And Coleto morality is very peculiar. In their dealings with each other, the people of Ciudad Real are exaggeratedly scrupulous, the most prudish sticklers. They want to keep up their good names as honest merchants, professionals in every sense of the word. But this same honest merchant, this consummate professional doesn’t hesitate for an instant at the chance to rob an Indian. Even more: he’s proud of having done it. He tells the story as a funny anecdote that never fails to gladden the hearts of his listeners. When they sell “used” cloth to a man from Oxchuc; when by some underhanded legal chicanery they dispossess a family from Chenalhó; when they kidnap a young girl in the street to enslave her in their domestic service, they can boast of the feat without anyone finding it in the least reprehensible. It would only be censurable if in some indirect way it damaged the interests of another Ladino. But apart from that, who would condemn someone for shaking a tree that belongs to no one in order to enjoy its fruits? Who could possibly take seriously the aberrant belief that trees are people and should therefore be respected as such?

The most cherished virtues of the women of Ciudad Real are chastity and modesty. Inconvenient virtues, these, requiring a constant vigilance over oneself, a renunciation of the pleasures of vanity and the flesh, a sacrifice of the primary impulses. Perhaps some women are capable of incarnating them. But many are very adept at feigning them.

And what stiff necks they all had, men and women alike! Pride in their ancestors, in their prosperity, in their race. A pride that had remained intact for centuries and was beginning to crack only now.

Because Ciudad Real was no longer a closed city. The government had opened up roads and the roads brought it closer to other cities. Travelling ceased to be the remote plan passed down from generation to generation without ever being carried out, and became an immediate possibility, an accessible and easy experience. Coletos travelled; they crossed the mountain which for centuries was their obstacle and their defense, their bulwark and their challenge. They saw, they touched, they compared. And they preferred not to communicate their observations. Anyone hearing them talk could believe nothing had happened. Nothing. An insect is nothing and it eats away at the foundations of a house.

Foreigners now come to Ciudad Real, as well. Curious people who are astonished by all they see, who are alarmed, who judge. Blabbermouths who comment on everything and kick up a fuss. Rigid, disdainful people, like Fernando Ulloa.

As a defense against this disturbing intrusion, Coletos needed to rekindle their old prejudices. Padre Manuel interpreted that need, which he himself felt, and from the pulpit he fulminated against these emissaries of Babylon, these bearers of dangerous ideas which would inevitably give rise to abominable habits. For the first time they listened to him with real attention.