only thing this country is interested in is the symbolic legitimization of power.”
They never left her alone from that moment on. In the office they changed her funerary ribbons for those of the party, they brought her by Mercedes to a new house surrounded by walls in the Pedregal district, a house for forgetting, she told herself, because she recognized nothing there, wanted nothing there, and everything she touched she forgot: white walls, built-in furniture, white just like the walls, as if they’d put her inside an egg, a house made for white forgetting, yes, they sent Leoncito off to sell coffins in Empalme Escobedo, she never saw him again, they disappeared her into this white shell in El Pedregal, they never let her see anyone, talk to anyone, only hear boleros all day long through a loudspeaker system reaching all over the house, even the bathroom, even her pillow, listening to boleros so she would know she was dominating and not dominated by the world of the machos, only in the bolero were women triumphant, punishing, inflicting pain, dominating, and beating down the whimpering macho who passed from his little mommy to his little Virgin, to his little whore, it’s all in a bolero, if you know how to make it fit, so that she would be told, subliminally, through the loudspeakers, day and night, sending the message directly to her subconscious as if to compensate for her being locked up, a man singing to her from the invisible heights of the romantic heaven of celebrity and love and security where it’s the women who have power and the men who are impotent:
You are to blame
For all my anguish
And all my grief …
and after this solitary cure for one year and three months, without knowing what was going on outside, came the army of hairdressers, makeup artists, seamstresses, dressmakers, and hat makers who invaded everything, dressed the house with models and stoles, clouds of crepe and chests filled with sequins, platinum wigs, and snakeskin bustles.
One day they all left her alone. Then Robles Chacón returned with all his people. They stared at her in astonishment. But she was more astonished still. What were they looking at?
They hadn’t let her see herself. The minister said that she needed no mirrors just now, she would have to get used to them later on, little by little: mirrors not allowed in the mansion of blindness in El Pedregal, just boleros. She could only see herself in the others’ astonishment, above and beyond the always energetic words of Robles Chacón.
“Gentlemen: the deeper the national crisis gets, the more obvious it becomes that we cannot be satisfied with quick-fix solutions. Mexico has always managed to save herself because she has known how to turn everything into an institution—even her vices, alas. Poor Argentina can’t even manage that; even its vices are chaotic and insignificant. Not here. Now we see it. In ancient times, when the people’s spirits were low, the emperors would give them bread and circuses. In these parts, two sporadic solutions have recently provided the circus if not the bread when discontent has run rampant: a visit by the Pope or a fight with the gringos. Even the most hardheaded agnostic would have to admit that the successive visits of Wojtyla not only have generated euphoria among the people—which only goes to show that no one can beat us for being pragmatic Marxists, and that even if the opium comes from Poland it’s still opium—but have created unforeseen commercial opportunities as well: hats, balloons, beach towels, deck chairs, bottles, records, and TV exclusives. But discontent is spreading, and there are no solutions in sight, not even if we had the Pope here for a whole year. The fight with the United States, well, we’ve escalated it into a war with the entire state of Veracruz occupied by battalions of Marines, who’ve penetrated as far as Huamantla and Apzaco. I know, I know: no one has to tell me we worked
that one out with the gringos to stabilize and direct anti-U.S. sentiment in Mexico. Other, less generous people have insinuated that we invited the Marines in to wipe out an agrarian-socialist rebellion in Veracruz. If that was true, we would have achieved all our objectives. Those battles are already less violent than a flat bottle of seltzer—as my teacher Flores de la Peña used to say. Gentlemen, I’m offering you something better: an institution all our own. A sorceress. A witch doctor. A nurse for the poor:
(and they opened the door to her boudoir and someone pushed the poor little thing out)
a Doña Bárbara in a helicopter
(and they led her by the hand to the unbelievably expensive ladder made of white, blinding acrylic)
a woman who can fill the empty pitcher of national legitimacy: a new Mother for Mexico
