Carlos Fuentes: Happy Families

THE SON. Abel Pagán walks along the avenue, its walls heavily painted with graffiti. On wall after wall, the Mara Salvatrucha gang announces that it will bring the war to the city. They are young Central Americans displaced by the wars in El Salvador and Honduras. Abel feels sad looking at this graphic violence that makes the city so ugly. Though making Mexico City ugly is a tautology. And graffiti are universal. Abel saw and felt the immense desolation of the broad gray street. There was nothing to be done. He reached the metro station. He decided to jump the gate and board the train without paying for a ticket. Nobody saw him. He felt free. The train, filled with people, pulled out.

THE BOSS. Leonardo Barroso shows no emotion at all when he reads these lines. Or rather, his lack of emotion is the most eloquent statement of his disdain. “Look, Abel. There are no indispensable employees here. Wise up, boy. With modern technology, production increases, and the worker goes down. If I ever offer you something, consider yourself privileged. Here you have a secure, steady job. What I don’t tolerate are stupid whims. Personal rebellions in exchange for the privilege of working with me. With Leonardo Barroso. Understand? It’s up to you. You’re either in or you’re out. I don’t need you. The business will grow with or without you. If you want the truth, it’ll do better without you. You should always feel that a job is a privilege, because you, Abel, are turning out to be superfluous.”

THE FATHER AND MOTHER. I don’t describe Elvira because in my eyes she’s always the same girl I met one day singing the bolero “Two Souls.”

Exita gave birth in the street

Half the girls on the street are pregnant

They’re between twelve and fifteen years old

Their babies are newborns up to six years old

A lot of them are lucky and miscarry because they’re given a beating

And the fetus comes out screeching with fear

Is it better to be inside or outside?

I don’t want to be here mamacita

Toss me in the garbage instead mother

I don’t want to be born and grow dumber each day

With no bath mamacita with no food mother

With no nourishment except alcohol mother marijuana mother

Paint thinner mother glue mother cement mother cocaine mother

Gasoline mother

Your tits overflowing with gasoline mother

I spit flames from the mouth I nursed with mother

A few cents mother

On the crossroads mother

My mouth full of the gasoline I nursed mother

My mouth burning burned

My lips turned to ash at the age of ten

How do you want me to love me mother?

I don’t hate you

I hate me

I’m not worth dog shit mother

I’m only worth what my fists deliver

Fists for fighting fists for stealing fists for stabbing mother

If you’re still alive mother

If you still love me just a little

Order me please to love me just a little

I swear I hate me

I’m less than a dog’s vomit a mule’s shit a hair on your ass an abandoned

Huarache a rotten peach a black banana peel

Less than a drunkard’s belch

Less than a policeman’s fart

Less than a headless chicken

Less than a bum’s old prick

Less than the skinny ass of a Campeche whore

less than a drug dealer’s spittle

less than the shaved ass of a baboon in the zoo

less than less mamacita

don’t let me kill myself all alone

tell me something to make me feel like a real fucker

a real bad motherfucker mother

jes gimme a hand to get out of this mother

damned to this forever mother?

look at my nails black to the quick

look at my eyes glued shut by rheum

look at my lips chapped raw

look at the black slime on my tongue

look at the yellow slime in my ears

look at my green thick navel

mother gemme outta here

what did I do to end up here?

Digging gnawing scratching crying

what did I do to end up here?

xxxxxita

1. Sometimes my father drank and sang Cristero songs.

2. He liked to recall the deeds of his father, our grandfather, in the War of Christ the King, when the Catholics of Jalisco rose up in arms against the “atheistic” laws of the Mexican Revolution. First he would drink and sing. Right after that he would remember and, finally, admonish. “May the sacrifice of your grandfather Abraham Buenaventura not have been in vain.”

Because it seems that Grandfather Abraham was captured by federal troops in 1928 and shot in the Sierra de Arandas, a place, they say, that was fairly desolate and desolating.

“The fact is that it was his time to die. I don’t know how many times he saved himself during the Cristero crusade.”

Our father, Isaac, recounts that at times Grandfather Abraham showed too much compassion and at other times too much cruelty. Though all wars were like that. Many government soldiers fell at the battle of Rincón de Romos. Grandfather Abraham walked among the corpses, pistol in hand, counting them one by one by order of his superior, General Trinidad de Anda.

They were all good and dead. Except for one, lying in the dust, who moved his eyes and pleaded with my grandfather, Have pity on me, I’m a Christian, too. Grandfather Abraham continued on his way but hadn’t taken two steps before the general stopped him cold. “Buenaventura, go back and finish off that soldier.”

“But General, sir—”

“Because if you don’t kill him, I’ll kill you.”

In our family, these stories were told over and over again. It was the way to make them present. Otherwise, they would have been forgotten. My father, Isaac, would not tolerate that. The Buenaventura family, all of it, had to be a living temple to the memory of those who fell in the Crusade of Christ the King. So long ago now because it began in 1925 and ended in 1929. But as current as the news on the radio in this remote ranch in Los Camilos, where there are no newspapers and even the radio played with intermissions of silence, thunder, cackling, and stuttering. The Sunday sermons (and every day’s remembering) supplied the missing information.

The priest’s homily invariably evoked the exploits of Christ the King and lashed out at Masons (where were they?), Communists (what were they?), and all impious people, especially the teachers sent from the capital: the men, sons of Lucifer, the women, socialist harlots.

“As if you needed to know how to read in order to pray,” the good father intoned. “As if you needed to know how to write in order to herd cattle.”

He would make a dramatic pause before exclaiming: “The good Christian needs only a rosary around his neck and a pistol in his hand.”

My father drank and sang. He felt guilty that the war hadn’t touched him. On the other hand, he had times of peace and prosperity here in Los Altos de Jalisco. The war was bloody and cruel. The government emptied the Christian villages and sent the people to concentration camps from which they trooped back in emaciated ranks. They say half of them turned into ghosts. They came back in long starving columns howling like dogs — says my father. The merchants barred their stores with chains. So great was the fury of those who came back that they destroyed the harvests so the shopkeepers would have nothing to sell.

“And they mutilated the animals,” Isaac said, lowering his voice behind his wet, scaly mustache.