(122 and 209)
1719: Potosí
The Plague
Three years ago heaven sent a warning, horrendous fire, presaging calamity. The comet—maverick sun, crazy sun—pointed its accusing tail at the mountain of Potosí.
At the beginning of this year a child with two heads was born in the San Pedro barrio and the priest wondered whether to do one or two baptisms.
Despite comet and monster, Potosí persists in its French styles, clothing, and customs reproved by God, shameful to sex, offensive to nature and a scandal to civic and political decency. The city celebrates the Shrovetide carnival as usual, binge and uproar very contrary to honesty; and when six lovely damsels proceed to dance in the nude, the plague strikes.
Potosí suffers a thousand ills and deaths. God is merciless with the Indians, who shed rivers of blood to pay for the city’s sins. According to Don Matías Ciriaco y Selda, scientific and highly qualified physician, to avenge himself God has used the evil influence of Saturn to turn the blood into urine and bile.
(16)
1721: Zacatecas
To Eat God
Bells ring out summoning all to the celebration. The mining center of Zacatecas has signed a peace pact with the Huichol Indians.
Long ago having fallen back into the Nayarit mountains, the Huichols have defended their independence for two centuries, invulnerable to constant assault. Now they are submitting to the Spanish crown. The pact guarantees that they will not be forced to serve in the mines.
On pilgrimages to their sacred lands, the Huichols have had no alternative but to pass through the region of mines, which is always hungry for hands. Grandfather Fire protects them from scorpion and snake, but can do little against the Indian-hunters.
The long trek to the Viricota plateau through an endless stony wilderness is a journey to their place of origin along the road of the gods. In Viricota the Huichols relive the ancestral deer hunt; they return to the eternal moment when the Lord of the Deer raised his horns to the newly risen sun, when he sacrificed himself so that human life would be possible, when he fertilized the corn with his own blood.
The deer, god of gods, inhabits a cactus, the peyote, which is extremely hard to find. The small and ugly peyote conceals itself among the rocks. When the Huichols discover it, they shoot arrows at it; and when they trap it, it weeps. Then they bleed it and skin it and cut the flesh into strips. Around the campfire, the Huichols eat the sacred cactus and then the trance sets in. At the edge of madness, in the ecstasy where all is forever and all is never, they are gods—while the communion lasts.
(31)
If You Inadvertently Lose Your Soul
That Huichol Indian woman about to give birth, what is she doing? She is remembering. She remembers intensely the night of love from which comes the child about to be born. She thinks about it with all the strength of that memory, that happiness, her body opening, joyful with that joy she had, sending forth a good Huichol who will be worthy of the joy that made him.
A good Huichol takes care of his soul, shining life force, but everyone knows that soul is smaller than an ant, softer than a whisper, a little nothing, a puff of wind. In any careless moment it can be lost.
A young lad trips and rolls down the mountainside. The soul, tied to him by no more than a silken spider’s thread, detaches as he falls. The young Huichol, dizzy, sickening, calls haltingly to the guardian of the sacred songs, the wizard-priest.
That old Indian scratching at the mountainside, what is he looking for? He retraces the sick lad’s trail. He climbs, silently, among the sharp rocks, searching the foliage leaf by leaf, looking under little stones. Where did life fall? Where does it lie in fright? He walks slowly, listening alertly because lost souls weep or sometimes whistle like the breeze.
When he finds the missing soul, the wizard-priest lifts it with the tip of a feather, wraps it in a tiny ball of cotton, and carries it in a little hollow reed back to its owner, who will not die.
(124)
1726: Montevideo Bay
Montevideo
East of the bend in the Uruguay River, the rolling prairie nurtures more cows than clover. The bandeirantes of Brazil, swallowers of frontiers, covet this enormous mine of meat and hides; and now the Portuguese flag flutters on the River Plata coast, over the Colonia del Sacramento fortress. To stop their onslaught, the king of Spain orders a town built on Montevideo Bay.
