Centennial

  “What did they say?”

  “That it was wrong to spend so much on decorating the church when men were starving. Colonel Salcedo stood the two people against the church doors and shot them.”

  “I hope you kept your mouths shut,” he told his Victoriano, an eager boy of fifteen.

  Tranquilino went to see Father Grávez, now white-haired and stooped, and asked him why Salcedo was still seeking revenge on the valley, and the priest said, “He’s a madman, but all of Mexico seems to be mad these days. Did you hear that General Terrazas had to flee? Yes, he’s in exile, in Texas.”

  “But he owned Chihuahua,” Tranquilino said.

  “He thought he did. I thought he did. Years ago, when he was on a trip to Los Estados Unidos, a newspaperman asked him, ‘Are you from Chihuahua?’ and he replied, ‘I am Chihuahua,’ and he was. Once the American army asked if he could provide them with five thousand horses. I understand they laughed when they asked this, knowing it to be impossible that one man should have so many horses, but General Terrazas replied, ‘What color?’ ” The priest shook his head.

  “Why did he run away?” Tranquilino asked. He could not visualize any man less likely to run away than General Terrazas.

  “They’re all running away,” Father Grávez said. “Don Porfirio, Don Luis, Colonel Fabregas. They’re all in El Paso.” Again he shook his head. “It’s pitiful when a strong man comes to the end of his days and has to run away. It means everything he stood for was wrong.”

  “Was Terrazas wrong?” Tranquilino asked.

  “To abuse the people you rule is always wrong,” the priest said. “Reflections from the sun shining on the rifles got into my eyes for a while,” he confessed. “When I ordered you to work in the mines, Tranquilino, I was very wrong. I have wanted to beg your forgiveness.”

  “Me? Forgive you? Father, in Dember, I lived with a girl who wasn’t my wife. I want your forgiveness.”

  “You should take your family north, Tranquilino. Your son Victoriano is hotheaded, and he’s going to find himself in great trouble.” He hesitated, then added, “We all will. I told the American engineers they had better go. Now.”

  “The men on the flatcar said the same thing,” Tranquilino reported. “If the trouble comes, what will happen to you?”

  “That could be a problem,” the old priest said. “I always sided with the government troops. Last time when Colonel Salcedo shot the two free-thinkers, he left bullet scars on the beautiful doors of our church, and I didn’t even protest. My only excuse can be that I knew no better. No one ever told me any better.”

  For the first time in his life Tranquilino felt like sharing his deepest thoughts with another human being. He had never done this with his wife, nor with Potato Brumbaugh, two people he loved, but now vast changes were afoot and he felt the need to speak. “You know, Father Grávez, in Colorado we do not work seven days a week. At sunrise and at sunset we have time for ourselves. We don’t step in the gutter when the strong man walks past, not even the sheriff. And we get paid. And when a man breaks his arm, as Hernandez did, someone takes him on a horse to the doctor and he pays nothing.”

  Flies buzzed in the whitewashed rectory, and Tranquilino concluded, “It was never right for men to work so long in the mines, climbing those narrow ladders and falling to their death, and leaving no money for their families. Maybe it was the thought of those narrow ladders and the men climbing them day after day like ants that made General Terrazas run away.”

  “Tranquilino!” the old priest pleaded, “Keep such things to yourself! And get your family out of this valley.”

  But Tranquilino did not move fast enough, for late one afternoon a horde of barefoot men in blue blouses knotted in front came over the hills into Temchic, assembled all the American engineers, fourteen of them, and shot them.

  On stolen horses they galloped down the valley to Santa Ynez, where they called for the priest who had for so many years defended the conditions imposed by the engineers. “Come out, you miserable old ...” They used a fearful word, and the old man appeared at the carved door of his church, prepared for death, but before they could kill him, Tranquilino Marquez ran out of his house and thrust himself in front of the priest, protecting him with his body, and there was a moment of confusion until a tall man rode up to ask, “What’s the delay?”

