Chiapas
Chapter III
El Zapote was located between east of Ocosingo, but a little closer to Palenque than the latter. It was a remote pueblo sowed into a valley surrounded by a rugged section of mountains acessible by a rough paths. A swift moving stream entered the village from the north and looped three times almost kissing itself with each pass. It was a village not unlike many others in the altoplano, except that it was more geographically isolated. Its few thatched roof houses were dispersed onto the valley floor. They seemed the remnants of cargo in the hull of an enormous shipwreck. It was a small village of perhaps a few hundred inhabitants, grossly intramural, and lulled into peaceful when the lords were not busy stirring the greater pot. Everyone knew everyone else, at least each knew the idiosyncrasies of the other inhabitants, and their peculiar manner. Habit and speech, though, can say much about a person. One could say that awareness of all the corners in human life was made keener by the limited social space. It was said once that to understand human nature one family is sufficient. The tools of communication in El Zapote, voice and memory, enchanted the expectant air, with soft breezes and enduring textures. It was a fact that most in the town could not read or write. Zapote was condensed in a naturally formed jar, a place of sound and sight, a pure verbal domain. Without reliance on books or paper, and living in confined spaces created a diminutive nation of persons given to flattery. The peace was easier to maintain when using soothing words. It tended to soften everyone up,,,, like a marinade.
In that era if the residents of El Zapote had traveled to Ocosingo they would have been met with strict codes of conduct, shunned for being indigenous. Turkeys among the descendants of Great Bustards, they were only allowed to visit the area of the market and prohibited from walking about the town proper and would have had to leave the city before dark. They were even expected to bow their heads when they encountered a criollo. The people of Zapote were aware of these regulations but since few of them rarely traveled there the greater part lived a life outside the racist laws of the place. Their only ties to the greater outside world were the occasional merchant and Tatik Vences, as they lovingly referred to him, their town priest. He was an “assimilated” foreigner,,,, God’s gûero broker with whom they invested their abundant faith,, not unlike their adopted locally adorned saints, he was revered, almost like a shaman.
El Zapote was part of the enormous finca, Hacienda La Alegria of Don Ruiz. The land under their feet was technically not their own. El finquero, Aurelio Ruiz, a light skinned ladino, was the owner of 12,000 thousand acres incorporating many surrounding pueblos.
The consciousness of those in Zapote was
mostly confined to the outer limits of the poor pueblo. It was a lofty
community, an island floating in the mist really, containing a population of
those deaf to what was happening beyond the rim of mountains on the horizon. Its location created a social microclimate.
Influence from the outside was restricted to the occasional visitor, an errant
cousin, sister, or brother from El Remolino or Jerusalem. The people depended
on the cultivation of maize, beans, cane and squash, herding of sheep, and,
most important, weaving beautiful textiles. There were a few town councilmen,
whose job was to coordinate events, more than acting as governors, two elected
sheriffs to convince those occasionally inebriated persons who crossed the invisible
line to calm themselves, and a small communal posada for the occasional valued
guest. The esteemed town priest was named Padre Vences.
Once every month a man from La Alegria arrived with
some bearers. He brought with him raw cotton,, to be processed into finished
products. The cotton man took back with him the finished cotton and woolen
weaving, and offered for sale overpriced essentials needed by the residents of Zapote.
At harvest times the finquero would claim his share by the collection of land
use taxes in the form of crops, wool, or finished weaving.
The “elite one” in the social structure of
the village was the cacique, Don Melesio Perez Perez, the boss who held sway
within the town. He acted as liaison between El Finquero and the townspeople.
The cotton man who arrived from La Alegria
each month was charged delivering goods and money to the cacique Don Melesio
Perez Perez,, whose real job was that of intermediary-informer. He was one of
the few bilinguals, who spoke both Spanish and Tzetzel which bestowed upon him
credentials. Don Melesio paid the residents their meager salary for their
weaving after he had extracted his share. The largest percentage of each
individual’s agricultural produce, and wool production went to Aurelio in the
form of a trade agreement, all overseen by Melasio. The meager remainder of
each resident’s production was consumed by their own households.
