Aztec Rage (79 page)

After four years in the heavens, they were transformed into birds with rich plumage and descended back to earth, flitting from flower to flower, partaking of the nectars.

But Aztec gods no longer ruled the heavens. The Christian deity called the Almighty was King of Heaven. Aztec souls—and Aztec people—were now consigned to hell.

The daunting trials in Mictlan I must endure in the afterlife that awaits me dominated my thoughts as I flew into a crack in the mountain. The first eight hells in the Underworld are physical challenges—I must make my way between two mountains clashing together, swim a raging river, crawl
among deadly snakes and hungry crocodiles, climb a cliff with jagged edges as sharp as an obsidian blade, survive a frozen wind that cuts like knives, battle raging beasts and eaters of hearts. After four years, if I survive and find my way to the ninth hell, there I will prostrate myself before Mictlantecuhtli, the King of Terrors.

If he finds me worthy, he will give me the Peace of Nothingness by turning my soul into dust and scattering it on the sand and dirt in the parched land that lies to the north . . . that place called Chihuahua.

Chihuahua, 1811

E
LIZONDO'S AMBUSH WENT
off as planned. As the main army slowly brought up the rear, one after another, the revolutionary leaders were ambushed and captured as they approached the wells.

Two of the leaders displayed great courage. Father Hidalgo, warriorpriest that he was, tried to fight. He drew his pistol to engage the enemy, but the horsemen with him, seeing they were outnumbered and out-gunned, pleaded with him to put down the weapon.

Allende also showed rock-hard courage. Refusing to surrender, Allende fired off a shot at Elizondo before he was overpowered. But his recklessness cost the life of his son, Indalecio. The twenty-year-old was killed when bullets struck the carriage he rode in.

The leaders of the revolution were herded across the desert, like shackled cattle led to slaughter, to the governor at Chihuahua. The purpose was to keep the padre far away from the heart of the colony for fear its indios would rise up in his support.

As for me, I was an inconsequential criminal of no importance, except for the hope that I would reveal where the marqués's treasure was located.
Sí,
it didn't take long for my captors to find out that I had not delivered the treasure to the padre. So rather than executing me immediately, the fate of so many lesser revolutionaries, I was taken in shackles with the padre, Allende, and the others as an animal is led to its abattoir.

For six hundred miles we slogged across a barren, parched wasteland to Chihuahua. Chained hand and foot, we marched, day after day, week after week, our bodies aching, our mouths and muscles burning.

It broke my heart to see the padre tormented as a common criminal. He was older than the rest of us—twice as old as most of us—and the trek was hardest on him. Allende and I had a determination and machismo that kept us from complaining, but we couldn't match the padre for sheer courage. He had a moral strength and an iron will that none of us possessed.

Someone with an unofficial interest in my welfare accompanied the military expedition to Chihuahua. Isabella rode in the coach with Elizondo
as his “special guest.” My former love had obviously recruited a new inamorato to assist her quest for the gold. How long would this bitch flog my soul with sharp spurs and a barbed whip?

Chihuahua: home of a breed of small dogs with a big bark and snapping jaws. A provincial town of about six thousand cradled in a valley nearly a mile high, it was in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by desert. It was a mining center but on a smaller scale than Guanajuato. Its northern location made it a natural place to sympathize with the revolution, but that movement was now in chains.

We were marched in shackles down the main street, paraded in dust and rags, worn and beaten bloody for all to observe. The governor issued a warning to the populace: watch the prisoners being paraded but show no support.

I was not angry at my humiliation; whatever disgrace I suffered, it was less than I deserved. But my heart burned for the padre.

They watched silently, these common people whose hearts and dreams the padre had fired by his vision of freedom for all but who were now disillusioned. Despite the prohibition against emotional displays, sobs and tears poured out as the padre staggered down the street—like the rest of us—in wrist shackles and leg irons, weak with pain from the deprivation of our desert crossing. But like Christ shouldering his cross, the padre did not falter. Squaring his shoulders, he kept moving forward, refusing to show any weakness, still inspiring us all.

I silently mourned Marina's death, the brave sacrifice she had made for me. I was grateful that she had not lived to see the padre in chains.

ONE HUNDRED AND NINE

I
'
M TOLD THIS
prison cell is my last stop before hell's inferno. Nothing would please the guards more than to see me burning in a lake of fire. For five months the inquisitors have visited on me, day and night, their own version of hellfire everlasting as they tried to pry from my lips the location of the marqués's treasure. Theirs has been a thankless job, for I have cursed their fathers, questioned their manhood, and spat in their faces.

Yesterday a priest came, offering me “a final opportunity” to cleanse my soul and purge my heart . . . by disclosing the treasure's whereabouts. I told him that when he brought me physical proof that God commanded me to tell him, that God had granted him a license to remit sins, I'd cheerfully tell him where the treasure was.

¡Ay! Instead of taking me up on my generous offer, he fled, shouting that I was a heretic who would burn forever in balefire. He wouldn't have long to wait to get his wish. Tomorrow my execution would be celebrated.

Was I ready give up the ghost? Ready for the goddess of justice to drag me to judgment? To punish me for my innumerable transgressions? No, not until I transgressed one last time on this planet we call home.

