I the Supreme

by Augusto Roa Bastos

  *1 Verses from Paraguay’s present-day national anthem.

  *2 These fragments regarding the first invasion of Buenos Aires in 1806 by British troops under the command of Beresford and under the leadership of Popham and Baird have been culled from the rough notes jotted down by El Supremo in the first years of his government. Although he does not quote or mention the Robertson brothers (nor do they do so in their own writings), it is evident that young Juan Parish Robertson, “direct witness” of events, both of the arrival of the flood of treasures in London and of the beginning of the British domination of Buenos Aires, was the obliging informant of El Supremo during his stay in Asunción. In these notes there are very precise references—true or not—to both significant and trivial facts, such as the sums that fell to Baird, Popham, and Beresford when the pirate booty captured in Luján, after the flight of the Spanish viceroy, was divided. El Supremo notes, for example: “The conquest of the Dutch colony of the Cape appears to have whetted the appetite of the English.” And then: “Baird’s share was 24 thousand pounds (to be precise, 23 thousand pounds, five shillings, ninepence), Beresford’s more than eleven thousand, Popham’s seven thousand; each one of them was able to buy himself a country seat with his part.” But at the same time he does not fail to note that during this same period, at the other end of the continent, Miranda, using British money [which allowed him to hire mercenaries and buy arms], was endeavoring to win the “independence” of Venezuela. “What is all this shit?” El Supremo exclaims indignantly. “In August of 1806, Miranda lands at La Vela. He finds no one there. The patriots flee from the liberators, believing them to be pirates. In September, the English land in Buenos Aires, and there the pirates sack it in the guise of liberators!” (Compiler’s Note.)

  *3 It was not Phèdre but Tancrède that was performed that night, the only work for the stage known at the time in Paraguay. (Compiler’s Note.)