Melasio was a thin framed man with
exceptionally skinny legs, and a pot belly, more like a paltry swelling that
was evident as it pushed against his tunic. He was a hairy thing. Hundreds of
moles populated his neck. Atop his narrow shoulders perched his ill fitted
large square shaped head, not quite the appropriate size for his body. His face
had been heavily scarred by the pox when he was young so his skin had the
texture of tezontle. He seemed a man cobbled together from parts yet the eyes
and ears of Don Melesio were in excellent condition, constantly sifting the landscape
and the air filtering it for anything out of the ordinary that might transpire
within Bejas,,, all the social dust that blew about within the village limits eventually
settled upon his table. He was feared, because of his connections and of what
he was capable. The villagers presented a mock deference to him that was
obviously theatrical and self-serving. He in turn was subservient to his own
master. He was a man who found no true quarter on either side,, a calculating
beast, he trusted no one, he belonged to nothing, not even his family, who he
had cultivated in the same soil as his own nurturing. Melesio was the model for
the post revolutionary middleclass political-citizen of Mexico.
Narciso referred to Melesio as, “A dog that
constantly sniffs the air for some odor not in its proper place.”
The only person who could temper Melesio’s
ambition was Padre Vences, who modeled himself after Bartholome De Las Casas,
the protector, and whose very presence in the pueblo represented a higher
whiter class wall over which Melesio could not easily vault, and to which he
paid some heed. Between the humanitarian side of Vences and the potential for
terror on behalf of the calculating Melesio and Aurelio with his special form
of “enlightenment” came the thinly preserved stability of El Zapote. This did
not alleviate their oppression by any means, it only prevented any greater
escalation of it.
Weaving and wool were the industrial
spring from which flowed a trickle of centavos into Zapote. Agriculture, was
important for survival but less fruitful. Families took turns in the fields
from eight in the morning to eight at night sometimes. Tending the agricultural
plots was pure sweat and tears. Aurelio had mandated the use of the steel
tipped wooden plow on most of his lands, replacing the old digging stick
method. He also developed some irrigation, and encouraged crop rotation, all
increasing production, and of course, the impuestos. Weaving, however, provided
Zapote the most income and a modicum of respect. As it imparted identity unto
them it did so to Don Aurelio who took pride in the weaving emerging from the
pueblo.
Back strap looms, favored by the Maya,
were easily built out of a few sticks and a belt made of ixtle. The people of the
village were renowned for their adeptness at creating beautifully executed
textiles. Nobody could really explain where this talent originated. Some said
it was a Maestro. Most didn’t know or care. Somewhere along their ancestral line there was
someone,,, who was motivated to master their tight world, to control their
craft,,, perhaps to make sense of their universe,, and this creative spark was
passed down through the generations and flourished there. It was a fact that
unlike other indigenous communities the weavers in El Zapote openly traded their
weaving techniques among each other. This helped spread the motivation to
create within the community itself. Perhaps that fact bolstered their identity.
The women wove, washed, cooked, helped
in the fields, collected firewood and honey, planted maize, foraged in the
mountains, and made pottery. The men built houses, plowed, planted, and many
times left the village to work as migrants in the coffee plantations to the
south.
Occasional
visitors brought news bits of the region to Zapote like light breezes bearing
feathery winged seeds, refreshing a little the palette of gossip but not really
widening anyone’s horizon far beyond the mountains that rimmed the small
valley. Luxurious time did not exist to discuss ideas, there were none beyond
the heavy tasks required for survival, and subjugated peoples sense a danger in
deep reflections upon purpose and reason. It has always been easier to work or
pray than to foment change. Zapote seemed a small unchanging social field, subject
to the whim of those considered “Los Finos”, the higher classes, whose own whims
and bickerings severely torsioned the modest stability of their existence from
time to time. It could have been called just a cleft in the landscape, from
which sprung a provincial weed. Everyone
there was content in “their” very own unique near horizon as they looked, up
from the valley floor, towards the
north, south, east, or west,,,, even if that very horizon was owned by someone
else. It is a fact that each town has its own personality shaped by landscape
and the origins of its inhabitants. Remoteness too protected it, but only
sparingly from the harshest conditions imposed by social upheavals. Their perpetual
poverty, however was guaranteed. The people knew to keep to themselves and had
a reputation for being good workers, an industrious lot, attentive to quality,
who didn’t complain, and knew their place in this tightly controlled universe.
