(76 and 81)
1548: Guanajuato
Birth of the Guanajuato Mines
“God’s peace be with you, brother.”
“So be it, traveler.”
Greetings pass between the two muleteers who come from Mexico City and decide to encamp. Night has fallen, and from the shadows those who sleep by day watch them.
“Isn’t that the mountain of Cubilete?”
“Of the damned, you might call it.”
Maese Pedro and Martín Rodrigo are off to Zacatecas to seek their fortune in its mines, and they bring what they have, a few mules, to sell at a good price. At dawn they will continue on their way.
They lay a few branches on a mattress of dry leaves and encircle it with stones. Flint strikes steel, the spark becomes a flame: facing the fire, the muleteers swap stories, their bad luck, and while they are at it, rags and nostalgia, one of them yells: “They shine!”
“What?”
“The stones!”
Martín Rodrigo leaps into the air, forming a squalid five-pointed star against the moonlit sky, and Maese Pedro breaks his nails on the hot rocks and burns his lips kissing them.
(182)
1549: La Serena
The Return
Pedro de Valdivia has just disembarked at the Quintero anchorage, and soon he runs into the acid smell of carrion.
In Peru, Valdivia has carried more than enough weight to avoid traps and surmount doubts and enemies. The vigor of his arm placed at the king’s service plus the glitter of the gold he grabbed from his men on the Valparaiso beach have proved highly eloquent to the top men in Lima. After two years, he returns with his title of governor of Chile well signed and sealed. He also takes back the obligation to return that gold to the last gram as well as another obligation, which gnaws at his heart. Given his brand-new title, he must put an end to his affair with Inés Suárez and bring his legal wife here from Spain.
Chile does not receive him with a smile. In this city of La Serena, which he had baptized with the name of his birthplace, the Spaniards are lying about handless and headless among ruins. His fascinating life stories do not interest the vultures.
(67 and 85)
The Last Time
At dawn an undulating streak opens in the black mist and separates earth from sky.
Inés, who has not slept, detaches herself from Valdivia’s embrace and leans on her elbow. She is saturated with him, and every little corner of her body feels fiercely alive; she looks at her hand in the misty first light. Her own fingers scare her: they burn. She feels for the dagger. She raises it. Valdivia is asleep and snoring. The dagger hesitates in midair over the nude body.
Centuries pass.
Finally Inés softly plunges the dagger into the pillow beside his face and moves away on tiptoe over the earth floor, leaving the bed woman-free.
1552: Valladolid
He Who Always Took the Orders Now Gives Them
The woman kisses the bar of silver with her lips, with her forehead, with her breasts, while the priest reads aloud the letter from her husband, Juan Prieto, dated in Potosí. The letter and ingot have taken nearly a year to cross the ocean and reach Valladolid.
Juan Prieto writes that while others spend their time at drinking bouts and bullfights, he doesn’t hang out in the taverns or the bullring, that in Potosí men put hand to sword on the slightest provocation, and that there are dust storms that ruin the clothing and madden the spirit. That he thinks of nothing but returning to Spain and now sends this big silver bar for the construction of a garden in which his welcome-home banquet will be held.
The garden must have a double iron gate and a stone arch broad enough for the guests invited to the fiesta to pass through in their carriages. It is to be a walled garden, high walls without any openings, full of trees and flowers and rabbits and doves. In the center there must be a big table with viands for the gentry of Valladolid whom he had served years before as a domestic. A carpet should be laid over the grass next to the head of the table, and on the carpet should sit his wife and his daughter Sabina.
He especially stresses to his wife that she must not take her eyes off Sabina nor let even the sun touch her, that it is to get her a good dowry and good marriage that he has spent all these years in the Indies.
(120)
1553: The Banks of the San Pedro River
Miguel
Plenty of his skin has stuck to the cords of the whip. They accused him of slacking off at work or of losing a tool, and the overseer said, “Let him pay with his body.” When they were going to tie him up for some more lashes, Miguel grabbed a sword and lost himself in the woods.
