The Uncomfortable Dead (19 page)

It may be due to these factors of saturation and intoxication that none of those agencies ever caught on that the organizational structure of the Zapatista National Liberation Army contains a branch equivalent to the Special Forces or elite guard of other armies. Its existence is known only to a few: the members of the General Staff of the EZLN and some of the older comandantes of the CCRI. That part of the neo-Zapatista structure is made up of six people who have carried out extremely delicate and important missions, in utmost secrecy, at different moments in the history of the EZLN. One such mission was the protection of Sup Marcos at the time of the betrayal, about ten years ago, in February of 1995. According to some accounts, when the community of Guadalupe Tepeyac was completely surrounded by paratroopers of the Federal Army, it was this group who got El Sup out of the encirclement and delivered him to a safe place. The special unit was also responsible for finding out, in just twenty-four hours, the truth about the events that took place in Acteal on December 22, 1997. The information they uncovered became the foundation for a series of communiqués issued at the time, which, along with additional data contributed by some of the media and NGOs, discredited the government strategy of representing the massacre as an internecine fight among indigenous peoples. In January of 1998, it was this unit that saved the Supreme Command of the EZLN when the Federal Army tried to take the La Realidad community on the same day that Francisco Labastida Ochoa was sworn in as Minister of the Interior.

While few know of the existence of this unit, even fewer know the names of the members: the members themselves and Insurgent Subcomandante Marcos. And only they know that their code name is … NOBODY.

1. Erika. Insurgent. Indian woman. Fifteen years old, going on sixteen. She was four years old at the time of the uprising. Her father was killed in the fighting at Ocosingo and she was brought up by the resistance. She decided to become a member of the insurgent forces in 2001, after the March of the Indigenous Peoples. Elías talked to her, and that’s when she lied. She said she was already sixteen, but she was only eleven, going on twelve. She is a radio operator. Sometimes, when El Sup and the Monarca don’t manage to get up the radio hill in time, she starts on her own with the transmissions of Radio Insurgente, the voice of the voiceless. She is also reputed to be ready to fight any of the males in the Zapatista troops if they make disparaging remarks about women or make fun of them. Very good with both the military angle and the political. Expert in radio communications. Loves poetry, the songs of Juan Gabriel, Los Bukis, and Los Temerarios. In the evenings, she makes illegal use of a lamp to read a tattered book of verses by Miguel Hernández that she found at an old mountain drop point. She goes off-key when she sings the song of the Zapatista
caracoles.
She is NOBODY’S radio operator.

2. Doña Juanita. Indian woman. They say she’s the widow of Old Antonio, who died in 1994. No one knows how old she is, but she’s an adult. She knows a great deal about herbal medicine, has a good clinical eye, and the patience of 500 years. She knows how to make sweet toast and
marquesote,
which is a bread made with sugar and butter. When she speaks at her town assemblies, everyone listens with attention and respect. She was one of the comrades who drafted the so-called Revolutionary Law on Women, and she was the first to state that women can become authorities too. Even the bravest of the men come to her for advice and guidance. She is NOBODY’S nurse.

3. Toñita. Indian woman. About ten years old, going on eleven. Daughter of insurgent parents. Her mother was carrying Toñita in her belly when she participated in the storming of Las Margaritas in January of 1994. She is very talented at obtaining and interpreting information. She is handy with disguises and can pass undetected anywhere, and in almost any situation. She loves to draw and to run. There isn’t a man among them who can get up a tree faster or shoot more accurately with a slingshot. She attends the autonomous school, and when she graduates, she says, she’s going to become an authority and then outlaw mathematics, because she suffers a lot with her numbers. She’s in charge of intelligence for NOBODY.