They made the job of Aurelio and Don Melesio easier.
Daily life was organized through hard
work and ceremonies and sometimes the two meshed. These rituals memorialized,,,
and also fortified what was. In the
evening, under the large ceiba tree that made up their entire town square and
called ironically “el árbol de los pensamientos” for really it was a spiney
trunk at the base of which was heard gossip. It was a trunk upon which you
could not lean. People sat on stumps haphazardly planted in the hard packed
earth and talked. Personal social visits, when they were not exhausted from work,
were opulent diversions and hospitality was too costly. The short time available
for these “safe” chats helped diffuse the burden of their life. It was never
enough time or quite enough hardship to crack their carapace. Any simple
conversation teeming with what appeared to be local gossip, and salted with
religious etiquettes served as an affirmation of the established social strata
in Zapote,, and beyond. Conversations teemed with humor, that acted like a
relief valve. Situations and characters were made farcical, that soft knife
that is unable to draw blood. The manner, in which order was maintained in this
world, was by mutual consent embedded within the music of chatting, although
the ever-present threat of terror hovered never far away.
Incidents that had taken place in other
nearby villages instilled fear in everyone from the region. Carrancistas who
roamed the countryside during the revolution had entered nearby Bejas looting
the town and raping some of the women. The Mapaches, another revolutionary
faction were no better. The revolution took more than it gave. It would be 70 more
years before they would see real benefit. Those outside their tight social
sphere of unfamiliar characters in the oppressive economic machine of the
region were automatically treated with prudent skepticism. The influence of
state or federal government In Zapote, for good or bad, was a distant
unfamiliar voice to them too, detached and invisible,, only making appearances
through its army of allies and their local agents.
Zapotans
were the errant sons, provincial hill dwellers, mountain Maya who made their
home enduring in these high remote villages during the rise of lowland Mayan
culture and after that culture disappeared. They were conquered by Spain in the
early part of the 16th century, almost rendered extinct,,, several times, and later
those that survived were turned into
virtual slaves working the large estates owned by descendants of the Spanish conquerors.
Labor was strip mined from the indigenous population and distributed among the “new”
landlords as if it were ore unattached to any human identity. Their land and
their dignity had been stolen, not just once in the past, but for many
generations, then after bullets and rhetoric were discharged into the wind, and
one exclusive system replaced another, the residents still remained
marginalized and starved for land.
There were incidents, always incidents to
freshen the already punished memory. Izauro remembered an evening when terror
filled the air. When a man named Demario Arias who when he returned to Zapote from
a visit to his sister, Esmeralda, in another neighboring pueblo called La
Concepcion told a tale of horror that he had witnessed there. The news spread
through the village quickly and those of Zapote present the evening of his
narration remember his account delivered at the house of Don Arnulfo Madrigal.
Some remembered that Demario’s usually contented demeanor had been shattered,
and what had been assembled in its place was a facade consisting of shards of
fear. That night they sat about him, shadows outlined in the candlelight
flicker listening attentively as the tale unfolded.
He related how two days earlier he had
started the long walk to visit Esmeralda, his sister, a march that had begun
with the Sun’s appearance.
