At the end of the eighties, CB radios were brought into Mexico from the North, allowing truck drivers to communicate with each other on the superhighways. This further fomented the movement of contraband, drug trafficking, and highway prostitution. Egg told Angeles (and me) that CB culture in the U.S. had developed its own slang, which our long-haul truckers rapidly adapted to the needs of rural, desert, and mountain roads, the yellow basalt and the dusty trees of the Mexican Republic: soon we, too, had our Smokeys, plain brown wrappers, Tijuana Taxis, and bubble-gum tops—called bubble-gómez here. Bubble Gómez also happened to be the name of the young leader of the truck-drivers union. Bubble Gómez, an albino, drove a spectacular eighteen-wheel Leyland seventy-two feet long, with jukebox lights around the windshield, fog lamps on its roof, exhaust pipes that could create darkness at noon in Vulture Gulch, pictures of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mamadoc, and Margaret Thatcher on the dashboard directly opposite the leader’s light eyes, which were in turn covered by fabulous wraparound sunglasses. The albino was also surrounded by opaque glass as he drove his British behemoth, which was equipped with the Whistler, the indispensable radar detector he used to warn his colleagues: listen up: speed trap at kilometer 13, pass the H to Chotas, who’ll be coming in the other direction, slow down. The CBs were used for more innocent activities as well: three putas are waiting for us at the Palmillas Tamps diner … Or let’s all sing and beat the boredom of crossing the Stinko Sierra, or get the dough ready for the Tijuana Taxis who’ll be waiting for us at the La Chicharrona exit.
The unfortunate drivers who had no CB or radar were picked off by the Smokeys at strategic points along the highways: they were novices, naïfs. But when it happened to Bubble Gómez himself, one night just a few yards from the Mexamerica border, in Corralitos, Chihuahua, and near the Nuevas Casas Grandes airport, the news spread like wildfire over the CBs, from Palmillas, Chihuahua, to Palmillas, Querétaro, and to Palomaras, Oaxaca, from radio to radio and truck to truck: the Boss has been nabbed!
Bubble Gómez was caught by a plain old Smokey in Chihuahua!
Bubble Gómez’s immediate loss of prestige (he must be an asshole!) combined with the general bewilderment (who can take his place?). Instinctively, the drivers tried to find the answer using their CBs, and the answer was waiting for them on every channel, repeated by every voice, running now from south to north, from Palomares Oax to Palmillas Qro to Palmillas Chih, the message was repeated insistently, the slogans offered by a velvety feminine voice, sometimes a virgin’s voice, sometimes a whore’s voice, listen good buddy in Nuevo León or oye buencuate in Hidalgo. Quite exciting, quite attractive the woman’s voice, whoever she is, and again and again that message, which had never gone out before and was now coming through every truck radio:
WHEN YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN ANYTHING,
WHAT DO YOU HAVE LEFT?
YOUR HOLY LITTLE MOTHER!
which became personified, as it should be, in:
TRUCK DRIVER, WHO PROTECTS YOU?
YOUR LITTLE MOTHER THE VIRGIN!
and since there was not a single one of these trucks that in addition to its CB and its radar detector did not also have its picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe and often even a blessed rosary hanging right under that picture, sometimes even a candle burning in front of the dark image, the slogan caught on, since the truck drivers heard the word and instantly saw the picture and the picture told them that the word was true and that outside the truck there was nothing more than tumbleweeds and cactus or ravines or bare bluffs: outside, desolation, and here inside, fellow traveler, the comforting warmth of a woman’s voice and a message for you:
Blessed are those who drive alone night and day along the highways of Mexico, exposed to all kinds of danger, victims of corruption and immorality, chased by the Smokeys and the Tijuanas, adrift in a sea of stone, dust, and thorns, blessed be the long-haul drivers because they can carry the good news in all directions:
OUR VIRGIN IS NOT ABANDONING US!
OUR DARK LADY KEEPS WATCH OVER US!
OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE SHALL RETURN!
and then in every diner along the way, in every tollbooth, in every melon, crackling, or tepache stand along those endless roads, a woman waited to surreptitiously pass every driver a cassette and the drivers were already prepared to hear that sweet sexy voice, which was now explaining more, saying more “to all those who feel adrift in modern society, hello and good news: Salvation is coming! Don’t lose hope! Our little Mother is thinking about you and is sending you an emissary! You will recognize him when you see him because you will recognize the son of our Mother!” Cassette after cassette announced the blessed news:
TRUCK DRIVER: THERE’S AN AYATOLLAH IN YOUR FUTURE PASS IT ON
and the woman’s voice: “Blessed be all those who have rolled through this world and faced its dangers. A truck driver is the favorite son of the Virgin. Blessed are they who walk through this world in time of danger.” The truck drivers began to communicate their opinions to each other, to feel they were a chosen people, to join together so that what had been prophesied would happen: they were chosen for what was going to happen, the Virgin was speaking to them—they were told by a man’s voice, rough and assimilable, that complemented the modulated, sweet, and sexy voice of the woman who swallowed her s’s in a Caribbean drawl, that they were the Comanches of the Virgin, they galloped over deserts and mountains like the brigades of the Virgin of Guadalupe. They didn’t have horses, but they had something better: their trucks, their Dodges, Leylands, Macks, like roaring chargers, their diesel sorrels, the Comanches of Guadalupe crossing the fatherland in all directions, tying together
THE NATION OF GUADALUPE
which had been separated and mutilated: Comanches! Remember, said the sonorous and Mexican voice of the man, Coahuila never belonged to the central government: it was Comanche territory! Texas never belonged to the Americans: it was Comanche territory! The Comanche nation is the nation that moves, unites, takes over land by running over the land. Comanche truck driver, spread the news far and wide, take it as far north as Presidio and as far south as Talismán: knock down the false borders, truck driver, you are the Comanche, the Man of Silver, the Knight of Guadalupe in 1992! They all came together on August 15, the Assumption, where the voices convoked them, thousands of drivers rolling in from north and south, from both coasts, from all the scattered borders of Mexico, gathered first in the Zoquiapan truck stop at Río Frío and from there to the Cuatro Caminos Bull Ring at Ciudad Satélite in Mexico, D. F., taken by surprise (and silent) attack by the motorized Comanches, curious, excited, committed, catechized, touched to their very roots, with their rolled-up sleeves, their bulky sweaters, their scratched boots, and their newly whitened Adidas, their elegant T-shirts, their beer bellies, their tight blue jeans, their underpants stuffed with Kleenex in front, their rippling muscles, their baseball caps, and some, the coquettish ones, even wearing white gloves with rhinestones on them which they’d bought in the Michael Jackson Shops along the border: they were all there and her voice (though she remained invisible) announced over the loudspeakers that HE was coming, THE AYATOLLAH OF GUADALUPE, AYATOLLAH MATAMOROS, THE MAN they’d all been waiting for, exactly as they’d imagined him, because he was the very image, the dream, the personification of Mexican machismo: tall, powerful, dark, big mustaches, with flashing eyes and an angry expression, but also a flashing smile, his head tied in a red scarf worthy of the Servant of the Nation, the liberating Generalísimo José María Morelos, in his Mexican cowboy suit, which was all black except for a huge silver cross over his chest and an old-fashioned cape which the man took off the way Manolete took off his bullfighter’s cape, and then began the whistling, the jokes, yo it’s Mandrake the Magician, giddyap cowboy, but the Ayatollah Matamoros stood his ground in the very center of things and looked at them as no one had ever looked at them, fearlessly but with fraternal tenderness, looking straight into their eyes, no “I’ll look down,” no “I’ll look aside,” without
the eternal Mexican way of looking: suspicious, crafty, traitorous, ill-meaning, insincere, resentful, double-meaninged: he wasn’t afraid of them, he looked straight at them, and the voice of the woman they knew and loved for her voice, and whose voice they thought was that of the Virgin herself, told them, “Love him, this is my son, follow him, he walks for me, listen to him, his words are mine.”