Under the protection of cannon and cross, the new city emerges. It blooms on a point of earth and rock beaten by the wind and threatened by Indians. From Buenos Aires come the first settlers, fifteen young people, nineteen children, and a few slaves who do not figure on the list—black hands for the ax, the hoe, and the gallows, breasts to give milk, a voice to cry wares.
The founders, almost all illiterate, get knightly privileges from the king. They try out the right to call themselves “Don” over rounds of mate, gin, and cigars:
“Your health, Don.”
“Here’s to yours.”
The general store smells of maté and tobacco. It is the first house to have a wooden door and adobe walls among the cowhide huts scattered in the shadow of the fort. The store offers drinks, talk, and guitars, and also sells buttons and frying pans, biscuits and what have you.
Out of the general store, the cafe will be born. Montevideo will be the city of cafes. No corner will be a corner without a cafe as an accessory for secrets and noise, a little temple where all loneliness can take refuge, all encounters be celebrated, with cigarette smoke serving as incense.
(278 and 315)
1733: Ouro Prêto
Fiestas
Arches of flowers span the streets of Ouro Prêto, and in their shade the Holy Sacrament parades between walls of silks and damasks. The Four Winds and the Seven Planets come and go on horses sheathed with jewels, and on lofty thrones gleam the Moon and the Nymphs and the Morning Star, with their corteges of angels. After a week of fireworks and continuous celebration, the procession chants thanksgivings to Gold, hallelujahs to the Diamond, and devotions to God.
Diamonds are a novelty in the region. Until recently they were used to keep score in card games. When it was discovered what these little crystals were, the king of Portugal presented the first ones to God and the pope and then bought from the Vatican the very costly title of Most Faithful King.
The streets of Ouro Prêto rise and fall steeply like knife blades, its people divided between summits and abysses. The fiestas of those at the top are displays of obligatory celebration, but the fiestas of those at the bottom provoke suspicion and punishment. Dark skins conceal threats of witchcraft and dangers of rebellion. The songs and music of the poor are a sin. The mulatta who likes to laugh risks prison or banishment, and on a Sunday of merriment a black slave can lose his head.
(209)
1736: Saint John’s, Antigua
Flare-ups
They sealed their oath drinking from the same earthenware bowl a mixture of rum, grave dirt, and rooster’s blood, and an earthquake of drums exploded. They had the powder ready to blow up the governor and all the chief gentry of the British island of Antigua. So the prosecutor told it. So the judges believed.
Six black slaves die of hunger, lashed to the stake, and another five are broken to pieces. Seventy-seven are burned alive. Two others save themselves by telling lies that condemn their fathers to the fire.
The conspirators are charcoal or putrid meat, but they wander along the beach at dawn. While the low tide bares marvels in the sand, fishermen cross paths with the dead, who are seeking water and food to continue their journey to the beyond.
(78)
1738: Trelawny Town
Cudjoe
Plants and people stream with sweat in the hairy mountains of western Jamaica. Even the sun hides itself when the long wail of the horn announces that the enemy chief has arrived at the pass.
This time Colonel Guthrie does not come to fight. The English slavers offer peace to the maroons. They
promise to respect the freedom they have won in long years of war and recognize their ownership of the lands they live on. In exchange, the maroons turn themselves into gendarmes of their imprisoned brothers: from now on, they will help punish slave rebellions on the sugar plantations and will return fugitives who come here seeking refuge.
Chief Cudjoe goes out to meet Colonel Guthrie. Cudjoe wears a brimless hat and a jacket that once was blue and had sleeves. The red dust of Jamaica imparts one color to skin and clothing, but not even a button is missing on the colonel’s vest and the whiteness of his rolled wig can still be discerned. Cudjoe falls to the ground and kisses his boots.
(78, 86 and 264)
1739: New Nanny Town
Nanny
After dealing with Cudjoe, chief of the Leeward maroons, Colonel Guthrie marches east, but some unknown hand slips a deadly poison into his rum, and he falls like lead from his horse.
