Conquistadora (49 page)

On the evening following Miguel’s fifteenth birthday party, Eugenio invited him for a walk. They frequently strolled around the plaza after dinner, sometimes with the ladies but more often alone. Before they left, Abuelo patted a stray hair from Miguel’s shoulder, buttoned his jacket, straightened his cravat, and pulled his sleeves until they showed evenly below his cuffs.

His grandfather’s attention to his appearance alerted Miguel that this would be no ordinary walk. Months earlier, Andrés related his visit, escorted by his father, to a house well known to nearly every man in San Juan, but that the decent women of the city pretended didn’t exist. Every young man of Miguel’s race and social standing had, around his fifteenth birthday, walked through the wide door and up the staircase to fragrant rooms overlooking a garden whose beauty was lost on them. The ground-floor parlors were spacious and comfortably furnished if a bit frayed from use and the stale smell of cigar smoke and spilled liquor. Upstairs, youngish women chosen for beauty, charm, and discretion, trained in their profession by Socorro and Tranquilina Alivio, occupied eight bedrooms. The
chicas
were white
españolas
or light-skinned
mulatas
from backwater towns, all disgraced by men who’d abandoned them. They’d rather work in the Alivio house than hire themselves out as servants, to perform work done by slaves or
libertos
. Regardless of
their family name, they used the surname Alivio while they lived in the house.

The Alivio house was on a narrow street halfway down the hill leading to the docks. Municipal gas lamps reached to the corner, leaving the two steps to the door in shadows. Eugenio rapped the heavy knocker and an eye appeared behind a grille. It looked at him and took in Miguel, standing nervously behind his grandfather. The iron slide bolt scraped along a groove on the cement floor as the tallest man in San Juan opened the door. He was very black, wearing a colorful robe. His ears were trimmed with gold hoops, and several bracelets were wrapped around both wrists and ankles. His enormous feet were bare save for rings on his toes. He was Apolo, Socorro’s husband, and Miguel had seen him on the street many times, dressed like an elegant gentleman of leisure, but never in these colorful clothes with jewelry winking from every limb and his earlobes. Apolo led them down the corridor. Guitar music and women’s laughter issued through the heavy drapes screening the rest of the house. The air smelled of cigar smoke, candle wax, and perfume.

Apolo opened another door for Eugenio and Miguel to enter Socorro Alivio’s private study. Two caned rockers faced each other in front of a long table under a painting of a muscular Leda copulating with an enormous swan. Miguel wanted to study the painting, but given the circumstances, he was embarrassed to look too much in its direction.

Socorro was shorter than Tranquilina, but there was about her a settled roundness and confidence that singled her out as the elder of the sisters. Boys took pride in knowing which sister was which and speaking their names in meaningful tones. In this curtained room, Socorro seemed luminous, but on the street, she and her sister looked sickly pale, as if they never saw the sun, making the color on their cheeks and lips unnaturally bright in contrast.

She greeted Eugenio with red kisses on each cheek.

“Welcome,” she said to Miguel. “I was looking forward to meeting you.”

Miguel bowed, as to any lady.

Socorro smiled and touched his cheek.
“Qué dulzura,”
she said to Eugenio. “You’ve raised him well.” She served him wine, which
Miguel downed in two big gulps. “It’s not unusual for a young man to be nervous the first time he comes here.”

“No need to be afraid, son. Tranquilina knows what to do.” Eugenio chuckled, and Socorro giggled as if tickled. He poured more wine for Miguel. “Go on, son, fortify yourself.”

A bit unsteady, Miguel followed Socorro to an upstairs room dominated by a four-poster bed covered with a colorful quilt. As soon as she closed the door behind her, another one opened and Tranquilina appeared on the threshold, her chemise and pantalets clearly visible through the lacework of a flounced robe.

“
Hola, mi amor
. Don’t look so scared. I don’t bite—unless you want me to.”