  “This one. He won’t let us have the priest.”

  “Shoot them both,” the man ordered, but before this could be done, Serafina Marquez screamed, “No, Frijoles! That’s Tranquilino.”

  Colonel Frijoles dismounted and strode over to the resolute farmer in front of the priest. “Are you Tranquilino Marquez?”

  “Yes.”

  “The one who refused to shoot my wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “My brother!” the revolutionary cried, embracing his unknown friend. But with this gesture he pulled Tranquilino away from the priest, and as he did so, he ordered his men to seize the old man. Quickly Father Grávez was thrust against the doors of Santa Ynez, where Salcedo had executed the two freethinkers.

  “Shoot him,” Frijoles ordered.

  “No!” Tranquilino protested. “It’s murder ... like your wife!”

  At this impiety Frijoles swung his hand and knocked Tranquilino to the ground, and he lay there as the fusillade echoed, adding its quota of pockmarks to the already scarred doors.

  Only then did Colonel Frijoles kneel down and lift Tranquilino to his feet. In apology he said in low tones, “He sent too many of us to die in the mines ... too many.”

  “But he repented.”

  “Today everyone in Mexico is repenting. It’s too late.”

  Frijoles dined that night with Tranquilino and his wife, the woman who had shielded him for three critical days, and at the conclusion of the meager meal he said, “Send your wife and the two young children to Colorado. You and this boy I need.”

  So it was arranged, and Serafina took Triunfador and the girl across the hills to Guerrero, where, like many others, they caught a boxcar on the Northwest Line, leaving the war-torn country at El Paso. They found their way to Centennial, where Potato Brumbaugh gave them the shack Tranquilino had occupied. Now the positions were reversed: she and the children worked sugar beets in Colorado and wondered what was happening in Santa Ynez. The only difference was that she did not send Tranquilino any giros postales, for she had no idea where he was, but Brumbaugh showed her how to save her money at the bank, which she did.

  Tranquilino and his son were not at Santa Ynez. When word of the massacre of the fourteen American engineers from Minnesota, and the murder of Father Grávez, had flashed across Mexico and southern United States, an outcry had been raised, and the Mexican government, such as it was, felt obligated to prove that it did not countenance such barbarities. It placated the North Americans by sending Colonel Salcedo into the Vale of Temchic to exterminate the entire population. They also burned both Santa Ynez and the visible structures at the mines and produced photographs to prove how complete their pacification had been.

  This dual action—Frijoles’ murder of foreigners and Salcedo’s destruction of the valley—led to a point from which retreat was impossible. Now two resolute and remorseless adversaries, the self-appointed colonels, rampaged back and forth across northern Mexico, using the trains as their cavalry.

  There had never before been anything quite like this, and there never would be again—two armies who moved only by train. Tranquilino and his son Victoriano joined a group of wild-eyed, fearless peasants who crept north to the tracks at Guerrero, where they waited until a government-occupied train stopped to take on water. Then, with howls and blunderbusses, they stormed the flatcars, massacred the soldiers and took possession of the train, sending it north toward Casas Grandes. From time to time they would order the engineer to halt, and they would sweep out like locusts to destroy some remote hacienda that had belonged to General Terrazas, killing all they found, then setting fire to the buildings and dancing to the
flames as they drank the general’s wine. At such celebrations Tranquilino could always identify which of the peasants had worked in Los Estados Unidos. They wore shoes.

  Sometimes their train would be riding along when government troops would ambush it, firing directly onto the flatcars, killing scores. The train would chug on ahead, and slowly the cars would be hauled out of rifle range; then they would count the dead, throwing the bodies off the cars as the train moved on.

  The most dangerous spot in this weird caravan was the solitary flatcar which ran in front of the engine. Its purpose was to detonate any mines before they could damage the engine, and a hardy group of men rode this car, aware that they might be blown to bits at any moment.

