Read Years With Laura Diaz, The Online
Authors: Carlos Fuentes
Years With Laura Diaz, The (63 page)
Santiago threw the copies of the papers into his father’s face, Danton mute, trembling, his cramped fingers reflexively poised over the alarm buttons though he couldn’t move, reduced to the brutal impotence his son wanted for him.
“Remember. There’re copies of every single document. In Mexico. In the United States. In a safe place. You’d better protect me, Papa, because you have no other protection than your disobedient son. Fuck you!”
And Santiago embraced his father, embraced him and whispered into his ear, I love you, Papa, you know that despite everything I love you, you old bastard.
Laura Díaz presided over the table that Christmas night of 1966. She sat at the head of the table, the two couples on either side. She felt secure, perfected in some way by the symmetry of love between her grandchildren on one side and her friends on the other. She was no longer alone. On her right, her grandson Santiago and his girlfriend Lourdes announced they would be getting married on New Year’s Eve, he would look for a job, and meanwhile …
“No,” Laura interrupted him. “This is your house, Santiago. You and your wife should stay here and bring joy to the life of an old woman …”
Because having the third Santiago with her was like having the other two, the elder and the younger, brother and son. They should have their child, Santiago should finish his studies. For her it was a party, filling the house with love, noise …
“Your Uncle Santiago never shut his bedroom door.”
To fill the house with happy love. Right from the start, Laura wanted to protect the young, handsome couple, perhaps because on her left was sitting the couple who had waited thirty years to reunite and be happy.
Basilio Baltazar had gone gray, but he still had the dark, precisely outlined gypsy profile of his youth. Pilar Méndez, on the other hand, showed the ravages of a life of bad luck and deprivation. Not physical deprivation, she hadn’t gone hungry, but an internal desolation: her face was etched with the doubts, the divided loyalties, the constant obligation to choose and then to bind up with love the wounds caused by family cruelty, so factious and also fantastic. The woman with the ash-blond hair and bad teeth, beautiful still with her Iberian profile, with all the mixed encounters—Islamic and Goth, Jew and Roman—carried on her face like a map of her homeland, also still bore the signs of those hard words, declaimed as if in an ancient tragedy staged opposite the classical background of the Roman gate to Santa Fe.
“The greater fidelity consists in disobeying unjust orders.”
“Save her in the name of honor.”
“Have mercy.”
“Heaven is full of lies.”
“I’m dying so that my father and mother will hate each other forever.”
“She must die in the name of justice.”
“What part of pain doesn’t come from God?”
Laura said to Pilar that the grandchildren, Santiago and Lourdes, had a right to hear about the drama that had taken place in Santa Fe in 1937.
“It’s a very old story,” said Pilar.
“There’s no story of the past that’s not repeated in our time.” Laura caressed the Spanish woman’s hand. “I really mean that.”
Pilar said she hadn’t complained when facing death hack then, and
she wouldn’t do so now. Complaint only augments pain. Enough is enough.
she wouldn’t do so now. Complaint only augments pain. Enough is enough.
“We thought she’d been shot at dawn outside the city walls,” said Basilio. “We thought so for thirty years.”
“Why did you believe it?” asked Pilar.
“Because that’s what your father told us. He was one of us, the Communist mayor of Santa Fe, so of course we believed him.”
“There’s no better fate than to die unknown,” said Pilar, looking at the young Santiago.
“Why is that, ma’am?”
“Because if you’re identified, Santiago, you have to apologize for some people and condemn others and you end up betraying them all.”
