them as she passed. In the spaces between the homes, amid heaps of rubbish and discarded building material, small children and women watched as she went by. In one alley, Jan was shocked to see a woman, her back to the street, squatting over an open hole, relieving herself. That, no doubt, Jan thought, accounted for part of the stench. For a moment, Jan wondered why she was doing that in the open. Then, looking back at the size of the houses, she realized that they were far too small and crude to hold a bathroom inside. For the next few feet, Jan looked between the homes, searching for any signs of an outhouse, but saw none. Satisfied, and disgusted at the same time, she stopped looking.
Other details began to jump out at her. Above the houses, a wild patchwork of electric wires and extension cords running from telephone poles crisscrossed, running into access holes in the houses. On the ground, running between the houses, garden hoses of every color and size snaked in and out of other holes chipped or cut through the walls. It took no great genius to figure that this was how those fortunate enough to afford the material provided their homes with water and electricity.
In their wanderings, Jan could not find any street markings or numbers on the houses. She began to wonder if there were any. While she was working on this problem, Corporal Fares stopped in front of a cinderblock house, no different than many of those they had already passed.
Sheepishly, he looked up at Colonel Guajardo. The colonel, without changing expression, simply nodded, giving permission to, or ordering, Fares to enter.
Turning to Jan and her crew, Guajardo finally spoke. 'Before, Ms.
Fields, you asked me what made me decide to raise my hand against the government to which I had pledged undying loyalty. I tried to think of the words that could describe this to you.' He paused, stretching out his arms, palms up, and rotating his torso as he looked away from Jan and at the crowded slum in which they stood. Dropping his arms, he turned back to Jan. 'But I could not. How, I thought, could I describe this in words that a well-bred, cared-for, and educated yanqui woman such as yourself could understand. Better, I thought, that I allow you to see, for yourself, what it meant to be a Mexican under the callous rule of the PRI. So I have brought you to the home of my driver, Corporal Fares. Perhaps, when you have seen this, you can better understand what is causing not only me, but millions of others like me, to take desperate steps. You may, if you like, film this. Perhaps you can think of the words that have escaped me.'
Suddenly, the confrontation with his driver, the nervous silence in the sedan, and Corporal Fares's uneasiness as they had walked down the street, made sense. The corporal, obviously ashamed of his home, was being forced to expose it to strangers. That, and the fact that Jan realized that the colonel was making a crude effort to use them for propaganda, angered her. Her dark expression, displaying the anger and contempt she felt for Guajardo, was returned by the colonel, who, for his part, felt hatred for a person who sought only the truth that fit her own clean perception of how the world should be.
Jan turned toward Joe Bob and barked out her instructions in a tone that betrayed her disgust with Guajardo. 'All right, let's get on with this.
Give me a hand mike.'
Pulling out his earphones and sliding them over his head, Joe Bob turned on the recorder, listened for a moment, then reached into a side pocket and pulled out a mike for Jan. While he was doing so, Ted hoisted the camera onto his shoulder and waited for Jan's cue to start shooting.
Without any of the normal preliminaries, except for a quick check of her long reddish-brown hair, Jan gave the cue to start shooting. When she saw the red record light and Joe Bob give her a thumbs-up, indicating the mike was hot, Jan began without really knowing what she was going to say. 'Jan Fields from Mexico City. About an hour ago, while interviewing Colonel Alfredo Guajardo, a member of the council of colonels responsible for today's dramatic coup here in Mexico, I asked the colonel why he decided to turn against the popularly elected government of Mexico. His response was to take me, and my camera crew, to this slum in the suburbs of Mexico City. The home we are standing in front of, barely better than a shack, supposedly belongs to his driver, a corporal in the Mexican Army. While it is not unusual for rebels to claim that they represent the will of the people or justify their actions by publicly displaying the plight of the people, thought it would be appropriate to allow the colonel an opportunity to state his case. So here we are, at the home of Corporal Fares, Mexican Army.'
