“Received them with open arms, because they were orderly people, decent people like us. But the liberals in Tuxtla and Comitán (very recently converted liberals, the ones who got rich buying the Church’s property for a song) were determined to send troops from Chiapas. Naturally the patróns weren’t going to fight, and neither were their sons. In order to keep from embarrassing themselves, they sent the Indians from the haciendas. They were the lucky volunteers, and they had to be caught the way you catch a steer: with a lasso. Yes, ingeniero, I’m not exaggerating: it’s recorded in the documents. In the list of the troop’s expenses is the sum spent on ropes to tie them up.

Leonardo laughed out loud, but his laughter died when he noticed the other man’s seriousness.

“Our peons took part in the battle of the 5th of May and they didn’t make us look bad either. But when they came back here: disaster! They were raring to go because they’d been told that in the North and in Yucatán there was a caste war between Indians and Ladinos. It didn’t take much for them to start getting impudent, and remember, they had learned to use firearms. . . . To make a long story short, the bad example was contagious and there was an uprising, and Ciudad Real was about to disappear from the map.”

“But you Ladinos won in the end.”

“It certainly wasn’t because of any support from the government, which has always tried to harm us. President Juárez—I’m sure you must worship him—didn’t send a single soldier or rifle to help us defend ourselves. But Guatemala offered us its army. Out of loyalty, a loyalty Mexico never thanked us for, we didn’t accept any help from the Guatemalans and we fought alone. The losses were great, and what was our sacrifice for? A few years of peace, and now the threat of instability again.”

“The two situations are very different. How can you compare them?”

“No, you don’t notice the resemblance because you aren’t from around here. But you can almost touch the agitation, the anxiety. They’re agitated, too. For no reason at all they’re fleeing from the haciendas and going to join up with the communities of unindentured Indians. They’re getting bolder because there are more of them and now they’ve seen that they can count on the support of certain authorities who, whether they know it or not, are provoking another uprising.”

“Times change, Don Leonardo. Nowadays there is no reason blood has to be shed. The battle will be strictly a legal one. What more do you want? That’s where you Coletos are most at home; those of you who aren’t lawyers hold forth even longer than the ones who are.”