The Demands of the Dead (21 page)

No, no, no, no! I found your son, Mr. Manley, but then I lost him again.

“By. Who?” I said.

“The EPR in Oaxaca.”

“So he was running around in guerrilla territory in Oaxaca and the guerrillas picked him up, an unknown black American who barely speaks Spanish. They'll kill him.”

“Actually they don't know what to do with him,” Luis said. “And we don't know what to do either.”

“Can your people there get me a meeting with the EPR?”

“Yes,” Luis said, “but --”

“--I”ll leave now.”

“I'll drive,” he said.

Our way in was friends of friends of friends Luis knew at UNAM. Someone was going to meet us in Juchitan and take us into the jungle where we would talk to someone else.

We got out of town clean, I thought, and were in Juchitan by 1pm. Travel to the jungle involved leaving Susana's father's Nissan Sentra in Juchitan, giving up Luis's cell phone there, getting into the back seat of an old silver Toyota Corolla with a 30-ish stranger driving before he put hoods over our heads and took us further west for two hours before turning south off of the 185 and into the back-country, northwest of Salina Cruz - as far as I could tell with the canvas sack on. The hoods came off and we waited for twenty minutes at a clearing with an empty hovel. I guessed a lot belonging to a small farmer, ally to the EPR. We sat on the grass and Luis smoked. Our driver accepted one of Luis's cigarettes and smoked it, leaning on the Corolla.

The flights of birds, the concentric rings, announced to me that men were coming, a group of four or five, quietly, from the woods to the south of us. Five minutes later, two of them came out of the woods, one with a drawn Uzi, the other with some kind of 9mm semiautomatic I couldn't make out. They weren't pointing their weapons at us, which was a good sign. Both had red scarves over their faces. The driver put his cigarette out and put the butt in his pocket, then had Luis do the same. I stood up tall, puffed my chest out, and got into character. I buried my American accent as deeply as I could, spoke with as much Mexican singsong as I could. I wasn't trying to pass for Mexican, only pass for someone who had been here, in the Indian villages, for a long time.

“Gentlemen, I am here to help with a problem that we both have.”

Uzi spoke up: “We caught an imperialist spy,” he said, “and we wonder what you are willing to give up to get him back.”

I spread my hands wide, at my sides. “I understand it looks like that, but the young man you have captured is no spy.”

“Of course he isn't,” Uzi said. “I'm sure that he is a Christian on a mission of mercy.” I looked at him, at Mr. 9mm, and the driver, and all three were calm, composed, and professional, no nervous tics, no preparation for violence. This was reassuring, and so was the fact that Walter himself was probably in the woods just behind them with just two additional armed guards.

“We know that you have been focused on your political work for the past few years. We know that you've been writing communiqués for the press, denouncing human rights violations in the Indian villages and your political prisoners, and we know that you are not looking to start a war this year. This hapless American stumbled on you, you saw an opportunity, and took it, but it will bring you nothing but trouble.”

“Trouble,” Uzi said, “is what your friend is in. If he is not with the CIA I don't know what he is.”

Actually, Walter's skill set was closer to Army Rangers or Special Forces, but now wasn't the time to correct the man holding him hostage. But Walter knew things that militaries didn't.

“If I tell you what he is, if I can convince you, will you release him?”

“If you tell the truth, I might. If you are lying, I will know,” he said.

If Uzi was as perceptive as he thought he was, he would know that I hadn't told him a lie yet. And just in case he was that perceptive, I was going to try to get through this without telling any.

“This man is not a spy, or an imperialist. He is... he is an herbalist. As you know, Indians have lost many of their traditions. This young man is an expert on medicinal plants, basically a botanist. He came to Chiapas to study, and teach, about these plants.”

Then I hit a wall, and had to lie my way through it.

“He's not political. He's not interested in the conflict. This young man just wants to teach Indian people about the many remarkable plants that are found in Mexico. He'll teach anyone, anywhere. That's why he went to Chiapas, and that's why people like Luis here, know him. And that's why he ended up coming to Oaxaca. For,” I definitely knew some plants... I strained to remember one that Walter might know... “the
chaya
plant. Ask him about that plant. I promise you he will know about it.”

“He's not here,” Uzi said.

“Yes he is,” I said. “He's in the woods behind you.”

Uzi raised his eyebrows in surprise. Then he whistled. Two more men, strapped with AK-47s and with the same red scarves, held Walter's arms, which were tied in front of him with rope.

Uzi said to him: “This guy says you know about the
chaya
plant.”

“Cnidoscolus chayamansca,” Walter said. “Good for diabetes, blood pressure, pain arms and pain legs.”

Uzi looked back at me. “Name some other plants, then.”

“
Violeta
.”

“Anoda cristata. Is a cure for the coughing.”

“I don't know any more,” I said. “I'm not the herbalist, he is.” Uzi looked at Mr. 9mm. “
Verdolaga,
” Mr. 9mm said.

“Portulaca oleracea. It's food.”

“Okay,” Uzi said. “Enough.” He motioned to Walter's captors. “Let him go,” he said. Walter walked over to our side.

“Tell your people this,” Uzi said. “We respect the aims of the EZLN, we respect them, and we do not want to ruin their dialogue with the government. We don't want to sabotage peace in this country. We don't respect imperialists and we expect you to stay out of our territory."

Then the guerrillas shuffled off into the woods, the driver replaced our hoods, including a new one for Walter, and a few hours later, in Juchitan, we gave back our hoods and Walter handed the driver back the rope his hands had been tied with.

When we were back in Susana's Sentra with Luis behind the wheel, I turned around to Walter in the back seat.

g
You OK?h

“They asked me a few questions and then took me prisoner. They were... polite. They didn't hurt me.”

“I thought we agreed you weren't supposed to get caught?”