Other slaves from the Buría mines fled behind him. A few Indians joined the black runaways. Thus was born the small army that last year attacked the mines and the newborn city of Barquisimeto.
Afterward the rebels moved farther into the mountains and, far away from everything, founded this free kingdom on the riverbanks. The Jirijara Indians painted themselves black from head to foot and, together with the Africans, proclaimed the Negro Miguel king.
Queen Guiomar strolls magnificently among the palms. Her full skirt of brocade rustles. Two pages raise the tip of her silk train.
From his wooden throne, Miguel orders trenches dug and palisades built, names officials and ministers, and appoints the most learned of his men as bishop. At his feet the heir-apparent plays with little stones.
“My kingdom is round and clear-watered,” says Miguel as a courtier straightens his lace ruff and another stretches the sleeves of his soldier’s jerkin.
In Tocuyo the troop that will kill Miguel and liquidate his kingdom is being readied under the command of Diego de Losada. The Spaniards will come armed with arquebuses and dogs and crossbows. The blacks and Indians who survive will lose their ears or their testicles or the tendons of their feet as an example for all Venezuela.
(2)
A Dream of Pedro de Valdivia
Light from the torches flutters in the fog. Sound of spurs that strike sparks from the paving on a parade ground that is not of Chile nor of anywhere else. In the gallery, a row of court noblemen; long black capes, swords tight at their waists, plumed hats. As Pedro de Valdivia passes, each of the men bows and doffs his hat. When they remove their hats, they remove their heads.
(67 and 85)
1553: Tucapel
Lautaro
The scourge of war has hit every part of Chile.
At the head of the Araucanians waves the red cloak of Caupolicán, the Cyclops who can tear out a tree by the roots.
The Spanish cavalry charges. Caupolicán’s army opens up like a fan, lets the cavalry enter, snaps shut, and devours it from the flanks.
Valdivia sends in a second battalion, which shatters against a wall of thousands of men. Then he attacks, followed by his best soldiers. He charges at full speed, shouting, lance in hand, and the Araucanians crumble before his lightning offensive.
Meanwhile, at the head of the Indians who serve the Spanish army, Lautaro waits on a hillside.
“What sort of cowardice is this? What shame for our country?”
Until this moment Lautaro has been Valdivia’s page. In a flash of fury the page chooses treason; he chooses loyalty. He blows the horn that hangs on his breast and at full gallop launches the attack. He opens a path with blows to right and left, splitting armor plate and forcing horses to their knees, until he reaches Valdivia, stares him in the face, and brings him down.
He is not yet twenty, this new leader of the Araucanians.
(5)
1553: Tucapel
Valdivia
There is a fiesta around the cinnamon tree.
The vanquished, clad in loincloths, are watching the dances of the victors, who wear helmet and armor. Lautaro sports the clothes of Valdivia, the green doublet embroidered with gold and silver, the shiny cuirass and the gold-visored helmet topped with emeralds and elegant plumes.
Valdivia, naked, is bidding farewel
l to the world.
No one has blundered. This is the land that Valdivia chose to die in thirteen years ago, when he left Cuzco followed by seven Spaniards on horseback and a thousand Indians on foot. No one blundered except Dona Marina, the wife he left behind in Estremadura, who after twenty years has decided to cross the ocean and is now aboard ship, with a retinue worthy of her rank as governor’s wife, silver throne, blue velvet bed, carpets, and all her court of relatives and servants.
The Araucanians open Valdivia’s mouth and fill it with dirt. They make him swallow dirt, handful after handful. They swell up his body with Chilean soil as they tell him: “You want gold? Eat gold. Stuff yourself with gold.”
(5 and 26)
1553: Potosí
Beauty and the Mayor
If Potosí had a hospital and she passed by the door, the sick would be cured. But this city or bunch of houses, born less than six years ago, has no hospital.