  Fourth recess of the thirteenth session, adjourned at the request of Echevarría, sweating, in a bad humor, turning up his nose at the maté vessel passing from mouth to mouth. The president of the Junta has had a basketful of maize cakes brought in. Everyone is sucking and eating greedily. Nothing but the sound of mouths, the slurp of the sipper in the foam. Just to be saying something, I bring up yet again the rebuilding of Buenos Aires, whose aim is the recasting of Paraguayans. Always a good subject. At least it keeps me from having to listen to one of my kinsman Fulgencio’s stupid jokes, which he has been giving signs for some time now of perpetrating. In 1580, almost forty years had gone by since the disappearance of the port city. The last huts burned down, overrun with grass which covered the ashes and erased it from the map. How much we would all have gained, gentlemen, if the slate had been left as it was, wiped clean! But Asunción, prolific mother of peoples and cities, was born to nurse suckling pigs. The founders of the second Buenos Aires left from Asunción. Governor Juan de Garay decided to establish a port in Río de la Plata in order to link Spain to Asunción and to Peru. So the standard for levying a work force was raised. The town crier went through the streets to the sound of trumpet and drum summoning all inhabitants who wanted to join in the undertaking. Those enlisted numbered 10 Spaniards and 56 native-born. They left Asunción accompanied by their families, their cattle, their seed, their tools for working the land, their hope. Garay and his companions go downriver by boat. Others go overland, driving 500 cows along with them. A fair-sized herd, right? A fine nursery. On June 11, 1580, the second birth of the port-city takes place. Everything goes smoothly. Harmoniously. The epic is over. It’s never one and the same man who kills the wild beast, dresses the hide, and lines the cape. Mustn’t skip the liturgy of the foundation. The governor whacks at the grass with his sword, as ancient custom prescribes. Garrido the notary speaks in a solemn, cavernous voice. The good Basque Garay smiles to himself. His smile is reflected in the blade of his sword. See how chronicographers invent details. Buenos Aires is definitively founded. Cabildo. Scroll. Cross. Its plan, on parchment. Just a flat stretch of open ground. There was no need for all that fancy-dancing, Larreta said. Perpendicular streets are traced, north to south, “easte/weste.” A plain, straightforward checkerboard. Sixteen blocks along the riverfront, nine deep. Six blocks to the Fort, lined with Adam’s-apple trees. Three convents. Main square. A hospital. Land for the small farms of the settlers. The young city is already creeping, becoming a prattler. The same never-ending story. Among the fifty or so Paraguayan sons of the earth there is a Paraguayan daughter of the earth, Ana Díaz. The pettifogger gives a suck on the sipper and chuckles. What are you laughing at, señor jurisconsult? Oh, nothing, señor dean. Your tale of the second birth, as you call it, more than two centuries ago, suddenly made me remember the homage rendered that woman, Ana Díaz, not long ago by the Paraguayan ladies who reside in Buenos Aires. A fine colophon for the story of the foundation! Tell us about it, Doctor Echevarría, Fulgencio Yegros says. The other takes his time. He takes a long sip from the bombilla, till the belly of the maté vessel complains that it’s running dry. Well, the pettifogger says, the Paraguayan ladies’ homage to Ana Díaz had an unexpected ending. No, no!, the members of the Junta cry. Begin at the beginning! There wasn’t one, really. Just that the resident ladies began searching, very early in the morning, even before the sun was up, for the plot of land that Juan de Garay awarded Ana Díaz as one of the founders of the city. They wanted to pay her homage at the same hour at which Garay supposedly gave that founding fillip with his sword. The hundred-some patrician ladies wandered all morning and all afternoon amid row houses, salting-houses, drinking-houses and foggy vacant lots in search of the Paraguayan woman’s piece of phantom ground, without losing heart in the face of the freezing wind from the estuary. As night was falling, they reached the place where, according to the barely readable maps, the domain they were looking for was located. All they find there is a shabby, broken-down house, a combination convent, salting-house, and general store. One of the ladies, a friend of mine, the reason why I don’t mention her by name, climbed up on top of a pile of refuse and began the speech in honor of the occasion. She was continually interrupted by men of all sorts who kept entering the building as others, drunken, boisterous roisterers, came out. When my friend, the lady giving the speech, solemnly called out the name of Ana Díaz three times, a rather scantily clad woman appeared in the doorway. That’s me, what is it you ladies lookin’ for?, she said that the woman inquired in a strident voice. The house of Ana Díaz, the lady answered. We’ve come to render her homage. I’m Ana Díaz, the lady. This is my house, and as it happens it’s my birthday, so jes’ come right in. The ladies were horrified. Wait a sec though, till I call my pals and my neighbors, so they can live it up a little too. You’ve doubtless already guessed what sort of house it was: a vulgar Temple of Eros, the pettifogger added, feeling obliged to explain what was already clearer than day. A noisy herd of some hundred or so men and women, including musicians with their instruments, appeared. The ladies consulted the map again. There was no doubt about it. This was the place; fate, that joker, had put another Ana Díaz there. Nonetheless the discourse was resumed, with renewed warmth but a different emphasis. My friend was so eloquent and so overcome with emotion, or so confused, that in a short while meritorious matrons and meretricious maidens were embracing each other in a flood of tears, as the musicians struck martial chords to serve as a background for this ceremony of unforeseen and unrepeatable feminine confraternity. The Porteño pettifogger lied as usual. Gross falsehood. Insidious invention. Anything to contradict me and check the course of the Treaty galloping along at full tilt in the steam of the maté. My investigations of the incident did not even remotely confirm it. On the plot of land awarded Ana Díaz by Garay, there is no such Temple of Eros, only a common, ordinary saddlery.

