There they would sit around the fire with the smoke smarting in their eyes, amid a smell of boiling food and human bodies at close quarters, the animal scent that persists in newborn babies, especially. Outside, the water ran down between the roughly joined planks and the half-rotten straw of the roof. The little children watched from a corner, quiet, ragged, big-bellied. Creeping along, trying not to make any noise or attract the attention of the strangers, they went over to their mother who was laboriously grinding the nixtamal, her eyes lowered, embarrassed and mute.

The master of the house would open the door to them at Pedro’s request, because Pedro was a former authority and was known as an honorable man. If he was accompanying these Ladinos there was no reason to fear any harm from them. Hospitably, the owner would uncork a demijohn of aguardiente and invite the visitors to partake. All of them drank straight from the bottle, even the boy Domingo. All except César, who was repelled by the custom.

But while Santiago remained on the margin, a current of fellow feeling and friendship would be established among the other men. Little by little, the owner of the house would yield to persuasion and begin to speak.

And in that way, today here and tomorrow somewhere else, each man finally says what he has kept inside himself for years. They come with their complaints as they would go to the altar of a saint. And it is the same monotonous chant, the same litany of abuses endured, poverty, sickness, ignorance. These men’s misfortune has something impersonal and inhuman about it, so uniformly is it repeated again and again.

Yes, some of them complain, and that is fine; complaining is the custom of a vanquished race, an abject generation. But not all of them are in the same mood. There are those who raise their voices in protest, who make demands. And there are those who propose ways of remedying the situation.

Ulloa answers them. He knows they will not accept any evasions. And he promises. He, a man of reason, will speak with the Ladino authorities. No, they must not rush into anything or go beyond the law, because the law foresees everything, protects against everything. The machine of justice, paralyzed until now by pettifoggers and shysters, has only to be set in motion. Fernando has experience; he knows how to handle deceitful men. Yes, he comes from somewhere else, “from the farthest reaches of Mexico.” And it is true that he knows the president and can bear out Pedro González Winiktón’s testimony that the president exists. And that the president has the power to order that the Indians be given back what is theirs.