The Chicano/Latino Literary Prize (20 page)

Gary D. Keller, El Huitlacoche

Honorable Mention: Short Story

I thought, being raza, that this was my
tierra
. You know, roots, ¡qué sé yo! Now I think maybe I'm just another
extranjero
, one who crossed the wrongway river.

I came down to learn stuff. Junior term in Anáhuac. At the Universidad Nacional Autónoma [UNAM]—the student movement—¡la revolución estudiantil!—I met and befriended Felipe Espinoso. He helped me with my notes because, speaking frankly, my written castellano isn't the best. “Language loss” is what some professor once muttered to me when I tested out at Cal State University. Felipe was curious about Chicano ways. He called me “güero valín, the Mexican in preppie polo shirts.” That made me laugh and I would kid him about the same Yucatecan guayabera that he wore every day that I knew him. We were both attending the same course, Theory and Practice of Mexican Social Class Structure, taught by tal profesor, one Maximiliano Peón, who alerted us at once to the fact that even though his remuneration was not enough to cover the gasoline that the trip cost him, he was proud to be teaching this course at UNAM as a servicio to the youth of his patria.

From the profile Felipe reminded me—it was an uncanny, almost perfect likeness—of a Mayan head in Palenque, a bas-relief with the prominent Mayan nose and receding forehead that I had pondered over in an art book at the CSU library. I had always wanted urgently to visit Palenque. I used to think about its Gothic arches and cornstalk glyphs when I was just a kid, working behind the counter at the Taco Bell, baking cinnamon crispas. Now I found myself in Anáhuac, peering into the eyes of a Maya.

Felipe pressed me hard on Aztlán, and pleased with his avid interest, I was proud to tell him about the meaning of César Chávez's black águila in a white circle, of “vato” and “cholo,” the Sleepy Lagoon riots, the finer points of pachuquismo, the fate of Reies Tijerina, the difference between an acto and a mito, Los Angeles street murals, and the old Operation Wetback of the '50s, and the silly tortilla curtain que parió.

In turn, I queried him about the political peripecias of Vicente Lombardo Toledano, the pastimes of Siqueiros when they threw him in the Lecumberri lockup, the subtleties redounding in the national diversion of deciphering every six years who the PRI [Partido Revolucionario Institucional] tapado really was, the new malinchista movement of contemporary Mexican feministas, what Buñuel had really meant in “Los olvidados,” and why Cantinflas had plastic surgery done on his notable nose.

One afternoon after class, at the tortería which surely has the best crema in the valley of México, La Tortería Isabela la Católica, only a few minutes from the university library which is a living historic-revolutionary mural, I confided in him a Chicano hope for a binational carnalismo. We were both brought to tears and to a heartfelt abrazo de correligionarios, not to mention compinches.

In class, Felipe Espinoso was quiescent. Weren't we all? In our aula there were over 80 where there should have been 50. The earliest got seats, the next earliest, window sills, then came those who pressed along the walls until the door could no longer be opened and the half dozen hapless laggards who either missed the lecture of the day or tried to catch a semblance of the proceedings from outside, through a window. The university had been built for 120,000 almas; there were over 260,000 in attendance. Classes had been scheduled seven days a week from the earliest morning until midnight.

During the days approaching registration, Indians trod in from the valley, from the mountains surrounding the valley, from the plains beyond the mountains surrounding the valley, from the plains beyond the mountains which circle this Anáhuac. They filed down the mountain roads, dog-tired, without chavos or any other material resources, spurred on by an implacable will for wisdom and upward mobility. Alentados perhaps by rural maestras de escuela they came for the term to UNAM where tuition was basically free. They traveled the roads in huaraches made from the rubber of discarded tires, slept where they could—in attics, hidden in obscure recintos of the university, in the swimming pool when there was no water—waited resignedly for a seat to study in the hopeless library that could no longer accommodate the push of the masses, begged or hustled for the term's nourishment. I have seen this drive that cannot be stemmed by any earthly privation or police state curtain at my heartfelt border, across which God's innocent children slip into the promised coloso of milk and miel, and I genuflect before these campesino multitudes and each day relive their fierce, steadfast resolve, share their dusty anger, revere their pursuit of self-improvement.

