To add spice to this political pizza, President Paredes, in a master stroke, renounced his membership in the right-wing National Action Party (PAN) — just to set an example — and then declared, in absolute impartiality, that he was joining millions of voters like himself who had to debate very seriously in their heart of hearts a decision pregnant with consequences: to which party do I wish to belong from now on?
This took place at the end of March. Then there was a long silence, until April 2, when President Paredes asked at a joint session of Congress meeting to honor Porfirio Díaz (UNION AND OBLIVION), whose name was inscribed that same afternoon in gold letters in the Congress, why citizens were so slow about massively joining the new parties, upon which Representative Hipólito Zea, deputy from the ninth district of Chihuahuila, stood up to exclaim emotionally, spontaneously, and brilliantly from his place:
“Because we are waiting to see which party you join, Mr. President!”
And that shout was followed by another from Representative Peregrino Ponce y Peón, Senator from Yucatango:
“Your party will be our party, Mr. President. Just tell us which way to go, so we can be with you!” added the peasant leader Xavier Corcuera y Braniff, deputy from the twentieth district of Michoalisco, and “Please stop torturing us, Mr. President,” tearfully whined the deputy from Tamaleón and representative of the actors’ guild, Ms. Virginia Iris de Montoya.
Genuinely moved, the President answered amid an impressive national silence:
“You just can’t make a snap decision in a situation of such transcendence as this one. I cavil. I ponder. I consult the core of my Mexican being. In September I will reveal my decision. But let it not be an impediment to anyone else’s decision: let everyone freely choose the party that’s best for him.”
This time, Uncle Homero rose from his semirecumbent position, the tears in his eyes reflecting those of our President, and from his lips came forth this exclamation, one of his favorites, almost as an involuntary reflex, the essential expression of his political being: “At your service, Mr. President!”
But knowing himself to be excluded, for the moment, from these events of historical transcendence, his candidacy for the Senate suspended (he hoped) but not nipped in the bud, he had to limit himself to lucubrating in the void, like the proverbial man on the street who has no access to well-founded rumors, political breakfasts, high-quality gossip, unnamed sources, and other funds of solid information: what does this declaration mean for the fortunes of the National Action Party (PAN), to which until this very moment President Paredes said he belonged, having won the election under its blue-and-white banner? Might the situation have so bettered that the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) could once again take control of the executive responsibility and symbolism, without piling the blame of all our problems on the back of the opposition? What part would Mamadoc play in all this as the central symbol of unity amid this inter- and intraparty squabbling? Would her creator Minister Federico Robles Chacón lose power because of what happened to her? Does this decision mean a return to power of the most eminent emissary of the past, Minister Ulises López? Enigmas, enigmas that Homero, in despair, could not resolve, which made him once again sink into the contagious languor of pure spectatorship; and what, he mused, were the majority of Mexicans if not spectators for those endless contests served up by national television, betting on every conceivable thing: how many miles is it from Acaponeta to San Blas, how many tortillas were sold in the month of March in the state of Tlaxcala, be the first to call, we will give a prize to the first caller to our studio, the first letter, the first coupon; how many miles are there on the odometer of the Red Arrow Mexico City — Zumpango bus number 1066, manufactured by Leyland and sold to Mexico because it was spewing out clouds of carbon monoxide, nicknamed Here’s My Sword, Follow Me, Men? Hold on! Looks like Leyland’s getting a corner on the prize market: the driver who’s brought most merchandise into the City of Palaces in a single day has also won himself a prize. (There appears on the screen an albino boy dressed in black leather, said to be named Gómez, long-haul trucker; he disappears from the screen as quickly as he appeared.) They all saw the entire nation immersed in prizes, tests, anniversaries, which don’t leave them a free minute, as they await the grand prize, the perpetual superlottery of Makesicko Shitty: useless, exhausted, dead — but about the Mexican middle class we can at least say that it was never bored: this was its solution and its paradox: UNION AND OBLIVION and yet one more subliminal message that each afternoon blinks on all the TV sets and which says, redundantly:
CIRCUSES AND CIRCUSES
and further transcending Roman demagoguery which promised, besides, bread bread the doctor’s dead, the blessèd smell of the bakery, but who likes bread without butter? yeah, but what about circuses and circuses? Ah, sighed Don Homero, the meaning of Catholic carnival was to abolish terror, even if our relative Benítez would say that among our Indians it’s the devil who organizes the carnival.
Don Fernando Benítez rapidly sketched out a map of the republic on one of the blackboards in the Tlalpan house. He made Don Homero Fagoaga, dressed as always in red-striped pajamas and barefoot, sit down in front of it as if he were the class dunce.
“Where are we?” asked Benítez, marking an X with green chalk on the blackboard.
“In Tepatepec Hidalgo,” huffed Homero, “prepared to give our lives so that the peasant organization shall be respected.”
“And now?” asked Uncle Fernando, marking another spot on his map.
“In Pichátaro Michoacán. We’ve just walked into Pichátaro to defend the workers’ cooperative.”
“Look — and don’t shut your eyes, fatso — where’s this?”
“I’m in Cotepec de Harinas, struggling to have the municipal election respected.” Homero stood up with his eyes closed and grabbed Benítez by the throat. “I’m going to send you to jail for life, your honor”—Benítez shaken about by the furious Uncle Homero—“for allowing yourself to be suborned so you’d be on the good side of the stronger party”—and Benítez slams his elbow into Homero’s paunch. “It’s you who’s going to prison, your honor, because unless the judiciary is independent everything else is an illusion.” And Benítez raised his miner’s-boot-covered foot to squash Homero’s bare toes. “Listen here, your honor,” snorted Homero, hanging on to the neck of the semi-asphyxiated Benítez, “we Mexicans can practice democracy without any need for hit men, or crimes, or bribes, or hucksters!” and Don Fernando had doubts about what to do: “Do I allow him to go on living out my teaching with such conviction, or do I stop him from strangling me?” He stopped doubting and let his miner’s boot fall on Homero’s bare toes, the fat man shrieked and sat down in his dunce’s seat once again, rubbing his smashed toe. Benítez straightened his tie and went on, coughing from time to time:
“You shall walk the byways of Mexico untiringly, shedding those extra pounds, ready to give your life so that in Tepatepec Hidalgo the peasant organization shall be respec…”
* * *
My father, an apostle (though now he was somewhat reluctant about it) of disorder, then imagined a diabolical play in which laughter and fear would coexist perfectly: the humor would not annihilate what is individual in terror, only what is finite in it. My mother did not understand this, later on, in bed, my father pointed toward a photo from the Cristero war, taken around 1928, which they had tacked up next to their bed: a religious guerrilla wearing a felt hat, open shirt, vest, riding trousers, and boots with spurs, stands against a wall and waits for his death. The government rifles are already cocked. But he holds a dry cigarette in his stained fingers and bends a knee forward as if he were expecting his girlfriend and not death (and who said what?) and he smiles the way no one has ever smiled. Baby, I swear: can you imagine yourself smiling like that when you’re about to die, when they’re going to shoot you? Could you do it? Would you like to try? She said no; things like that were macho myths, magic ceremonies for jerks; she wasn’t interested in dying, with or without dignity.