Erased Faces (30 page)

Adriana lowered her camera. The film had run out and she needed to reload. As she did this, she was aware of the heated discussion that was going on. It was agitated but orderly; no one shouted nor argued. Opposing points of view were listened to and then responded to as necessary.

The demonstration by the bishop's priests and missionaries
.

Military policemen captured, murdered, mutilated
.

Compañeros
accused and arrested
.

The review of insurgent troops by El Subcomandante
.

Hours passed and the committee continued its work, allowing interruptions only when the officers needed to go out to relieve themselves. Other than that, no one left or took time out to eat. Adriana decided that she would follow that example, using the time to take notes and to snap more photographs.

Her headache persisted, growing worse as the day passed. Although she tried to resist, she continued thinking of her dreams.

Chan K'in's words, vividly clear, came back to her. The heat of the jungle became oppressive, and she felt stifled inside the room. Adriana left her gear behind and walked out onto the compound. Suddenly, she felt a little lightheaded and she began to ache. Without warning, nausea overcame her. She ran to the edge of the jungle and emptied her stomach. Fatigued and sweaty, she sat on a fallen tree while she tried to gather her thoughts.

“Compañera.”

Adriana whipped her head toward the voice and discovered Juana standing beside her. She could not help herself. She stared at her without inhibition, scanning her face, then down to her uniform shirt, her trousers and boots.

“I'm sick, Juana.”

“It's the heat.”

“No!”

“Then what is it?”

“It's dreams that hound me and don't let me sleep.”

Juana sat by Adriana's side and they remained in silence. The heat had by that time saturated the jungle. The animals were also silent, as if sleeping, only the faraway murmur of cascading water breaking the afternoon languor. In that quiet, Adriana felt an inner door opening, letting out a flood that had been trapped there, and tears rolled down her cheeks. Embarrassed, she tried to turn her face from Juana, but before she could turn completely, Juana took hold of her shoulder and placed her arm around her.

“Talk to me.”

“This morning I woke up from a dream in which my mother came to me. She spoke to me.”

Juana released Adriana's shoulder and put her clasped hands in her lap. Her face tilted to one side so as to look fully at Adriana. She lifted her eyebrows inquisitively.

“She died when I was a child, and I was left alone. I've always felt that she abandoned me.”

“But she died, Adriana. She didn't abandon you.”

Adriana looked at Juana but feared revealing what she had never before dared to tell. She had never told anyone of her memories of being locked in an apartment with her dead mother and father, of her childhood rootlessness, of her fear of abandonment.

“She didn't just die, Juana. She killed my father, then she killed herself.”

Juana again put her arm around Adriana's shoulders to communicate her understanding of what she had heard, and remained silent. Adriana turned her head toward Juana, thinking that perhaps Juana had somehow experienced similar feelings and truly understood her pain.

“Last night she came to me for the first time. I think that she was trying to explain why she did what she did, but because I felt anger at her, she disappeared. I awoke before she could speak.”

Juana listened to Adriana's words, apparently understanding her emotions. She tightened the grasp on her friend's shoulders.

“My people know that dreams say something to us; their words and actions are explanations. We take them seriously. Your anger has meaning; maybe it's a discovery.”

Now it was Adriana's turn to look at Juana. She stared at her, again unabashedly. She was thinking that, until the dream, she had never felt anger at her mother. At least, she could not remember experiencing that sentiment.

“Discovery?”

“Maybe it will lead you to understand, to forgive your mother for killing your father.”

Adriana pulled away from Juana. She needed to explain to her the real reason for her anger.

“It was not her killing my father that filled me with anger in the dream. It was that she killed herself, abandoning me, leaving me alone.”

“Adriana, no one knows what was in your mother's heart. Perhaps that is what she's trying to tell you. Maybe that is why she cannot rest until you accept that she had a reason for what she did.”

“But to accept it, I must first know the reason.”

“You'll know. Your mother will reveal it to you.”

