“All right, let’s say that an inspector comes. He’ll have an area many miles wide to cover. The roads. . . . you already know what they’re like, ingeniero. And as far as lodging goes, the owners of the fincas aren’t going to want to open their doors to those who are coming to damage their interests. You can figure that your lucky inspector will be able to take the grind for a month or two. After that, he’d rather let things take their own course. And that is supposing, mark my words, that he is very honorable and no one starts waving money around under his nose.”

“Don Leonardo, I’m only responsible for what I’m supposed to do.”

“That’s nice work! Light the fuse and let everyone else take the heat. Because the way you’re leaving things, there’s going to be a fight. And the Indians will be on the losing side; we patróns are still stronger.”

None of these warnings had the slightest impact on Fernando; he felt he was backed by a legal code, a political orientation, the steadfastness of the government.

“We ranchers here in Chiapas aren’t going to be the only ones to protest this. Throughout the Republic, landowners are growing alarmed and joining together to fight. We’re going to be forced to dig out the problem at its roots.”

To straighten out the legal code, change the political structure, replace the government. Fernando Ulloa knew that in Mexico these were not remote possibilities and that even the most insignificant privilege of the wealthy had never been attacked without unleashing a disproportionate, bloody and ultimately triumphant reaction.

At that point, the ranchers were prepared—in order to keep the peace, they said—to concede some improvements in the treatment of the peons. But what they would never tolerate was for the Indians to believe they had won a right to anything. The patrón must always be the divinity who dispenses favors, freely given benefactions and well-deserved punishments. The circumference of his existence was not going to be violated by a trial, by a summons from his inferiors.

For their part, the inferiors carried the feeling that inferiority was their authentic condition so deeply in the marrow of their bones that they were offended by those who tried to foist a new burden on them: dignity.