What can the will of men do against the things the gods have ordained? Why does Pedro González Winiktón come at so untimely a moment to urge prudence? And those foreigners, Fernando Ulloa and César Santiago, whose intentions are unintelligible, whose language is untranslatable. Let them all be silent! The people of Chamula are establishing their alliance with the dark powers, paying their tribute to the true masters, ransoming their right to live another year.

But some men, the community’s leaders, have been momentarily removed from this communion. They left the freedom of the night, the echoes, the bonfires; guided by an ancestral instinct to obey, they have come to the Cuarto del Juramento. They squeeze together in order to fit in. Their features are difficult to see in the light of a gasoline lamp. They laugh and spit. They are nervous. Winiktón has announced that Ulloa, the engineer, is going to speak to them.

“I come from Tuxtla. I was with the governor.”

Winiktón translated. A few of the men let out belches of self-importance. They were not unaware of what that was, Tuxtla. As for the governor, they had heard him speak once or twice, when he was touring the state. The Indians did not remember the speech, to which a representative of their community gave a response in their own language. They remembered the jolting of the truck in which they had been transported, their long immobility in front of a kiosk or a balcony, the coin that repaid them for their time. What did the authorities assembled here (each one of the principal men represented a village, down to the smallest one in the Tzotzil region) have to do with the other ones Ulloa was invoking? Why did they always have to fear, always have to submit? They were sick of patróns. The president of the Republic, who was something more than the governor, promised them they would be free.

“The matter of the land redistribution is going very well.”

Fernando was lying. The process could be delayed for years. But he was counting on their intervention to make it go more quickly.

César listened to him skeptically. Led by this phlegmatic, dispassionate man who believed in the law, the Indians’ unrest wouldn’t go anywhere. But César placed his faith in circumstances rather than individual decisions. The present ones could be favorable. The people of Ciudad Real were terrified and the governor was authorizing measures that only increased their alarm, rather than offering them any security. And the Indians . . . the Indians were an unknown quantity. They were probably frightened as well. It’s easy to transmute fear into violence. When a man is already afraid he can’t tell the difference between self-defense and defiance. He throws himself into action like a bull charging the red cape that ripples in front of its eyes.