In addition to introducing Miguel to the Alivio women, Eugenio made sure he moved comfortably in upright society, where he left lasting impressions among tittering girls and their watchful
dueñas
. Miguel dazzled fathers and brothers with his horsemanship during the festivals of San Juan and San Pedro. He endeared himself to mothers by his obvious devotion to Leonor, always the first female he led to the dance floor at the parties and balls hosted by the military governors and other officials. He was a competent swordsman, although not as aggressive as Eugenio wished, and it seemed to him that Miguel went through the motions to please him, rather than to defend himself.

Following in the footsteps of their beloved teacher, Miguel and Andrés became regulars at don Benito’s drugstore, where other young men of leisure gathered to study and discuss politics. By the late 1850s and early ’60s, strictly enforced censorship of all forms of public expression ensured that liberal ideals were nearly impossible to disseminate. Fines were levied on newspaper editors and publishers for infractions like the use of the words “tyranny,” “despotism,” or “independence.” Liberals depended on contraband books, magazines, and newspapers from Europe, the United States, and Spanish America. The same private homes and businesses that hosted what might be considered seditious discussions also acted as informal lending libraries for the forbidden literature.

Benito was a fourth-generation native-born Puerto Rican. “
Criollo
to the core,” he said. He was an orator and a singer, and displayed both skills in the gatherings in his
botica
, where he tried to instill
criollo
pride in another generation. Most nights, the discussions were informal and followed a meandering path determined by how much liquor he dispensed over the course of the evening. At other times, he prodded the young men to focus on issues crucial to an understanding of history and the situation on the island as a colony of Spain. On such occasions, Benito prepared a discourse, delivered in a booming voice, gesticulating passionately, taking frequent sips from a glass with rum and water by his side.

“From the day Cristobal Colón landed on our shores in 1493,” Benito began, “Puerto Rico has been little more to Spain than an outpost. The military has unlimited powers to enforce laws designed by
peninsulares
to benefit them and their compatriots.”

The young men voiced their agreement.

“Even the most insignificant government post is filled by
españoles
. You know what that means. We, born on this island, have no say in how we’re governed.”

Miguel attended these evenings out of camaraderie rather than political conviction. He’d rather spend time at an art opening or at the theater than with these men whose emotional appeals never went farther than the walls of the drugstore or one another’s smoke-filled rooms.

“The high taxes collected from landowners and businessmen go directly to the Spanish treasury, with scant investment on the needs of our
vecinos
. You’ve addressed this before us, Félix Fonseca, with your usual erudition.” Félix Fonseca nodded, and those sitting by him patted his back. Benito continued: “Those of you who’ve traveled to the interior know that with the exception of the roads near the capital and bigger towns, transportation
en la isla
is a disgrace. Public works, paid for with the exorbitant taxes the Crown imposes, are undertaken only if they improve the life of
españoles
and foreign colonists in San Juan and the bigger towns like Ponce and Mayagüez.”

Again the men turned to one another in agreement. The druggist leaned back, enjoying the effect of his words on the young, eager minds of these
criollos
, the generation that he hoped would create the Puerto Rico for Puerto Ricans that he envisioned yet was unable to realize.

Benito acknowledged don Simón. He’d been the teacher of most of the younger men present, and they regarded him with respect and affection.

“Thank you, don Benito. As usual, you remind us of the issues we should be discussing around your generous table.” Benito nodded. “We cannot forget,” Simón continued in his soothing voice, “the deplorable condition of education on our island. In San Juan and the bigger towns we’re fortunate to have public and parochial schools, but
en la isla
, public education is virtually nonexistent. After decades without a census, the one conducted in 1860 gives us a more dismal picture than we ever imagined. It reveals that eighty-four percent of our
compatriotas
are illiterate. How can we build a
nación
if over two-thirds of it can’t even sign their name?”

Andrés raised his hand. “Our esteemed
maestro
points out that eighty-four percent of our population is enslaved by their ignorance. But twelve percent of its residents are also physically, emotionally, and legally enslaved. To overturn the tyranny of Spain we must work toward freeing them with as much passion as we seek freedom for ourselves.”

Forbidden to utter their aspirations for their future openly, the younger men aired their views in private, frustrated that a large and powerful segment of the island’s elite opposed them. Abolition was at the heart of the debates. The island aristocracy, many of them refugees from the wars for independence in North and Spanish America and on Hispaniola, came to Puerto Rico with their fortunes and their slaves precisely because the
vecinos
hadn’t taken up arms against the colonial government.

