Carlos Fuentes - Adam in Eden

Jobs and savings. Also homes, houses in nice neighborhoods, on which, from one day to the next, they could no longer keep up mortgage payments. Able people who lacked only foresight, reduced to the misery that always surrounds Mexico’s islets of relative prosperity.

Large numbers of seasonal field laborers, migrant workers who no longer have a way out of the country, have also ended up in the Gorozpevilles —I’ve had it up to here with that offensive little name! Since the northern border was sealed, the migrants have had no choice but to camp here, without jobs, and more devastatingly still, without official work programs, all abolished because as we exist in a market economy, we trust the market to solve the problem of labor supply and demand. Yeah sure! I think, disappointed by the very theory that I helped make official: the State is bad, the market is good, the State is an ogre, the market is a fairy godmother. .

These are the camps where the forces of order led by Adam Góngora come to unleash attack dogs, to burn down miserable shacks, to rip the stuffing out of mattresses and sofas, and to tighten the garrote on whoever refuses to abandon their piece of turf, and because they can’t be too careful, on those who don’t refuse. I wonder if the denizens had only come to the misnamed Gorozpevilles because they were forced to abandon their homes in Anzures and Patriotismo. Where can they possibly go from here? What is left for them? The mountains? The volcanoes? The open countryside? Cuernavaca? Toluca? That’s a mystery. We’ll see. Perhaps Góngora has a master plan I could only imagine: could my sinister namesake be some sort of a demographer with a plan to decongest Mexico City by culling some of its excess population and forcing those people to migrate to the provinces?

Please observe what a good person I am. I give Góngora the benefit of the doubt. I force myself to think so for the sake of the country. But this is a fleeting hope, an illusion of which I am soon disabused.

The repression is worse every day as it extends from the tents raised at the edges of the railway tracks to those people who find work in fairs and circuses — clowns, acrobats, horseback riders, midgets, and vendors of roasted pumpkin seeds, Pueblan sweet-potato desserts, or Zamoran sweet curdled-milk-with-cinnamon. What did they do to deserve this? Maybe nothing, but Góngora is fighting Tyrians and Trojans. He has to show his strength and that is easier to do by taking on the weak than the criminal . When will he dare take on the powerful ? Ha!

He rounds up drug addicts, the criminally insane, the destitute, the drunks, hookers of all genders, people who have done nothing terrible but are identified (by Góngora) as blight. And I wonder, how far is he willing to go? And I answer my question with another question: why doesn’t he pursue the culprits instead of just their victims? And I answer that question with yet another question: when will my turn come? When will Góngora come after me for A) being rich, and B) being married to Priscila?

Clause A becomes more immediate as Góngora increases his acts of violence, first against the poor, then against the impoverished, and finally against the rich. Of course these staggered measures depend on the public’s approval, motivated more by resentment than by justice. Góngora finds culprits where there are only victims, but he doesn’t shy away from punishing the rich, and this posture will win him more fans than if he had captured Al Capone red handed. I see Góngora come and go, small and intrusive, borrowed haircut, in the papers and on the news, and what is worse, in my own house, which belongs to my father-in-law Don Celestino Holguín, and where Góngora comes to “take tea” with the famous one-time Queen of the Veracruz Carnival, otherwise known as my wife.

All of which leads me to clause B and the renewed circumstances of my wife, Doña Priscila. At first, the capo Góngora comes over to have tea at the King of Bakery’s house, but soon he doesn’t have to come over because Priscila is stepping out. Where does she go? She leaves word that she is with her cousin Sonsoles, which is easy to confirm. “No, Adam, Priscila isn’t over here. I haven’t seen her in months. See you, Adam. Bye.”

This lack of discretion on Priscila’s part only serves to confirm that the Queen of Carnival lies more than King Momo himself, and that she doesn’t take precautions because she (so pious!) is not used to the deceit that I (so graceful!) practice with refined cunning.

I ask myself, my macho self, if there is any comparison between the taking of my wife and the taking of power. For most men, conquering a woman is proof enough of our manhood, and after the conquest, relaxed, we can return to our various occupations. For some men, worthy of compassion, the taking of power is victory enough, and they no longer need anything else: the woman is expendable, a housewife, an apron without a face. For others — and I think Góngora falls into this awful category — to have power and to have an “old lady” are equivalent and complementary. I understand, gentlemen, because that is my category as well. I have power, and I have a lover, and so help me God, ask me no more questions!

The most surprising thing, nevertheless, is the change that Góngora’s attention has brought about in Priscila, a woman I thought I knew like the back of my hand, but who now turns out to be a fistful of ants that I can’t control. What has happened? I don’t want to entertain those most banal of all banalities: Priscila had sexual urges that I didn’t know existed, much less how to satisfy; she adapted to our way of living because, like most women, she let herself be influenced. Comfort, husband, house, maids. It’s difficult to imagine Priscila in another role, for example, that of Chachacha locked away in Santa Catita women’s prison. Chachacha, however, seems like a nun compared to my wife, with the madness I suspect her of, and the Queen of Mambo is more faithful to the gangster Big Snake than the Queen of Spring is to me.

None of which is enough to interrupt the carnival of life:

M.A.M. (The Moral Alliance of Mexico) steps up its campaign against homosexuals. Families organize themselves against gays, even, and especially, against their own gay children. Upright parents demonstrate their moral courage. The brave paterfamilias of a house with a homosexual child hangs on his door the sign:

A PERVERT LIVES HERE

Pervert and perversion are M.A.M.’s favorite words. Their famous advice is to

TAKE CARE OF YOUR CHILDREN!

They have, indeed, organized themselves to an astonishing degree. In an interview with this newspaper, a young man who calls himself “Orchid” discussed the “precarious state” that has been his life since he came out of the closet. “My friends disappear then turn up dead,” he complained. “I’m too afraid to leave my house, even though my dad says he’d rather have a dead son than a faggot one.” Orchid clarifies: “But he doesn’t mean it. He lets me stay in his house because, he says, on the streets I’d wind up dead. I tell him, ‘I don’t mind staying home. It’s better to be gay than dead.’”

In Mexico City, the vast number of houses and apartments abandoned by occupants who have defaulted on their mortgages has inspired a new business (scare) tactic. The competition among real estate agents has become so fierce that they’ve had to launch smear campaigns against each other. Here are some recent ads:

• “Stop by the property on offer at Acatempan Street in the Famsa section. If this house doesn’t scare you, you’re probably already dead.”

• “On Masaryk Avenue, the advertised house looks like an African bordello.”