Carlos Fuentes - The Crystal Frontier

and Texas did not look at Juárez, it only looked at Texas, and Texas only saw two presidents cross the bridge to visit and congratulate each other, William Howard Taft, fat as an elephant, seeing him walk on the bridge made everyone fearful the bridge wouldn’t hold, immense, smiling, with roguish eyes and ringmaster moustaches, Porfirio Díaz light and thin under the weight of his myriad medals, an Indian from Oaxaca, sinewy at the age of eighty, with a white moustache, furrowed brow, wide nostrils, and the sad eyes of an aged guerrilla fighter, the two of them congratulating themselves that Mexico was buying merchandise and that Texas was selling it, that Mexico was selling land and that Texas was buying it,

Jennings and Blocker more than a million acres of Coahuila, the Texas Company almost five million acres in Tamaulipas, William Randolph Hearst almost eight million acres in Chihuahua,

they didn’t see the Mexicans who wanted to see Mexico whole, wounded, dark, stained with silver, and cloaked in mud, her belly petrified like that of some prehistoric animal, her bells as fragile as glass, her mountains chained to one another in a vast orographic prison,

her memory tremulous: Mexico

her smile facing the firing squad: Mexico

her genealogy of smoke: Mexico

her roots so old they decided to show themselves without shame

her fruit bursting like stars

her songs breaking apart like piñatas,

the men and women of the revolution reached this point,

from here they departed, on the bank of the río grande, río bravo, but before marching south to fight

they stopped, showing the gringos the wounds we wanted to close, the dreams we needed to dream, the lies we had to expel, the nightmares we had to assume:

we showed ourselves and they saw us,

once again we were the strangers, the inferiors, the incomprehensible, the ones in love with death, the siesta, and rags, they threatened, disdained, didn’t understand that to the south of the río grande, río bravo, for one moment, during the revolution, the truth we wanted to be and share with them shone, different from them, before the plagues of Mexico returned, the corruption, the abuse, the misery of many, the opulence of a few, disdain as a rule, compassion the exception, equal to them:

will there be time? will there be time? will there be time? will there be time for us to see each other and accept each other as we really are, gringos and Mexicans, destined to live together at the border of the river until the world gets tired, closes its eyes, and shoots itself, confusing death with sleep?

What had Leonardo Barroso been talking about a minute before? He was almost spitting into the cellular phone, demanding compensation for the losses these gangs of thieves— these end-of-the-millennium Pancho Villas! — attacking trains were causing him, piling up debris outside the terminals, robbing shipments from the assembly plants, smuggling in workers: did Murchinson know what it cost to stop a train, investigate if there were illegals on it, fuck up the schedules, replace stolen merchandise, get the orders to their destinations on time — in a word, to fulfill contracts? What had Leonardo Barroso been thinking about a minute before? The threat had been repeated that morning. Over the cellular phone. Territories had to be respected. Responsibilities as well. In matters related to drug trafficking, Mr. Barroso, only Latin Americans are guilty, Mexicans and Colombians, never Americans: that was the crux of the system. In the United States there can never be a drug king like Escobar or Caro Quintero; the guilty parties are those who sell drugs, not those who buy them. In the United States there are no corrupt judges — they’re your monopoly. There are no secret landing strips here, we don’t launder money here, Mr. Barroso, and if you think you can blackmail us in order to save your skin and be proclaimed a national hero in the process, it’s going to cost you plenty because there’s millions and millions involved here — you know that. Your whole way of operating is to invade territories that aren’t yours, Mr. Barroso; instead of being content with the crumbs, you want the whole feast, Mr. Barroso … and that just cannot happen …

What did Leonardo Barroso feel a moment before? Michelina’s hand in his as he feverishly sought the girl’s familiar heat without finding it, as if a bird, long caressed and consoled, had suffocated, dead from so much tenderness, tired of so much attention …

Where was Leonardo Barroso a minute before?

In his Cadillac Coupe de Ville, being driven by a chauffeur supplied by his partner Murchinson, he and Michelina sitting in back, the chauffeur driving slowly to get past the booths and obstacles U.S. Immigration had set up so immigrants couldn’t run through and cause a stampede, Michelina making who knows what small talk about the Mexican chauffeur Leandro Reyes who crashed in that tunnel in Spain, crashed into that foolish nineteen-year-old boy driving in the other direction …

Where was Leonardo Barroso a minute later?

Riddled with bullets, shot five times by a high-powered weapon, the driver dead at the wheel, Michelina miraculously alive, screaming hysterically, clutching her hands to her throat, as if she wanted to strangle her shouts, immediately remembering her tears, wiping them in the crook of her elbow, staining the sleeve of her Moschino jacket with mascara.

Where was Juan Zamora two minutes later?

At Leonardo Barroso’s side, answering the urgent call— Doctor! Doctor! — he’d heard as he crossed the international bridge. He looked for vital signs in the pulse, the heart, the mouth — nothing. There was nothing to do. It was Juan Zamora’s first case in American territory. He didn’t recognize in that man with his brains blown out the benefactor of his family, the protector of his father, the powerful man who sent him to study at Cornell…

What did Rolando Rozas do three minutes later?

He spoke into his cellular phone to transmit the bare news — job done, no complications, zero errors — then passed his sweaty hand over his airplane-colored suit, as Marina called it, adjusted his tie, and began to stroll, as he did every night, through his favorite restaurants, through the bars and streets of El Paso, to see what new girl might turn up.

now Marina of the Maquilas crosses the bridge over the rio grande, rio bravo, and she’s holding the arm of a tiny old lady wrapped in shawls, protecting her, an unreadable old woman under the palimpsest of infinite wrinkles that cross a face like the map of a country lost forever,

Dinorah asked her this favor, take my grandma to the other side of the bridge, Marina, deliver her to my uncle Ricardo on the other side, he doesn’t want to come back to Mexico ever again, it makes him sad, makes him afraid, too, that they might not let him back in,

take my grandma to the other side of the río grande, río bravo, so my uncle can take her back to Chicago,

she only came to comfort me on the death of the kid, she can’t do it alone, and not just because she’s almost a hundred years old

but because she’s spent so much time living as a Mexican in Chicago that she forgot Spanish a long time ago and never learned English,

she can’t communicate with anyone

(except with time, except with the night, except with oblivion, except with mongrels and parrots, except with the papayas she touches in the market and the coyotes that visit her at dawn, except with the dreams she can’t tell anyone, except with the immense reserve of that which is not spoken today so it can be said tomorrow)