Twelve years earlier in Guares, Siña Damita had observed political disaffection, although in the late 1840s there was no organized leadership. After the indefensible government response to the cholera epidemic—closing off the capital, burning barrios, sending thousands of homeless into the roads and byways of the island—politicized, educated, courageous, outspoken young men and women emerged as leaders. The most prominent among them was Dr. Ramón Emeterio Betances, an ophthalmologist, poet, writer, and Mason who’d already challenged the colonial government and had been threatened with exile by the authorities.

Betances reminded his followers that the Cortes in Madrid continually met requests for reforms from Puerto Rican
colonos
with
indifference and disdain. He exhorted Puerto Ricans to take the future of their island into their own hands. To the horror of the more conciliatory liberals, Betances advocated armed revolt like the successful struggles that had resulted in independence for every former Spanish colony, with Cuba and Puerto Rico the only exceptions.

In the American hemisphere, Betances wrote, political independence and reform had been won only through armed struggle. He envisioned Puerto Rico not as the half-forgotten outpost of a dying empire, but as a shining jewel adorning an Antillean Confederation composed of Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico. It was a grand idea, and Miguel and Andrés wanted to be part of its creation.

A revolution, however, needed more than young men’s nationalistic ardor and dreams of glory. A revolution needed leaders, a coherent message appealing to the masses willing to fight to the death for an ideal, and money to fund rebellious activities. Miguel was too much a follower to be an effective leader, and too introverted to be an orator able to incite others to battle. But the generous allowance from don Eugenio made it possible for him to contribute his share toward the costs of recruiting, arming, and training rebels.

Miguel and Andrés were compelled by the revolutionary concepts espoused by Betances and the activities of his supporters, who depended on a network of secret societies. Unlike those who gathered in the
botica
and places like it, the truly secret societies didn’t meet in the easy-to-infiltrate
tertulias
of poets, apothecaries, and known liberals. They met in small groups in members’ homes, along the narrow streets of the capital and outlying towns, in the back rooms of bordellos like the Alivio house, on the
fincas
that dotted the landscape near rivers and harbors, on the
estancias
where men came together to ride and race horses, watch bullfights, enjoy a bloody cockfight, to drink, gamble, and plot.

Leaders forced from the island were kept informed through visits from their associates with freedom to travel. Correspondence was hand delivered by trusted members who carried documents sewn into their clothes.

The question at the forefront of the leaders’ discussions was how to motivate the average
campo
-dwelling, poor Puerto Rican to rise against the oppression that was so obvious to the upper-class
criollos
leading the nationalist movement. The burgeoning patriots wanted
to go from talking about reform to making it happen, something that would be impossible without popular support.

But pamphlets, bulletins, posters, and other written materials were useless in a population that couldn’t read. Public discussion, speeches in town squares, even songs and poems with what the authorities considered subversive content were banned.

As the members argued about how to bring their message to the
jíbaros
, as ideas were batted around, plans were made, and people were assigned roles, Miguel floated along the margins, trying to find his place in the glorious mission. He was enamored of the romance of
patria, igualdad, libertad
, and believed he’d found something worth dying for. What better principles for a man to live and die for than his nation, equality, and liberty for all? He listened to the better rhetoric of his neighbors, studied the history of armed struggle, and gave money as he waited for the opportunity to prove himself worthy of the cause.

He and Andrés joined one of the secret nationalist societies that exchanged documents, money, and information in the Alivio house, in conversations in low voices in the plazas, in the
cafetines
that dispensed strong coffee and news. Miguel donated part of his allowance to a fund that purchased slave infants from their owners at the baptismal font, then turned them over to their grateful parents as
libertos
. Miguel and Andrés didn’t tell their liberal parents about their involvement in the secret society, lest they forbid their activities as too dangerous. Members were encouraged not to change their habits in such a way as to provoke suspicion, so the young men continued to frequent Benito’s
botica
and listened to their elders, not sure which ones were also in the society, which ones were spies, which ones were there just to drink the
aguardiente
.