The results of these errors were now making themselves felt. Here were a people who disregarded the advice and warnings of their parish priest, abandoned the practice of a religion of humbleness and obedience and began digging up images of a savage and bloody past, thus defying the wrath of their natural masters and endangering the established order. Where would all of this lead? To its logical end: the taking up of arms and the violent demand of rights which, even if they were granted by law, the Indians did not deserve. No one who knew their nature, their customs, their tendencies, could doubt that the Indians needed guardians. And who could exercise that guardianship better and more beneficially for all than the patróns?

The lawyer paused to leave time for the comments to burst out. All the Coletos present vehemently assented to his words, exaggerating the danger that confronted them and asking for rapid and effective measures to stave it off.

The lawyer went on. The harm, he said (which a clearer vision of reality on the part of those who drew up the agrarian law and a spirit more accessible to reason in those charged with implementing it could have avoided), was already done and there was no recourse but to try to remedy it. How? With a benevolence that would be taken for weakness by the very people who reaped its benefits? No: with a severity that would serve as an example. On these prisoners and especially upon the one whom they appeared to venerate as their leader, on Catalina Díaz Puiljá, all the weight of punishment should fall. That would have a pacifying effect on the restless spirits of all the Chamulas scattered across the mountains and the hills; that would put some good sense back into all the heads led astray by irresponsible advisors.

When his speech was finished, the lawyer returned to his place. From afar he answered the greetings, the gestures of approval, the mimicked applause by which his listeners sought to show their gratitude to him for having expounded so faithfully and so courageously the opinion they all shared.

The judge delayed the proceedings, pretending to review some papers, in order to allow these sympathies to be expressed. Then the priest, Padre Manuel Mandujano, was called upon to testify.

He began by stressing that his vows kept him from meddling in the historical events of the century. The concerns about properties and rights that had just been expressed were very foreign to him. The distinguished lawyer who had preceded him had given unto Caesar what belonged to Caesar, and generously. For him, as a priest, there remained only to consider the spiritual aspect of the question.