Before I started this long confession, did I not say I would avenge myself on the one who had betrayed me?

It's said the devil taunts those who leave unfinished business on earth, that his mocking words are daggers in your heart. El Diablo is one clever bastardo, no? He knows that it is not our triumphs we carry beyond the grave but our regrets.

I heard voices outside my cell and the rattle of a key in my cell door. The door swung open, and a priest in a hooded robe entered. Seeing another one of his ilk did not please me.

“Hijo de la chingada!”
I growled.
“Chingo tu puta madre!”
Calling him the son of a wanton woman, I then told him what he could do with his mother.

“Such language, señor, to a man of the cloth.” A delicate hand pushed back the hood, revealing a lovely face.

“Raquel!”

A key to the cell door, a sharp sword, and a fast horse might have been more welcome . . . but not by much. After we hugged each other for what seemed to be an eternity, she pulled bread, meat, and wine from under her robe. We sat down so the condemned man could enjoy his final repast.

“Tell me about the padre and the others,” I said.

The criollo officers had been shot in the back because they were considered traitors. They had met their maker over a month ago.

“Allende, of course, was defiant to the end. He became so angry at the
judge that he broke the manacles holding him and struck the judge with a piece of chain before the soldiers could subdue him.”

Only one of their officers had disgraced himself. The criollo officer Mariano Abasolo, to save his hide, testified that Allende forced him to participate in the revolt. The supplications of his beautiful wife, Doña María—and no doubt a payment in gold—obtained for him a prison sentence in Cádiz.

Unlike the spineless Abasolo, the padre had faced the military court with dignity and grace. Brought in chains before the judges, he stood tall and assumed responsibility for the revolution. He freely admitted he had raised armies, manufactured weapons and ordered gachupines executed in retaliation for the murder of civilians by the Spanish commanders.

“He regretted that thousands had died for the cause of liberty,” Raquel said, “but he believed that God would have mercy on him because the cause was just.”

Because the padre had to be defrocked by a church process before he was executed, the officers had been executed first. The court ordered the officer's heads pickled and preserved in brine until the head of the padre joined them.

At daybreak on July 31, 1811, the guards led the padre from his tower cell to the prison courtyard. When the commandant asked if he had anything to say, the padre requested that candy he brought be given to the firing squad when they finished.

Raquel's voice trembled as she described the death of a man whose ideals and courage had fired the passions of millions.

“The padre went to his death with the same courage he showed at all times in life. He faced the twelve-man firing squad without flinching. Because he had been a priest, he was allowed to die facing the firing squad. To help them with their aim, he placed his hand over his heart.

“The marksmen however were less resolute than the good father. Eleven of them missed, and only one ball struck his hand. The commandant ordered them to fire again, but the shots again missed the mark. Finally, an officer ordered several soldiers to administer the coup de grâce with muskets held inches from his heart.”

Tears welled in Raquel's eyes.

“And with him died any hope of independence,” I said.

“Don't say that. When the padre shouted the grito, he started a fire that burns eternal in the hearts of all those who love freedom, and it's not a flame the viceroy can extinguish. It continues to spread and will consume the greedy gachupines who plunder not just our money but our hopes and dreams, our freedom and our lives.”

“Do you really believe that or are you just—”

“Yes, Juan, it's true. What we have fought for—and so many have died for—is not forgotten. Each day the flame grows brighter. Father Morelos
and others are keepers of that flame and carry on the fight. Each time one of them falls, another picks up the torch. The Spanish have more trained soldiers than we do, they have muskets and cannons while we have clubs and knives, but we are fighting for our homes and families.”

“As the common people of Spain themselves have done against the French.”

“Yes, and we have our own Geronas and maids of Zaragoza. The viceroy and his minions don't understand. They think they can stamp out the fire, but it's spreading everywhere. In Guadalajara and Acapulco, in the capital, the jungles of the Yucatán and even here in the deserts of the north, its flames blaze. The cry will resound again and again, until we're free.”

Her tears were gone. Her eyes, clear as God's own heaven, burned with the dream of freedom.

She was right. I knew it in my heart. The padre had unleashed a spirit that had awakened the people of New Spain. That spirit now burned in the hearts of peons, men and women savaged and scourged by the whips of mine and hacienda owners. No longer whipped dogs, they now had the courage the padre had given them to stand and fight, and the gachupines would not recognize it until it was too late for them.

Raquel spoke of Marina. “I saw to it that she received a proper burial. Someday, when it can be done, the women of the revolution will salute this Doña Marina as the First Lady of Liberty.”

She hugged me and said with genuine concern, “Juan, I've tried—”

“I know. Don't worry; I'm not afraid. I won't show fear. I won't dishonor the padre and Allende. I wouldn't give the gachupines satisfaction.”

She cried softly against my shoulder, and I smoothed her soft hair. I don't know what is in me, the devil must make me do such things, but one moment she was crying on my shoulder, and the next I had her on my cot, both of us gasping with passion. I made love to her as if we were the last two people on earth, the last two people in the universe, now, forever, till the end of time.