Basilio wanted to tell the young people what he’d already told Laura, about how he’d asked for emergency leave and had rushed back to Mexico to see his wife, his Pilar. Don Alvaro Méndez, Pilar’s father, had faked his daughter’s execution that morning and had hidden her in a ruined house out in the Sierra de Gredos, where she’d lack for nothing for the duration of the war; the owners of the neighboring farm were impartial, friends of both Don Alvaro and his wife, Doña Clemencia. They wouldn’t betray anyone. Even so, Pilar’s father said nothing to his wife, who remained convinced that her daughter was a Martyr to the Movement. That’s how she described it when Franco triumphed. Don Alvaro was executed on the very spot where his daughter was supposed to have died. The mother cultivated a devotion to her martyred daughter, dedicating the place where Pilar had supposedly fallen, though the body was never found because the reds must have taken it away, most likely tossing it into a common grave …
The heroine Pilar Méndez, the martyr executed by the reds, was put on the Falange’s list of saints, and the real Pilar, hidden in the mountains, could not reveal herself, lived invisibly, torn at first between revealing herself and telling the truth or hiding out and maintaining the myth, but in the end convinced, when she learned of her father’s death, that in Spain history is tragic and always ends badly, therefore it was better to go on being invisible, because that protected both the faithful memory of her father and the holy hypocrisy of her
mother. She became accustomed to it, first in the refuge given her by her father’s friends’ kindness and then, much later, when they feared they were in danger because of Franco’s avenging siege, protected by the charity of a convent of Discalced Carmelites, the order founded by St. Teresa of Avila and under her regulations, in which Pilar Méndez—protected by Christian charity though longing to join the rules of the sisters—found a discipline that, as she accustomed herself to it, was a salvation: poverty, the woolen Carmelite habit, rough sandals, abstinence from meat; sweeping, sewing, praying, and reading, because St. Teresa said that nothing seemed more detestable than “a stupid nun.”
mother. She became accustomed to it, first in the refuge given her by her father’s friends’ kindness and then, much later, when they feared they were in danger because of Franco’s avenging siege, protected by the charity of a convent of Discalced Carmelites, the order founded by St. Teresa of Avila and under her regulations, in which Pilar Méndez—protected by Christian charity though longing to join the rules of the sisters—found a discipline that, as she accustomed herself to it, was a salvation: poverty, the woolen Carmelite habit, rough sandals, abstinence from meat; sweeping, sewing, praying, and reading, because St. Teresa said that nothing seemed more detestable than “a stupid nun.”
The nuns soon discovered Pilar’s gifts. She was a girl who could read and write, so they gave her the Saint’s books and with the passing years so ingrained the customs of the convent in her (her personal austerity reminded the sisters of their Holy Founder, that “errant woman,” as King Philip II had called her) that the authorities raised no objections when the Mother Superior asked for a pass for this humble, intelligent convent worker, Ursula Sánchez, who wanted to visit some relatives in France and had no documents because the Communists had burned all the papers in her hometown.
“I left blinded, but with such an intense memory of my past that it wasn’t hard for me to remember it when I got to Paris, to recover what might have been my fate if I hadn’t spent my life in towns with bad water where the rivers flow down the mountains white with lime. The sisters had recommended me to the Carmelites in Paris, where I began to stroll the boulevards, regain my feminine tastes, covet elegant clothes—I was thirty four and wanted to look pretty and well dressed—and I made friends in the diplomatic corps, managed to get a job in the Mexican House at the Cite Universitaire and I met a rich Mexican whose son was studying there, we had an affair, he brought me to Mexico, he was jealous, so now I was living in a tropical cage in Acapulco filled with parrots, and he gave me jewels, but I felt I’d been living in cages all my life, village cages, convent cages, and now a gilded cage, but always a prisoner, incarcerated mostly by myself, first so I wouldn’t betray my father, then so I wouldn’t rob my mother of her satisfied rancor, or of the holiness she ascribed to me thinking I was
dead, which let her feel saintly, and I was used to living in secret, to being someone else, to never breaking the silence imposed on me by my parents, the war, Spain, the peasants who protected me, the nuns who gave me refuge, the Mexican who brought me to America.”
dead, which let her feel saintly, and I was used to living in secret, to being someone else, to never breaking the silence imposed on me by my parents, the war, Spain, the peasants who protected me, the nuns who gave me refuge, the Mexican who brought me to America.”
She paused a moment, surrounded by the others’ attentive silence. The world had thought her sacrificed. She had to sacrifice herself for the world. What part of pain comes to us from others, and what part comes from ourselves?
She looked at Basilio. She took his hand.
“I always loved you. I thought my death would preserve our love. My pride was to believe there was no better fate than to die unknown. How was I going to scorn what I was most thankful for in my life—your love, the friendship of Jorge Maura and Domingo Vidal, ready to die with me if necessary?”
“Remember,” interrupted Basilio, “we Spaniards are hounds of death. We sniff it out and follow it until we ourselves get killed.”
“I’d give anything to undo the past,” said Pilar sadly. “I chose my stupid political militancy over the affection of three marvelous men. I hope they forgive me.”
“Violence breeds violence.” Laura smiled. “Luckily, love breeds love. We come out even, in general.” She took Lourdes’ hand on her right and Pilar’s on her left.
