Pedro did not even try to stop the avalanche of events that crashed down around him. Like the others of his race and in his circumstances, he believed in the truth of what was manifesting itself. Hopes a thousand times dashed by misfortune sprang up anew, vigorous. In the convulsive rapture which he, too, shared, he felt the pulsation that foretold events which would direct all their lives into a new channel. “Humiliation will no longer strangle you with its iron noose. Amends will be made for injustice. The gods live again in order to tell us that you and you and you, you will be free, you will be blessed.”

Pedro observed something more, something that was still invisible to the others. If the suffering we have endured were not enough (he said to himself) to make us worthy of redemption, we have other merits: that of having had the wisdom to gather around a man who has stooped down to hear our complaints, who knows the extent of our misery and who has plumbed our anguish: Fernando Ulloa. He is taking the measure of what we are owed and once he has finished he will go and seek out the government, as far as the city of Tuxtla, where the ajwalils will sign the papers of restitution. We will be, from that moment, Indians with land, Indians equal to the Ladinos. And that will be the first of God’s words to be fulfilled.

What Pedro knows is a truth. But a truth that is only just germinating, that still cannot survive the harsh climate or the light. Pedro makes a silence to protect it.

Does anything weigh more than a secret? The judge has no one to speak to. He often remembers Xaw Ramírez Paciencia.

Xaw was content among his people. They needed only to see him coming and all of them, even the principal men, would incline their heads to request the brush of his fingers on their foreheads. And they listened to his words with attention, hoping to find in them the thread that would guide their actions.

Xaw had performed the functions of the absent priest in San Juan for years. Unlike the brujos, he did not have an ambiguous reputation. He was respected for being the one closest to the altar, for being the only one who knew the name of each of the saints.

Xaw carried out his appointed duties in good faith. He believed in all honesty that the hallucinations induced by alcohol, the absurd fancies of a mind befuddled by senility, were inspired wisdom, warnings from the beneficent divinities. He communicated them to his listeners as such and on them fell the remainder of the task: to obey.