There were about fifty of us packed into Doña Althea’s living room, just there to watch. The Doña looked as she always looked: tiny, imperious, dressed in black, with her long white braid pinned around her head like a crown. As a concession to the cameras she clutched an embroidered shawl around her shoulders.
She refused to close the restaurant, though, and it was lunchtime, so there were still comings and goings and much banging of pots. Cecil, the sound man, had to run his equipment off the outlet in the kitchen, since it was the only part of the house that had been wired in the twentieth century. “Ladies, we’re just going to have to be cozy in here,” he said, turning sideways and scooting between two Althea sisters to reach the plug.
“Son of a,” he said, when one of the sisters tripped over his cord and unplugged it for the third or fourth time. The Althea in question stopped in her tracks and looked for a minute as if she might deck him, but decided to serve her customers instead. She was so burdened with plates it’s lucky Cecil didn’t get menudo in his amps.
The director of the crew had the Doña sit in a carved chair that normally stood in her bedroom and held the TV. Two men carried it out, sat her down in it, and arranged vases of peacock feathers at her feet. “Just cross your ankles,” the director told her. Norma translated, and the Doña complied, scowling fiercely. She looked like a Frida Kahlo painting. “Okay,” he said, wiping sweat off his forehead. He was a heavy man, dressed in Italian shoes and a Mexican wedding shirt, though his mood was not remotely festive. “Okay,” he repeated. “Let’s go.”
There was a camera on the interviewer and two cameras were on Doña Althea: bright, hot lights everywhere. A crew member dabbed the interviewer’s nose and forehead with a powder puff, eyed the Doña once, and backed off. The interviewer introduced himself as Malcolm Hunt. He seemed young and wore an outfit that suggested designer-label big-game hunting or possibly Central American revolutions. He probably meant well. He carefully explained to Doña Althea that they would edit the tape later, using only the best parts. If she wanted to go back and repeat anything, she could do that. He suggested that she ignore the cameras and just speak naturally to him. Norma Galvez translated all this. The Doña squinted at the lights, fixed her scornful gaze on a point just above the kitchen door, and shouted all her answers in that direction. Cecil took it personally and slinked around behind the steam table.
Mr. Hunt began. “Doña Althea, how long have you lived in this canyon?”
“Desde antes que tú cagabas en tus pañales!”
Norma Galvez shifted a little in her chair and said, “Ah, since before your mother was changing your diapers.” The Doña scowled at Norma briefly, and one of the Altheas laughed from the kitchen.
Mr. Hunt smiled and looked concerned. “When did your family come to this country?”
The Doña said something to the effect that her family had been on this land before the Gringos took over and started calling it America. The prospectors came and mined out the damn gold, and the Black Mountain company mined out the damn copper, and then they fired all the men and sent them home to plant trees, and now, naturally, they were pissing in the river and poisoning the orchards.
Mrs. Galvez paused. “A long time ago,” she said.
Mr. Hunt lost his composure for the first time. He made an odd, guttural noise and looked at Mrs. Galvez, who spread her hands.
“You want an exact translation?”
“Please.”
She gave it to him.
It wasn’t the afternoon anybody had expected. Malcolm Hunt kept adjusting his posture and his eyebrows and appearing to start the whole interview over, framing new questions that sounded like opening lines.
“The Black Mountain Mining Company is polluting-and now actually diverting-the river that has been the lifeblood of this town for centuries. Why is this happening?”
“Because they’re a greedy bunch of goat fuckers” (Mrs. Galvez said “so-and-sos”) “and they got what they wanted from this canyon and now they have to squeeze it by the balls before they let go.”
“They’re actually damming the river to avoid paying fines to the Environmental Protection Agency, isn’t that right? Because the river is so polluted with acid?”
The Doña waited for Norma’s translation, then nodded sharply.
“What do you think could stop the dam from being built, at this point?”
“Dinamita.”
Mr. Hunt appeared reluctant to follow this line of questioning to its conclusion. “In a desperate attempt to save your town,” he said, trying another new tack, “you and the other ladies of Grace have made hundreds of piñatas. Do you really think a piñata can stop a multinational corporation?”
“Probably not.”
“Then why go to all the trouble?”
“What do you think we should do?”
She had him there; Malcolm Hunt looked stumped. He looked from Norma to the Doña and back to Norma. “Well,” he said, “most people write their congressmen.”
“No sé. We don’t write such good letters. I don’t think we have any congressman out here anyway, do we? We have a mayor, Jimmy Soltovedas. But I don’t think we have any congressman.” She pronounced the word in English, making it stand out from the rest of her speech
