Mexicans and Manners
Shade for Encino
One of the sugar Haciendas, just north of Cuernavaca, claimed and took control of several hectares of land and part of a tiny pueblo. A rag-tag band
of Indians and Mexicans attacked the Hacienda in retaliation and killed two people they found outside the walls. The dead were Indians who worked for
the Hacienda. No Gachupines, Spaniards, were encountered or harmed. It was enough. Within the next two weeks the incident was reported to the
office of the Vice Royalty in Cuernavaca and a troop of Rurales, mounted soldiers, was dispatched to put the matter right.
Encino, the captain's small, dark horse, was in a froth. The captain had pushed his mount and his men at a pace too fast for the weather. He hoped
he could bring this messy business to a close and return to the barracks that same night. Perhaps his horse longed to return to the cool mountains of
Northern Spain; leave forever this prickly oven.
Captain Juan Diego Villa Real was proud of his men; they routed the peasants from the fields and foothills in short order and now had eleven
dirty-faced men in white, waiting in the heat to meet their maker. Their hands were bound behind them, the soldiers had taken their shoes; the ponies
had trampled their sombreros in the dust. The scene was strangely quiet and serene, the huge green Laurel trees that lined the entrance to the
Hacienda were lit up by the bright and noisy flying lemons, Colandria, Orioles, that always brought smiles to the faces of the children of the
Hacendados.
As one man was being led to the wall before the rifle squad, he passed a little too close to the Captain's horse. The horse reared and pranced
nervously at the sound of the man's voice. The Captain yelled at his soldiers, who by now were laughing and smiling at the remark. "?Como dice?"
"What did he say?" "Con su permiso, Capitan". "With your permission". The eleven men died quickly and the troop returned to the cool comfort of the
compound in the city before the sun had disappeared behind the Sierra Madres. The corpses were left by the wall, where they fell; wives and others
from the pueblo would recover them that night.
Less than a month later one of the men his soldiers had not seen or captured on that dusty day at the Hacienda, put a bullet above and behind the
Captain's right ear, taking off one whole side of his head. As the Captain fell from the saddle his horse bolted. Encino did not run long in the
killing heat.
The blood on the ground at the Hacienda was crimson wet on September 20, 1849. It might have been spilled months, years or decades, before or after,
anywhere in Mexico. The core of continents and civilizations change slowly. The people do not change.
Things that caused the spilling of this particular blood, a thick, heady mixture of Indians, Spaniards and Mexicans, are simple and enduring. Abused
by isolation in lands torn by drought and tempests, the people learn to accept. Accept famine, disease, death and conquest while looking to the sky
and hoping only for rain and forgiveness from their gods. Used to apologies and humbled by a fate they could not see nor predict, their adaptations
did not require losing a tail or growing new feathers -- it required a unique sense of balance -- keeping your eyes on the ground while, from time to
time, holding your head high. Eventually this posture earned polite contemporaries in the Americas the complement; "Cortes como uno Mexicano", "As
courteous as a Mexican".
As the hard but arable space diminished; more stomachs, less trigo, wheat, the more humility would be needed. Endurance became another name for
life. Conditions spawned parades of charlatans, thieves, and patriots who shamed a timid populace to rage and riot -- "how could you let them take
your lands?" "Kill the Gachupines". Etc. Etc. The longer the people had endured the taking of their lands and their pride, the harder they fought to
regain it.
Today a new arrival to this spiky finger of land, Baja California, when meeting, for the first time, a Chollero, a local Mexican, might expect a
summer greeting of "hola, mucho calor", "Hello, it's very hot". Extended conversations, friendly exchanges of pleasantries, gossip will surely
include apologies for the food, the weather, the travel conditions, the heat, polvo, dust, the lack of fish, the high prices of everything, the
government and the local police. He or she will undoubtedly say that things, unhappily, are not as nice, sweet, simple, as they were in the past.
They may lower their eyes, show a faint smile to hide this customary lie.
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....huh?....way over my head....