Giving Ted the signal to keep rolling, Jan turned to enter the cinderblock house. For a moment, she felt good. The brief piece before the camera, her little introduction, had had a calming effect on her. For a second, she felt she was back in control, running the show. All she had to do now was maintain the edge and keep Guajardo from dominating the interview. Like a fighter entering the ring, she was ready.
The scene that greeted her, however, shook her. With the trained eye of an observer, in a single sweep of the one-room house, she took everything and everyone in, and was appalled. A single light bulb, precariously dangling from a cord in the center of the room, provided the only source of light. Guajardo, standing just inside the door to the right, was silently watching Corporal Fares as he hugged a girl of six or seven. She was thin, bordering on scrawny, with jet black hair pulled together in a braid. Her big eyes, wide with fright, were turned up to her father as she held his leg with a viselike grip.
Across from Fares, on the wall to the left of Jan, was a small portable two-burner stove, the only kitchen appliance in evidence. Next to it stood several wooden boxes, neatly stacked and attached by boards on either side, creating a shelving unit in which pots and pans occupied the lower section, or box, while other cooking utensils and boxes filled the top two.
In the corner, next to the stove, was an old kitchen table with a broken leg, surrounded by four chairs, none of which matched. Against the far wall was a mattress sitting on the floor. Though Corporal Fares partially blocked Jan from seeing the entire mattress, she could see that someone was on it. Curious, and anxious to see what was so important about this particular home, Jan moved around the corporal.
As she made this move, Jan's head struck the bulb, causing it to swing haphazardly from its long wire. Distracted, she moved farther into the room, almost up to the edge of the mattress, before looking down to see who was on it. When she did, she gasped in horror.
The child lying there was little more than a skeleton. It was hard to judge her age because her face was distorted by bulging eyes sunk deep into their sockets and surrounded by black circles and hollow cheeks.
Still, based on her length, the girl had to be ten, maybe eleven. Her arms and legs showed no sign of muscle; the joints, both kneecaps and elbows, were clearly visible. The only indication that she was alive was a shallow, raspy breathing that caused her chest to rise and fall ever so slightly.
Once she was over the initial shock, Jan began to notice that, for all the misery that wracked the girl, she appeared to be well cared-for. Her hair, long and black like her sister's, was neatly combed and arranged to either side of her head. Her nightgown, and the single sheet that covered the mattress, though frayed and threadbare in spots, were spotless.
'Her name is Angela. She is ten years old.' Jan, startled by Guajardo's statement, turned away from the girl and looked at the colonel. To his right, in the doorway, stood the rest of her crew, Ted taping and Joe Bob listening to the quality of the sound recording and adjusting it as necessary.
Looking back at Angela, Jan asked what was wrong with her.
Guajardo grunted. 'Mexico City, Ms. Fields, Mexico City and poverty.'
Jan looked up again, first at Corporal Fares and his other daughter, both of whom were watching her intently, then at Guajardo. For the first time since entering the room, she noticed it was terribly hot and she was sweating. Except for the door, there was no other opening in the room.
The sun, on the exposed tarpaper on the roof, was turning the room into an oven. Guajardo was using her.
Though she knew in her heart that what was happening had not been a setup, Jan felt anger. She didn't quite know why she was angry, let alone who she should be angry at. Was she angry because she was unable to handle the sights of poverty, sights that were part of the real world that was so much a part of her profession? Was she angry at the arrogant Mexican Army colonel for rubbing her nose in that poverty? Was she angry because she wasn't in control of the situation? Was she angry that she was being manipulated so skillfully by the colonel? She didn't know.
At that moment, surrounded by the grim reality of real life in Mexico, all she knew was that she was angry and had no one to lash out at. Determined to regain her mental balance and establish some degree of moral ascendency over the colonel, her retort was sharp, almost bitter.
'Cities do not kill children. Nor do governments. This poor creature has an illness that, I am sure, can be
