Taino (14 page)

Catalina Diaz is a midwife, one of the old-timers who still remembers many of our cures. Even the Spanish ladies go to her with their ailments. She uses the
manatí
cranium powder in a broth to strengthen the women after childbirth. However, my message was cryptic. With Catalina, whom I have known for more than thirty years, I use the term
baby
when refering to Enriquillo. I mean to ask Catalina to be my ear in the Valenzuela household, so she might learn what those vile minds plot against her nephew. Two of Catalina's daughters also serve the household. All three of these women conduct themselves humbly and piously, seldom talking, so that their
señores
hardly know them to understand and speak the Spanish language, but they do. Among them they are bound to hear most of the talk in the house of Valenzuela.

Fifty.
A note for later writing.

Rereading my conversation with the good friar, I note my reference to the mission of the Hieronymites and also to his project to set up free Indian communities. I will explain both of these events as they come up in my recollections. I brought them up to him to remind him how his ideas have failed in the past, at other times when he was stronger and hoped for total solutions to our people's misery.

September 15, 1532

Fifty-one.
Reminding Las Casas of Enriquillo's first cause

I write this in the late evening. Tonight the grand men of Santo Domingo met at the House of Contracts. The fifteen major sugar cane plantations were represented. The large cattlemen were also there, even Bishop Bastidas, reputed to have more than twenty thousand head of cattle in ranches from here to the Bahuruku.

I met the good friar at the convent gate. More than a dozen monks were already congregated, and we started to walk down together. I paired off with Las Casas. “Will you be speaking tonight?” I asked in his ear. “Yes,” he answered.

“Speak please of Enriquillo's cause.”

“Of course, I intend to.”

“He has always wanted peace, to live in harmony,” I said. “He has kept his Catholic sacraments, even in the mountains, fasting his Fridays and even hearing Mass whenever possible.”

“Do not worry, Dieguillo, we will speak of the
cacique
's character and of the justice of his cause. But you tell me: will Enriquillo come to a parley? Can I hold his promise in my hand that he will come in? “

“Enriquillo trusts you, Father,” I said. “But can he forget the parley at Anacaona's, Ovando's dirty trick? We must remember, Father, how each of the major
caciques
, one by one, were tricked and killed.”

“I will be there to guarantee Enriquillo's safety.”

“And your safety. Who would guarantee that?”

He shook his head. Las Casas is totally fearless. Always ready for martyrdom, he is not quite impressed by arguments about safety. But for a chief like Enriquillo, this is preeminent. His first loyalty as
cacique
is precisely for the safe settling of the dispute and the accommodation of his people in their own community.

“It is complicated to guarantee the safety of our people on the Bahuruku. You know they will try to kill him.”

“What brutes they would show themselves to be!”

“Yes, and our young
cacique
would be dead.”

We walked. To impress him again I told him, as we neared the House of Contracts: “While you speak, I will try to find out when they intend to kill him.”

He vacillated a step and turned to me, as if awakened abruptly. “Strength, Father,” I reassured him. “I am praying for your success.”

Fifty-two.
The townsmen have reasons for peace.

The House of Contracts is a two-story building. It has a large meeting hall that was crowded with more than eighty people. On the platform, the
oidores
, with Judge Suazo at the head and Vadillo to his right, looked over the hall. Some thirty or forty servants waited on the street, verandas, and stairways of the large government building, half of them
mánso
Indians, half of them Negro Africans. More than twenty of the permanent guard milled about outside, interspersed but not mixing with the servant group. Only four, led by a lieutenant, had stand-up duty, two inside and two outside. The commander of the permanent guard was inside also, sitting in a second row on the platform, behind Suazo.

When Las Casas came up to the door, the lieutenant quickly saluted him and kissed his ring. Immediately, the good friar was ushered toward the raised platform and seated next to the vicar and bishop. All greeted each other graciously, though not a one of them respect the other. Las Casas took his seat, and I could see his face through the window as he lowered his friar's hood to the shoulders. Then the various
señores
came in and many, almost all, approached Father Las Casas, offering polite greetings. I found this completely remarkable because to a man they all hate him deeply, as he has harassed their persons and insulted their endeavors many times.