  Colonel Frijoles, who was taking the train north to combine his forces with those of a redoubtable warrior new to the field—a man named Pancho Villa—asked Tranquilino if he and Victoriano would volunteer to ride the first car. Without hesitation Tranquilino said he would do so, but he refused to allow his son to share this considerable danger, and that was why Victoriano was riding in the fifth car when the federal troops sprang their ambush on a curve south of Casas Grandes.

  They had hidden a large mine under the track, and Colonel Salcedo, who crouched beside the man who would plunge the handle to explode the dynamite, whispered as the train approached, “Remember. Let the first car go past. At my signal, blow up the engine.” The flatcar containing Tranquilino and the other brave men did get safely past, but the man with the plunger failed to respond quickly to Salcedo’s signal. The mine did not destroy the engine; it caught the following two cars instead.

  There was a tremendous explosion, with bodies flying in the air, and for one anguished moment Tranquilino thought the blast had struck the fifth car, but that was not the case, and with relief he looked back and saw that it was still on the tracks.

  However, the trailing cars were now motionless, and federal riflemen began picking the rebels off, one by one. In despair Tranquilino watched as man after man twisted when the bullets struck him, or fell sideways in twitching movements.

  “No!” he screamed, but the procession of bullets went savagely on, and he saw Victoriano leap sideways as the bullets ripped into him. Six or seven must have struck him, tearing him this way and that until his body crumpled and fell.

  “Get the engine forward!” Frijoles shouted, and the train moved north—an engine, a tender and. one flatcar in the van. The whole body of troops on the abandoned cars behind had to fight off the soldiers as best they could, and with whatever weapons they could improvise.

  From that moment on, Colonel Frijoles and survivors like Tranquilino Marquez became avengers without pity. They failed to make contact with Pancho Villa, but they did succeed in assembling a new train and more men than they needed. They rampaged up and down the Northwest Line on their iron cavalry, destroying and killing. Tranquilino, who had once been unable to see a woman shot, or a priest, now participated in frenzies of slaughter in which whole haciendas were wiped out.

  They knocked three government trains off the line, and once when two of Frijoles’ engines passed near Casas Grandes, Tranquilino saw, for one dramatic moment only, the girl he had known in Denver—Magdalena. She was standing in the door of a boxcar, rifle in hand, bandoleers of cartridges across her breast. Their eyes met for an instant and he recognized her, but she had seen too many men on the trains. They all looked alike.

  “Magdalena!” he bellowed, but she could not hear him.

  There were many women aboard these trains, fierce creatures who had no fear of death and who consoled the men who did. At times it seemed as if they were the ones who kept the revolution going, this chaotic, haphazard movement of an outraged people who would endure no more persecution. Sometimes the rabble army would come to a hacienda where servant girls had been constantly mistreated—younger sons of the ranch demanding bed partners as they willed and the girls forced at gunpoint to comply—and the men attacking the hacienda might waver in the face of gunfire. Then the women took charge, disregarding the bullets, and when the walls were breeched and lacy bedrooms invaded, it was the women who dragged out the soft-skinned white mistresses and lined them against the wall.

  It was one of these vengeful women who came to the train while it was stalled at Casas Grandes, with electrifying news: “One day’s march to the east, Colonel Salcedo’s men are trapped without a train or horses.” She was a soft-spoken, gray-haired woman of fifty, carrying a jar of honey. It seemed unlikely that she was lying, for men whispered, “Her husband and sons were hanged. She is thirsty for revenge.”

  So a raiding party was organized, with this woman, still holding her jar of honey, serving as scout and Frijoles himself in command. They forayed eastward and the woman led them to a small valley where Colonel Salcedo had been forced to hole up, awaiting reinforcements, and when Frijoles saw that Salcedo was indeed among the troops, he became frenzied and led three suicidal charges into the mouths of the guns, and the federal soldiers were overwhelmed and slain one after another, but Salcedo was kept alive and taken prisoner.

