Erased Faces (25 page)

Everyone gawked at the speaker, some open-mouthed, but they were startled back to attention when the president smashed his gavel on the table. Its crashing noise had never been so loud or explosive; it forced all faces to turn to the stage.

“Amigo
, we're all here to listen and to be heard, but your words are disrespectful. I will tell you not to express yourself in that manner again!”

“Señor Presidente
, I'm here in good faith, so I beg your pardon, but what I've been hearing during the past few days has made me lose patience.”

“Identify yourself before you say any more.”

“My name is Pedro.”

“And your last name?”

“I'm only Pedro. May I speak?”

The president went into a huddle with the other speakers who shared the table, some wagging their heads negatively, other shrugging their shoulders. They whispered and interrupted one another until the president spoke up.

“We agree that at this meeting all the
compañeros
have a right to speak. Say what you must, but you must be brief, and watch your language.”

The man looked to the uplifted faces that were concentrating on his words, turning in a circle as he spoke. Orlando saw that the man was assured in his manner, relaxed but intense. He plunged his hands into the pockets of his khaki pants as he spoke.

“Whatever accords you offer, whatever agreements you reach, if you do so in so-called
peace
, you are fooling yourselves into believing that your lives will change. What here is being called
peace
is a false peace. It is the condition that keeps you bound to the yoke, like dumb beasts. It is your masters' tranquility, not yours! They will never share their prized land with you! They will never erect schools for your children! They will always cheat you when you sell your beans and coffee to them. Your sweat, your silence, your suffering is your masters'
peace!”

The gavel slammed on the table once again, signaling the protest of the president, who now got to his feet. He circled around the table and stood at the edge of the stage.

“Do you speak against the plans we're making because we propose to carry out our action in a peaceful manner?”

“Yes,
Señor Presidente.”

“What do you propose in the place of that plan?”

“War!”

The man hurled the word at the president and it exploded in midair, as did the assembly. That word triggered an energy buried deep in the hearts of those people, shattering any semblance of orderly debate. The forbidden, feared, yet desired word had at last been uttered! Men and women got to their feet, shouting, wagging heads, craning necks, stumbling over each other as they strained to move from one place to the other. There was pandemonium. Orlando, lips pursed and scowling, glared at the man who had dared to articulate the word. The man stood without moving. His calm demonstrated that he had expected, and even wanted, the chaotic response to his proposal.

“This session is closed!”

The president shouted above the din and banged his gavel repeatedly, bringing an end to the day's meeting. People hardly heard the gavel as they argued with one another, already engaged in the debate of war versus peace. The ushers opened the doors of the hall and the delegates plunged toward the exits, shoving and pushing while excitedly engaged in feverish talk.

Orlando, still seated, waited for the hall to empty. He did not want to be dragged by the crush, but most of all he sat quietly as he wrestled with his thoughts, which were in turmoil. The idea of armed resistance was not new to him; he had pondered it many times, but especially when he became impatient with incessant talk and little action. More recently, the reality of being hunted by the Mayorga people had incited him to think of ways in which to fight back, to defend himself. Somehow, negotiation and bargaining did not provide the answer to his own dilemma.

At last, the auditorium had emptied but Orlando remained seated, lost in thought until he was interrupted by a voice that startled him.

“Amigo
, are you thinking about what I said?”

Orlando turned in his seat to see the man who had almost thrown the meeting into a riot. At close range he saw that he was in his mid-twenties, of medium height, and that his eyes were shrewd.

“Yes. I'm thinking that maybe you're right. That maybe we're stuck in the mud of injustice, and that the only way to free ourselves is to raise the machete and cut off the head of the beast that keeps us down.”

Orlando stopped abruptly, surprised at the intensity of his words, which had come straight from his heart. As he spoke, he relived having cut off El Brujo's head, he relived the mud he had wiped from Aquiles' face, he relived the feeling of having placed the machete in his friend's dead hand. The other man nodded, seemingly reading Orlando's thoughts.

“Come. Join us.”

“Where?”

“In the Lacandona, where we've been gathering for years.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Recruit for us.”

“I'll think about it.”

“We'll be waiting for you.”

The man walked away from Orlando, but before he exited, he looked back at him and said, “You're a good recruiter. I've seen how you work. Instead of people from towns and streets, you can help us gather men and women from the villages and canyons. They're the ones who are suffering most.”

“How can we stand up to the power of the
patrones?”

“With an army of men and women.”

Orlando gazed at the man, doubt stamped on his face. But his racing mind was already beginning to accept the man's proposal as the way to self-defense and survival, his people's as well as his own.

“When you've made up your mind, go to our camp in the Lacandona. Tell them El Bombardero sent you. That's me.”

Orlando did not join the guerrilla forces right away, as The Bomber would have liked. Instead, he took time to consider what path he would take. Four years passed before he became disenchanted with the direction the activists had taken. He had finally concluded that their words and advice would not change anything, much less transform the misery of his people. Everywhere Orlando looked, he saw hunger, sickness, ignorance. Men sank deeper into debt and drunkenness; women became more oppressed by constant pregnancies and battering. And no one did anything. To speak of liberation and not provide a way seemed to him cruel and futile.

During the four years of his discernment, Orlando taught himself to read and write. He mastered those skills to the point of being able to understand newspaper articles as well as to compose simple pages expressing his views. This made it possible for him to follow the guerrilla movement that had sprung from the ranks of university students, mainly in the city of Monterrey in the state of Nuevo León, and had spread to other parts of the country. By reading newspapers, he learned of reports damning those men as traitors and insurgents—enemies of the state.