Of the meeting, I heard the first part, up until the good friar's intervention, when Doña Catalina got my attention. After the bishop's blessing, Suazo called it to order, explaining the contemplations now before the king's court, relating to the troubles of the Bahuruku Indians, under
Cacique
Enriquillo. The meeting got started with a recounting of the Enriquillo affair through its thirteen years of hostilities and campaigns. The lesser
oidores
read testimonies from important people in the island expressing the wish to settle a peace with Enriquillo. I looked at Valenzuela, Enriquillo's pushed-aside master, who sat silently as even Suazo acknowledged the early grievances of the young
cacique
. The
oidor principal
even spoke of some “lack of understanding” shown to Enriquillo when his complaint came to old Vadillo's jurisdiction. The
oidor
Vadillo, brother-cousin of the early magistrate, also sat silently.

The commander of the guard reported next. He informed the
señores
that Enriquillo's fortresses had been attacked by half a dozen well-stocked campaigns. Not a one had been successful, he said. The loss of Castilian men was more than two hundred, counting all the campaigns. Several major estates had gone to ruin pursuing the military destruction of Enriquillo. There was considerable fear that more and more Africans, slaves, would take the
cimarrón
trail and join Enriquillo. “The Indians are very hard to pursue,” said the commander. “They eat anything, anywhere, and somehow always manage to survive and keep going. Our troops must be supplied and are not used to the constant climbing. The Bahuruku mountains have many ridges and tall points. The only attack that might succeed would be to penetrate the Bahuruku with fighting
cuadrillas
from at least fourteen directions at once. Such a crusade would be very expensive, and even that could fail. Were a major campaign to fail now, I am afraid many Indians and Africans would determine to join the armed camps.”

Perhaps not too long ago, that commander would have been called for cowardice and lack of spirit, however, tonight there was considerable approbation in the assemblage. One cattleman said: “Give the
cacique
his due; bring him to a peace, negotiate with him. We shall give the group a tract and be done with the damnable war.”

A merchant man added: “Not only are the armed campaigns ruinous for our townships and estates; while the Indians are in the bush, all merchandizing is reduced. Little of consequence travels overland anymore. And even docking ships have been attacked. Our commerce is at times paralyzed by the nuisance assaults. I say as the cattleman from Juan de la Maguana, make peace with the devils and be done with it.”

When Judge Suazo introduced Las Casas, he was most generous, crediting the good friar his steadfast search for a more just treatment of the natural race of the islands. An acquaintance of the rebel
cacique
in his youth, said Judge Suazo, Las Casas should be recognized for his providential demeanor to make himself available to help secure the peace that is sought. I prayed silently as Las Casas stood to speak that Enriquillo's safety would be at the center of his thoughts and words.

“Many of you no doubt believe the Indian to be inferior to our race,” he began, and my heart sank as my mind paid attention. “You are incorrect. The Indians of these islands and over most of the mainland are a race of innocents, pure and gracious people, who had their own beliefs. The original inhabitants you hold now as servants and slaves met us in a state of grace. They have ancient stories, like the Greeks of our ancestry. They are still endowed with that nature. But our own ancestor, Adam, only lasted six hours in that state before the Lord kicked him out of paradise.”

Everybody murmured at once. Las Casas was so brazen it made me shudder. “Sodomites,” I heard a guard say at a nearby window. “That priest is still a puker.”

The good friar further demanded that the assembled
encomenderos
guarantee their Indians sufficient food and other benefits “if you are not ready to give them up, although that is precisely what you should do if you would respect the doctrine of Jesus Christ.” He reminded them, “I have not absolved anyone holding Indians for almost twenty years. Wolves thou shalt not be among these sheep. I believe it is wrong in the eyes of our Lord.”