  He was a brave man. His thin mustache did not quiver when he faced his mortal adversary, and he stood firm in his polished German boots. Apparently Colonel Frijoles had long anticipated this moment, for he knew precisely what he wanted to do. With his own hands he stripped Salcedo of all his clothes save the gleaming boots. Then he staked him out on a level piece of ground, where the sun would strike him evenly and roast him to death. Each hand was lashed to its own stake; each ankle tied to its stake, with all ropes pulled taut. He would be dead by nightfall.

  But for the woman that was not enough. Into each orifice of the naked man’s body she trickled a thin stream of honey: eyes, ears, nose, mouth, anus all were well smeared so that the savage ants of the desert would find them. And then the woman and Frijoles withdrew to watch the sun and the insects go to work, and when the screams were most agonized, Tranquilino asked, “Can I shoot him?” and Frijoles said, “No.”

  CAUTION TO US EDITORS: Do not panic if your western agricultural experts refuse to believe that the sugar beet was originally an annual. It was. Prior to 1800 it produced beet and seed the same year, with all its energies going into the reproductive process and little into the generation of sugar. German botanists forced it to behave itself and to spend its major energies during the first year in the making of sugar. Today, if you want to seed, you dig the beet up at the end of the first year, tend it carefully through the winter and plant it like a bulb the second year.

  Ecology. While I was in Centennial there was a great stink. if you’ll forgive the pun, about the effluent going into the river and the smell from fermenting pulp that crept over the town. Agitated ecologists launched a movement to drive the factory from town. I beg you not to go overboard on this. When the 1973 beet campaign started and I first smelled the pulp, I wanted to dynamite the factory, for it is a most pungent and pervasive odor, but by December, when I left town. I had grown not only to respect it but even to like it. For me it became the smell of the land at work, the sweet, heavy smell of the earth’s produce readjusting itself to new utilities. This country can make a damned fool of itself if it tries in a nice-nelly way to eliminate all evidence of the fact that we are animals who inhabit a natural world. I abhor scented toilet paper.

  Racial mix in Mexico. Few data in my report will be more controversial than my figures on the basic population of Mexico. Let me underline the pitfalls, and you may prefer to edit out this material. I will not protest if you do so. (1) Most educated, upper-class Mexicans prefer to believe that an extremely large number of Spaniards entered Mexico, stayed there and provided some seventy or eighty percent of the bloodlines. (2) Revolutionary Mexicans prefer to think that only a few Spaniards arrived and that their blood was quickly submerged by indigenous Indian blood. (3) Most Mexicans prefer to forget the black infusion altogether, and if the matter does come up, confess to the arrival of “a few thousand Negritos.” (4) Those special pleadings
are, I suppose, self-evident, but a more vital dissension is not. Scholars whose persuasions are antithetical to Spain’s, or anticlerical, always want to show that the original Indian population of Mexico was enormous, for this permits them to proceed with an explanation of how the evil practices of Madrid and the church killed off the indigenous population. (5) Anti-United States leaders also like to visualize the original Indian population as enormous, because this provides justification for a very large population now. In some peculiar way this is interpreted as a rebuff to the population experts, most of whom happen to be from the United States. (6) Sentimentalists argue in favor of a large Indian population.

  Estimates of population. The figures I give for Mexican population are conservative. Anti-Spanish theorists claim there were as many as 25,000,000 Indians in prosperous condition when Cortez arrived. Pro-Spanish theorists argue that not more than 4,500,000 lived in Mexico at that time. A good many serious scholars seem to be centering on the figure 20,000,000, but I consider even this too high. As to the blacks, the figure 250,000 is secure and is derived from slave-ship records. As to my figure of 300,000 Spaniards, most scholars consider this about 150,000 too high. They are basing their judgment. I believe, on those. few Spaniards who came to Mexico and actually stayed there. I think we must also count those who came, worked, fathered a dozen children and went home, because it is their contribution to the gene pool that we are concerned about, not where they died. Taking that into consideration, I stand by my figure of 300,000.