In vain the Ladina attackers took up their posts, one early morning after the next, at the roads that entered Ciudad Real. No Indian came down from the hills and they had to return to their miserable dwellings emptyhanded. Those who cultivated a strip of garden could cheat hunger a few days longer. But the others hurried out to beg in the city’s main streets* It was useless. The shops were closed and the portals of the private homes as well. The beggar women pounded the iron knocker insistently, clamorously. One of the maids would open the giant door a crack and look out. Through the opening came the echo of laughter, fragments of conversation. The rich were gathering together, tightening their social connections, making danger a reason for recreation. And the needy woman was left outside with the door unceremoniously shut in her face.

The Congregation of the Daughters of María and the Ladies of the Sacred Heart were the first groups to take pity and organize a charitable committee. In the district of Mexicanos y Tlaxcaltecas, in Custatali and San Felipe, they distributed old clothes, small portions of coffee and brown sugar, a few bushels of corn.

The residents of those districts formed jubilant throngs to receive these charitable gifts, and the benefactresses returned to their homes, their consciences swollen with a feeling of satisfaction.

But they quickly discovered that what they were doing was not enough, that nothing was enough. Where to find more? The rich had used up their extra supplies and donated less each time. The Daughters and the Ladies began making their morning rounds with a trace of fear and a vexation they could no longer conceal. More ragged and famished families were constantly appearing, no one knew from where, and none of them maintained the initial stance of submission and gratitude any longer. The youngest ones screamed out their demands and the older ones did nothing to quiet them. Then the older ones began screaming themselves, importuning the devout ladies with their pleas, giving free rein to their bad manners and permitting themselves to make jokes and show a lack of respect.

The Daughters of María and the Ladies of the Sacred Heart complained, weeping, to their confessors. And the latter, led by Padre Balcázar, because the bishop was still ill, went (as if on a mission to a pagan land) to the miserable neighborhoods that surrounded thé city and served as an almost imperceptible transition from the Ladinos’ world to the Indians’.