Death in Veracruz (12 page)

What was visible beyond the orange grove was a complex of buildings, sheds for laying hens, and corrals of tall grass awaiting the cattle that had grazed out neighboring corrals. What this indicated was a system of grazing rotation among the feedlots.

“No English grasses here,” Pizarro said. I was bemused by what I saw, and Pizarro knew it. “We sow only native grasses. Just look, it's amazing. We spend next to nothing on seed because we did the work necessary to adapt and improve grasses that grow here naturally. Come see the rest of the complex.”

The complex consisted of a large quadrangle of buildings interspersed with storehouses for the bounty of La Mesopotamia. There were facilities to box eggs, polish and package rice, and pasteurize milk. There was
a refrigerated slaughterhouse where the carcasses were butchered and dressed out on an automated production line. There was a carpentry shop, a machine shop with its own parts department, an electric power generation plant, an agricultural laboratory with a half-hectare experimental plot, and a railroad spur.

“We built the rail spur from here to El Álamo to cut down on shipping costs,” Pizarro said. “Shipping over dirt roads is expensive. We fill two boxcars every three days, and they're ready to go to Poza Rica, Ciudad Madero, and Veracruz. All the railroads in Mexico belong to the government except this one that belongs to the oil workers, the people who built it. There are twenty kilometers of track. We did it with our own engineers and our own hands. Because here the revolution of the workers and the people is on the march. We're making a socialist revolution because we're going to take over the factories, the capital, and the means of production. And we're doing it peacefully. In time, the workers will peacefully dislodge foreigners and private enterprise through honest competition. The oil workers' union is standing up for all the people who have been marginalized in this country. And those are not just empty words and demagogy, my journalist friend. They're facts, the ones you see right here. Come see our maintenance and repair shop.”

He didn't sweat. In the smothering heat and humidity of a cloudy day at La Mesopotamia, Pizarro didn't sweat a drop. He spoke and gave orders with the natural imperiousness of a tribal chieftain. Though he was the sun and everything orbited around him, there was nothing dazzling about him. He could easily be confused with the aides, workers and supervisors who came out to greet him. They gave him information, awaited his bidding, and fell in with us like metal filings attracted by the magnetism of
a demanding but unshining sun. As he proceeded about the complex, the throng around him grew into a small crowd. At its center Pizarro continued speaking to me non-stop, his eyes ablaze, his manner genial and relaxed though alert to my every reaction. Beneath the intoxication of showing off La Mesopotamia, he remained as cold and calculating as ever.

The parts department amounted to a gigantic hardware store and the machine shop to a canopy over rows of Gringo tractors and German mowers.

“This parts department serves the whole region,” Pizarro explained. “There's nothing like it from Brownsville in the north to Sao Paulo in the south. We repair and sell parts for less than anyone. We make them too. We buy from outside once, but as soon a part comes in here, we start figuring out how to make it ourselves. And our only area of weakness so far has been electronics where our failure rate is twenty percent. Anything else goes out of here defect-free. So long as we find a supplier for any special steel that's needed, we can ship it. How much are we selling?” he asked the man behind the long parts counter. The man hesitated.

“How long have you been here?” Pizarro demanded.

“Barely two weeks.”

“Then how come they put you out front so soon? That's not right, that's not how our cooperative is supposed to work. We need to learn from private enterprise. They all know how to add two and two, they're not like you. Come on, my
paisano
journalist, let's have a look at the shops and see if we can find someone who knows what's going on. We do jobs for PEMEX here too. We designed a pulley for drill rigs that saved millions of dollars. We've got a patent on it, and the Venezuelans and the Arabs are using it. And though we charged PEMEX plenty, it was less than a third of the price anywhere else. And not even a fifth of what contractors
in this country would have charged. All they ever do is buy abroad and resell here. They're parasites, middlemen. But we're not. We have properties worth billions, not because we're hungry for money but because, as long as we live in a capitalist society, it's the only way for workers to be autonomous. When you run with wolves, you learn to use your teeth, my friend. That's what I always say, no matter where I go.”