Orlando discovered that the movement was not new, that it had begun sometime in 1971, had grown and spread from city to city. He learned that police had recently arrested culprits in a clandestine cell somewhere on the outskirts of Mexico City, then in Veracruz, and also in Tabasco. One of the accounts asserted that other centers were suspected as far south as the Lacandona Jungle in Chiapas, and that it
was only a matter of time before those, too, would be discovered and eradicated by the army.

One of those newspaper articles in particular attracted Orlando's attention because it was accompanied by photographs of two men suspected as leaders of the Puebla cell. When Orlando took the paper in his hands, he stopped what he was doing to concentrate on those pictures. One displayed the corpses, mutilated beyond recognition by multiple gunshot wounds. As he held the page to the light, he made out dangling arms, ruptured stomachs, protruding intestines, shattered and bloodied faces. To the side of that grim scene, the photos of the same two men, still students, were printed.

The culprits, stated the article, were university-trained, one in biology and the other in political science. One of them stirred Orlando's memory. He did not recognize the man's name, but despite the passing of four years, his face riveted Orlando. It was El Bombardero, the same man who had confronted the Indian Congress and declared that war was the only way to change. Orlando stared at the picture, whispering the man's fictitious name: The Bomber.

Instead of being frightened, Orlando felt that what he was reading and seeing was a message indicating which direction he should take. He saw that there were people already fighting a war, already dying for what they believed, and that it was a national movement with a name, with leaders, and that those people were ensconced somewhere in the Lacandona Jungle. At that moment he decided to abandon the organizers' mission and join the guerrillas. He did not know where to find them in the vastness of the Lacandona, but he had no doubt that he would encounter them. He was determined to become part of the force, so he journeyed to the Lacandona in search of his insurgent
compañeros
.

He returned to wearing the white tunic of his people and left behind the khaki trousers and cotton shirts typical of the organizers. After months, his hair was finally long enough to dangle from his forehead to his eyes and the back of it reached toward his shoulders. He wandered, sometimes visiting villages where he exchanged fish or small game for tortillas or a bowl of beans, but Orlando mostly stayed
hidden in the jungle. Whenever he asked villagers about the camp, his questions were answered with blank looks or shrugged shoulders. He did not know if those people were uninformed or unwilling to give him directions, but after a while, he stopped asking.

It occurred to him that he was not looking in the right places, nor was he asking in the right way. He remembered that The Bomber had singled him out as a recruiter. This led Orlando to believe that others would be doing the same thing, and that those recruiters would be concentrating on the villages and canyon settlement most likely to respond to their message. He then began going into those places that he judged to be ripe to listen and respond to the insurgents' message. When he found such a settlement, he stayed to mingle with the people for days, hoping that a recruiter would appear and lead him to the guerrilla compound.

It was in El Caribal that Orlando noticed a group of women and men clustered around a man dressed in the Lacandon way. His plan had finally worked. As he approached the gathering, Orlando caught snippets of the man's speech.

“I tell you,
compañeros
, we have to band together and fight back! There's no other way.”

Orlando looked at the villagers and saw that the recruiter's words were not having the effect he expected. The men and women barely looked at the man, and most of them fidgeted distractedly.

“Do you want to go on living like burros?”

One or two in the group walked away; others began to talk among themselves, losing interest in what the recruiter had to say. The man appeared frustrated to the point of following those who were leaving the circle. He neared one man and put a hand on his shoulder.

“¡Compañero!
Aren't you at least going to ask a question? Why aren't you interested in what I'm saying?”

The man, annoyed at having been stopped, pushed the recruiter's hand away. He glared at him, hostility stamped on his face.

“Do you think we're fools? It's easy for you to tell us to fight back, but how can we overthrow the
patrones?
They're the ones with the power. They have the
catxules
, too. Those jackals are ready to kill all of us and take what little we have.”

Orlando saw that the recruiter had lost his audience because he was not delivering his message in a manner that might be understood. He sensed that his time had come, that he had at last found his way into the insurgents' group. He stepped forward as he raised his voice.

“Amigos
, I have heard what this man is saying and I believe in his message. We must fight if we are to free ourselves from the burden that the
patrones
laid on our ancestors. It will not be an easy task; many of us will die, but we must fight and not give up.”

Although Orlando had spoken almost the same words as the recruiter, something in Orlando's voice captured the group's attention. Those who were about to leave turned to look at him and listened to what he had to say. Others, men and women, seemed to come out from the shadows of the trees and from behind huts. The recruiter, at first taken by surprise, soon regained his composure, recognizing an ally in Orlando. He walked up to him, reached out his hand and shook it warmly.

“Compañero
, I'm Rodrigo Vázquez. Who are you?”

“Orlando Flores. The Bomber sent me.”

Orlando saw Rodrigo's eyes narrow suspiciously and he realized that the man was backing away from him even while his hand was still in Orlando's grip. Orlando tightened his grasp.

“I know that The Bomber is dead. Don't think I don't know, but I say that he sent me because it's the truth. I've come because of him. We met at the Indian Congress in San Cristóbal de las Casas four years ago.”

Rodrigo relaxed with that, backed away and allowed his new
compañero
to take over. The task came effortlessly to Orlando as he applied the technique and style that had won him so much approval when he was organizing. He spoke to the villagers and they responded, wanting to know more, asking questions, speaking among themselves. There were some questions that Rodrigo had to answer, but Orlando's listeners neither lost interest nor confidence.

The day was turning to evening, but Orlando and Rodrigo were still in conversation with men and women who were now so interested in joining the ranks of the insurgents that they had forgotten about time. When they realized that it was nearly night, the women ran off
to put together campfires, to heat
comales
, to knead
masa
for tortillas. The men, in turn, headed for their
palapas
, where they would sit by the fireside waiting for the food that was being prepared.