“If we don’t inform them of what is happening in Tzajal-hemel they may accuse us of complicity later on. Don’t you realize,” said Padre Mandujano, pointing to the idols, “that this is the beginning of an uprising?”

Don Alfonso didn’t want to put up any further opposition: old men, he reflected, lose their sense of proportion and no longer grant importance to anything but the subject of their own death.

The meeting, which was attended by Church dignitaries, civil servants and all the notables of Ciudad Real, took place in the Bishopric. Before an audience that was easily convinced and predisposed to condemn, Padre Manuel and Xaw Ramírez Paciencia repeated their story. They answered an infinity of questions, invented details they hadn’t noticed in order to satisfy their questioners’ curiosity. In the end, everyone agreed that the situation was perilous. What they differed on was the measures it would be appropriate to take. The municipal president and the members of the city council were inclined toward prudence, the slow but sure way of paperwork and bureaucracy. To write to the higher authorities in Tuxtla and even in Mexico, to inform them in minute detail, to await their instructions.

The men who held no political office proved to be more impetuous. While the letters came and went, who would protect their ranches, their businesses, from being attacked and ransacked? Who would defend their lives and those of their families? Because as soon as the Indians recovered from the confusion Padre Manuel’s abrupt intervention had undoubtedly caused them, they would prepare to take revenge. They were numerous, far more numerous than the Ladinos scattered throughout the region and concentrated in Ciudad Real, and their savage spirit, inflamed by the offense they had endured, would lash out in uncontrollable destruction. It was imperative to take advantage of the Indians’ moment of paralysis to render their chiefs and leaders powerless by imprisoning them.

The one who argued most vehemently that these decisions should be put to the vote was Leonardo Cifuentes. For some time, his political ambitions had been known and now he was presented with a set of circumstances in which to act, demonstrating not only the weakness and ineptitude of his rivals but also his own gift for leadership.

The bishop watched him, noting with a slightly disdainful coldness how the eagerness for power infused brio into a man’s words, impetus into his resolutions. But he was unaware of one element that was having a considerable impact on Cifuentes’ attitude. As he argued, Cifuentes was rubbing between his fingers a scrap of fabric—trampled, dirty, stained—that had been wrapped around the idols. What a strange way to recover the shawl by which he had once attested his love to La Alazana!

XX

CHAPTER XX