He stopped and so did the small crowd of followers. He wiped away the saliva that had accumulated at the corners of his mouth. He looked down at the floor and then at me. Once again he turned cold and dry without a trace of the triumphant air and the vanity he'd displayed only minutes before. “I talked about this with your friend Rojano the last time I saw him in Veracruz. Didn't he say anything to you?”

He moved briskly on without waiting for an answer. “Who dumped oil on the grass? You can't do that. You can't blame the grass for what we do.”

Our tour ended back at the parts counter. “How much are we making on replacement parts?” Pizarro asked the man behind the counter.

“Six million a month, Lacho.”

“Good, but that's a mark you have to exceed. You have the experience now, and you've got plenty of support.”

“Yes, Lacho.”

“Anyway, tell our journalist friend here how many customers you have here in your shop.”

“Well, everybody around here, Lacho.”

“Otherwise, they'd have to go to Brownsville,” Pizarro went on. “It costs half as much to come here. And the same applies to everything else. The food we produce here is sold in our stores in Poza Rica. We make a good profit and still sell for less than half the price in private stores. Our union shops make clothes for two thirds less. We build schools and offer
no interest loans because we're not loan sharks. Come on, let's go to the pyramid. This land even came with a pyramid. From there you can see the rest of our operation.”

We climbed into the jeep with Loya at the wheel. We drove towards the sheds for the laying hens before heading into the foothills, beyond which the green wall of the Western Sierra Madre rose into the clouds. This way lay Chicontepec and the towns where Rojano's blood-drenched photos were taken. After passing several more corrals and a hog nursery, we were back in tropical jungle twilight amidst tangled vines and the shrieks of spider monkeys squabbling in the treetops. Though the heat and humidity made Lacho's glasses fog over, he never sweat a drop. His skin never appeared oily or showed any other trace of uncontrolled secretions. Even his glands seemed on notice not to dampen the image of monastic, quasi-religious dryness projected by the formidable rival Rojano was determined to challenge. We got out of the jeep and walked some 500 meters with two guards in front of us and Loya behind. Suddenly, we were shrouded in darkness and overcome by the dense odor of rotting jungle vegetation. I was gripped by the thought that our real destination might be someplace other than a pyramid. I felt as if I were being smothered. This didn't escape Pizarro, who came to an abrupt stop and peered at me over his fogged glasses. “You don't like the jungle?” he asked in the voice that made his questions sound like statements, a smooth violence-laden voice. “More than one journey has ended here. There's malaria, vermin, and wild animals. But look. Here's a gift from La Mesopotamia that you'll never forget.”

He pointed to an impenetrable curtain of vines and, barely touching my shoulder with his hand, pushed me
towards them. I had the clear impression I was being made part of a ritual that would end with my execution, but I walked where Pizarro told me to. I parted the wall of vines with my hands and stepped forward. As I did, I heard the guards lock and load their weapons followed by the crack of the report echoing up to the sierra one, two, three times, then thundering down against the back of my neck. I ran forward into the wall of vines that anointed my body with stinging saps, scratched me with thorns, and sliced me with leaves that cut like razors. I was not alone in my flight of frenzy. An insane circus of monkeys stampeded from branch to branch, thrashing about the dense canopy above me and letting in the only slivers of light to penetrate the exuberant green trap.

Before I could take stock of my predicament, the jungle gave way and I saw the spectacle Pizarro had prepared for me. I had flailed my way into a huge bubble of air and light with the pyramid of La Mesopotamia at its center. The ruin stood a good fifteen meters high, encrusted in the lime and vegetation that rounded the edges of its steps and corners. The sight of it in the midst of the jungle was overpowering. So were the howls and screeches of the stampeding monkeys with their childlike faces and twitching tails as they stormed madly about the pyramid. It was like a revelation. I felt as if I'd stumbled into a time utterly alien to the squareness imposed by technology on the world beyond this jungle island.

Behind me a smiling Pizarro stepped through the wall of vegetation followed by Loya and the guards.

“The effect wouldn't be the same without the gunshots. You can appreciate that now.” Pizarro pointed to the monkeys swarming the pyramid. “I hope you don't take this the wrong way. We don't belong in an insane asylum. We say what we have to say very clearly. And what we have to do we do without dithering. Come here. There's a path you can climb.”

