Though outlawed, Mexico’s September 16 Independence Day was greeted by swift celebratory bursts of pistol shots, echoing thinly like .22 caliber pistols being fired. Security officials were unclear where the shots were fired.
Until the 1970s, gunfire from much heavier weapons freely echoed throughout every pueblo and town in Mexico, celebrating cherished occasions. But what goes up comes down, and increased celebrating caused too many casualties. Last week it was reduced to furtive, briefly-fired rounds in some pueblos skirting Lake Chapala’s far western shores.
When folks finally celebrated Independence Day on Sunday, September 20, I stood in a cluster of pickups decked out like floats, hearing two men retrieving harsh details of a riña (feud) that took the lives of both their angry fathers. It was a crowded fiesta, and they’d been drinking.
That initial killing and its vengeful lash-back were separated by several years. Chapala’s “legal” authority then traditionally – if spottily – had a far reach. One pueblo in a “western” municipality was split in two. The smaller part loosely – for official convenience – was overseen by an diputado, a local government representative appointed for often curious reasons by the larger, more authoritative portion. That municipality in turn was overseen, oddly and theoretically, by Chapala. Early in the 1960s the diputado of the El Puente neighborhood, Jose Diaz (I call him that to ease kinfolk feelings), was known for beating his wife and kids, and intimidating other relatives
Being far from Chapala, Diaz believed he not only was an unquestionable legal “jefe”, but essentially independent of local municipal authorities. As was the custom, he carried a .45 caliber Colt, inherited from Mexico’s civil war.
A resident of El Puente, Juan Lopez had a small run-in with Diaz. Three weeks later as Juan was pushing his bicycle up El Puente’s main street. Jose saw him, aimed his pistol as people emptied the cobbled street. Diaz killed the unarmed Lopez with a single shot. Both the local and the Chapala authorities found him innocent of murder. Witnesses – all residents of El Puente – declined to testify against “El Jefe.”
In the 1970s, Jose had land near where I was building a house. I had to cut down a large handsome tree to erect my property wall. A friend who loathed Jose told me to expect a visit form El Jefe. I called him Jose, which made him scowl. At that time, a certain amount of prejudice against gringos who were not obviously wealthy mottled some sectors of Mexican society, certainly government officials and the wealthy elite.
My wife and I understood we were in a very different culture where the United States had an often unhappy history. We now lived somewhere not known for its democratic habits.
To erect a protecting wall around our just-built mountainside house, I’d had to cut down the grand tree whose wide trunk and sprawling roots embraced my downhill property line. And unfortunately touched the uphill edge of some Lopez land. There were no nearby structures. A protecting wall was essential.
My Ajijic workmen friends said Diaz would come for a fee for the cut-down tree. There were no laws regarding the felling of trees at that time, unless it was on someone else’s property.
I was splitting the trunk of the felled tree when Jose Diaz started up my dirt road. I paid no attention, though I turned to my car for a British Army Webley revolver that a friend in Los Angeles had brought down. I placed it under my shirt.
Diaz bluntly asked if I had “permission” to cut down the tree. I said I’d checked the matter and that no government fee was required. He told me that I had broken the law and, also, the tree was on his land. I unfolded a crudely rendered government map of my property and immediate surrounding properties. I gave him the address of the family from which I’d purchased the property and that of an old-time rancher who owned land surrounding my sprawling purchase on either side. That rancher, wearing a holstered pistol, used colorfully obscenities to speak of Diaz.
The rancher was too old to think well about what he was saying, Diaz said.
Diaz named the cost of the fine I owed for cutting down the tree, plus a sum for felling a tree that was on his property. I had small posts pounded into the property line that matched the zone on all four sides of my land as pictured on a map I’d obtained from the local government – the one Diaz ostensibly worked for.
“Who has authority in this matter?” I asked. He said that as diputado of El Puente, he was the authority.
“No,” I said. “I mean in matters of property ownership. Your job, according to the municipio, is to maintain order, not make decisions about land management.”
Diaz swore and declared he could level fines regarding “all crimes.”
I placed the Webley on the tree’s waist-high remaining trunk I’d left in the ground.
Diaz looked at the Webley then at me. “I’ll talk to mis amigos at the municipio about this,” he said, giving the words a threatening twist.
“Talk to Bejamin Padilla there. His cousin’s best friend was Juan Lopez.”
That matter never came up again.
Four years later, Jose Diaz was called to the Chapala Municipio for an “urgent” meeting at the odd hour of six o’clock in the morning. That meant catching the first bus of the day from El Puente to Chapala. That time of morning there were then few passengers. Three workmen scattered up front, three men in the long back seat, their sombreroed heads bent forward in sleep.
Diaz took a seat in the middle of the bus. On a lonesome stretch of highway, the three men in back grabbed Jose Diaz from behind. Two held him, the third slit his throat.
The driver skidded to a stop and hurled himself out the door. Other passengers, panicking, scattered into the darkness.
No one was arrested for the killing.