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  During the night the president of the Junta came to consult me as to whether, in view of the sudden paralysis in both hands with which Eche
varría had been stricken, the day of the signing ought to be postponed. Look, cousin, if the two envoys don’t sign the treaty, the Buenos Aires Junta can always play that old game of claiming later that it is thereby null and void, Fulgencio Yegros says confidentially. Look, you who know all the ins and outs of cozening, we’ve set tomorrow, October 12, the Day of the Race, as the Day of the Signature. The treaty will be signed tomorrow. Pass confirmation of this along to the other members of the Government. Is the treaty drafted, cousin? Every last word. Fair copy. Definitive text. It will not be corrected. May we read it? You’ll hear it tomorrow; less work that way. Leave that part up to me. You see to your parade. Arrange things so that it starts when the trumpet sounds, so that the ceremony of the signing ends the negotiations and we can bid our guests farewell with all the honors. And be good enough to have La’ó-Ximó, the healer of Lambaré, brought here immediately. Send him to me the moment he arrives.

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  Echevarría has reluctantly agreed to hold his two arms out above the straw mat, with his face turned to the wall. His clenched fists stand out against the stains of old blood on the esparto. La’ó-Ximó, a skinny skeleton of a man yet possessed of the strength of a bull, has been struggling for some time now to relax those hands tensed in a death grip. Frictions, massages, lightning blows capable of splitting a chunk of marble in two. All to no avail. La’ó-Ximó’s bald pate drenched with sweat gleams amid the candles; a little stream trickles down from his pigtail onto the bundle of nerves at the nape of his neck. He turns to me: Sire, it’s a simple case of apava, in other words paralysis. But the kuruchí, in other words the knot of the gnarl, is not in the hands. It’s located at a certain point in the celebrum. It’s the mark of a point from which there is no return. This man can still return; the trouble is, he doesn’t want to. So you have your points too, eh, La’ó-Ximó? Yes, Sir, it’s a point. I’m going to see where it is. I’m going to burn him a little and the leaves of his hands will open again. He inspected, sniffed the two fists, pore by pore. He suddenly stopped at the point of the paragraph, the article, the clause. Over the flame of a candle he softened a mixture of artemisia, benjamin, and liquidambar, and formed two little balls. He crushed one of them in the juncture between the thumb and the index finger of the right hand; the other in the center of the metacarpus of the left hand. He lit a little stick of incense and brought it close to the poultices. The combustion finally melted them and volatilized them into smoke, vapor, odor. The hands slowly opened. A sort of gradual resurrection. Little by little the fingers regained the ability to move. There you are, Sire, La’ó-Ximó says. Echevarría gazes at his hands, glowering; he suspects that he has had others attached to him that aren’t his. He moves them reluctantly. As he gathers together his straw mat, his potions, his needles and little sticks, La’ó-Ximó says to me in Payaguá dialect in a low voice: Wanting to go on being sick, the sick man has gotten well without meaning to, through the opilative power of Santa Librada and the Great-Grandfather La’ó-Xé who-binds-and-unbinds what kills. At the door I throw him a coin. It remains suspended in the air. La’ó-Ximó catches the silver colibri of the carlos-cuarto and puts it in his guayaka.*1 Be careful, Sire! That foreigner’s hands are full of tongues! Don’t worry. Off with you. His figure cuts a corner and disappears.

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  Another solemn meeting of the Junta and the Cabildo. I read the Treaty aloud in a calm, deliberate voice. I regulate the decibels of the acoustic volume, underlining the most important parts: Article One: Inasmuch as Paraguay finds itself in urgent need of aid in order to maintain an effective and respectable force for its security and in order to confront the machinations of its enemies within and without, the tobacco of the Royal Treasury on hand in the province will be sold and the proceeds credited to Paraguay, to be invested in the aforementioned object or an analogous one. Article Two: It is established that the food and municipal taxes previously paid to Buenos Aires on each hundredweight of maté imported from Paraguay are henceforth to be collected in Asunción, to be applied specifically to the object set forth in the preceding article. Three: It is hereby provided that foreign duties will be collected at the point of sale. Article Four: The department of Candelaria, situated on the left bank of the Paraná, is hereby declared included within the boundaries of Paraguay. Article Five: In view of the independent status retained by Paraguay, the Junta of Buenos Aires will not in any way oppose the implementation and execution of the other measures passed by the Governing Junta of Paraguay, in conformity with the provisions of the present Treaty, both contracting parties desiring to strengthen still further the ties and obligations that unite and ought rightfully to unite them in a Federation. Each of the parties pledges for its part not only to cultivate a sincere, firm, and perpetual friendship, but also to offer aid and cooperation, mutually and effectively, with every manner of assistance, as the circumstances of each permit, whenever required by the sacred end of annihilating and destroying any enemy that may attempt to oppose the furtherance of our just cause and common freedom.