Adriana thought of Juana's words. She closed her eyes, returning to the embrace that had given her strength and pulled her away from the gloom of abandonment. She was not yet ready to accept what Juana had said; she needed time to ponder those words, to understand their meaning. Buried in those sentiments was the explanation for what her dreams held.

That evening, while mingling with the women, Adriana was finally able to dispel the shakiness caused by her dream. There was tension in the camp caused by a sense of approaching conflict. People talked of nothing else, and no one doubted that war was close. They wondered what day would be determined by the general command for its beginning. In the meantime, orders were given for some insurgents to leave the camp to gather intelligence.

As far as Juana's eyes could see, a multitude of people covered the sides of the canyon. The beaten paths that marked the hillsides had disappeared under the throngs which had come and were still arriving, responding to the bishop's call for dialogue and prayer. From where she stood, she was not able to see where the mass of people ended; she could only focus below, on the floor of the canyon, where an altar had been erected.

Adriana stood beside Juana. She spotted Orlando Flores nearby, when she occasionally glanced back. They had been assigned to join the demonstration, mingle with the crowd and get a sense of the people's mood. With that instruction, Juana, Adriana and Orlando had trekked from the jungle campsite to the highlands, blending in with the pilgrims as they made their way to the convocation.

Juana scanned the swarm of people, identifying tribes by their dress: the black woolen skirts of the Tzeltal women; the white cotton tunic of the Lacandón men. There were other groups represented; even city people had come. The cut of their dress and shoes gave them away.

Juana had replaced her uniform with her native dress. She inwardly admitted that she was happy to kick off the heavy boots and replace them with
huaraches
. It was not so easy, however, when the time came to transform Adriana. Her hair was too curly and short, her legs were too straight and unblemished, and she was so gangly that Juana had a difficult time finding a skirt long enough for her. The other
compañeras
had giggled when they first caught sight of Adriana dressed like a native, but when they saw her sincerity, they patted her on the back and said she looked fine. Sharing in their humor, Adriana laughed with them as she made sure that she had a camera tucked under her
huipil
.

Looking down on the color-speckled sea of people, Juana felt herself in turmoil, mainly because she, like the other insurgents, knew
that war was now inevitable. There had been too many tortures and killings, too many breaches of agreement. Fear of war was the reason for the bishop's call to the people; he hoped to prevent through dialogue a bloody explosion.

It's too late, Tatic, too late. Five hundred years have passed and now we're armed and angry. Nothing can stop the torrent that is about to fall on us all
.

Juana's thoughts were so intense that her lips mouthed what was going through her mind. But there was another reason why she was so inwardly stressed: her conversation with Adriana of the previous day. From the beginning, she had felt deeply moved by affection for her, and now her sentiments were drenched in sympathy because she, too, had been uprooted and alone during her life. Juana longed to tell Adriana about herself, about her life with Cruz Ochoa, about her father and how she had returned to him looking for an explanation, but she was not used to speaking about herself or such personal things.

She glanced sideways to look at Adriana and saw that she was taking furtive shots with her camera. She felt apprehensive, but sensed that this was a special moment and that Adriana should capture whatever she could. Juana again turned to examine the growing crowd, guessing that there were thousands of men, women and children, and that the massive convocation might be critical to the insurgents' war. She knew in her heart that no matter what the bishop preached, his words would not halt the momentum of insurgency. It was too late.

Led by seminarians standing in a circle around the altar, each with a portable microphone in hand, the people began to sing hymns. At first, the singing was thin, tinny, but as the swell of voices joined in, the chanting rose and flowed, at times becoming thunderous as the petitions of the people elevated beyond the mist, soared up to the mountain heights.

¡Alabaré! ¡Alabaré! ¡Alabaremos al Señor!

Juana stretched her back, and stood on tiptoe in order to see more. She was moved by the faces of her people, especially the women. In the crowd was a girl, no more than thirteen or fourteen years old, who
reverently held a bunch of wildflowers. Next to her stood an old woman, perhaps the girl's great-grandmother; both of them were singing piously, offering their voices in prayer.