(and they let her go, they left her alone, and she felt she was falling from the top of the spiral staircase down a bottomless ravine, with no sisterly hands to save her)
An ancient Mother was Our Lady Coatlicue, she of the serpent skirt
(but she managed to control herself, she shut her eyes, not knowing if she could open them again because of so much mascara, so much eye makeup, so much Stardust on her eyelids, on her bedaubed eyelashes)
An impure Mother was Our Lady la Malinche, the traitorous lover of the conquistador Cortés, the motherfucker who created the first fucked mother who created the first Mexican
(and with each step she descended, her breasts shook more: injected, inflated, sillyconized breasts surgically manipulated to achieve the consistency, the rhythm, and the balance necessary to bounce as they bounced now even though they were squeezed and raised and revealed as they were now under the cascade of diamond chokers)
A pure Mother was Our Lady of Guadalupe, redeemer of the humble Indian: from Babylon to Bethlehem with a bouquet of instant roses, Nescaflowers, gentlemen: we’ve got our holy little mommy
(and so for a year and three months they taught her, swing those hips, girl, shake your ass, baby, now you’re talking, honey, bend that waist as if you were the seawall in Havana, your ace is your ass, and don’t you forget it, bitch)
A rebellious Mother was Our Lady la Adelita, the darling Clementine, the fairy godmother of the revolution
(corseted, cinched, swaying, full of secrets only she knew, they told her, a ruby encrusted in her belly button that no one would ever see, and between her legs a white bulge and curled foam, not that slack, gawky mop she showed up with, even there they gave her a permanent and a marcelling, her vulva sewn up with golden thread and embellished with two dozen diamonds sharpened like tiny shark teeth, like hussars guarding the entrance closed to all; they told her that her temptation would be to offer hatred as a hope; that she should think that she was not real, that she’d been invented, screwed together with precious stones, a Frankedenic monster with forty-carat cathodes: the guy who gets inside you, baby, is gonna be fried, pulverized, and cut like a deck of cards)
and secret Mothers all the women from whose image we descend, but whom we can never touch: the movie stars, the devouring women, the vampire women, the great rumba and exotic dancers of our immense adolescent dreams, Ninon Sevilla, Mapy Cortés, Marie Antoinette Pons, Dinah, Rosa la Más Hermosa, Iris Chachachacón
(but barefoot, she’d never use shoes they told her, they ordered her, always barefoot like the little Virgin of the humble, barefoot like the Indian porters and the slaves, Holy Mother, look at yourself, as naked as a poem: you shall not return, your slave’s feet will return; the people will love your feet because they walked on the earth and on the wind and the water until they found me, Little Mother, your feet went out looking and found your lost child, Mamacita, the soles of your feet were not made for the world’s frivolous dancing but to ascend the calvaries of the world, your naked feet, bleeding, on a thorny path, Little Mother, bend your waist, I can’t go on, but never put on shoes: think about your sons Eddypoes, Oddyshoes, Lost Children)
and supersecret Mothers all the gringas of our masturbatory dreams, Lana, Marilyn, and Ava, but, above all others, the tits of the town, teatanic Mae West from the Big Apple, when she was good she was good but when she was bad she was better, Occidental Mother, your splendid tinsel lost inside your white flesh, your secret depths: to screw you, Stepmother of the West, is to avenge our entire history of insecurity and submission, White Ass, come on your Black Prick, go on, fart so I can orient, Occident, accident, crank it up blondie, your short, Daddy says so
(those lips like a scarlet satin sofa, yes, señora, that you will show—they stopped calling her girl just at the end, only señora: step out onto the balcony, señora, go down the white acrylic ladder without looking at your feet, wave without seeing anyone, señora)
superimposed on all women, gentlemen, we are finally free from the cloying sweetness of some, the nocturnal terror of others, the inaccessible distance of these, the familiar and intimate disdain of those, here is our final legitimation, our permanent prize, the fountain of all power in Mexico, the supreme edifice of machista supremacy, boys,
the perfect mix of Mae West, Coatlicue, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. A symbol,
The greatest human symbol ever invented:
THE MOTHER,
The sweet name where biology acquires a soul,
where nature becomes transcendent
and where sex becomes history:
OUR HOLY MOTHER!!!