Halfway into the course, Felipe made a pronouncement. “Güero, I thought I liked Prof[esor] Maximiliano Peón. I no longer like him. He is deceptive. He is pequeño burgués.”

“He comes out here for nothing to teach this unwashed horde and untouched rabble, doesn't he?”

“Sure, he comes out, and punctually. He's all subjectivity and nineteenth-century retórica, spouting about the incontrovertible objective realities of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary materialism. He's a living contradiction, a comfortable gentil hombre, an hidalgo of the professorate, all immersed in bourgeois pieties and comforts, drunk with arriviste parfums and amaretto and frangelico liqueurs. But to assuage his sotted, corrupted soul, to aggrandize his smug persona, to allay his midnight anxieties—because he knows well that his kind and his class would be first to the paredón in a genuine revolution—he sacrifices salary and comes out here to provoke inditos de Lerdo Chiquito so that they may march to revolutionary beats, so that they may be mowed down by imported burp guns. Yes, he'll watch it all on his Magnavox in the parlor. He'll be hoping that he's hedged every bet, that he'll come out triumphant no matter who wins the partido.”

I should confess now that Felipe was a fanatic for the jai alai and he had taught me to be a fanatic. His front on imagery troubled me. Of course it was what everybody tried to do at the jai alai, bet on the underdog when the price was low and hope for the score to turn, then bet again on the opposing team at good odds and sit out the game a sure winner no matter which team won. I protested, “But I love his Spanish! My God, his command of the language!”

“¡Coño! Sure you do. You're a poor, hapless Chicano—a güero pocho boy who has never had the opportunity to study your mother tongue with any formality or system until now. Don't be deceived. It's all Porfirian sophistry and pedagogical pettifoggery. He doesn't even speak Spanish anyway. He speaks Castilian. And these poor, ingenuous indios—I include myself here, once a poor simpleton from Quintana Roo—who also are mostly tonguesmen of Zapoteca, Huichol, or whatever, they are mesmerized by the castizo buffoon who wishes to provoke their action for lost causes so he can feel assuaged for having ‘done something' about the Mexican social class problem.”

“This is wrong,” he went on. “Let us have a revolution in Olmeca, or Chichimeca, or Náhuatl even, or Mayaquiché. Anything but the Porfirian castellano of the Mexican empire and the simpering sleight of hand of the crypto-revolutionary.”

So, then, Maximiliano fell from his pedestal. But who or what to replace him with?

The Virgin of Guadalupe's day was approaching. We were tertuliando with other left-leaning student intellects at a café in the slanting sun on the Promenade of Institutionalized Revolution, near the cathedral. We could see a pilgrimage approaching like marabunta down the wide promenade. Felipe told me that tonight would be a fine one to be at the jai alai. Probably he should take all my money and his too and bet it on the main partido.

“Why is that, Felipe?”

He turned to the promenade. “They will be betting heavy.” The pilgrimage swept down the promenade, eighteen campesinos abreast, marching in for the novena. There were delegations from Tenancingo and Tlaxcala, Acámbaro and Acatlán, Pátzcuaro and Pachuca, and even Pénjamo and Tzintzuntzan. First the crests of cyclists congruous to paramilitants. They had plastic virgins tacked to their handlebars and wheels and pennants that saluted the breeze of their own making. Then came legions of dusty benditos, huffing and chanting the Ave María, each village headed by a priest and an icon. Then down the Promenade of Institutionalized Revolution came herds of goats and turkeys and aggressive geese, bullied by trotting boys and mongrels. The peddlers followed too, hawking tostadas in green or red sauce, sweet potatoes in carts with piercing steam whistles, guava and cajeta, mamey and mango ice, jícama in vinaigrette. Jesting and cursing in the militant sun, the pilgrims marched and peeled corn husks, smearing the tender grain of their elotes with colored sauce. On the special earthen track, the last kilometer to the cathedral doors, the supplicants came by on bloody knees, bearing the indrawn vision. In the courtyard they were doing Amerindian dances against the slanting, sinking cathedral walls. Precisely every ten meters hung white metal signs with red letters neatly stenciled: It is strictly forbidden to urinate against these holy walls.

That night at the jai alai with all our funds in hand I worried and became a little drunk. Felipe doubted too and wondered if we oughtn't be at the cockfights. “On nights of the novena, the Indians come to the cock arena and wager nuggets of gold that they have dug out of the countryside.”