“I thought it was a good plan. I was going to find an Army base and do some psychological warfare. Not hurt anyone, just mess with their patrols, set a couple man traps, give them some clues to make them think the killings in Hatuey were linked to something outside Chiapas. I just didn't realize that there could be other guerrillas operating in the same zone. They got me before I even got into the bush, just started asking me questions, and I wasn't suspicious cause they didn't seem dangerous.

“You took too much time come here,” he said, switching to Spanish.

“Nobody had any idea what to do, how to talk your way out of that one,” Luis said.

“Yeah,” Walter said. “My boy Mark is real crafty.”

Too much driving, too much adrenaline, and too much darkness forced us off the road well before San Cristobal.
Luis took us off of the highway 185 just after we crossed the state line back into Chiapas. This late at night, highways were opportune places for accidents.

Driving slowly on the side streets, in between craning to check for landmarks – Luis obviously didn't know this area much better than we did.

“I assume we're going to some kind of safe house?” I asked.

“Not a safe house, exactly,” Luis said. “It's actually a
finca
. But I promise no one will be looking for us here. Our host is someone with important evidence about your case and your murder victims. Do you understand the importance of the PRI in this case?”

I didn't. I waited.

“He's a PRIista. The PRI has been in power since 1929. In 1929 it took power by force. There has never been a change of government that was not by force in Mexico. Never.”

“But there are other political parties.”

“Yes—there is the PAN, a Christian, right-wing, conservative party, and the PRD, Cardenas’s social democrats. But the PRI is in power, and stays in power, through everything. Here in Chiapas we don’t talk about the PRI or the government. We talk about the PRI-government.”

“So the PRI controls the police and the army too?” My murder victims didn’t strike me as party-affiliating types. But it could be they had to do jobs for party bosses as part of the package.

“Oh yes,” Luis said. “And the PRI distributes rural aid packages. They give out the government contracts. Vote PRI or you can't bury your husband in the local cemetery, that kind of thing. In the last federal election, the PRI gave $3 billion US to 3.2 million farmers in the 3 months leading to the election. They paid a bonus of about $100 for presenting your voter ID. They won 10 million votes that way.”

Luis slowed down, turned his high beams on and began turning the car left and right to look for landmarks.

“Plus,” he continued, “they cheated. There were shortages of ballots in many places near Zapatista communities. The results all over the country came out the same: 50% PRI, 30% PAN, 17% PRD. They cheated in the state elections too.”

He stopped the car. “I think this is it,” he said. As he turned off onto the dirt road to the
finca
, he said: “They cheated even worse in the 1988 election. That one the PRD won by a landslide. Everyone knew it. Then there was a ‘computer failure’ and they had to let the PRI stay in power. Cardenas gathered all his supporters in the zocalo of Mexico City—“

“And told them to protest the election outcome?”

“—and sent everyone home. I’ll never forgive him for that. He didn’t want bloodshed and the army was obviously behind the PRI.”

“So the PRI is big, corrupt, and invincible. What does that have to do with my case?” The car bumped its way down a narrow road. Tree branches attacked the windows.

“The PRI isn’t invincible,” Luis said. “Actually it is destroying itself right now and it has been for a while.

“The rich are starting to defect to the PAN because the PRI is just costing them too much in bribes, for one thing. For a rich person, it’s probably better to pay one big bribe into the PAN’s campaign than to pay hundreds of petty bribes to every PRI official to do business every day. The cleaner the elections get the more likely it is that the PRI is going to lose. These next elections are going to be the most closely watched in history. I think the PRI is going to lose.”

“Is that what you mean by self-destruction, that they’re allowing election observers?”

“No. I meant that the PRI actually kills its own members. The party presidential candidate was murdered right out in public in the middle of a crowd at a rally in 1994. They killed an informer who came out and talked about the party’s work to the media. Actually the Zapatistas once joked that they were not going to negotiate with the government until the PRI stopped killing its own members.”

“
And you're taking us to this guy's house as a safe place?”

Luis ignored me, focused on driving. He found a turn I hadn't seen, a small gap in a solid wall of vegetation, then a real wall with a metal gate. I tried another tack. “So you think that Diaz and Gonzalez were killed because of conflicts in the PRI? They were in some faction of the PRI that fell out of favour?”

“That’s where our PRI contact comes in. He was in charge of distributing patronage for the PRI in the areas around Hatuey.”

“He was in charge?”

“Yes. He’s left the PRI to join the anti-PRI coalition for the upcoming elections. He’s working for the anti-PRI campaign now. But don’t admire him too much. He’s a landowner and a careerist who only changed sides because he thinks the PRI is going to lose.”

“He distributed patronage, you said? What kind?”

“All kinds.”

“Through what channels?”

“All channels.”

“Ah.”
Thoroughly dirty, then.
“Can’t wait to meet him.”

A young man let us in and returned to his guard post. Past the gate, we put the Sentra in a parking lot with a gleaming Ford pickup and a GM Suburban parked in it and walked to a well-lit house.

The PRIsta answered the door dressed in politician-chic, with a beige golf shirt tucked into black dress pants, fine black leather dress shoes, and his voice was surprisingly low and bold for his thin, narrow-shouldered frame. He introduced himself as Jose.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “but I can't offer you dinner. Adelia's feeling ill, so there's just snacks.”

“Adelia's your wife?” I asked.

“I'm not married. Adelia's Ernesto's wife,” he said. “They live on the property. They've been with us since I was a boy. Their son let you in the gate, just now.”

I wasn't part of this group myself, but I'd met enough rich people over the years to know that this was Jose's way of avoiding telling us that Adelia and Ernesto, and their son, were his
servants
. And Jose was doing well. Marble floors, mahogany furniture, and a couple of big cars.