Erased Faces (21 page)

When the gang of workers finally cleared a section of trees, their task turned to chopping at the jungle to make a path, a
calzada
, from the fresh
caoba
grove to the river. It was only at those times that the overseers, under the bat's eye of El Brujo, armed the
boyeros
with
machetes. Because the morass was so dense, this work was just as awful as goading oxen. As each man hacked at stubborn giant palms and undergrowth, he did so not knowing if he might be disturbing a nest of poisonous ants or falling into a snake pit. The overseers coaxed and pushed the workers forward relentlessly, shouting profanities and threats, commanding them to finish the path, never allowing time for rest or a drink of water. Many times a
boyero
collapsed, drained of all energy, and this meant that he would be left behind to die.

Now, as Aquiles chattered cheerfully, Orlando's fingers massaged the sores on his arms, wounds caused by swarms of blood-sucking mosquitoes. As he did this, his memory brought back the image of the pinkish ooze that dripped from a
boyero's
skin, aggravated yet more by the demanding pokes of El Brujo, who used his prodding stick insistently.

“¡Ándale, cabrón! ¡Jala! ¡Jala!”

Come on, son of a bitch! Pull! Pull!
These words, which he heard coming from El Brujo's mouth, snapped Orlando back to the present and to the awareness of Aquiles' presence. As he looked over to his friend, he tried to smile, but realized that his face was stiff, unwilling to bend to such a gesture. He got to his feet and headed for his hammock, hoping that sleep would erase the intolerable images invading his mind. Dawn came, but time had dragged for Orlando that night because he had been unable to rest. He knew these would be his last weeks with Aquiles, and he was saddened, knowing that his friend would leave, that he would probably never see him again.

When Aquiles and Orlando joined the gang of
boyeros
, they saw that although they had been in the jungle for only a week, they were already exhausted beyond endurance. They sluggishly lined up, listening for El Brujo's shrill commanding voice. The men began the trek into the density of the jungle, followed by teams of oxen that looked as if they, too, sensed their own impending death. Two of them squatted on the ground, refusing to move, and no amount of prodding or pulling could make them get to their feet. The drivers lost patience with them and ordered those remaining in the camp to look after them.
When Orlando saw this, he wondered what would happen if he got down on the ground and refused to move.

After a day's march, El Brujo signaled that they had arrived at the harvesting site. As the
boyeros
looked over the surrounding area, they saw countless prime
caoba
trees. Many of the boys secretly exchanged glances which confirmed:
I told you he's a sorcerer
. Other workers scratched their head, wondering how El Brujo always managed to find such rich reserves of timber, when others often lost their lives searching. Someone in the rear muttered,
“¡Cabrón brujo!”

Orlando always kept his eye on the sorcerer, knowing that he, in turn, was continually spied on by those unblinking eyes. Years had passed since his attempted escape, but Orlando knew that the sorcerer planned to kill him and that Aquiles' prediction would some day come true.

Time passed, but nothing happened until the day foreseen by Aquiles arrived. At dawn, the caravan of
boyeros
and oxen struck a path toward the jungle, El Brujo, weapon in hand, at its head. The shift would begin with their dragging to the river a trunk left over from the night before. It would end with the beginnings of a path. Three men carried the necessary machetes.

“¡Ándenle! ¡Jalen! ¡Jalen!

El Brujo's shrill call to pull the trunk shattered the first rays of light that had begun to filter through the mesh of vines and trees. At his command, men and beasts strained to dislodge the tree that had doubled in weight as the mud coating it had hardened overnight. The hooves of the oxen plowed into the slime beneath them, sinking deeper each time the
boyeros
drove them on. As the animals struggled, the ooze beneath them churned, deepening, thickening. Its sucking sounds struck fear in the men, and they instinctively kept a distance while trying to reach the oxen with their prodding irons.

