Death in Veracruz (14 page)

I gave her photocopies of my column, my message to Pizarro, and his reply. We kissed, she got out, and I went to my apartment on Artes to read the papers she'd given me. They turned out to be a lengthy memo from the PEMEX
Office of Projects and Engineering to the Office of the Director General. It outlined an immense federally subsidized project to be centered around a prehistoric waterway near Chicontepec called the
paleocanal.
According to the memo, the area's potential oil reserves equaled the sum of all prior discoveries in the country put together. Under the planned project, Chicontepec would within four years become the biggest oil and petrochemical complex in the Americas and one of the biggest in the world. It would be surpassed only by Kuwait's facilities on the Persian Gulf and the ones then becoming operational in the North Sea. The project called for phase one investments totalling 1.5 billion pesos beginning in 1978; 5 billion in stage two from 1979 to 1981; then 12 billion in phase three after 1981. Pumping an expected 10 billion barrels of light crude would require the building of a complete system of primary and secondary petrochemical refineries and processing plants. Four instant cities of 80,000 each would spring up, and local farming and cattle-raising capabilities would undergo major expansion in order to feed this new demographic. All that. And right on time to make Francisco Rojano Gutiérrez's craziest dreams of riding the crest of the wave to wealth and power come true.

Doña Lila came in at ten and proceeded to fix herself a late-night snack. Looking pale with her hair somewhat uncombed, she sized up her current state by muttering to herself. “You look like a rooftop cat. You're never satisfied till you're scratched bare.”

She made me sandwiches, and I turned on the television to watch the Channel 13 news, then anchored by Verónica Rascón. About 11:00 someone knocked. “I want to sleep with you,” Anabela said when I opened the door.

I gave her a vodka and tonic and one of the sandwiches Doña Lila made, and we finished watching the news. She removed her makeup, donned a transparent nightgown,
and clipped a toenail. We carried on a conversation with the television still on just like a married couple. Later we made love until very late as if we hadn't seen each other for a long time. In the early morning, half asleep with our arms intertwined, I wondered if this was her way of celebrating the victory my photocopies confirmed for Rojano.

Doña Lila woke us up by opening the curtains and shouting that the whole apartment smelled like sin. “This is going to take papal absolution,” she said as she approached the bed with a tray of orange juice and coffee. “It looks like every jot and tittle of the sixth commandment has been broken here.”

She stopped to watch Anabela sip her coffee. Though still sleepy, she looked fresh and relaxed. Doña Lila paused in the doorway on her way back to the kitchen. “Blessed child,” she said. “You can tell me later what disgrace brought you to this den of iniquity because this is the first time I've seen the man you're in bed with wake up next to a woman who wears shoes.”

We bathed, drank the juice, and then ate the breakfast Doña Lila prepared for us. I'd already gotten to the coffee when I looked up from the newspapers I was going over and found Anabela looking at me over the rim of her cup. She was sitting perfectly straight with her elbows on the table. She'd put on a long-sleeved blouse with frills at the wrists and neckline and small pearl earrings. A very thin film of makeup redefined her eyebrows and lashes. She'd dusted shadows onto her eyelids as wide as her mocking eyes. She blew on the coffee before drinking it, holding the cup at the height of her lips.

“So how many hectares did you inherit in Chicontepec?” I asked.

She sipped her coffee and waited a moment before answering.

“A hundred and fifty.”

“From the widow Martín?”

“From my grandaunt, yes.”

“And that makes how many hectares that you own in Chicontepec?”

“I told you everything I inherited.”

“But how many do you have?”

“Maybe another fifty.”

“According to my sources, you have around
two-hundred-fifty more”

She took another sip.

“About that, three hundred or so in all.”

“Four hundred in all.”

“Yes, more or less.”

“And how many does Rojano have?”

“So far as I know, the farm at El Canelo, about a hundred hectares,”

“And that you don't know about?”

She finished her coffee and poured herself more.

“I don't know. Probably another sixty.”