“But here too the galleries are filled with countryfolk. Besides, Felipe, we are fanatics of the jai alai. We know nothing of cockfights.”

“True enough. All I know of the cocks is that they use one straight and one curved dagger. That's all I know. It's a question of breeders and other intimate variables.” Felipe sighed. “Whatever happens tonight, we cast our lot with the people.”

“Sure,” I said. Right then I felt muy raza, muy Mexican. “Sí, con el pueblo.” But immediately I started to wonder, “Do you think the games are fixed?”

“Who would fix them for the poor to win?”

“Maybe the government. On orders of the authority.”

“I wouldn't put that beyond the authorities. A devious scheme to enervate the pilgrims. But no. Why should the government subsidize the gambling vice? Besides, it doesn't happen all the time. It's just … a pattern. We must realize that by probability we stand to lose. But the odds make it worthwhile. A handsome wager.”

“But I don't want to lose, Felipe. If I lose I will have to eat pinto beans all month. I'll have to return to Califas.”

Felipe laughed. “Come now, compis. It's not every day that a vato loco can wager with the people with a firm hand. Maybe the match is fixed every night before the pilgrims make the final march to celebrate Tepeyac. Just to brighten the Indian's firm belief in the miraculous. But no, I don't think there's any question of a fixed game. It's simply the milieu, those days when the campo and the aldea come to court, the Indians packed in the galleries, hiding behind masks. I think it's a spirit that descends on the jai alai court. An ether which comes from the galleries and penetrates the players.”

“Perhaps a revolutionary spirit?”

“Yes, but lapped up by the gambling vice the way mole is contained and dammed by corn dough. The inditos make their way up to the galleries expecting the supernatural.”

I laughed. “What would Gramsci think of this, Pablo Freire, even the barbudo Carlos Marx? Could they construct a paradigm pa'l fenómeno?”

“Hard to say. It's too early in the course.”

“You're right, Felipe. On a night like tonight one should be a jai alai fanatic. Have you seen all the grenaderos about?”

“Yes. They've even brought a contingent in from Atzcapotzalco. I'm sure there are two in front of every pulquería, every brothel, every revolutionary square, every Ateneo in Mexico City.”

“How many do you think there are at the university library, underneath the mural?”

Saturday night at the Palacio de la Pelota, El Frontón México. The jai alai court was stretched and wide, bounded by three rock walls. The open end was strung with an immense steel net protecting the spectators from the missiles. Occupying the choice seats in the middle of the stands were the vested ones, Arabs and Jews, gachupines and wealthy Mexicans who played the favorite and lapped up the chiquitero money.

There was a roar from the crowd. The intendant and four huge Basques with long straw wickers bound to their wrists entered the court. They marched single file and solemnly along the wood boundary line. Then they turned and faced the crowd, placed their wickers across their hearts in salute, and gave the slightest of nods. There were whistles, jeers, and enthusiastic applause. The players broke rank and began to practice up. It was two mean frisky bucks playing against two stooping esthetes.

Felipe studied the program. “This match is a timeless syndrome: youth versus experience. Only a poet or saint will win this.”

“Well then,” I asked, “who do we bet on?”

“It doesn't matter, güero. The team that falls behind and permits the chiquiteros to bet their pittances. We will bet on the underdog, the people, and their expectations for a miracle.”

“I like that, Felipe. A higher logic. I may be a vato loco, but you are a vate loco. A meta-wager and a melodrama. A dialectic that ends in a materialistic. I like the pastel money of México. It's easier than the hardened green of the dólar.”

Redcaps called the odds out, which were an even 100 red versus 100 blue, and the match to 30 points began. The fierce bucks dominated from the very start, and as the score mounted in their favor the odds dwindled, 50, 30, 10 to 100. From the galleries there was a steady projection of sullen mirth. I saw an Olmec-looking type call out, “That old camel should be playing marbles with his grandchild!” and a striking mestizo who looked the prototype of Vasconcelos's raza cósmica imprecated a few times and then said, “Get him a pair of roller skates … and a Seeing Eye dog!” Rejoined a weasel who looked more like the critics of Vasconcelos, who coined La raza cósmica. “No, old fool! Bring him Sancho Panza!”