Setting out to check on the local pueblo celebration of Miguel Hidalgo’s 1810 grito launching Mexico’s war of independence, was a stormy errand. True, it was a mandatory national celebration, and one that the corps of folk who waveringly operated the local cabecera (county seat) vehemently promised to conduct — despite a long-running series of rainstorms of Tlalocian persistence. The downhill dirt road was steep and as slippery. Much of the citizenry believed local officials, despite their strutting and loud words, would call the game due to weather. Such citizens decided to forego this example of frail patriotism. My own chance to observe this bit of weak-heartedness was foiled by a late evening version of Chuma Chavez’s cow-lot cabaret. Chuma’s cow-lot in the mornings as he milks his small herd, offers laborers on their way to work a clay cup — or three — of freshly warm milk spiked with straight alcohol, for an easy price.
Chuma’s cabaret operates under a tin and tarpaper roofed lean-to, and this Sunday evening, there was a inviting fire at the outer edge of the lean-to. Chuma came out as I slowed to see who had gathered around the fire’s warmth. He stepped into the rain and chided me for believing that anyone from the cabecera would stand long in the evening’s blowy swirls of moisture. “They’re catrines (dandies), hombre. They’ll call it off.” Andele, he gestured. “It’s dry and warm” He held up a chipped clay cup. Getting out, I said, “Some drug cartel ojete will drive by and shoot all of us for the fun of it.”
“Memo’s son, Andres, came from the other side, Los Angeles, last night. He’s got an education now. Though he’s telling stories of white women and new gringo ways. Talking a lot of English, he’s forgetting he’s Mexican.”
“Nobody forgets that. No matter how caliente the women.”“No le hace. He wants to talk to you about computers. He remembers you always at your desk, typing.”
After the usual greetings and obscenities about the weather versus the Cabecero’s “elite,” Andres Molina Gomez, now a tall young man with a moustache and a grin framed by a serious mien, told me he had a degree was in journalism. When a lull came in the joking and humorous insults, he turned his back to others, and told me he was planning on creating a blog charting the misbehavior of the national government, as well as the atrocities of the drug gangs.
At the behest of his father, I had often helped Andres with his elementary school lessons. Since then he had entered university here and, when his parents moved north, earned a diploma from a small college in the United States.
“You know gringo journalists have no idea of how dangerous taking on either of those subjects can be.” I told him. “We know that many Mexicans believe that a lot of the murders and disappearances are not the work of drugs gangs. Journalists are hated by both government entities as well as cartelistas. If you do this, how long do you think you’ll stay alive?”
He was stubbornly committed to his project. “Look at the female Mexican blogers and journalists who’ve been tortured and killed recently.” I said. “There’s no such thing as immunity. The immunity exists on the other side, with the killers”
“Well, we know that (President Enrique) Peña Nieto isn’t interested in justice,” he said. “He blatantly showed that with the PRI’s old habit of buying votes. (Andres was referring to Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party’s handing out supermarket credit cards to citizens in exchange for their vote. Peña Nieto declared ignorance of that maneuver, and promised that anyone committing such “irregularities” would be brought to justice — which was the last time much was heard of the matter.) And the release of the killer of DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent “Kiki” Camarena, among dozens of other ‘escapes.’ and thousands of killings.”
I just shook my head. “Don’t do it. They’ll kill you.”
“Well, with the internet, I won’t have to come down here a lot.”
“You can’t get people to talk about this kind of stuff by using the internet. You have to persuade them face to face to get them to talk about these things. They have to really trust you, deep down.”
“Well, I can come down secretly for that.”
“Oye, ‘mano, there are no secrets like that. Haven’t you read Anabel Hernandez’s books? Her latest, ‘Los Señores del Narco’ is coming out this month in English: ‘Narcoland: Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers’ and it says the drug war is all one big lie. If it is, anything you do is screwed.”
“Sure. That’s what I’m talking about, what she did, except it would be a blog.”
“Yes, well they killed her father. You’re going to be in the States most of the time, and your parents, all your family, will be here. That’s a lot of relatives by now, no? How are you going to protect them? Hernandez had police protection. Then it was taken away. When she complained to the human rights commission about new threats, the cops came back but the threats continued.
“Sure, she’s famous. She has a lot of connections, received a costa of awards, even one from the U.N. But she lives in fear none the less, no matter what she may say. I admire her like a lot of people. But according to her evidence, the police, the whole system is involved. Your folks are pueblo people, campesinos. You think the local presidente municipal is going to protect all of them? That all these mero, meros are going to stick their necks out for you and your family? That’s too much money and time. And if you’re putting out stuff that endangers anybody’s job....” I shrugged and spread my hands to indicate impossibility.
Chuma came up with more to drink. “What are you talking about so seriously, hombres? The rain shouldn’t make you that sad.”
“This gringo could make a birthday party cry,” said Andres, shifting gears, smiling.
“Ahhh,” Chuma slapped me on the shoulder. “You’re giving your own September Sixteenth speech, ay?” He grinned. “Fijate, let those pueblo payasos tell each other all the lies they want. They’ve got to keep in practice, no?”
When it was time to leave, I put a hand on Andres’ shoulder. “Think before you act, ’mano. Make up your mind what you want to do: Become famous or cut the cojones off these bastards. Once you’re a bit well-known, they’ll make chopped pork out of you. Think hard, plot hard. Get one of these kids with a magic internet touch to find a way to make you anonimo. Come up with a way to set one pendejo against the other. Politicians are as paranoid as cartelistas. If they’re playing a double game, there’s more chance of tricking them against each other. Might not work. But whatever you do, think like a fox, not like a wolf.”
I already have an idea for a pseudonym.”
“Good but be very careful, eh.”