“I am not a Coleto, señor Gobernador. What do they accuse you of?”

“Of having proceeded with negligence and bad faith during the Chamula rebellion.”

“Do you acknowledge that to be true?”

“It’s true that I didn’t send troops as quickly as they wanted and in the numbers they asked for. But I had reasons which I considered valid at the time.”

“What reasons.”

“Every day, several times a day, I received letters postmarked in Ciudad Real. Do you want to see them? I brought them with me?”

Don Alfonso covered his eyes with his hands as if to reinforce his blindness.

“No.”

“In those letters, I was assured that the situation was not serious, that the ranchers had armed their own peons to simulate a nonexistent danger.”

“For what purpose?”

“For the purpose of concretely demonstrating to my government and the federal government that the laws on the redistribution of land could not be put into practice in Chiapas without the risk of bloodshed.”

“And what did you do?”

“I conducted my own investigation. I sent people in whose good judgment and prudence I believed. And they came back to tell me that in Ciudad Real the atmosphere was more festive than fearful. That under the pretext of the Indian uprising, daily gatherings were being held and morals were becoming lax.”

“Did that seem unlikely to you?”

“No. I’m from a town where people are bored, too.”

“And the Indians. They didn’t pose any threat?”

“There wasn’t a trace of them in the area surrounding the town. The villages were and still are abandoned.”

“So?”

“How could I justify to my superiors a decision to provide the ranchers with the means to make a mockery of the application of the law? They would say I had been bribed.”

“Are you very protective of your reputation?”

“I have a future, Monseñor.”

“Under the circumstances, señor Gobernador, you proceeded with good judgment.”

That sentence appeared to be the end of the consultation. Don Alfonso could no longer conceal his exhaustion or his lack of interest in the subject. But the governor was not yet satisfied.

“My informers also determined something that didn’t bother me before, but that worries me now: the names of the people who signed the letters were false. And the addresses, as well.”

“Why does that surprise you? Aren’t you from a town where anonymous letters are written, too?”

“Yes, but. . . .”

“But you don’t like having been deceived. And yet how very easily you excuse yourself for having made a mistake, having taken affliction for festivity, anxiety for happiness. A mistake that has cost so much suffering, so many losses, so many lives.”

“What happened can no longer be remedied, Monseñor. And I’m glad my hands are clean of the crimes that have been committed here.”

“You could have prevented them.”

“The ranchers wanted to use the army as an executioner, not as a defender.”