4. Maa Jchixuch
(Maa
means macaw in Tojolobal, and
Jchixuch
means porcupine in Tzeltal; macaw is also Moo in Tzeltal, and porcupine is
ixchixuch
in Chol and
tek tikcal chitom
in Tzotzil). Young mestizo man. Must be close to twenty. Wears a punk-style haircut with his hair up in spikes like a porcupine and dyed a bunch of different colors like a macaw. He has a stand in the Mercado de los Ancianos, in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. He sells anything, depending on which way the wind is blowing. From dealing in fireworks, he became an expert in explosives. He is also a singer-songwriter Well, he makes up songs and sings them, but he doesn’t set them to music. They say he writes the lyrics and sends them off to someone else who does the music. One example is the song known as “Other Caresses,” which goes as follows:

In some corner of the world/Some skins meet./They speak, they listen./They ask, they answer./They caress each other./For a caress is a question./For a caress is an answer./A piece of flesh asks: Here? Like this?/And another piece of flesh answers: Yes, there, like that./But not always./There are men and women in the world./And there are ghosts as well./The ghosts are very different./The ghosts get wounded when they caress./But that is not the worst of it./Those caresses don’t leave scars./Because those caresses never heal./Worst of all is that ghosts devote all their clumsy tenderness/To caressing the whole world/And preventing it from healing the memories./When a ghost caresses/It asks and answers/Rebellion.

He sent that song to some rockers in Europe and, according to them, this and some of his other songs will become part of a record they are putting together called
Ghosts.
Maa Jchixuch is NOBODY’S explosives expert.

5. El Justiciero. Male mestizo. About forty years old. Black as night. Formerly a plumber’s assistant. Presently drives a construction truck. The sticker on El Justiciero’s rear bumper reads,
Historical and Dialectical Materialist,
just above the one that reads,
Old, But Still Able.
He got to talking to Elías one night when his truck broke down at the La Garrucha
caracol,
and they say that when the sun rose they were still at it. After that he became a militant Zapatista. He talked to his friends and colleagues and they all registered with the Good Governance Board. He recruited taxi drivers, tortilla vendors, table servers, and even a few soldiers. He is the driver-mechanic for NOBODY.

6. Elías, Investigation Commission. You already know a bit about him. He is the commanding officer of NOBODY.

7. La Magdalena. We already know her background; she was co-opted temporarily, on Elías’s recommendation, as the seventh element. She’s just barely part of NOBODY.

Cry Me a River

What I did was I talked to Magdalena and told her she should wait till I got back, cause I had to go grab the Bad, but he/she said she wanted to help any way she could, so I took her to meet with the group we call NOBODY.

When we got there, I introduced her to everybody and I told them that he/she was my daughter, or my son, depending on your perspective, and they said hello, and that was about it. I told the unit that we had to make a plan to catch this Morales and that we didn’t have much time to do it, cause we had to get it done by February 9, which means right away. So we got to studying the reports we had and looked at them with perspective. Course, I had to explain what
perspective
means, and they all jotted it down in their vocabulary pads. So when we had done the collective analysis of the Morales thing, or case, depending, from all angles, we came up with a plan and an agenda. (I also explained what
agenda
was, and they all wrote it down.) So then Erika started setting up her toaster, which is what we call her communications equipment, and she screwed on the antenna and did all the calibration and tuning so’s the signal would reach far’s it could, and she settled down to communicating with all the radio bases in the Zapatista towns and insurgent outposts.

Meanwhile, Toñita was writing down the messages Erika was receiving. Maa Jchixuch began to get the things ready that we were going to need to grab this Morales, and El Justiciero did all the checking he always did before a mission so that nothing could go wrong—I mean, if he could avoid it. Doña Juanita filled her knapsack with herbs and
pozol
and toast, cause what if it took longer’n we thought, and Magdalena got together the makeup and clothes she was going to use. Now me, Elías Contreras, Investigation Commission, I was going over and over in my head the plan to catch the Bad and the Evil, this Morales person who was doing his evil things in Zapatista lands. So that’s what I was doing, and every time I got a new idea I would tell everybody to stop and listen up. Then I remembered something and I called everybody in and told them to pull out their vocabulary pads and take down the word
aforementioned,
and I explained that in this case, or maybe thing, the
aforementioned
referred to Morales. Then they went back to doing what they were doing before to get ready to catch the aforementioned Morales—that is, to bring him up before Zapatista justice.