  Thunderous applause greets the end of the reading. There is no further discussion. We all come forward to sign the double-tenor papyrus intoned without a single false note. Everyone wants to be the first to sign. A moment before, I have been obliged to drag Eschevarría out of his lodgings, still protesting that his hands are not his hands. Come on! Hurry up! They’re your hands, your very own hands! No more of this…! I pull him. I push him. I row and tow him, haul and heave-ho him, a heavy barge of bad faith. I shoot him across the Plaza full of horses. He sees Belgrano affixing his signature with an air of great satisfaction; he has no other alternative than to sign himself. Everyone highly satisfied. The envoys because they have obtained, if not the much-desired union, a close alliance; the military leaders of the Junta because they have arrived at an accord with the Porteños; I because I have prevented domination by Buenos Aires. In his chronicle, the Tacitus of the Plata will later severely reproach the envoys for having yielded to Paraguay’s demands by agreeing to a federal league without obtaining the slightest advantage in return. Everyone speaks in accordance with the promptings of his particular mad vision. The Devil take the Tacitus of the Plata! Off with him! All of us here are as happy as larks! More shouts of Long Live the Holy Federation! Ovations. Applause. Even Echevarría claps his usurer’s hands for all he’s worth. The roar of applause swells and dissolves into the thunder of cavalry.

