Death in Veracruz (3 page)

“That's what happens when people get caught in a crossfire,” I started to say.

“What crossfire?” Rojano insisted heatedly.

“You said there was a shootout, and these people got caught in the crossfire.”

“That's what the witnesses said,” Rojano noted. “What I said was that Malerva was unarmed. What's more, the Garabitos were also unarmed. So the question then becomes
which of the victims fired?
The Garabito kid? His mother? The woman with the food stall? Her daughter? Prospero Tlamatl? The unidentified guy? Tlamatl and the unidentified guy don't have twenty pesos in their pockets between them. Can you imagine them with pistols in their waistbands?”

What I needed to do was not to imagine them but to follow Rojano's logic. “So according to you, what happened?” I asked.

“The same thing that happened the following month in Altotonga,” Rojano said as he reached for the second file.

He unwrapped the (purple) crepe paper and spread
the file's contents over the desktop. It was a collection of newspaper clippings that explained how a drunk had fired into the crowd in Altotonga during the festival in honor of the town's patron saint on July 22, 1974. He wounded five and killed two before fleeing, Rojano explained, growing increasingly agitated. “He'd fired at least a dozen times because he hit twelve targets,” Rojano declared. “Unheard of marksmanship for a drunk.”

“He fled almost four blocks, and the mounted police who supposedly gave chase couldn't catch up with him. At the very least he was a surprisingly fast drunk,” Rojano surmised, “and they didn't catch him later either.”

He pulled a kerchief from his pocket and dried the sweat from his lips and cheeks.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“What didn't happen. Read on.”

He handed me the autopsy reports on the cadavers. Certain passages were carefully underlined in red. In stilted coroner's prose, the documents described the deaths of: Manuel Llaca, age 29, by shots from a .38 caliber pistol that struck him in the right groin area, the rib cage, and the left shoulder; and of the widow Mercedes Gonzalez de Martín , age sixty-four, from wounds to the abdomen, left arm, right gluteus and left temple (the latter enclosed in a double red circle). The report went on to detail the wounds inflicted on the other five casualties.

“Count the shots,” Rojano said. “Twelve shots counted one by one.”

I asked about the shots.

“They show the same pattern as in Papantla,” Rojano said, drying his hands with the kerchief. “Shooting breaks out, several people get killed, but only one gets the finishing shot to the head.”

“The woman shot in the head?”

“The woman they made sure was dead, yes.”

“What makes you think they're the same?”

“Look at the circumstances,” Rojano started to say. The facade of domestic tranquility was cracking, and his habitual vehemence began to show through. “A drunk fires twelve shots from a .38 revolver, kills two, and injures five. But the .38 with a twelve-round magazine hasn't been invented. The biggest ones have eight. Sot…, the drunk changes magazines in the midst of the shootout or someone other than the drunk is shooting.”

“Maybe he had two pistols.”

“He didn't have two pistols. According to all the witnesses, he had one. But even if he had two pistols, how was he going to finish off the widow Martín? He never got that close to her.”

“You're saying they were all shot in the head to make sure they were dead. So what? If you're killed by gunfire, bullets are what kill you.”

“No, no, listen to what I'm saying!” Rojano leaped from his chair. “The Martín woman was already down when she was shot in the head. The shots came from in front of her. First she was shot in the abdomen, then in the left arm, and the impact flipped her over. That's why the next shot got her in the butt. But she was shot in the temple in cold blood when she was already on the ground. They took advantage of the confusion to finish her off.”

His version was admirably descriptive and precise. It also betrayed many imaginative hours reconstructing what happened from a blur of forensic data.

“She could still have been hit in the shootout,” I insisted.

“What shootout, brother?” Rojano began pacing about the office, wiping his collar with his kerchief. “You're looking at an execution, damn it! Don't you see?”

“I see, but I'm out of whiskey. Is the bar closed?”

“Of course not. Whatever you like.”