The mining camp has grown crazily, now containing twenty thousand souls. Each morning new roofs rear up, raised by adventurers who come from everywhere, elbowing and stabbing each other, in search of an easy fortune. No man takes a chance in its earth streets without a sword and leather doublet, and the women are condemned to live behind shutters. The least ugly run the greatest risk; and among them the Beauty—a spinster on top of everything—has no alternative but to cut herself off from the world. She only emerges at dawn, heavily chaperoned, to attend Mass, because just seeing her makes anyone crave to gobble her up, either in one gulp or in sips, and one-armed people to clap hands.
The lord mayor of the town, Don Diego de Esquivel, has cast an eye upon her. They say that this is why he goes about with a broad grin, and all the world knows that he hasn’t smiled since that remote day in his infancy when he hurt his facial muscles trying it.
(167)
To the Strains of the Barrel Organ a Blind Man Sings to Her Who Sleeps Alone
Lady,
why do you sleep alone,
When you could sleep with a lad
who has trousers
with polished buttons
and jacket
with silver buttonholes?
Up above
there’s a green olive tree.
Down below
there’s a green orange tree.
And in between
there’s a black bird
that sucks
its lump of sugar.
(196)
1553: Potosí
The Mayor and the Gallant
“Don’t sleep alone,” says someone, “sleep with that one.” And points him out. The girl’s favorite is a soldier of fine bearing who has honey in his eyes and voice. Don Diego chews over his despair and decides to await his opportunity.
The opportunity comes one night, in one of Potosí’s gambling dens, by the hand of a friar who has gambled away the contents of his begging bowl. A skilled card sharp is picking up the fruits of his efforts when the cleaned-out one lowers an arm, pulls a dagger out from beneath his habit, and nails the man’s hand to the table. The gallant, who is there out of pure curiosity, jumps into the fray.
All are taken under arrest.
The mayor, Don Diego, has to decide the matter. He faces the gallant and makes him an offer: “Fine or beating.”
“A fine I can’t pay. I am poor, but a gentleman of pure blood and honored lineage.”
“Twelve lashes for this prince,” decides the mayor.
“To a Spanish gentleman!” protests the soldier.
“Tell it to my other ear, this one doesn’t believe it,” says Don Diego, and sits down to enjoy the beating.
When they unbind him, the beaten lover threatens: “I’ll take revenge on those ears of yours, Mr. Mayor. I lend them to you for a year. You can use them for that long, but then they’re mine.”
(167)
1554: Cuzco
The Mayor and the Ears
Ever since the gallant’s threat, Don Diego feels his ears every morning on waking up and measures them in the mirror. He has found that his ears grow when they are happy and that cold and depression make them shrink; that glances and calumnies heat them to bright red and that they flap desperately, like birds in a cage, when they hear the screech of a steel blade being sharpened.
To ensure their safety, Don Diego takes them to Cuzco. Guards and slaves accompany him on the long journey.
One Sunday morning, Don Diego is leaving church after Mass, more parading than walking, followed by the little black boy who carries his velvet hassock. Suddenly a pair of eyes fastens on his ears with sure aim, and a blue cloak flashes through the crowd and disappears, fluttering, in the distance.
His ears feel they have been hurt.
(167)
1554: Lima
The Mayor and the Bill Collector
Before long the cathedral bells will be ringing out midnight. It will mark just a year since that stupid episode that obliged Don Diego to move to Cuzco, and from Cuzco to Lima.
Don Diego confirms for the thousandth time that the doors are bolted and that the people standing guard even on the roof have not fallen asleep. He has personally inspected the house corner by corner, without forgetting even the woodpile in the kitchen.
Soon he will throw a party. There will be bullfights and masquerades, joustings and fireworks, fowls roasting on spits, and barrels of wine with open spigots. Don Diego will knock Lima’s eye out. At the party he will try out his new damask cloak and his new steed with the black velvet gold-studded saddle, which goes so well with the crimson caparison.