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  From the dais erected on the Plaza de Armas we witness the parade. The two thousand five hundred horsemen of Paraguay and Takuary ride by in combat formation, giving their coursers free rein. Arms dipped in salute to Belgrano, who beams with pleasure at this anteposthumous honor. Fulgencio Yegros and Pedro Juan Cavallero, that is to say half the Junta, at the head of the parade. Sound of a fanfare. The closed formation then breaks up into a thousand fanfaronades. Simulated charges, attacks, hand-to-hand encounters. Horses and horsemen divide in two, with a horseman-half and a courser-half coming back together a moment later, galloping on like centaurs. Individual feats multiply, yet maintain their nature of a collective choreorganization. Two troopers mount the same half-broken horse; suddenly one of them dismounts on one foot on one side, the other on the other; they cross over, changing from foot to hand, doing a scissors on the back of the galloping mount. Ten horsemen ride along standing upright on a line of chargers alternately saddled and barebacked. They alight, run alongside their mounts on foot, and unsaddle them without slackening their pace. The saddles fly through the air. In the wink of an eye, they saddle them up again, but now the ones riding bareback are the ones on the mounts. They set one foot on the ground, with the other hooked in the stirrup, snatch up off the ground lances that they have tossed a hundred yards in front of them. Look, general; I don’t believe any country has horsemen that can surpass Paraguayans in the art of equitation. Indeed, señor dean, these figures that they are
executing are amazing! They’re well done, it’s true, Echevarría mutters, but in the province of Buenos Aires I’ve seen riding exhibitions that would have amazed you, señor dean. There are gauchos in the Migueletes Regiments who can harness their nervous Frisians using nothing but their teeth. Others who, between two horses with one foot in each saddle, take off at full spur when retreat is sounded, carrying a man, whom we take to be a comrade wounded in battle, off with them in their arms. Another gaucho standing atop the first one keeps shooting his harquebus or his crossbow to cover the retreat of the three. I knew an equestrian from Bragado who put his trained mount through all sorts of exercises, dances, and contredanses. Between the saddlepad and his knees, and between the stirrup and his big toes, he placed little silver coins. They never fell off, as though they had been nailed to those spots more firmly than the coins sewn to the leather of his belt. The secretary’s wrinkled hands had been let loose to allow their tongues to graze in the pastures of a purple erudition. Who could stop him! I remembered La’ó-Ximó’s warning. He was shouting louder and louder in the midst of all the din: In the East Indies the principal honor was to ride an elephant, not a plebeian horse. The second, to ride in a coach drawn by four oxen with monumental horns. The third, to ride a camel. The last category, if not to say the last honor or practically a dishonor, was to ride a horse or be driven in a cart pulled by a single jade. A writer of our time says he saw that, in those regions of extremely ancient culture, worthy individuals ride oxen fitted with rawhide saddles, stirrups, and bridles, and adds that they are pleased and proud to ride such mounts. Ah well, my esteemed Echevarría, speaking of such matters, you no doubt know that in the war against the Samnites, Quintus Fabius Maximus Rutilius, seeing that on the third or fourth charge his cavalry had nearly defeated the adversary, ordered his soldiers to let go of the bridles of their steeds and charge at full spur; with no obstacles to hinder them as they galloped through the enemy lines, where the troops lay all about on the ground, they cleared the way for the infantry, which consummated the bloody rout. Quintus Fulvius Flacus used the same tactic against the Celtiberians: Ib cum majore vi equorum facietis, si effraenatos in hostes equos immittitis; quod saepe romanos equites cum laude fecisse sua, memoriae proditum est…Detractisque fraenis, bis ultro citroque cum magna strage hostium, infractis omnibus hastis, transcurrerunt,*2 as Livy describes it. More or less, esteemed doctor, what happened at Cerro Porteño and Takuary. Echevarría, a shifty one, changes the subject: in ancient times the Duke of Muscovy performed the following ceremony with the Tartars when the latter sent him their ambassadors: He came out to meet them on foot and presented them with a glass of mare’s milk. If on drinking it a single drop fell on the horses’ manes, the duke was obliged to lick it up with his tongue. Well, my dear Echevarría, you haven’t yet licked the manes of these victorious horses. Nor have you, señor dean, offered us the glass of mare’s milk that the Duke of Muscovy offered the foreign ambassadors. On the contrary, señor secretary; you drank down half of it and spilled the other half on the manes of the Junta’s horses. What happened is what happened to Croesus on traversing the city of Sardis. He found a meadow in which there was a multitude of serpents. His horses ate them with a will, which was a bad omen for his undertakings. Almost all of them were lamed hand and foot, according to the account by Herodotus of Halicarnassus. We call a horse whose other parts are as perfect as its mane and ears, not to mention, naturally, its testiculary parts, whole and complete in every way, a caballo entero. Other horses are only half horses, and geldings not horses at all. See, look, watch that!, Belgrano exclaimed, reining Echevarría in before he could come out with another imminent stupidity. A spectacle truly phantasmagorical. The sort of dazzling darkness spread by the sun’s fire falling from directly overhead at midday is suddenly rent. A single clap of thunder makes the earth tremble. Two thousand five hundred horses ride down upon us, amid whirlwinds of dust. Horses alone. Saddled or barebacked. No sign of horsemen. Compact mass. Geometric exhalation of steeds. They thunder past the reviewing stand, sweat-stained, bearing lances between their teeth. Completely unbridled. When finally our eyes grow accustomed to this unreal charge, they gradually make out the cross of the barebacked steeds, or above the empty saddles doll-sized horsemen no bigger than a man’s foot: in reality it is the crossed feet of each horseman. Look at that, Echevarría! That was the mystery of Takuary! How was a person to shoot at those tiny cruciform figures? How was a person to imagine that those X-shapes were the Paraguayan horsemen upside down! By the time we realized, they were right side up again, pressing us hard with their lances and machetes! Not to have seen that, general!, Echevarría stammered, biting his fists.