And the minister offered his hand to the incredible apparition as she reached the last step:
GENTLEMEN: I PRESENT TO YOU OUR LADY MAMADOC.
He released her hand, fatigued, Jupiter without glory, devalued Pygmalion, observing in his most tranquil voice that the bureaucracy ends up creating what it conceives. Mamadoc will prove that the secret of the system is its secret. The important thing now is to keep up the momentum, gentlemen, of what we have set into motion.
“She is my gift to you, gentlemen.”
She never saw him again. At one point, she actually thought she was falling in love with him. Folly, folly. They sat her in her silver Mercedes with darkened windows; and with a motorcycle escort they brought her to the National Palace, they brought her up in an elevator, they led her out to the balcony, she knew what she had to do, weep, thank, wave, pretend the people were cheering her and weeping with her and then they, the multitudes of Mexico City, in this night of castles of fire and bands and fireworks and dead stars and showers of gold, would associate their national holiday, their September 15, not with a president or liberator, all devalued now, but with her, she-who-cannot-be-devalued, the mother who returned with her slave feet, her feet searching for her children, her ideal feet …
What Mexican alive in the Year of Our Lady 1992, when this story of the polyphonic gestation of the child Christopher Palomar and his imminent travels around an oceanic egg takes place, could forget the supreme instant of the national destinies that my father and mother remember while they plan out my birth for October 12 next so they will win the Christopher Contest, since without Her there would be no contest: Who, I repeat, who could forget the instant in which the spotlight focused on the central balcony of the Palace on the night of flying gold, the night of September 15, 1991, when the unique cornucopia of Mexico was a castle of light and the sparkle of a fleeting rocket when the spotlight moved away from President Jesús María y José Paredes, away from his family, from his cabinet, from his bodyguards, to tremble for an instant, indecisively, and then quickly stop, white and whitewashed like the object of their desire, on Her?
She with her mountain of platinum curls and her face whiter than the moon (the same moon Robles Chacón was staring at, but he had created this one; how they stared at her now, the children of Our Lady the Mother Doctor of All Mexicans!) and her spangled skirt shining with green reptile scales and her chubby little feet, white, naked, now that She, like an apparition, simulated, made people believe she levitated, rising above the copper railing and showing naked little tootsies, Our Lady, her bare littl
e tootsies posed delicately over the horns of a bull; who was going to pay any attention to the President, who had resigned himself to this for the sake of the continuity of the system; who was going to pay any attention to the tight-lipped rage of Robles Chacón’s rival, Superminister Ulises López, ready, after so many defeats, to exchange wheels for deals; who was going to pay any attention to the sullen chief of police, Colonel Nemesio Inclán, so tenacious about remaining true to his archetype with his dark glasses at 11 p.m., and that stream of green spit running out of the corner of his mouth, when this celestial apparition, the subtle summa of all our mothers and lovers, shook the national flag over the heads of a million Mexicans and cried out. Gentlemen, can’t you see? she made no speeches, recalled no heroes, condemned no Spaniards, none of that! If the business at hand was to give the Cry of Dolores, Mamadoc, right here, gave her first Cry, as if she were giving birth to the mob that was staring at her in rapture, a shout that cracked the bells in the Cathedral, that knocked a pair of stone putti off the Sagrario Metropolitano, a Cry that made each and every one of the million souls down below with their tiny tricolor flags and their sugar candy and their lollipops shaped like oil derricks, believe that She was giving birth to all of them, that now this ceremony did make sense, that finally they understood what this Cry of Dolores was: it’s that our little mother is giving painful birth to us, sons of a whore! And yet that shout which was so loud was also so melodic, so tender, so sweet that it seemed like a bolero intoned on a velvety afternoon by Adelina Landín, by Amparo Montes, by the Aguila sisters …
My father and mother went together. My father, oh so lopezvelardian, shouted with impassioned and repugnant love to that figure who from now on would be at the center of our history:
“Prisoner of the Valley of Mexico! You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into!”