Destiny and Desire

rid of incompetents at the highest levels, occupies the center of the center, governs himself in order to govern others better, does not overstimulate the public…”

“And all of this for what?” I interrupted her because her exaltation of Max was beginning not only to annoy me but, in particular, to make me jealous. It fell upon me to learn about Max Monroy through the love of his dear dead mama. I was irritated by the admiration, as repetitive as a record, as unrestrained as an orgasm, of this woman who was more and more awful and perhaps, for that reason, more and more desired. Or, just the opposite…

“Why?” she said, disconcerted.

“Or for whom,” I said, not daring to throw up to her the lack of sincerity: Everything she had said to me seemed learned, like a lesson that had to be memorized and repeated by the loyal servant of Max Monroy.

She went on as if she hadn’t heard me. “Max controls demand with what supply can provide,” she said like a jukebox.

“For what, for whom?” I tossed a coin on the piano.

“It would have been enough for him to inherit, Josue, with no need to increase his inheritance…”

“For whom?” I said in my best bolero voice.

A tremor of anger fought in Asunta’s body against the sorrow of a resignation that seemed too satisfied.

“For you?” I grabbed her shoulders. “Will you be the heir?”

“He has no descendants,” she moaned, surprised, “he had no children…”

“He has a lover, what the hell…”

Asunta detached herself from my growing weakness. I thought desire would strengthen me. She was undermining me: the longing to love her. The longing, nothing more.

“What joins the two of you? He’s an old man. What is it that joins you, Asunta?”

To my surprise she said that smell joined them. What smell? Many smells. Now, the strange smell of an old man, the smell of an animal in a cave. Earlier, the smell of the countryside, where we met. I laughed a lot. Perhaps all that joins us is the smell of cow, chicken, burro, and shit, she said, serious but with a good deal of humor.

She looked at me with a fixity suspended between love and defiance.

“Mexico poor and provincial, mediocre and envious, hostile…”

She threw her arms around my neck.

“I don’t want to go back there. Not for anything in the world.”

She told me this in a whisper. I looked at her. She wasn’t smiling. This was serious. She took my hand. She looked at it. She said my hands were beautiful. I smiled. I wasn’t going to enumerate the charms of Asunta.

“Please, understand me,” she said. “I owe everything to Max Monroy. Before, my life was very frustrated. Now, I’m a guided force.”

“Like a missile?” I said with misplaced humor, as if I hadn’t guessed something more serious in her embrace.

She looked at me again.

“Please, don’t distract me.”

I woke before dawn. Everyone was asleep. I anticipated the surprise of waking beside Asunta Jordan. I already felt the suffering that awaited me as punishment for obtaining what I most desired. Now everyone else was sleeping. What is there outside?

THE SECOND ROYAL Tribunal of the City of Mexico met in 1531 and made it clear that enslavement of the Indians favors miners and encomenderos, the colonists who hold Indian labor. Yes, but at the expense of the Indians, disagrees Vasco de Quiroga, member of the Tribunal. The labor of the Indians is the sinew of the land, the Tribunal maintains. The prosperity of the land depends on respect for indigenous traditions, responds Quiroga, and he moves from words to deeds. He frees his slaves. He becomes a priest. He founds in Santa Fe-here, where you are, Josue-the Republic of the Hospice, dedicated to saving indigenous children by teaching them Castilian along with the Otomi language; to singing and officiating and also preaching Christianity to their parents, without discrediting the native sacred tradition, but fusing Christianity with innate religiosity; to celebrating, without candles, without consecration, the “Plain Mass” as a cordial invitation to shared spirituality. Quiroga evokes a time common to all, Spaniards and Indians: a Golden Age that renews the mythic spirit of the Otomis and also the faith of the early Christian church: The Indians, Quiroga writes, are simple, gentle, humble, obedient, they lack pride, ambition, and greed. They were not born to be slaves. They are rational beings. If some are vagabonds, they must be taught to work. And if some are indolent, it is because the fruits of this earth are offered too easily. Indians and Christians can be today what they were yesterday and in this way become what they will be tomorrow. From Santa Fe, Vasco de Quiroga expands to Michoacan and founds the Hospice of Santa Fe on the shores of Lake Patzcuaro. He respects the Tarasco language as he teaches the Spanish language. He is inspired by Thomas More’s Utopia. The Indians should organize communally, for they are adrift in societies shattered into a thousand pieces by the savage conquest that speeds like a lightning flash from the Gulf to the Pacific, from the land of the Otomis to the land of the Purepechas, from Oaxaca to Xalisco, today’s history faster than yesterday’s, tomorrow’s history broken too if the Indians are not given a language and a roof, care and doctrine, work and dignity. Tata Vasco, Papa Quiroga, Father Vasco the Indians call him, and he gives them collective ownership of the land, a six-hour workday, assigning the fruits of their labor to the necessities of life. He forbids luxury. He organizes every four families under a Principal. Vasco de Quiroga, in whose shadow you work, Josue, teaches that social organization requires a practical economy, that the European world must learn to live in harmony with Indian customs. What will be born of this teaching and this mutual respect? Is it worth wagering that the simple life, work and education, will create a new Mexican community without conquerors or conquered but protected by liberty and law?

“Does happiness have a price?” you, Josue, ask of the statue of Fray Vasco de Quiroga, Tata Vasco, that you pass by every day.

“Yes,” the friar affirms. “The Indians have to be recruited by force so they can learn to be happy…”

“And the reward?” you ask Tata Vasco.

“Christian rebirth.”

“And the method?”

“Using tradition to…”

“To dominate?”

Fray Vasco doesn’t hear you. There was a drought in Michoacan. Quiroga strikes a rock with his staff. Water pours out of the stone when the crook of the bishop’s crosier touches it. Is the miracle enough for you, Josue? Do you need something more than a miracle?

The savage soldiers of Nuno de Guzman the conquistador come down from Xalisco, burn villages, take prisoners, demand tributes, spices, labor, give themselves extensive and abundant lands and water. Utopia isn’t good for a race of porters and vassals, Utopia doesn’t allow forced labor in the mines or company stores on the haciendas. Silver, cattle, seized lands, alcohol for weddings and funerals: The Indian flees the utopia of Tata Vasco, subjugated by the swords and horses of Nuno de Guzman, takes refuge on the latifundios: It’s the lesser of two evils… What can we do.

Every morning Josue questions the statue of Fray Vasco de Quiroga, Tata Vasco, in the district of Santa Fe in Mexico, D.F.

“I am the father of your culture,” Tata Vasco tells Josue one day.

Josue wonders if his mission consists in maintaining or changing it.

“GO ON, ANDALE, andale.”

Order, greeting and farewell, communication, familiarity and alienation, this Mexican verbal expression lends itself to as many interpretations as its national insularity permits: No one outside Mexico says “andale,” and a Mexican reveals himself when he says it, the lawyer Antonio Sangines told me one winter night in his house in the Coyoacan district.

This time, the garland of mischievous children was not climbing around his neck, and on the maestro’s face I observed a seriousness at once customary and unusual. I mean, he almost always was very serious. Except this time-I read it in his face-he was serious only for me. And this only for me excluded the other person with whom I had visited Sangines on previous occasions. My old buddy Jerico.

“How long has it been since you’ve seen each other?”

“A year.”