“I am free. I love you. You are my best friend. I don’t want to lose you, I’ve already lost…”
“Take this note. It’s from Ofelia Salamanca. She wants you to join her in Mexico. She’s waiting with Father Quintana in Veracruz. Here are the directions and a map. Hurry, Baltasar. Oh yes, I bought you a pair of glasses. Start using them again. You have to read this letter carefully. Don’t start hallucinating. You have to see things clearly.”
8. Veracruz
[1]
The Virgin of Guadalupe had no time to spread her arms in imitation of her son on the cross before receiving the blast.
She stood there with her hands clasped in prayer, with her eyes lowered and sweet, until the bullets pierced her eyes and mouth, and then her blue mantle and her warm, maternal feet.
The stars were reduced to dust, the horns of the moon shattered into a thousand pieces, the scandalized cherubs fled.
The commander of the fort of San Juan de Ulúa repeated the order, take aim, fire, as if a single barrage wasn’t sufficient for the independentist Virgin, as if the effigy venerated by the poor and the agitators who carried her image in their scapularies and on their insurgent flags deserved to be executed twice a day.
The priest Hidalgo in Guanajuato, the priest Morelos in Michoacán, and now the priest Quintana here in Veracruz had all thrown themselves into the revolt with the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe raised on high. And though they were ultimately captured and beheaded — except for that damned Quintana, who was still running around loose — she, the Virgin, could be shot at will, whenever there was no rebel leader to take her place.
Baltasar Bustos watched this ceremony of the shooting of the Virgin when he reached Veracruz from Maracaibo, and he concluded that he’d reached the strangest land in the Americas.
The revolutionary decade was coming to a close, and if in South America San Martín, Bolívar, Sucre, and O’Higgins had beaten the Spaniards and there had been no chance for retaliation, in Mexico the sacrifice of the poor parish priests, who led the only uprising of the Indians and the peasants armed with clubs and picks, had left independence to the dubious outcome of an agreement among warriors. On the one side, there were the weary professional soldiers of the Spanish Army, representatives of the reactionaries restored after the Congress of Vienna and the return to the throne of Ferdinand VII, more stupid and ultramontane than ever. On the other were the nervous (and enervated) creole officers, led by Agustín de Iturbide, who could no longer pretend (not even to fool themselves) to support Ferdinand or Carlota. All the same, the creole military men promised to protect the interests of the upper classes and keep the damned races — Indians, blacks, mestizos, zambos, cambujos, quadroons, and other racial mixtures — from taking over the government.
So the Virgin of Guadalupe was shot to death once more on the morning of Baltasar Bustos’s arrival at Veracruz, and through the perforated eyes of the Mother of God passed the rays of a tropical, leaden sun. Baltasar Bustos was entering Mexico: it was the final phase of his campaign of love and war. It had now been ten years since he’d kidnapped the white baby and put the black one in its place in Buenos Aires; but only two months had gone by since the quondam Luz María, Lutecia, the madam of Harlequin House, had handed him that ever so simple and direct note written in Veracruz:
Come instantly.
Ofelia.
Baltasar had brought something more than this note with him from Maracaibo: he was entering Mexico with the documents of a Spanish officer, as thin and nervous as a greyhound, whose face had been blown off and who had died in Baltasar’s arms.
He was entering Veracruz in search, first, as Lutecia had instructed him, of the priest Quintana. And entering Veracruz was like walking into a blazing oven.
Barely had Baltasar presented his papers to the port commander, Captain Carlos Saura, Fifth Grenadier Regiment of the Virgin of Covadonga, than he took off his royalist officer’s coat and used it to cover a wretched dead man in Customs House Street, an indigent, the other wretched creatures around him said, for whom there was no money for a funeral.
“No one wants to bury them free, neither the priests nor the government.”
[2]
“You’re looking for Father Quintana? Well, let’s see you find him!” the toothless man in Orizaba said, laughing, when Baltasar Bustos came within sight of that rainy city close to the volcano, a city occupied by the insurgent forces of the priest Anselmo Quintana for no other reason — according to the malicious gossips of Veracruz — than to destroy the Spaniards’ tobacco supplies, or — according to the kindhearted gossips of the same port — to dress his troops in the excellent fabric produced in Orizaba, or — according to the cynics — because the rich Spaniards had hidden their property in the convents and this priest, they knew for a fact, had no respect for nuns; he’d certainly had, with one nun or another, one or another of his many bastards. After all, the principal purpose of this campaign was to frighten the Spaniards and then enter the richest and most devout city to sack it before running off with the loot and mounting the next campaign.
“My God, when will there be peace!” said the creole ladies, fanning themselves before the parish church of Veracruz.
“We’ve put all our faith in Iturbide and the royalist creole officers,” said another lady to Baltasar Bustos.
“Let the war be over, even if the Spaniards go. But, for God’s sake, don’t let the Indians and the blacks take over everything, like that excommunicated, heretical priest Quintana, who’s taken the city of Orizaba. All the decent people have come to the port, fleeing from the outrages perpetrated by that damned priest,” said a coffee grower from Cempoala, standing at the entrance to the License Office. This man, named Menchaca, had come to investigate tax exemptions, so he could export his sacks of coffee. “Around here, they say the Indians did the work of the conquest, because without them the Aztecs would have dined on Cortez and his five hundred Spaniards. Now it’s up to us creoles to bring about independence, just so the Indians don’t take their revenge.”
“Are you asking who this parish priest Quintana is?” the gentlemen playing billiards and smoking in the bars near the docks and the lethargic sea asked Baltasar rhetorically. “A dangerous man. A womanizer. He’s got a ton of kids. He laughs out loud at the edicts of the Inquisition, which excommunicate him. He used to be a parish priest right here near La Antigua. Of course we know him. He liked to bathe naked in the Chachalacas River with his flock. He’s immoral. He would bet on fighting cocks. Do you know why he became a rebel, Captain Saura? Because in 1804 the consolidation law legislated by the Bourbons took away his privileges as a member of the lesser clergy. He lost those privileges, especially the exemption from civil justice. That’s the reason. And now they’ve assumed the privilege of sacking every hacienda they find in their path. Just like Hidalgo, Morelos, and Matamoros. This is a land of rebel priests, who take advantage of religion to fool the asses and behave like pirates.”
“He’s a show-off. He wears fancy cassocks. He covers his head with a red cap, as if he were a cardinal.”
“He’s the heir of Hidalgo and Morelos,” said a young lawyer, slapping Baltasar’s face with a glove as the tiles of an interrupted domino game poured over the floor of the entrance. “He’s our last hope to keep criminals and scoundrels like you, Captain, from exploiting Mexico one second longer. Death to Iturbide! Death to the creoles! Hurrah for Father Quintana and the equality of the races!”