So we did all that in the early hours of the 8th of this month, which is February of 2005, and when the sky was beginning to get gray, Erika and Toñita came to tell me that according to the reports, that Morales person, the aforementioned, had gone to the municipal seat in Ocosingo and was getting all drunk and bothering the women. Besides that, the aforementioned had with him a couple of gorillas as bodyguards, so he was being guarded wherever he went, and I think they even took him to the bathroom. Toñita said how maybe there was very few people and nothing to do in Ocosingo because the feast of Candlemass was already past and people didn’t have the money to go on partying, so that was why she thought it might be a good place to grab that Morales person, the aforementioned, without making a really big noise.

El Justiciero came back and said the truck was all ready. Then Maa Jchixuch said he was ready to go. Then Doña Juanita said she was ready to go. Then Magdalena said she was ready, and Erika and Toñita had already said they were ready. Then I said I was ready and that they should wait for me to go to the john, and then I came back from the john and we all climbed in El Justiciero’s truck, and we got to Ocosingo when nighttime was settling into the streets. So we got ourselves installed in a little shed on the outskirts of the town called Paradise—the shed was called that, not the town—and Erika set up her radio with the antenna and all and sent back a message that read,
Big eye to old horse. Big eye
to
old horse. NOBODY is ready. Repeat, NOBODY is ready.
So that was the message for El Sup, letting him know that we were ready to carry out our agenda with a perspective to grab the aforementioned—Morales, that is. Then Toñita dug into her knapsack and pulled out a pack of gum and told me she had some that are laxatives and then went out to take a look to see where the aforementioned, which is Morales, was getting to. And then Doña Juanita went off to talk to her cousin who works in the Ocosingo market and is one of the biggest gossips around and … I mean, her cousin is the gossip, not Doña Juanita, so wherever she is, she knows what’s going on … the cousin. Then Maa Jchixuch got his things together in the yard of the shack and El Justiciero found a place for the truck so’s it would be handy, but not really out in the open. Erika got her sound equipment in place and set up a speaker in the yard and another where they put the cars—the driveway, that is. Magdalena was busy getting herself all fixed up. And I started thinking how NOBODY is really good at these jobs that the General Staff of the EZLN gives us every once in a while. Just then, Toñita came back and said that the aforementioned Morales was over in El Infierno, and I asked what the hell he was doing in the inferno when he was sposed to be here in Ocosingo, and how everything was mixed up, and then Toñita just looked at me and said I was right, but that El Infierno was the name of the cantina where we could find Morales, the aforementioned. So I guess it was clear that El Infierno was just the name of the cantina where he was, and Toñita went on explaining that the aforementioned Morales was about my age, that’d be around sixty, and my height, and had gray hair and was a bit fat. And then Toñita said for sure it was him, the aforementioned Morales, cause that’s what the bodyguards kept calling him. Then Toñita said how the bodyguards were these really big guys and double-wide, which is real strong like, and how they had their hair real short, sorta like the soldiers of the bad government. And just then Juanita came back and told us that the cousin said that the aforementioned Morales was a little tanked, which is a little drunk, and so were the bodyguards.

So it was time to get together and go over the plan one last time and make any changes we might need, and then we sat back to wait for nighttime to get a little further on, until it was almost morning. Then, in the really dark part just before first light, I put on my hat and everybody understood that we were about to start the mission. NOBODY was ready to move.

Then Maa Jchixuch, Erika, El Justiciero, and Doña Juanita got into their mission positions, and I took off with Toñita and her pack of gum and with Magdalena and her really high heels that were making her stumble every few seconds. And then we got to the doors of the inferno, which is the name of the cantina, which is El Infierno, and Toñita went in with her pack of gum and came right back out again. She said how there weren’t that many people, just a few, really, and that the aforementioned was right there—Morales, that is—and that he was completely gone, not that he wasn’t there, cause he was, but completely gone cause of all he had drunk, and gone with him were the bodyguards.

Toñita explained how she had given the aforementioned’s bodyguards the gum with the laxative and that it would take awhile for it to work, so I told Toñita to get in her position. Then I told Magdalena to go on into the inferno, which was the cantina’s name, El Infierno, and I went in after her to make sure nothing happened to Magdalena.