The struggle was at its peak when Orlando, straining at his section of chain, saw Aquiles slip; one of his ankles had buckled under his weight. He saw that his friend tried to regain his balance but the momentum of the pull worked against him, causing him to plunge headlong into the churning mire. Orlando dropped the chain and
rushed to the edge of the mud, so close that he felt the haunches of an ox brush his torso. He thrust his arms into the slime, grabbed one of Aquiles' shoulders and raised him up far enough so that he could gasp air through his opened mouth.

As Orlando did this, the blast of a shotgun stopped all motion; even the animals froze. He looked over his shoulder in time to see El Brujo lower the weapon he held in his hands. In that second, Orlando snapped his face back to look at Aquiles and saw that part of his friend's face had been blasted away. It was at that moment that Orlando realized that the shot had been meant for him.

“¡Boyero Osuna! ¡A la chamba!”

The gang stood in stunned silence as they saw that Orlando refused to obey the command to return to work and that he no longer cared what El Brujo was ordering. They watched as he pulled Aquiles' body from the mire, dragged it to a small patch of solid ground, and there laid the remains of his friend. They followed his movements, watching as he wiped whatever mud he could from the bloodied face, and then gently crossed his friend's arms over his chest.

Orlando got to his feet, still not caring that the sorcerer was watching him, weapon in hand, with his bat-like gaze defying Orlando to do something. But then, with a speed that even El Brujo's eyes could not follow, Orlando leaped at the hold of machetes and, armed with one of the sharpened long knives, he sprang toward the sorcerer, reaching him before he could raise his shotgun.

Orlando's arm, grown tough with five years of hacking and chopping, raised the machete and brought it down on its target. The cut was clean, swift. El Brujo's head hit the ground while his body was still on its feet. Moments passed before it slowly crumbled to the soggy jungle floor, where its blood oozed through severed arteries into the mire. Years later, those who witnessed the execution swore that the sorcerer's blood was not red but white, like the milk of the
yuca
.

Orlando looked around him and saw that the
boyeros
as well as El Brujo's underlings were paralyzed into inaction by what had happened.
No one moved or showed signs of daring to apprehend him. They only stared, mouths agape. Seeing that no one intended to accost him, Orlando, the machete still in his hand, approached Aquiles' body and got down on his knees. He placed the machete by the body, taking its inert hand and closing it around the weapon's handle. He then got to his feet and disappeared into the jungle.

It was late October and the diffused autumn light filtering through tall windows accentuated the reflection in the full-length mirror. Twenty-one-year-old Rufino Mayorga stared at his image and was pleased with what he saw. His hazel-colored eyes took in his blond hair, oval-shaped face, long straight nose, wide mouth highlighted by lips clasped in a jaunty smile. His glance slipped downward, pausing on his broad shoulders, slim torso, long legs planted apart on the tiled floor. Rufino gawked at his mirrored image, gratified with how the officer's uniform, knee-length boots and shiny medals rendered him an exceptionally handsome figure.

He suddenly snapped out of his reverie when he remembered that he and other officers were expected at Los Pinos to dine with
El Señor Presidente
. The 1968 Olympic Games had ended and with those events a turbulent month had just closed in Mexico City. Rufino Mayorga had distinguished himself as a young officer, emerging from the bitter violence of those days with a sterling record, proving himself an enemy of the rabble that had tried to embarrass the country in the eyes of the world. Dinner with the president was his reward.

Rufino sniffed contentedly and looked at his watch, noting that there was still time before the driver was due to arrive. He walked to the window and stared out at the steel-colored sky while he waited. Soon it would be dark, but there was still enough light for him to make out rooftops, and farther away the silhouettes of the Tower of the Americas and other tall buildings. He craned his neck to look down at streets, now eerily silent after the turmoil of the past month.

He turned his gaze north of the Zócalo, to Tlatelolco, and his thoughts drifted back to the mass student demonstration of October 2. The towering silhouette cut into the night by the church of Santiago de Compostela loomed in his memory, its giant wooden doors slowly creaking shut. The square was jammed with people chanting, shouting, singing, protesting. In his memory, Rufino looked beyond the left
flank of the church and focused on the building known as El Chihuahua; its balconies were filled with screaming, ranting university students, its walls draped with insulting placards and banners. Over tinny microphones, hysterical voices poured out scorn, all of it aimed at the government, at the ruling class, at the military.

