Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Chiapas Chapter III

 

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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