“That’s why, when I saw the announcement for an exhibit of portraits of exiled Spaniards, I flew from Acapulco and found Basilio’s empty frame.”
She looked at Laura. “But if you hadn’t been there, we’d never have gotten together again.”
“When did you tell your Mexican lover you weren’t going back to him?” asked Santiago.
“As soon as I saw the empty frame.”
“That was brave of you. Basilio might have been dead.”
Pilar blushed. “No, all the photos had birth and death dates when called for. Basilio’s had no death date, so I knew. Excuse me.”
The young people hadn’t spoken much. They were giving all their attention to the story of Pilar and Basilio. Santiago once exchanged a
loving look with his grandmother and found something marvelous in Laura Díaz’s eyes, something he wanted to tell Lourdes about later, something that shouldn’t be forgotten, he didn’t say so, the eyes, the entire attitude of Laura Díaz said so that Christmas of 1965, and those eyes took in the people at the table but also opened to them, gave them a voice, invited them to see and read each other, lovingly to disclose themselves.
loving look with his grandmother and found something marvelous in Laura Díaz’s eyes, something he wanted to tell Lourdes about later, something that shouldn’t be forgotten, he didn’t say so, the eyes, the entire attitude of Laura Díaz said so that Christmas of 1965, and those eyes took in the people at the table but also opened to them, gave them a voice, invited them to see and read each other, lovingly to disclose themselves.
But she was the world’s fulcrum.
Laura Díaz had learned to love without asking for explanations because she had learned to see others, with her camera and with her eyes, as they themselves might never see themselves.
She read after dinner a brief note of congratulations from Jorge Maura, written in Lanzarote. Laura could not resist: she’d told him about the marvelous and unexpected reunion of Pilar Méndez and Basilio Baltazar.
Jorge’s note simply asked, “What part of happiness doesn’t come from God?”
On New Year’s Eve, Lourdes Alfaro and Santiago López-Ayub were married. The witnesses were Laura Díaz, Pilar Méndez, and Basilio Baltazar.
Laura thought of a fourth witness. Jorge Maura. They would not see each other again.
Tlatelolco: 1968
“N
O ONE HAS THE RIGHT to identify a body. No one has the right to remove a body. We will not tolerate five hundred funeral processions in this city tomorrow. Throw them all in a common grave. Allow no one to identify them.”
O ONE HAS THE RIGHT to identify a body. No one has the right to remove a body. We will not tolerate five hundred funeral processions in this city tomorrow. Throw them all in a common grave. Allow no one to identify them.”
Make them disappear.
Laura Díaz photographed her grandson Santiago the night of October 2, 1968. She made her way on foot from the Calzada de la Estrella to watch the marchers enter the Plaza of the Three Cultures. She’d been photographing all the events in the student movement beginning with the first demonstrations—the growing presence of police squads, the bazooka fired against the door of the National Preparatory School, the occupation of University City by the army, the arbitrary destruction of laboratories and libraries by paid thugs, the university protest march headed by the rector, Javier Barros Sierra, and followed by the entire university community, the gathering in the Zócalo, where the crowd shouted to President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz: SHOW YOUR FACE—SHOW YOUR FACE—YOU’RE A DISGRACE—TO THE HUMAN RACE!, the silent march of a hundred thousand gagged citizens.
Laura recorded the nights of discussion with Santiago, Lourdes, and a dozen or more young men and women whose passions had been aroused by the events. They met in a room Laura had cleared for them in the Plaza Rio de Janeiro apartment, moving old files and throwing out useless trash that actually represented precious memories, but Laura told Lourdes that if at the age of seventy she hadn’t stored up in her memory what was worth remembering, she’d be crushed by the weight of the miscellaneous past. The past had many forms. For Laura, it was an ocean of paper.
What was a photograph, after all, but an instant transformed into eternity? The flow of time was unstoppable, so trying to save it in its totality would be a kind of madness—time that went on, under the sun and stars, with or without us, in an uninhabited, lunar world. Human time meant sacrificing the totality to give privilege to the instant and the prestige of eternity to the instant. The painting by Santiago the Younger in the apartment dining room said it all: we aren’t falling, we’re rising.
Laura had shuffled the contact sheets nostalgically, thrown the ones that seemed pointless to her into the trash, and cleared out the room for her great-grandchild to come. Shall we paint it blue or pink? Lourdes asked, laughing, and Laura laughed with her. Male or female, the baby would sleep in a cradle surrounded by photography smells, the walls were impregnated with the unmistakable perfume of wet photographs, of developer, of prints hung up with clothespins to dry like freshly washed clothes.
