And the workers did. Each day they took their stations and nodded at one another, transmitted courage in furtive looks. They walked past the empty workstations and blessed them. They gave up more of their pay to the lector, knowing there were fewer of them; offered fruits and bread to the skinniest among them; placed thicker cigars and fuller offerings of rum before the saints in their homes. Antonio’s words comforted.

“‘To Youth,’ a poem by Saturnino Martínez, in today’s La Aurora.”

Oh! Dance not—Beyond the distant mountain

See how it appears

A fierce cloud which, blurring the horizon,

Announces a tempestuous storm is near.

The Spanish militia fighters did not make a large production of their arrival. A knock. Señor Porteños looking up from his perch. The workers met his eyes. He dashed down the stairs, wiped his face.

Three of them—slender, mustachioed men with handsome faces. They were there to deliver an official edict from the governor. The workers knew better than to stare, but María Isabel could see their rolling pause, could see how they all strained to hear.

Antonio folded La Aurora and placed it on the lectern as Porteños read the scroll before him and the soldiers watched. Porteños said the words under his breath and guided his fingers across the lines. Then, hand on the back of one of the soldiers, he guided them out the door, where they continued to huddle and speak in whispers.

“Gentlemen,” Porteños said with a nod. The door’s closing echoed through the workshop.

“There will be no more readings,” he announced, matter-of-fact.

Antonio kept his eyes to the ground when Porteños led him out. María Isabel could hear them speak outside but could not make out the words. Antonio sounded agitated, and Porteños seemed to calm and admonish him simultaneously. Then, silence, just the brusque click of Porteños’s heels as he reentered the workshop and walked back to his desk.

Everything in María Isabel told her to go after her husband. She closed her eyes and silently repeated the words that had carried her through past weeks: We are force.

She stood. She tucked her chair into the desk and walked out the door, knowing she’d never walk through its arched entryway again. A handful of workers followed. Porteños didn’t even bother to look up.

They knew they risked their lives. But María Isabel and Antonio had ceased to care. Something greater than themselves swam in their blood; this would be their war.