He sits down to await the chimes. He counts them. Takes a deep breath.
A slave raises the candelabrum and lights his carpeted way to the bedroom. Another slave takes off his doublet and shoes, those shoes that look like gloves, and his openwork white hose. The slaves close the door and retire to take up their lookout posts until morning.
Don Diego blows out the candles, buries his head in the big silk pillow and, for the first time in a year, falls into an unperturbed sleep.
Much later, the suit of armor that adorns a corner of the bedroom begins to move. Sword in hand, the armor advances in the darkness, very slowly, toward the bed.
(167)
1554: Mexico City
Sepúlveda
The city council of Mexico, cream of the colonial nobility, resolves to send Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda two hundred pesos in gold in recognition of his services and to encourage him in the future.
Sepúlveda, the humanist, is not only a doctor and archpriest, chronicler and chaplain to Charles V. He also shines in business, as witness his growing fortune; and in the courts, he works as an ardent publicity agent for the owners of America’s lands and Indians.
In rebuttal to Bartolomé de las Casas’s assertions, Sepúlveda maintains that Indians are serfs by nature, according to God’s will, and that the Holy Scriptures contain examples to spare of the punishment of the unjust. When Las Casas proposes that Spaniards learn the Indians’ languages and Indians the language of Castile, Sepúlveda replies that the difference between Spaniards and Indians is the same as that between male and female and almost the same as that between man and monkeys. For Sepúlveda, what Las Casas calls abuse and crime is a legitimate system of dominion, and he commends the arts of hunting against those who, born to obey, refuse slavery.
The king, who publishes Las Casas’s attacks, places a ban on Sepúlveda’s treatise on the just causes of the colonial war. Sepúlveda accepts the censure smiling and without protest. In the last analysis, reality is more potent than bad conscience, and he well knows what those in command all know in their hearts: The desire to make money, not to win souls, is what builds empires.
(90 and 118)
1556: Asunción, Paraguay
Conquistadoras
They carried the firewood and the wounded on their backs. The women treated the men like small children: They gave them fresh water and consolation and cobwebs for their bruises. The words of e
ncouragement and of alarm came from their mouths, and likewise the curses that scourged the cowards and pushed the weaklings. They fired the crossbows and guns while the men lay down seeking a bit of shade in which to die. When the survivors of hunger and arrows reached the brigantines, it was the women who hoisted the sails and set the course upriver, rowing and rowing without complaint. Thus it was in Buenos Aires and on the Parana River.
After twenty years Governor Irala has distributed Indians and lands in Asunción. Bartolomé García, one of those who arrived in brigantines from the South, mumbles his protests. Irala has given him only sixteen Indians: he who still carries an arrowhead in his arm and who fought body-to-body against the pumas that jumped over the Buenos Aires stockade.
“What about me? If you’re beefing, what shall I say?” cries Dona Isabel de Guevara.
She also had been there from the outset. She came from Spain to found Buenos Aires together with Mendoza and went with Irala up to Asuncion. For being a woman, the governor has given her no Indians at all.
(120)
1556: Asunción, Paraguay
“The Paradise of Mahomet”
The dice roll. An Indian woman holds up the candle. Whoever wins her takes her naked, for the one who loses her has wagered her without clothes.
In Paraguay, Indian women are trophies of the wheel, dice, or cards, the booty of expeditions into the jungle, the motives for duels and murders. Although there are many of them, the ugliest is worth as much as a side of bacon or a horse. The conquistadors of Indies and Indians go to Mass followed by flocks of women. In this land sterile of gold and silver, some have eighty or a hundred, who by day grind sugarcane and by night spin thread and let themselves be loved, to provide their masters with honey, clothing, children: They help toward forgetting the dream of wealth that reality denied and the distant girlfriends who grow old waiting in Spain.