“Another
three hundred,
according to my sources.”

“That could be,” Anabela said. “Why the interrogation?”

“For information purposes only.”

“Well, I feel like Mata Hari in the clutches of the Gestapo.”

“Don't feel that way. Does El Canelo share a boundary with your lands?”

“Partly.”

“Which part?”

“All of it except a twenty-eight-hectare wedge that belonged to my Uncle Arvizu, the one who was shot in Huejutla.”

“Executed by Pizarro, according to Rojano.”

“Yes.”

“Who owns that land now?”

“It's in litigation.”

“With whom?”

“With Local 35 of the oil workers' union.”

“The local headquartered in Poza Rica?”

“Yes.”

“Then with Pizarro?”

“Well, yes.”

“So why do you want those other twenty-five hectares if you already have
eight hundred?

“I know nothing about that,
Negro,
so stop pestering me. Get Rojano to explain it to you.”

“I'm asking you. You're the one who interests me, not Rojano.”

She stood up and began walking in circles as she spoke.

“There's a spring on those twenty-five hectares. It's the main source of the Calaboso River.”

“And?”

“I'm telling you I don't really understand. But having that spring is the difference between irrigating those lands or not. Otherwise, watering them would cost a fortune.”

“But you two are supposed to be getting another fortune.”

“Don't play games,
Negro.
You're making me very nervous. Feel how cold my hands are.”

She lay a hand on my neck. It really was cold, but no colder than they'd been one night ten years before, because Anabela was a woman with cold hands.

“You're going to rule the municipality that gets the most federal money during this administration.”

“That's enough,
Negro.
You don't know the area. It's an inferno without a single passable road. Going there is a punishment, not a reward. But it's all Ro was able to get. Don't you understand that?”

“Which is why you're so critical of him?”

“All I want to do is live in peace and preserve my children's inheritance.”

“And you look down on Rojano because he failed as a politician?”

She was in the sala when she spun around towards me, clearly a bit out of sorts. Though furious, she maintained her self-control.

“Rojano's just beginning,
Negro.
Don't talk about failure. You know about politics, about the ups and downs. It's like a wheel of fortune. Who was José López Portillo six years ago? He was an out-of-work loser who played his cards wrong. And now he's president of the republic. What's political failure? It's an excuse for small-minded people. A real politician never fails. He's always in the game. It's a wheel of fortune, and the most important thing is never to let go. Sometimes you're up, sometimes down. But that's not what's important. The important thing is to keep spinning the wheel, to hang on and not let go, damn it. Not let go.”

She was standing in the middle of the apartment's huge sala with her clenched fists pressed to her body. “And not let go,” she repeated with fierce conviction.

I thought I understood where the motor was that drove Rojano.

The following week, PEMEX director Jorge Díaz Serrano attended the regular Wednesday lunch meeting of the
Ateneo de Angangueo,
one of the most popular political discussion groups during the López Portillo years. Every Wednesday a senior government official—on several occasions the President himself—showed up for these sessions to talk about current events with columnists and writers. Since a regular member of the group was going to be absent, I was invited to the luncheon with Díaz Serrano on June 17, 1977, in
the gray months preceding what would become the Mexican oil boom. All the talk in political circles—among reporters, government officials, business and labor leaders—was glum, focusing on austerity and crisis, the country's disastrous financial situation, the breakdown in productivity, lagging investments, waning confidence, etcetera.

The first surprise was that everything Jorge Díaz Serrano had to say was just the opposite of glum. He spoke of an end to poverty in Mexico, the dawn of an historic new opportunity for the country to confront its incredible backwardness with regards to basic necessities, income distribution, and the general welfare. Oil, Díaz Serrano said, had the potential to reverse once and for all the low rate of domestic investment that was the number one determinant of our underdevelopment.