“¡Asesinos!”

“¡Gorilas!”

“¡Puercos!”

“¡Gobierno de mierda!”

When Rufino received the order to be one of the officers in charge of dispersing the crowd, he felt proud, but when he actually confronted that outraged mass of people, he was filled with terror. Face to face, he realized that the troops he commanded were identical to the mob filling the plaza, except that his men were uniformed. Amid the turmoil, Rufino had looked at them as if for the first time, seeing their flat, brown faces, accentuated by slanted eyes, broad mouths with lips that barely covered buck teeth.
What if they turn on me?
His soldiers did not turn on him; they obeyed his orders when he commanded them to fire into the crowd, leaving him wondering why they fired on people who looked just like them.

Rufino, standing at the window, thought he now heard the echo of panic-stricken voices floating in the chilly air, and his eyes conjured images of bodies falling, riddled with bullets, others trampled by those trying to escape the carnage. He remembered looking upward and seeing the scramble of young men and women, leaping from an upper balcony to the one below, some making it, others falling two and three floors.

The battle—his men against the students—lasted the entire night, and when it was over, Rufino felt sickened, not by the deaths and maiming of people, but because he discovered that he detested the sound and stench of violence. He was convinced that the insurgents deserved to be crushed, and that force was the only way. He wondered, however, if it was for the likes of him to carry out such tasks.

Rufino turned away from the window, glanced at his watch, then looked again at his image in the mirror. He absentmindedly fidgeted
with the top button of his tunic, then straightened one of the medals while his train of thought returned to the subject of living a military life. He had to admit that the night at Tlatelolco had shaken him and deeply eroded his resolve to be an officer. He had discovered that he found the experience too untidy, too messy—not at all for him.

Rufino stood in the middle of the room, lost in thought; his mind was toying with an idea that had emerged on that violent night:
My father would rejoice if I returned to stay at
Las Estrellas. This thought conjured an old memory of his friend Quintín Osuna, of whom he had heard nothing. Over the years, whenever he remembered to ask his father, Don Absolón would shrug his shoulders or merely change the subject. Rufino, as always when thinking of his boyhood friend, discovered that he barely remembered his face. He imagined that it now might resemble that of one of the soldiers under his command, or he might even look like one of the dead students. Rufino was yanked out of his thoughts by a soft rap on the door, announcing that his car was ready.

Before leaving, Rufino stepped over to the chair where he had laid his cap and gloves. As he turned, he could not help but see his reflection in the mirror once again. He was tall, handsome, refined, soon to reach the prime of his life. The image told him that a life in the barracks was not for him—perhaps for others, but not for him.

Orlando Flores became a fugitive in 1968, the year of the massacre at Tlatelolco. It was also in that year that the Catholic bishops of Latin America met in Medellín to ask one another how the Church was to spread not only the word of God, but also the word of God's people. But those prelates were mostly perplexed; they had only the old ways to talk about God. One of them knew what to do, nevertheless, and it was he who signaled the exodus to freedom of the congregations he shepherded.

Led by a bishop, the journey of the tribes that inhabited the canyons, the highlands and the jungle was difficult; it took years. The spiritual centers of the movement became Ocosingo and San Cristóbal de Las Casas, where teachers, organizers and social workers congregated after heeding the bishop's call to catechize in a new manner, a way in which the people were brought together not to hear but to be heard, not to erase their culture but to remember it, not to disdain their mysticism but to rediscover it.

When this new spirit swept through Chiapas, Orlando was only twenty-one years old, but he, like his people, had already sustained indescribable physical and mental pain; he had also killed a man. He knew that Don Absolón would not be lenient, much less forgiving, of the native who murdered his favored overseer.
El patrón
would not rest until he had Orlando's severed head dangling from a
ceiba
tree.