More murmuring was heard, some quite loud. One phrase I agreed with: “Stick to the issue,
cura
. What about the
cacique
Enriquillo, in the Bahuruku?”

“Peace with Enriquillo, yes. Respect Enriquillo. But free all the Indians, as the king would have them do in Peru and Nicaragua, where he sent word via my own person, to dissolve the
encomienda
.”

From the center row, immediately before the
oidores
, a rather stout man in a long blue shirt stood and reared his head. He said: “The good friar, as he is called, protector of the Indians, will forgive a mere writer and servant of the king if he takes issue with the friar's usual misbegotten logic.”

It was Oviedo himself, I could tell, as the speaker approached the platform. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, the official historian and enemy of Las Casas—I had heard he was a recent arrival on a caravel from Spain. He went on: “The king, whom I have seen frequently, has not renounced the
encomienda
and has in truth congratulated the
encomenderos
, I heard him say so just this past summer, for the dutiful task of imparting Christian doctrine to Indians. Your information is old, Father Las Casas. Or maybe it simply does not apply to Española.”

It was at this moment that Catalina called to me from the street through her daughter Julia, who simply walked by and gained my attention. I was sorry to have to go, as I was both fascinated and chagrined by the widening debate the good friar had aroused. The anti-
encomienda
talk, as I had anticipated, bothered everybody. I could see the discussion was going to get heated.

Fifty-three.
Dissimulated romancing with Catalina.

For an extra moment, I watched the clique of Vadillo, Valenzuela, and, not far distant, Pero Lopez, the man I hate most in the world. I stared at Lopez that extra moment, thinking quickly in my mind as usual how much I have wanted to kill him. I could see Father Las Casas's face reddening, too, and said a silent prayer for him to stay with Enriquillo's cause. Then, lowering my hat and showing a bit of limp to give the appearance of a smallpox-scarred
mánso
Indian, I went looking for Doña Catalina.

The street was quite crowded, but I found my old friend around two right-hand corners, sitting in a group of young women in a crowd of
mánsos
. Catalina wore a long cotton skirt and blouse and, as usual, held a baby in one arm. She was small and thin but wiry and alert. As I found her, she was instructing the baby's young mother, no more than fourteen years old, in the use of an aloe salve for a case of butt rash. In the moonlight, my eyes watered, as I had not seen her in more than three years.

Catalina had loyal people around her, including several Negro girls who challenged me directly with their eyes. But Catalina jumped up to greet me as I lowered my head to get her blessing. “Diego,” she said. “My old boyfriend.”

I had to laugh. I had never been her boyfriend, but it is true she is not ten years older than me, and once, when I knew her after the Massacre of Anacaona's Banquet, we shared a common adventure. At that time I still had Ceyba, my wife, and our twin sons, all of whom I hid with Catalina for several months before being pressed into Diego Velazquez's service in 1505. Later, we toiled at the same
encomienda
, survived it, lost track of each other, and reencountered around 1520, by which time we both had gained a semblance of freedom, I as monk's servant and she as housemaid in the Valenzuela estate. Time and again we have seen each other, which I truly enjoy, as she is the closest person I have for a relative; Catalina is like a mother-aunt to me, or maybe like an older, distant cousin.

Tonight, for this
guajira
of mine from an earlier life, I had a present. She received it graciously. It was the ground
manatí
brain bone, not for the baby, so much, but our own best cure for side pains, which Catalina and the women she cares for often suffer. She had something for me, too, a good stack of tobacco leaves, selected for low aroma and consistent dryness, the kind to be mixed in our
cohoba
.

Slowly, without any overtness, we walked into the darkness, where we held hands. Nearby, in door frames on both sides of the street, pairs of lovers embraced in the darkness. One man was a guard, and it seemed safe to assume that other guards would not disturb couples there. “We are not a sun's walk from each other,” she said. “But I never see you.”