‘After more than a day and a half of
arduous travel I arrived in early twilight on the pomontory overlooking La
Concepcion when I glimpsed the silhouettes of men above me facing a person in
front of a rock face. I was suddenly startled when I saw white flashes come
from the muzzles of guns as the men suddenly began firing. I fell to the ground
to hide myself from this sight, he said. The sounds of the rifles hid the noise
of my own startled movement. When, after they had fired many times, there was a
silence, perhaps five seconds, yet they remained, the fearful echoes, and I
could feel my heart pounding in my chest and I tried to hold my breathing so as
not to be discovered,,, I prayed to the almighty to save me,,,, then as the
first echoes had stopped one more shot punctured the dusk like a scream during
a silent prayer and the sound from this one bounced back and forth against the
mountainsides so it terrified my ears again and again. I pressed my head and body tightly against
the ground. After the last shot, there
were a series of grunts and dull thuds,,, and,, then I heard the men speaking
among themselves. I heard their footsteps crackling upon the dry leaves as they
walked past, very near where I was hidden, yet I tell you all gathered here
that San Francis was at my side this evening, so that I would not die a
solitary death, and he preserved me, so that I might die here, with those that
I know in my own humble place. These men did not find me. They passed by me and
walked south away from the village. I waited a time sweating, unable to move a
finger almost willing myself to be part
of the damp earth, my mind in turmoil, not wanting to rise and know what had
happened, I prayed to the creator for some strength as I waited for more
darkness to help hide me better. Then finally, when I felt sure they had gone,
I stood up and went to the place where the rifles had fired. There was a lifeless body, wetting the earth
with his blood. I saw who I knew was Mateo Vazquez Jimenez, my own
brother-in-law from La Concepcion,,,, by his cleft palate, his face and head
shattered and opened from the shots and a beating. I could not understand why the Great God
could have allowed my brother-in-law’s life to be ripped from him like this,
yet we all know there is evil that runs with us which we cannot comprehend but
must endure. I ran towards the town and was met by a group of men and women
gathered there on the periphery of the village, Esmeralda among them, her face
contorted in extreme distress, for Mateo had been missing for some hours. The
villagers too had heard and been startled by the distant sounds of the shots.
You must understand how difficult it was to tell them,,, to tell her, my
sister, what I had seen and heard. She wailed when she knew what she had already
suspected, and fell to the ground tearing at the earth,,, inconsolable. Some men went for Mateo and solemnly carried
him back to the village. They marched in silence like heavy stones as they bore
his body. Only my sister could be heard weeping.
That evening when she had fewer tears and
she was sure most in the village were asleep she recounted the unfortunate
happenings that led to his murder. It was a painful story. She said that the
people of La Concepcion were near starving, desperate. They had been cheated
for years of their wages by their own corrupt cacique Adulio Ferro, so they
could not buy tools, or even salt, and recently the detached Finquero had
increased offerings and had ordered them to clear more land for cattle leaving
little available soil on which to plant their own corn, and beans or to raise
sheep. We had no food, no money, babies
were sick, some dying, our clothes were becoming ragged, as they grew fatter.
They were like a plague of scavenging locusts. Many men had left La Concepcion
on a foolish quest to find work elsewhere which made matters worse for it
diminished our ability to feed ourselves. A few that remained behind began to
meet secretly at nigh, at first to air their frustrations but later, urged by
Mateo’s fiery orations, many began to speak more belligerent words. Adulio of
course heard of these meetings and as the ownership of his duty belonged to the
faceless ones,, he informed the landlords. These assassins must have belonged
to them.’
This tale, like other similar horrors,
were often repeated in Zapote, and had helped to “educate” them and all the
residents of the highlands,,,, to create a “memory” and curtail the behavior of
everyone. In El Zapote it inculcated them with a sharp prudence,, whetted by
fear.
El Quince often had moments of clarity
when his tongue had been loosened by pulque, said, “We live by the grace of The
Creator who has provided us work in the fields, and the making of cloth, in
this small forgotten valley, nothing more than a humid hole in God’s great
universe,” and then he added, “We are secretly proud I think,“ and here he
would always pause, “We don’t have the time to meddle in what is God’s fate for
us”,,,,, then after a moment of
reflection his eyes would change and one could detect a fire there and he would
look over his shoulder then lean forward speaking in a hushed tone,, “We are so poor even nothing seems a gift
from God. They have been rubbing shit in our mouths forever and telling us its
honey,,,,,, but every pig has its Sunday.”
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