Everywhere Juana looked she saw faces worn out before their time by misery and overwork, bodies covered with threadbare cotton and frayed woolens, feet shod in raggedy sandals or even bare and callused. She looked at children's bloated bellies, ill-fed and ruined by parasites, and her own stomach sickened as she relived her childhood when she was weighed down by burdens meant to be carried only by burros. Juana wanted to pray, but she could not because her guts were on fire with anger and rancor.

“The poverty of our people and their deplorable living conditions, which are even more serious in the indigenous areas of our diocese, are explained by the structures that have been formed over the length and breadth of five hundred years of history.”

A deacon, making time for the bishop's arrival, had begun to read from the prelate's pastoral letter. The words, nasalized by the sound system, mixed with the continued praying and chanting of “
¡Paz! ¡No Violencia!
” The shouting swelled as lines of people crowded down the sides of the ravines, snaking their way across the mountainsides, closer to the altar.

“For the Indian peoples, the conquest meant that the colonizers brought subjugation and exploitation, as well as varying degrees of brutality and the violation of the dignity of the indigenous.”

Juana turned to Adriana and saw that she was riveted by the overwhelming sight and sounds. Again, she turned to look at the girl with the flowers, wondering if she might have looked like her that day when her father had exchanged her to Cruz Ochoa. She returned her attention to the bishop's letter and the people's response to his words. She wanted to discover the real mood of the congregation, wondering if their shouts in favor of peace were sincere.

“Our communities have discovered that, united, they have the capacity to solve the problems that affect them. In the end, they will be the ones to decide their own history.”

Juana listened carefully, puzzled as to why, despite the meaning of the bishop's words regarding her people's unity and their obligation
to forge their own future, he still advocated peace. Her mind filled with questions.

Is he not recognizing the enormity of grief suffered by our people for so many centuries? Is he not acknowledging that we are the ones to ultimately take control of our own lives? Why can he not admit that war is the only way to solve the grievous problems afflicting our people? War is the only way that will lead to defining our own history
.

She was nearly talking to herself when the deacon abruptly stopped the reading and joined the other seminarians as they moved toward a mass of people churning in expectation. The bishop, vested to celebrate Holy Mass, had arrived. He had been transported by car from San Cristóbal de las Casas, but had chosen to walk the last miles down the mountain into the canyon. As he penetrated the crowd, uproarious cheering arose.

“¡Tatic! ¡Tatic! ¡Tatic!”

The bishop was jostled back and forth, and countless hands, hungry to touch even the hem of his vestment, reached out to him. He was patted on the back and his hands were kissed or shaken. As he inched his way through the multitude, making the sign of the cross in every direction, hymns were again entoned and led by the seminarians, and the people sang with their hearts. Now, their chant rose yet higher than the ravines and mountain peaks. Behind the sad-looking prelate a long line of priests, also vested for the service, followed smiling, waving, nodding, blessing.

When he finally arrived at the podium, a hush fell over the multitude. The only sound to be heard was the hum of the wind as it snaked its way from the mist-covered peaks down through the ravines. Juana surveyed the right and left sides of the canyon and again was struck by the upturned brown faces, all of them filled with hope.

“¡Viva Tatic!”

“¡Viva!”

A massive response followed the lone voice that had shouted out its tribute to the Little Father. Minutes passed while the crowd opened its heart, cheering and shouting support for the man most of them believed had lived among their ancestors and who had returned to defend them.

Juana squinted, trying to focus on the tiny figure clad in white vestments. The day was ending; the northern wall of the canyon was now shrouded in a purple mantle. Torches were being lighted around the altar and beyond it. She saw that the breeze was ruffling the bishop's thinning hair and that he patted it down with his right hand from time to time. She waited as did everyone for his words as he adjusted the microphone that had been pinned on his shoulder. Then he cleared his voice.