She observed her grandson’s growing enthusiasm and would have wanted to warn him, Don’t let yourself be swept along by enthusiasm, for in Mexico disillusion quickly punishes anyone with faith and tosses that faith out the door. We were taught this in school, Santiago would say to his comrades, kids between seventeen and twenty-five, dark-haired and blond, the way Mexico is, a rainbow country, said a pretty girl with hair down to her waist, very dark skin and very green eyes, a country on its knees that has to be stood on its feet, said a dark boy, tall with very small eyes, a democratic country, said a boy who was pale and
short, muscular and calm, with glasses that were always sliding down his nose, a country united with the great revolts in Berkeley, Tokyo, and Paris, a country that won’t ever say “
Interdit d’interdire”
and where imagination can seize power, said a blond boy, very Spanish, with a full beard and intense eyes, a country where we don’t forget the others, said another boy who looked Indian, very serious and hidden behind thick glasses, a country where we can all love one another, said Lourdes, a country without exploiters, said Santiago, we’re doing nothing more than bringing to the street what we were taught in school, we were educated with ideas called democracy, justice, freedom, revolution; they asked us to believe in all that, Doña Laura, can you imagine, Grandmama, a student or teacher defending dictatorship, oppression, injustice, reactionary thinking, but they showed themselves and we saw their faces, said the tall dark boy, and we cited demands, said the Indian boy with thick glasses, listen here, where are the things you taught us in school?, listen here, the dark girl with green eyes added her voice to the chorus, who do you think you’re fooling?, look here, said the boy with the full beard and intense eyes, just dare to look at us, there are millions of us, thirty million Mexicans under the age of twenty-five, do you think you can fool us forever?, the tall boy with small eyes leaped to his feet, where is democracy in the farcical elections that the PRI organizes with stuffed ballot boxes?, where is the justice—Santiago went on—in a country where seventy people have more money than seventy million citizens?, where is the freedom in unions handcuffed by corrupt leaders? asked the girl with hair to her waist, in newspapers paid off by the government, added Lourdes, in television that hides the truth?, where is the revolution? concluded the boy who was pale and short, muscular and calm, in the names of Villa and Zapata inscribed in gold on the Chamber of Deputies, concluded Santiago, on the statues the night birds shit on and the morning goldfinches shit on again when they write the PRI’s speeches?
short, muscular and calm, with glasses that were always sliding down his nose, a country united with the great revolts in Berkeley, Tokyo, and Paris, a country that won’t ever say “
Interdit d’interdire”
and where imagination can seize power, said a blond boy, very Spanish, with a full beard and intense eyes, a country where we don’t forget the others, said another boy who looked Indian, very serious and hidden behind thick glasses, a country where we can all love one another, said Lourdes, a country without exploiters, said Santiago, we’re doing nothing more than bringing to the street what we were taught in school, we were educated with ideas called democracy, justice, freedom, revolution; they asked us to believe in all that, Doña Laura, can you imagine, Grandmama, a student or teacher defending dictatorship, oppression, injustice, reactionary thinking, but they showed themselves and we saw their faces, said the tall dark boy, and we cited demands, said the Indian boy with thick glasses, listen here, where are the things you taught us in school?, listen here, the dark girl with green eyes added her voice to the chorus, who do you think you’re fooling?, look here, said the boy with the full beard and intense eyes, just dare to look at us, there are millions of us, thirty million Mexicans under the age of twenty-five, do you think you can fool us forever?, the tall boy with small eyes leaped to his feet, where is democracy in the farcical elections that the PRI organizes with stuffed ballot boxes?, where is the justice—Santiago went on—in a country where seventy people have more money than seventy million citizens?, where is the freedom in unions handcuffed by corrupt leaders? asked the girl with hair to her waist, in newspapers paid off by the government, added Lourdes, in television that hides the truth?, where is the revolution? concluded the boy who was pale and short, muscular and calm, in the names of Villa and Zapata inscribed in gold on the Chamber of Deputies, concluded Santiago, on the statues the night birds shit on and the morning goldfinches shit on again when they write the PRI’s speeches?
It would have been useless to warn him. He’d broken with his parents, he identified himself with his grandmother, she and he, Laura and Santiago, had knelt down together one night right in the Zócalo
and together had put their ears to the ground and together heard the same thing, the blind tumult of the city and the nation about to explode.
and together had put their ears to the ground and together heard the same thing, the blind tumult of the city and the nation about to explode.