Some months later, at the foot of a very high mountain, Captain Adair secures peace in the east. Sporting a ceremonial sword and a silvery hat, Quao, chief of the Windward maroons, accepts his conditions. But on these eastern cliffs Nanny has more power than Quao. The scattered Windward bands obey her, as do the squadrons of mosquitos. Nanny, a large woman of fiery clay, mistress of the gods, wears nothing but a necklace of English soldiers’ teeth.
No one sees her, everyone sees her. They say she is dead, but she hurls herself naked, a black bombshell, into the center of the battle. She squats with her back to the enemy, and her magnificent ass catches the bullets. Sometimes she sends them back with interest and sometimes she turns them into balls of cotton.
(78 and 264)
Pilgrimage in Jamaica
They come from holes in the trees, holes in the ground, chinks between rocks.
Rains and rivers do not hold them back. They cross marshes, ravines, forests. Neither fog nor the fierce sun sidetracks them. Slowly, implacably, they descend from the mountains. They march in profile, on a straight course, without deviations. Their shells gleam in the sun. Battalions of warrior males head the pilgrimage. At any sign of danger they raise their weapons, their claws. Many die or lose an arm opening the way. The soil of Jamaica creaks, covered by this immense army of crabs.
The journey to the sea is long. After two or three months they arrive exhausted—those that arrive. Then the females come forward and let themselves be covered by the waves, and the sea pulls out their eggs.
Of the millions that began the journey to the sea, few return. But the sea incubates, beneath the sand, a new crab people. And before long this new people sets out for the mountains whence came their mothers; and there is no one to stop them.
The crabs have no heads. They arrived late at the distribution of heads that was made by the god king in his cotton and copper palace back in Africa. Crabs have no heads, but they dream and know.
(86)
1742: Juan Fernández Islands
Anson
The Chileans believe that the waves of this ocean are horses with foaming mouths that witches ride with reins of gulfweed. The waves hurl their assault upon the boulders which do not believe in witches, and the rocky castles submit to the beating with remote disdain. High above, dignified as a king, a billy goat with venerable beard contemplates the spray. Few goats remain on the Juan Fernández Islands. Years ago the Spaniards brought from Chile a pack of dogs to seize this easy food, thus denying it to the pirates.
Commander Anson’s men vainly hunt the shadows of horns among rocks and precipices, and think they recognize the mark of Alexander Selkirk on the ears of a goat they catch. The English flag flies intact from the ships’ masts. Lord George Anson’s fleet will return to London devastated by hunger and scurvy, but the booty will be so splendid that forty ox-carts will not suffice to haul it from the port. In the name of perfecting Cartography, Geography, Astronomy, Geometry and the Art of Navigation, scientist Anson has hunted down various Spanish ships with his guns and set fire to several towns, taking everything, down to wigs and embroidered underwear.
In these years the British Empire is coming to birth in the translation from piracy to contraband; but Anson is a pirate of the old school.
(10)
1753: Sierra Leone River
Let Us Praise the Lord
The revelation of God came in the flashes of lightning. Captain John Newton was converted to Christianity on a night of blasphemy and drunkenness when a sudden storm was on the point of sending his ship to the bottom of the ocean.
Since then he is one of the Lord’s elect. Every evening he preaches a sermon. He says grace before each meal and starts every day singing psalms which the crew hoarsely repeat in chorus. In Liverpool, at the end of each voyage, he pays for a special ceremony of thanksgiving to the All-Highest.
While awaiting a cargo at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River, Captain Newton puts fears and mosquitos to flight and beseeches God to protect the ship African and all her crew, and to ensure that the merchandise he is about to load reaches Jamaica intact.
Captain Newton and his numerous colleagues are engaged in a triangular trade between England, Africa, and the Antilles. At Liverpool they load cloth, rum, rifles, and knives which they exchange for men, women, and children on the African coast. The ships steer a course for the Caribbean islands, and there exchange the slaves for sugar, molasses, cotton, and tobacco which they take to Liverpool to start the cycle again.
