The unfortunate drivers who had no CB or radar were picked off by the Smokeys at strategic points along the highways: they were novices, naïfs. But when it happened to Bubble Gómez himself, one night just a few yards from the Mexamerica border, in Corralitos, Chihuahua, and near the Nuevas Casas Grandes airport, the news spread like wildfire over the CBs, from Palmillas, Chihuahua, to Palmillas, Querétaro, and to Palomaras, Oaxaca, from radio to radio and truck to truck: the Boss has been nabbed!
Bubble Gómez was caught by a plain old Smokey in Chihuahua!
Bubble Gómez’s immediate loss of prestige (he must be an asshole!) combined with the general bewilderment (who can take his place?). Instinctively, the drivers tried to find the answer using their CBs, and the answer was waiting for them on every channel, repeated by every voice, running now from south to north, from Palomares Oax to Palmillas Qro to Palmillas Chih, the message was repeated insistently, the slogans offered by a velvety feminine voice, sometimes a virgin’s voice, sometimes a whore’s voice, listen good buddy in Nuevo León or oye buencuate in Hidalgo. Quite exciting, quite attractive the woman’s voice, whoever she is, and again and again that message, which had never gone out before and was now coming through every truck radio:
WHEN YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN ANYTHING,
WHAT DO YOU HAVE LEFT?
YOUR HOLY LITTLE MOTHER!
which became personified, as it should be, in:
TRUCK DRIVER, WHO PROTECTS YOU?
YOUR LITTLE MOTHER THE VIRGIN!
and since there was not a single one of these trucks that in addition to its CB and its radar detector did not also have its picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe and often even a blessed rosary hanging right under that picture, sometimes even a candle burning in front of the dark image, the slogan caught on, since the truck drivers heard the word and instantly saw the picture and the picture told them that the word was true and that outside the truck there was nothing more than tumbleweeds and cactus or ravines or bare bluffs: outside, desolation, and here inside, fellow traveler, the comforting warmth of a woman’s voice and a message for you:
Blessed are those who drive alone night and day along the highways of Mexico, exposed to all kinds of danger, victims of corruption and immorality, chased by the Smokeys and the Tijuanas, adrift in a sea of stone, dust, and thorns, blessed be the long-haul drivers because they can carry the good news in all directions:
OUR VIRGIN IS NOT ABANDONING US!
OUR DARK LADY KEEPS WATCH OVER US!
OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE SHALL RETURN!
and then in every diner along the way, in every tollbooth, in every melon, crackling, or tepache stand along those endless roads, a woman waited to surreptitiously pass every driver a cassette and the drivers were already prepared to hear that sweet sexy voice, which was now explaining more, saying more “to all those who feel adrift in modern society, hello and good news: Salvation is coming! Don’t lose hope! Our little Mother is thinking about you and is sending you an emissary! You will recognize him when you see him because you will recognize the son of our Mother!” Cassette after cassette announced the blessed news:
TRUCK DRIVER: THERE’S AN AYATOLLAH IN YOUR FUTURE PASS IT ON
and the woman’s voice: “Blessed be all those who have rolled through this world and faced its dangers. A truck driver is the favorite son of the Virgin. Blessed are they who walk through this world in time of danger.” The truck drivers began to communicate their opinions to each other, to feel they were a chosen people, to join together so that what had been prophesied would happen: they were chosen for what was going to happen, the Virgin was speaking to them — they were told by a man’s voice, rough and assimilable, that complemented the modulated, sweet, and sexy voice of the woman who swallowed her s’s in a Caribbean drawl, that they were the Comanches of the Virgin, they galloped over deserts and mountains like the brigades of the Virgin of Guadalupe. They didn’t have horses, but they had something better: their trucks, their Dodges, Leylands, Macks, like roaring chargers, their diesel sorrels, the Comanches of Guadalupe crossing the fatherland in all directions, tying together
THE NATION OF GUADALUPE
which had been separated and mutilated: Comanches! Remember, said the sonorous and Mexican voice of the man, Coahuila never belonged to the central government: it was Comanche territory! Texas never belonged to the Americans: it was Comanche territory! The Comanche nation is the nation that moves, unites, takes over land by running over the land. Comanche truck driver, spread the news far and wide, take it as far north as Presidio and as far south as Talismán: knock down the false borders, truck driver, you are the Comanche, the Man of Silver, the Knight of Guadalupe in 1992! They all came together on August 15, the Assumption, where the voices convoked them, thousands of drivers rolling in from north and south, from both coasts, from all the scattered borders of Mexico, gathered first in the Zoquiapan truck stop at Río Frío and from there to the Cuatro Caminos Bull Ring at Ciudad Satélite in Mexico, D. F., taken by surprise (and silent) attack by the motorized Comanches, curious, excited, committed, catechized, touched to their very roots, with their rolled-up sleeves, their bulky sweaters, their scratched boots, and their newly whitened Adidas, their elegant T-shirts, their beer bellies, their tight blue jeans, their underpants stuffed with Kleenex in front, their rippling muscles, their baseball caps, and some, the coquettish ones, even wearing white gloves with rhinestones on them which they’d bought in the Michael Jackson Shops along the border: they were all there and her voice (though she remained invisible) announced over the loudspeakers that HE was coming, THE AYATOLLAH OF GUADALUPE, AYATOLLAH MATAMOROS, THE MAN they’d all been waiting for, exactly as they’d imagined him, because he was the very image, the dream, the personification of Mexican machismo: tall, powerful, dark, big mustaches, with flashing eyes and an angry expression, but also a flashing smile, his head tied in a red scarf worthy of the Servant of the Nation, the liberating Generalísimo José María Morelos, in his Mexican cowboy suit, which was all black except for a huge silver cross over his chest and an old-fashioned cape which the man took off the way Manolete took off his bullfighter’s cape, and then began the whistling, the jokes, yo it’s Mandrake the Magician, giddyap cowboy, but the Ayatollah Matamoros stood his ground in the very center of things and looked at them as no one had ever looked at them, fearlessly but with fraternal tenderness, looking straight into their eyes, no “I’ll look down,” no “I’ll look aside,” without the eternal Mexican way of looking: suspicious, crafty, traitorous, ill-meaning, insincere, resentful, double-meaninged: he wasn’t afraid of them, he looked straight at them, and the voice of the woman they knew and loved for her voice, and whose voice they thought was that of the Virgin herself, told them, “Love him, this is my son, follow him, he walks for me, listen to him, his words are mine.”
Ayatollah Matamoros spoke and his voice fused with that of the Madonna and he reminded them that Mexico was the second largest Catholic nation in the world, the largest in the Spanish-speaking world, 130 million Catholics, not 130 million members of PRI or PAN or Communists or peasants or ragpickers or functionaries or anything else: only 130 million Catholics could equal 130 million Mexicans, that was the only equivalence, that was the force, that was the reason, and nevertheless, despite all that, the Ayatollah Matomoros exclaimed in his hoarse, moving voice: THERE IS NO NATION!