“The hell that is Mexico,” said Santiago. “Are we predestined for crime, violence, corruption, poverty?”
“Don’t talk, son. Listen. Before I photograph, I always listen …”
She wanted to bequeath to her descendants a luminous liberty. The two of them raised their faces from the icy stone and looked at each other with a questioning look filled with tenderness. Laura understood then that Santiago was going to act as he acted, she was not going to say to him, You’ve got a wife, you’re going to have a baby, don’t get involved. She wasn’t Danton, she wasn’t Juan Francisco, she was Jorge Maura, she was the gringo Jim at the Jarama front, she was the young Santiago the Elder shot in Veracruz. She was those who doubted everything but never hesitated to act.
Her grandson Santiago, in every march, in every speech, at every university gathering, incarnated change, and his grandmother followed him, photographed him, he paying no attention to being photographed, and Laura watched him with the tenderness of a comrade: with her camera, she recorded all the moments of change, sometimes change brought on by uncertainty, sometimes change brought on by certainty, but the final certitude—of acts, of words—was less certain than doubt. The most uncertain thing was certainty.
Laura felt during those days of the student revolt, in sunlight or torchlight, that change was certain because it was uncertain. Through her memory passed the dogmas she’d listened to all her life—the almost prehistoric antagonisms between the Franco-British allies and the Central Powers in the 1914 war, Vidal’s Communist faith and Basilio’s anarchist faith, Maura’s Republican faith and Pilar’s Falangist faith, Raquel’s Judeo-Christian faith and also Harry’s confusion, Juan Francisco’s opportunism, Danton’s greedy cynicism, and his brother Santiago’s generosity.
Through his grandmother, this new Santiago was heir to them all, whether he knew it or not. The years with Laura Díaz had formed the days of Santiago the New, which is how she thought of him, like the
new apostle in the long line of namesakes of the son of Zebedee who had been a witness at Gethsemane of Christ’s transfiguration. The Santiagos, “sons of lightning,” all violently killed. St. James pierced by the swords of Herod. St. James the Less garroted by the Sanhedrin. Santiago saints: history recorded two; she, Laura, had four of them, and a name, said the grandmother, is a manifestation of our most intimate nature. Laura, Lourdes, Santiago.
new apostle in the long line of namesakes of the son of Zebedee who had been a witness at Gethsemane of Christ’s transfiguration. The Santiagos, “sons of lightning,” all violently killed. St. James pierced by the swords of Herod. St. James the Less garroted by the Sanhedrin. Santiago saints: history recorded two; she, Laura, had four of them, and a name, said the grandmother, is a manifestation of our most intimate nature. Laura, Lourdes, Santiago.
Now the faith of the friends and lovers of all the years with Laura Díaz was the faith of Laura Díaz’s grandson, who, along with hundreds of young Mexicans, men and women, went to the Plaza of the Three Cultures, the ancient Aztec ceremonial center Tlatelolco, with no more illumination than that which came from the dying afternoon in the old valley of Ana
huac. Everything was old here, thought Laura Díaz, the Indian pyramid, the church of Santiago, the Franciscan convent and college, but also the modern buildings, the Foreign Ministry, the apartment buildings. Perhaps the most recent things were the oldest because they’d stood the test of time least, being already cracked, with peeling paint, smashed windows, sagging clotheslines, the lamentation of too many sobbing, penitential rains coming from the walls: the streetlights in the square were beginning to come on, the spotlights on prestigious buildings, lamps in kitchens, terraces, living rooms, and bedrooms; hundreds of young people were coming in on one side, dozens of sol diers surrounding them were coming from other sides; nervous shad ows appeared on the roof terraces, fists covered with white gloves were raised, and Laura photographed the figure of her grandson Santiago, with his white shirt, his stupid white shirt, as if he were asking to be a target, and his voice saying to her, (Grandmother, we don’t fit into the future, we want a future that will give room to young people, I don’t fit into the future my father invented, and Laura said to him, yes, that with her grandson she too had come to understand that all her life Mexicans had dreamed of a different country, a better country, her grandfather Felipe who emigrated from Germany to Catemaco and her grandfather Díaz who left Tenerife for Veracruz, both dreamed of a country of work and honor, as the first Santiago had dreamed of a country of justice and the second Santiago of a country of creative
serenity and the third Santiago, this one entering Tlatelolco Plaza with all those students on the night of October 2, 1968, continued the dream of those whose name he bore, his namesakes, and seeing him enter the plaza, photographing him, Laura said, Today the man I love is my grandson.