He left the room, and I took a closer look at the files. The surveyors' plats identified properties belonging to Raul Garabito and Severiano Martín. The former consisted of 300 hectares in the municipality of Chicontepec; the latter nearly 500 wedged between the eastern spur of the Sierra Madre and the Calaboso River in the municipalities of Chicontepec, Veracruz, and Huejutla, Hidalgo.

I opened the third file and saw more photos from provincial morgues. These were from Huejutla, five bodies cut down during the town carnival (November 1974) a few months after Papantla and Altotonga.

The accompanying newspaper clip from
El Dictamen
said that gunmen (i.e. the henchmen of local political bosses) mowed down the Arrieta brothers whom it described with characteristic editorial impartiality as “leaders of smalltime communist pseudo-peasant organizations.” The gunmen “achieved their objective at no risk to themselves by firing into the crowd at a cockfight killing five and wounding four. Except for the Arrietas, who were notorious communist agitators in rural Hidalgo, the remaining victims of the shooting were innocent bystanders.”

A typed list of the dead summarized Rojano's very different version of events. Rather than the Arrieta brothers, he put check marks next to the names of Severiano Ruíz and Matías Puriel. I looked them up in the coroner's report. Rojano had underlined the same sentence where it was repeated in two different paragraphs: “Projectile penetration is also visible in the left parietal area with severe disruption of the encephalic mass and superficial external burns characteristic of a projectile fired from a distance no greater than thirty centimeters.”

I was beginning to study the surveyors' plats when
Rojano returned with ice and mineral water which he placed on the stack of orange and mango crates next to the desk.

“The pattern is identical,” he said with a nod towards the third file while opening the bottles. “The Arrietas died in the shooting, but they weren't the ones executed.”

He was already into his story so I served myself and asked about the executions.

“They were half brothers,” Rojano said, beginning to drink from one of the water bottles. Then, surprisingly, he added, “They were both sons of Severiano Martín, the man whose widow was executed in Altotonga.”

“All from the same family?”

“Sons of Severiano Martín, a dirty old stud who knocked up every woman around and sowed the whole area with sons. He didn't give them his surname, but he gave his land to the two who got killed in Huejutla.”

“In Chicontepec?”

“Exactly. You looked at the plats already?”

I nodded.

Rojano continued: “Old man Martín had 1,500 hectares of the best land in the area, and he died without a will like all the other old-time bosses. But between them Severiano Ruiz and Matías Puriel owned some 350 hectares. They killed the widow who had 500 and executed the half brothers. That makes 850 hectares in all.”

“And who wound up with the land?”

“That's the thing, nobody did. The lands went unclaimed.” Once again Rojano grew excited by his own words. “It turns out there are no heirs or relatives left to file valid claims to these lands. In a nutshell they can be easily acquired with a combination of money and the right political connections.”

“What do you mean in a nutshell?”

“In a nutshell I mean that two whole families have been
executed in cold blood with alibis built in to divert attention at a cost of nine dead and nine more wounded.”

“That's absurd. How did you manufacture this information?”

“How did I
manufacture
it?” Rojano bellowed as he leaped out of his chair. “Don't fuck around with me, brother. I didn't
manufacture
it. Ask me how
I found out,
not how I manufactured it. There's nothing slanted in what you're looking at, nothing inconsistent or made up.”

“Then how did you
find
it all out?”

“Anabela was the godchild and niece of the widow Martín whose maiden name was Mercedes González Guillaumín.” Rojano pulled out his kerchief as he spoke. “Aside from that, there are the letter files, the leather saddlebags the folders came in.”

I picked up the folder on the desk. Rojano kept talking.

“Everyone who was executed received one of these letter files months before receiving a bullet in the head. The one you have in your hands reached the widow three weeks before the bullets in Altotongo. Here are the others.”

He groped behind the orange crates and retrieved two tooled leather letter files covered with dust and pseudo-Mexican artwork. He ran his fingertips over the one he had in his hands. The quality of the leather was extraordinary, thick but smooth and malleable to the touch like cloth.
Whoever can add can divide.

