“I’ve provided her with a small amount of capital so she can go into business for herself. She bought some mules and some salt and went to sell it where it’s most needed right now: in Chamula.”

“That broad has guts. Heading straight into the wolf’s jaw like that. . . .”

“She’s not in any danger,” Leonardo assured them, to detract from her merits. “The Indians are used to seeing peddlers.”

“What miserable work it must be! Going along those paths. . . ”

“Always in danger of an assault, an ambush.”

“And there’s not even anyone to talk to. There aren’t any people of reason in those villages.”

“The income makes up for it. After a few years the peddler, who’d never have been anything but a poor beggar if he’d stayed at home, can open a shop in the Calle Real de Guadalupe.”

A few of those present cleared their throats, feeling that they were being alluded to.

“Any kind of work is honorable.”

“Of course.”

“So if Doña Mercedes hears about anything that might interest us, she’ll pass it along to me immediately.”

“And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime we drink our coffee and chat.”

“But if we have to wait too long people are going to lose their morale.”

“What can we do? We don’t have any way of stirring up the hornets’ nest.”

“Even the authorities are against us.”

“The government is a gang of crooks!”

“One thing is going to be very clear when all of this is over: the president will know that in Chiapas his laws aren’t worth a pure and celestial heap of shit.”

“Maybe they’ll stop sending us these college boys who think they’re so much sharper than anybody else.”

“Fernando Ulloa doesn’t even hold a degree. I have that on good authority,” Leonardo added, to clinch the matter. The others smiled in complicity.

“To think that this is what it’s come to! Señor Nobody shows up out of the blue and puts us—us!—in a bind like this.”

“Because if the Indians didn’t have him backing them up. . .

“If he hadn’t inflamed them with his sermonizing . .

“. . . they never would have dared get themselves fired up like this.”

“Gentlemen,” one of them who had a penchant for historical exactitude said, “let’s not forget that this isn’t the first uprising.”

“The main thing is to make sure it’s the last.”

“From your lips to God’s ears!”

“God will hear me, even if the bishop has gone deaf.”

“Poor old man! He’s getting weak in the head.”

“They should make them retire, too, like every other employee. There are some priests who are smart men . . .”

“. . . and who are figuring out how to fish in the turbulent river of circumstance.”

“If the government persecutes them they have to defend themselves one way or another.”