In his leisure hours the captain contributes to the sacred liturgy by composing hymns. On this night, shut up in his cabin, he begins to write a new one as he waits for the slave caravan, delayed because a few slaves tried to kill themselves by eating clay on the way. He already has the title. The hymn will be called “How Sweet the Sound of Jesus’ Name.” The first verses are done, and the captain hums possible melodies beneath the accomplice lamp that swings from the upper deck.
(193)
1758: Cap Français
Macandal
Before a large assembly of runaway slaves, François Macandal pulls a yellow handkerchief out of a glass of water.
“First it was the Indians.”
Then a white handkerchief.
“Now, whites are the masters.”
He shakes a black handkerchief before the maroons’ eyes. The hour of those who came from Africa has arrived, he announces. He shakes the handkerchief with his only hand, because he has left the other between the iron teeth of the sugar mill.
On the plains of northern Haiti, one-handed Macandal is the master of fire and poison. At his order cane fields burn; and by his spells the lords of sugar collapse in the middle of supper, drooling spit and blood.
He knows how to turn himself into an iguana, an ant, or a fly, equipped with gills, antennae, or wings; but they catch him anyway, and condemn him; and now they are burning him alive. Through the flames the multitude see his body twist and shake. All of a sudden, a shriek splits the ground, a fierce cry of pain and exultation, and Macandal breaks free of the stake and of death: howling, flaming, he pierces the smoke and is lost in the air.
For the slaves, it is no cause for wonder. They knew he would remain in Haiti, the color of all shadows, the prowler of the night.
(63 and 115)
1761: Cisteil
Canek
The Maya Indians proclaim the independence of Yucatán and announce the forthcoming independence of America.
“Spanish power has brought us nothing but troubles. Nothing but troubles.”
Jacinto Uc, who makes trumpets sound by caressing the leaves of trees, crowns himself king. Canek, black snake, is his chosen name. The king of Yucatán ties around his neck the mantle of Our Lady of the Conception and harangues the other Indians. They have rolled grains of corn on the ground and sung the war chant. The prophets, the men with warm breasts enlightened by the gods, have said that he who dies fighting will reawaken. Canek says he is not king for love of power, that power craves more and more power, and that when the jug is full the water spills out. He says he
is king against the power of the powerful, and announces the end of serfdom and whipping posts and of Indians lining up to kiss the master’s hand.
“They won’t be able to tie us up: they’ll run out of rope.”
In Cisteil and other villages the echoes multiply, words become screams; and monks and captains roll in blood.
(67 and 144)
1761: Merida
Fragments
After much killing, they have taken him prisoner. Saint Joseph has been the patron saint of this colonial victory. They accuse Canek of scourging Christ and of stuffing Christ’s mouth with grass. He is convicted. He is to be broken alive with iron bars in the main square of Merida.
Canek enters the square on muleback, his face almost hidden by an enormous paper crown. On the crown his infamy is spelled out: Risen against God and against the King.
They chop him up bit by bit, without permitting him the relief of death, worse than an animal’s fate in a slaughterhouse; then they throw the fragments of him into the bonfire. A prolonged ovation punctuates the ceremony. Beneath the ovation, it is whispered that the serfs will put ground glass in the masters’ bread.
(67 and 144)
1761: Cisteil
Sacred Corn
The executioners throw Canek’s ashes into the air, so that he won’t revive on the day of the Last Judgement. Eight of his chiefs die by garroting and two hundred Indians have an ear cut off. Hurting what is most sacred, soldiers burn the rebel communities’ seedcorn plantings.
The corn is alive. It suffers if it is burned; its dignity is hurt if it is trodden on. Perhaps the corn dreams about the Indians, as the Indians dream about the corn. It organizes space and time and history for the people made of corn flesh.