Ayatollah Matamoros spoke and his voice fused with that of the Madonna and he reminded them that Mexico was the second largest Catholic nation in the world, the largest in the Spanish-speaking world, 130 million Catholics, not 130 million members of PRI or PAN or Communists or peasants or ragpickers or functionaries or anything else: only 130 million Catholics could equal 130 million Mexicans, that was the only equivalence, that was the force, that was the reason, and nevertheless, despite all that, the Ayatollah Matomoros exclaimed in his hoarse, moving voice: THERE IS NO NATION!
THERE IS NO NATION!
and he told them
WE WANT A NATION!
WE WANT A COUNTRY!
all culminating in the phrase
LESS CLASS AND MORE NATION
and they shouted back what he said in chorus and now he asked them: Where are we? What should be our idea? And they supplied the slogan that would link the nation to its Prophet:
WE ARE ALL HERE!
We are all here, the long-haul truckers roared, gathered in the bullring and proud of having invented this unifying slogan, and their “We are all here” was a “We already exist” and “There is a country” and “There will be a nation” and “The Virgin will come to help us so that we, Brothers, can help the country”: Go out over all Mexico, organize those you find in the name of the Nation of Guadalupe and the Ayatollah Matamoros, who is, listen carefully now, the YOUNGER BROTHER OF JESUS CHRIST, who wants for our Mexico
Guadalupan nationalism! Your kind!
Catholic morality! Your kind!
Holy Little Mother! Your kind!
New energy! Everybody’s kind!
New Faith! Our kind!
shouted the Ayatollah and all answered in chorus, on foot, inflamed by the mission. No one had given a hoot about them before, no one had ever preached to them before, except some Protestant missionaries who gave them decals that said I DRIVE WITH JESUS, but they forgot to include the Little Mother. That’s why they all carried their polychromed picture of Mamadoc, most loving Mother of all our appetites. But who was this holy woman standing next to the Ayatollah, this hatchet-faced Indian woman, hair pulled straight back, a severe bun, without a speck of makeup: savagely melancholy eyes, lips as straight as an arrow, like a blessing, like a promise, dressed in black, no shape, her head a shiny porcelain skull, her body a furrow of age-old suffering, early deaths, lost children, absent husbands, hands simultaneously cold and boiling, red from washing so much, from grinding so much, dry and yellow from burying so much, from praying so much?
The August rain poured down, but they all went on chanting the slogans with the Ayatollah in the center, his arms spread wide, and the rain running off his face like tears and the voice of the Woman, of the Mother, she never wept, begging her sons:
Organize and move the nation of Guadalupe!
Carry the message! Carry the message!
One hundred and thirty million Mexicans!
One hundred and thirty million sons and lovers of mine!
Follow the Mexican Ayatollah!
Who am I? asked Concha Toro with a trace of skepticism and a degree of shock as she sat before her dressing-room mirror, rapidly transforming her “look” and her makeup (actually: her lack of “look” and cosmetics, her Gothic and Araucanian nakedness) into her usual character, the Chilean bolero singer, in order to stand before the nocturnal audience, but already imagining, day after day, her reappearance as Galvarina Donoso, the sorceress, the mother of the Ayatollah.
Damn fool idea! It surprised her to see in the mirror how easily her Basque and Irish ancestors disappeared from her face and how the essential Araucanian face of Chile reappeared.
However, she did feel that something was missing from what she saw. As she scrutinized the mirror in front of her and was surprised not to see the number of the beast 666 appear, or the seventh cup filled with the wine of God’s vengeance, or the gathering (in the bullring, in the cabaret, on the highways) of the One Hundred and Forty-four Thousand just men called for by St. John on Patmos.
That frightened her.
However, she did see a lost but serene woman clearly reflected in the center of the jungle.