huac. Everything was old here, thought Laura Díaz, the Indian pyramid, the church of Santiago, the Franciscan convent and college, but also the modern buildings, the Foreign Ministry, the apartment buildings. Perhaps the most recent things were the oldest because they’d stood the test of time least, being already cracked, with peeling paint, smashed windows, sagging clotheslines, the lamentation of too many sobbing, penitential rains coming from the walls: the streetlights in the square were beginning to come on, the spotlights on prestigious buildings, lamps in kitchens, terraces, living rooms, and bedrooms; hundreds of young people were coming in on one side, dozens of sol diers surrounding them were coming from other sides; nervous shad ows appeared on the roof terraces, fists covered with white gloves were raised, and Laura photographed the figure of her grandson Santiago, with his white shirt, his stupid white shirt, as if he were asking to be a target, and his voice saying to her, (Grandmother, we don’t fit into the future, we want a future that will give room to young people, I don’t fit into the future my father invented, and Laura said to him, yes, that with her grandson she too had come to understand that all her life Mexicans had dreamed of a different country, a better country, her grandfather Felipe who emigrated from Germany to Catemaco and her grandfather Díaz who left Tenerife for Veracruz, both dreamed of a country of work and honor, as the first Santiago had dreamed of a country of justice and the second Santiago of a country of creativeserenity and the third Santiago, this one entering Tlatelolco Plaza with all those students on the night of October 2, 1968, continued the dream of those whose name he bore, his namesakes, and seeing him enter the plaza, photographing him, Laura said, Today the man I love is my grandson.
She fired her camera, the camera was her weapon, and she fired only at her grandson, realizing the injustice of her attitude, since hundreds of young men and women were coming to Tlatelolco Plaza to demand a new country, a better country, a country faithful to itself, and she, Laura Díaz had eyes only for the flesh of her flesh, for the protagonist of her descendance, a boy with his hair tousled, his white shirt and dark skin and honey-green eyes and bright teeth and sturdy muscles.
I am your comrade, Laura said to Santiago from afar, I’m no longer the woman I was, now I’m yours, tonight I understand you, I understand my love Jorge Maura and the God he adores and for whom he licks the floor of a monastery in Lanzarote, I say to you, my God, take away everything I’ve been, give me sickness, give me death, give me fever, chancres, cancer, tuberculosis, give me blindness and deafness, cut out my tongue and my ears, my God, if that’s what’s necessary to save my grandson and my country, kill me with evils so my nation and my children may have health, thank you, Santiago, for teaching all of us that there are still things to fight for in this sleeping and self-satisfied and tricky and tricked Mexico of 1968, Year of the Olympic Games, thanks, my son, for teaching me the difference between the living and the dead—then the commotion in the plaza was like the earthquake that toppled the Angel of Independence, Laura’s camera looked up to the stars and saw nothing, then, trembling, it looked down and found the eye of a soldier staring at her like a scar, the camera firing and the rifles firing, extinguishing the songs, slogans, voices of the young people, and then came a horrifying silence, and one heard only the moans of the wounded and dying young people, Laura looking for the figure of Santiago and finding only white gloves against the sky, closing into insolent fists, “mission accomplished,” and the impotence of the stars to tell the story of what had happened.
Rifle butts beat Laura out of the plaza, chased out not for being Laura the photographer, grandmother of Santiago, but because all witnesses are being chased away, they want no witnesses, yet under her full skirt Laura hides her roll of film, in her panties, next to her sex, but she cannot photograph the smell of death that rises from the plaza soaked in young blood, she can no longer capture the blinded sky of the night of Tlatelolco, she cannot print the widespread fear of the great urban cemetery, the groans, the screams, the echoes of death … The city grows dark.
Not even Danton López-Díaz, the powerful Don Danton, has the right to remove his son’s body? No, not even he.
To what do the young widow and the grandmother of Santiago, young rebel leader, have a right? If they wish, they may go to the morgue and identify the body. As a concession to Don Danton, personal friend of President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz. They may see him, but they may not remove or bury him. No exceptions. There will not be five hundred funeral processions on October 3, 1968, in Mexico City. It would make traffic impossible. It would break the rules and regulations.
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