“In the leather letter files there were offers to buy the lands described in the documentation,” Rojano said. “I found them in their houses afterwards. Garabito's widow had hers sewed up the sides to make a handbag. She had it with her at the market in Papantla when she was executed. Here it is.”

It made a horrible handbag. There was a strap attached to the letter file with gold staples so it could be worn over the shoulder.

Rojano continued: “A servant of the widow Martín had it, a servant who was sort of a nursemaid to Anabela. There are close ties among the families with French blood. They don't say Martín, they say
Martán,
and not Guillaumín, but
Guillomé.
The nursemaid said the stepsons had received the same kind of folders. According to her, the evil eye came with them.”

“But you said that what came in them were purchase offers.”

“Each one was actually an ultimatum, a final offer that was the last in a series.”

“How do you know that?”

“From the best possible source.” Rojano rubbed his kerchief between his hands. “I was told by the buyer himself.”

The whiskey had had its effect. I didn't react, but the tale with all its scaffolding struck me as quintessential Rojano: overblown and labyrinthine with an agenda shrouded in shadows. I was glad to see him return with more liquor. I set my suspicions aside and relaxed for the first time all night.

“You mean to say you know the buyer?” I asked. “You know the would-be benefactor of these ex-landowners?”

“That's not all I know, brother.”

“A schoolmate?” I went on. “A childhood friend?”

“Not quite, brother. For the last two years we've been having coffee whenever he's in the city. That's where the story begins as far as you're concerned.”

“You mean the man behind this massacre?”

“Yes, the brains. We have long conversations whenever he comes to town.”

“To plan the future of the children of Veracruz?”

“Don't fuck around with me, brother. It's no laughing matter.”

“You're the one that sits down with him, and he's the
one who collects dead people.”

“To feel him out, brother. To get to know him.”

“What other reason could there be?”

“Stop wising off for a minute and listen to me,
Negro.
That's not the whole story. The problem is there's almost no way I can avoid having him as a political ally.”

I got up and served myself a sixth shot of the whiskey whose therapeutic effects were increasingly hard to resist. “Congratulations on your ally,” I said as I sat down again.

“It's not up to me,” Rojano said. “He carries a lot of weight in the municipalities in the northern part of the state.”

“And what do the elections in the northern part of the state have to do with you?” I said. “You're from the south, from the coast at worst. What do you have to offer as a candidate in the north? Aside from planning the future of the children of Veracruz.”

“That's what the governor wants.”

“Is it what you want?”

“That doesn't matter. I'm a politician, I go where I'm needed. But if you want to know what I want, I'll tell you. Besides, you know perfectly well what I want. I want to go back to Chicontepec as mayor.”

“The better to plan for the future of the children of Veracruz.”

“You're jerking me around,” Rojano said.

“I'm not jerking you around. Just let me guess: you want to go back to Chicontepec so you
can fight from within.”

“God damn it,
Negro.
You're jerking me around.”

“To wage war on your ally from within. I mean so you can plan a better future for the children of Veracruz.”

“The better to screw your mother,
Negro.”

“Of course, why else?”

“Stop playing games with me, damn it. You're just jerking me around, that's all you're doing. I'm speaking from
the heart, I'm baring my soul to you, and you're just jerking me around.”

He sat down in the chair behind the desk and ran his hand wearily through his hair as if his fatigue would rub off. Enervated and half asleep, he took a swallow of the highball I put on the table, then another and another until he'd emptied the glass, ice and all.

“For a man who doesn't drink, you have a taste for whiskey,” I said.

“One more thing,” he replied, picking up where he left off. “Anabela owns land in that same area.”

I stepped to the orange crates to refill what Rojano had drunk, but the ice and the soda were gone. I poured myself straight whiskey and took a drink. It was absurd how the same old rage kept coming back, the feeling that Rojano's entanglements meant trouble for Anabela, that he was unfairly putting her at risk. “You just finished showing me a collection of photos of women and children who were killed for nothing,” I told him. “And now you're telling me Anabela could be involved. What's going on? What are you getting at?”