Mexico, whose colonial rulers squandered its mining wealth in the 17th and 18th centuries, was getting a second chance. In the austere and melancholy 1970s, Mexico could look forward to the possibility of controlling its own destiny, thanks to resources to be extracted directly and indisputably from beneath its own territory. These resources belonged to the Mexican people, according to the country's noblest political tradition, national control of the oil industry.

Díaz Serrano was a man of limited eloquence, tall, lean, and healthy looking despite going gray. His heated insistence that Mexicans lived atop riches as yet to be explored was contagious. By the year 2000, he said, this resource of mythic proportions would bring economic development and justice to Mexico. There was something touching about the simplicity and ingenuousness of his optimism. Instead of our traditional resignation to the idea of an unproductive Mexico doomed to failure, mediocrity, and exploitation by foreigners, Díaz Serrano spoke of a country on which nature was about to bestow a brilliant future. It was a speech that
sought unabashedly to convert, to be both profoundly and superficially flattering to all of us by putting a charge of positive energy into the idea of national pride. It offered real hope that we could overcome the kind of defensive nationalism born of resentment and jealousy. It evoked visions of collective euphoria and an achievable utopia; of a rich, sovereign and desirable Mexico no longer crippled by the brutal deformities of its past; a new, noble, and generous country like the one we'd always believed in and longed for; a great country worthy of our nationalism and hitherto unrequited love.

I took advantage of the occasion to ask about plans to invest in Chicontepec, and Díaz Serrano confirmed that there were such plans. I followed up immediately by asking if he knew Lázaro Pizarro. He nodded. I then asked about his corps of escorts and bodyguards and his strong-arm approach to leadership.

“He's a solid, longtime oil worker,” Díaz Serrano replied. “He started at the bottom with PEMEX when he was a kid. He's a master welder who will be entitled to a generous pension when he retires. He's a born organizer and leader. Go to Poza Rica and take a good close look at him. I challenge you to show me a single enemy of Lacho Pizarro's anywhere in his area.”

“I've been in his area,” I said. “Everybody loves him, and everybody's afraid of him.”

“That may be. But we don't work with saints or devils, we work with flesh and blood human beings. We didn't elect them. They were there when we arrived. And I can tell you that, whatever their defects, Mexico's oil workers are an even greater source of wealth than the oil itself.”

“They say the machinery is very expensive to lubricate,” Manuel Buendía broke in. He was Mexico's most widely read columnist until he was shot from behind and killed on May
30, 1984. His remark alluded to the fact that the union was notoriously corrupt. “Petróleos Mexicanos reputedly spends millions of pesos to keep those gears well oiled. How much do those exemplary leaders cost you, sir?”

Though somewhat annoyed, Díaz Serrano answered with a smile.

“That may be so, Manuel. I don't deny that there may be something to what you say. But I came here to talk about the good news from PEMEX, about its greatness, which is what matters to me, and not the deficiencies that are never in short supply anywhere. What you're unlikely to find elsewhere in this or in many other countries is what oil can give Mexico, a doorway to enter the 21st century as a strong country, as a major player on the world stage.”

In mid August, Rojano was named the PRI candidate for mayor of Chicontepec. He took the candidate's oath in an auditorium in the port of Veracruz. He appeared the following day on the front page of
El Dictamen
with his hand raised and with an ascetic pair of glasses he didn't need. He looked very focused and stern. My telegram read, “Congratulations. Excellent step towards greatness and disaster.”

That night he was on the phone to me. “Brother, you have to come. You can't leave me alone now.”

“How are the kids?” I asked.

“Anabela's pleased,” Rojano answered. “She wants you to come. We want you here. The governor didn't know we were friends. He wants to speak with you too.”

“And what does your godfather say?”

“Pizarro was at the ceremony. He's very supportive.”

“I'm pleased for the children of Veracruz. But don't forget you're a bantamweight, and your godfather's a heavyweight.”

“In politics weight is relative, brother. What counts is being able to seize the moment, the opportunity.” Rojano
sounded triumphant and sure of his future. “Just a minute. Anabela wants to speak to you.”