It was useless to try to separate them. Anyway, Catalina was not accustomed to manifesting her disapproval of Pedro’s conduct directly. This time she put her reputation as an ilol to use and announced that her second sight had revealed to her that the two Caxláns’ stay in Chamula had no other end or purpose than to bring harm to the people of the tribe, by denouncing the clandestine distillers of aguardiente or by selling the information they were able to gather from their observation of the town to the ranchers and enganchadors of Jobel.

The rumor reached Pedro’s ears after having passed through so many mouths that its origin was no longer identifiable. In Catalina’s presence, Winiktón spoke harshly of the faint-heartedness and bad faith of those who were spreading such gossip. Catalina argued that those who looked upon the Ladinos with distrust were not to blame. When had an Indian received anything good from a Ladino? Except for the monks and the priests. But those men share only the speech of the Ladinos and are different in every other respect; they are of the race of angels, so great is their power to mete out—and how incomprehensibly, at times!—rewards and punishments.

“Oh really? Certainly you are not going to tell me that the priest of San Juan, that man Manuel Mandujano, has any strength. It is not true! I have seen him fall to the ground, knocked down by rage and by fear. I have seen him tremble at the sound of my voice!”

Catalina enfolded herself back into silence. But like a spider in its web, she was tirelessly spinning ways to separate Pedro from the newcomers whom he spoke to in Spanish about matters she did not understand and which left him pensive, irritable and uneasy.

As if to alleviate the weight of his preoccupations, Winiktón went out looking for someone to share them with. He took great care in choosing the men he spoke to. Never respectable old men, men of council. Not even Xaw Ramírez Paciencia, whom he no longer visited so as to avoid going to the parish house.

No, Pedro’s new friends were young men who were disrespectful like he was. They were the ones who had returned from working on the coastal fincas, made insolent by their travels, or the ones who had gone further, down to the isthmus, up to Mexico, those who no longer found it good to continue living as they had lived until then. Poverty enraged them like an injustice. A man (they pronounced the word with all the pride of a valuable discovery), a man does not have to endure it.

“If the Ladinos do not recognize our rights, we must reclaim them. By force, if necessary. By war.”