2
The Ayatollah Matamoros’s first order was: NO MORE MONEY! He put his power to the test: he triumphed: the carts Made in Whymore full of devalued paper money (the Mexican peso plummeted to 25,000 per dollar in August) were exchanged for barrels of oysters made in Guaymas: all it took was for the long-haul drivers to refuse to accept money in exchange for goods in the markets of MonteKing, GuadalaHarry, or Makesicko City.
“I’ll give you this load of Sheetrock for a load of pineapples.”
“I don’t want your hardware. How about you take my wire and give me your steers?”
The pineapple sellers and the owners of the steers exchanged the wire and the Sheetrock for a delivery bike or for labor to build an outhouse, the drivers ate some of the pineapples and slaughtered a couple of steers, but they exchanged the rest for bricks, which they brought from Pachuca, where they had too many, to Zihuatanejo, where they didn’t have enough: Federico Robles Chacón realized what was happening, a political genius had organized the most mobile sector of the Mexican populace, the long-haul truckers, and in one stroke had eliminated the money economy and restored the barter system: Why? The minister was scratching his head in his SEPAFU office: Why? before asking himself Who? From the terrace of his ministry he could see the bonfires of paper money burning all over the city, people of every class throwing bills of all denominations into the fire, but the poor more than the rich, the poor having no doubt whatsoever about the worthlessness of the paper, which wasn’t even good for wrapping things: yesterday’s newspaper, a brown paper bag—these were worth more than currency; the poor knew the value of the barter system better than the rich, they knew how to set it up and how to present things as if they were sumptuous gifts and do it all by means of an incredibly swift army, the nation’s truckers. Why didn’t it occur to me before! Federico Robles Chacón slapped himself across the face to release his fury, and the official statistician hidden in the closet heard that sadistic slap-slap and decided to stay right where he was, so those slaps wouldn’t reach him, and besides, he didn’t understand what was going on, not only in the city but in what was left of the country.
From his office, Federico Robles Chacón could see the desperate outskirts of the city and observe the repetition of the nightmare that every millionaire, government functionary or not, and every government functionary, millionaire likely as not, had been having obsessively for over a decade: on the fringes of the suffering city, the outskirts of the lost city’s garbage dump and the sand dumps and the caves and cardboard houses of the anonymous cities inhabited by millions of people as anonymous as the places in which they lived, the shit city where seven million animals and three million human beings defecated right out in the open so that thirty million people could breathe the shit dust, an army of the miserable was waiting for the order to march on the downtown fortresses of power and money. No one had anticipated a Zapata-style agrarian revolution, never again; and yet it would have been easier—said Minister Robles Chacón to President Paredes as the President distractedly played with a new kind of ball-and-cup game made of a tiny barrel of oil and a drilling rig with a hole in it—to manipulate peasants than these marginalized urban masses: the peasant had a history, a culture, his past was known, as was his face, his little wiles; but these new people had no history, no culture, no face to recognize: they were the forgotten, and no one had ever had to fight with them, manage them, defeat them while making them think they’d won, the
way the agrarian rebels had been taken care of. What are we going to do?
The President was frustrated because he couldn’t get the oil drum into the hole; perhaps for that reason he said calmly, “Turn the troops on them, that’s why we have Colonel Inclán.”
“That’s the last option, Mr. President.”
“So they tell me.” He sighed, the toy dangling from his hands. “But just explain to me why, Mr. Secretary: for years and years I fought in the opposition with the secret desire to be president and turn the troops on people whenever I wanted instead of having them turned on me. Now here I am and I find out that troops are the ‘last option,’ that I should avoid it so as not to have a rerun of Tlateloco or a Corpus Christi and lose everything. Look here: I’m in PAN, I have to govern through PRI cadres and I can’t tell the Army, ‘Get out there and kick some ass.’ Tell me now, is it worth being president if I can’t do this?”
“Mr. Paredes,” said Robles Chacón after looking at him for a long time with incredulous severity.
“Yes?” said the President, alarmed that someone, especially a Minister of State, was not calling him “Mr. President.”
“No one forced you to be president,” said the minister, not in an absolutely conclusive tone, but in one that invited a response that never came, which gave Robles Chacón yet another victory.