We walked around the pyramid and climbed the side outfitted with a recently poured cement stairway and a handrail. Pizarro and I went up it by ourselves. For the first time since my surprise arrival at his house in the morning there was no one else near him. We stood at a height from which the boundary between the surrounding jungle and La Mesopotamia with its complex of corrals, buildings, and mangroves was clearly discernible. The jungle ringing the pyramid turned out to be a band no more than a hundred meters wide that had the contrived look of a moat. Naturally, there was a road cut uncluttered by weeds and vines that led to the pyramid, but that was not the route Pizarro had chosen for me. He squatted by the pyramid's guardrail and took a long look down at the civilized domain snatched from the wilderness. “This is La Mesopotamia,” Pizarro said without looking at me. “Three years ago it was all wilderness, but the building plans were already on the drawing boards. Look over there towards the fork in the river. Do you see where I mean?”

There were, in effect, two rivers—two threads of sluggish red water—bordering La Mesopotamia. “From time immemorial these lands were meant to be shaped by human hands and were fit to be called La Mesopotamia. Civilization is said to have begun in Mesopotamia, right? It lay between two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. I doubt those two rivers have anything these two don't have. The soil here is as good as any in the world. Come on, I'm taking you to the dam we're stocking with carp and trout. That's another thing they didn't know how to do in Mesopotamia on the Tigris. But fame is like that,
paisano.
And history's the same way. If something is meant to happen, there's nothing humans can do to stop it.”

He descended the stairway with the agility of a teenager. I understood the pride he took in the pyramid. From its peak
he could overlook his domain in its entirety and let its name resonate in his ear with an echo reaching him from the dawn of civilization. He seemed to see his own destiny embodied in a name marking the beginning of history.

We visited the dams and went back to the complex. In the dining room he said goodbye to the women waiting for him. He drew Loya aside for a talk, then took leave from him before getting into the van. It was four in the afternoon.

“L-1 on zero bound for Dinner Party as planned,” the driver said in code. It meant Pizarro was in the vehicle and we were leaving La Mesopotamia on the way to the Quinta Bermúdez in Poza Rica.

“Have a fig, my
paisano
journalist, to keep your hunger at bay,” Pizarro said. “And don't worry. There's a banquet waiting for you in Poza Rica.”

I ate one fig, then another. My mouth was dry. So were my tongue and throat.

“If you'd like a beer, there's one under the seat,” Pizarro said while looking out the window and sounding as if he were giving orders to a subordinate. The plastic beer cooler was where he said it was. I eagerly fished for a beer and then for an opener. First, I looked in the cooler, then I felt through my clothes until I came up with the small one on my key chain. Little by little I succeeded in opening the bottle. Pizarro glowered back at me from the front seat. In his hand was a bottle opener he'd been holding out to me for several seconds. I could feel his disdain and his ironic assessment of my faltering composure. It made me realize that his dealings with others were rarely more than a series of tests of strength in the form of veiled competitions and secret traps and triumphs accumulated to prove his own importance, his superiority.

We got to Quinta Bermúdez shortly before 5:00. Crossing
through the garden of India laurels, and then the other patio, we entered Pizarro's inner sanctum where a group of supplicants as large as the one in the morning awaited him. Roibal was seated at the table where we'd had breakfast along with a pale, heavily mascaraed woman of about thirty. She rushed to greet Pizarro with open arms and called him “my love.” To my surprise, Pizarro responded in kind. Throughout the meal he addressed her as “little darling.” He embellished this with such endearments as “my little darling,” “my little girl,” and “my love” whenever he spoke to her. Just as they had for breakfast, the cooks loaded the table for dinner. The spread included mugs for a variety of beers, toasted tortillas with assorted toppings, spiced
mole
stews, a marinated ham, and fresh tortillas. Yet Pizarro's place at the head of the table remained pristine except for two servings of yogurt and a plate of tomatoes and lettuce. No one spoke except Pizarro, his little darling, and Roibal when issuing instructions to the cooks. We hadn't gotten to the
mole
when Pizarro announced he had business to take care of and withdrew to his office. Roibal went after him. Little Darling and I served each other toasted tortillas and kept on eating for another half hour.