Government

by B. TRAVEN

  Workers would be advised to adopt this well-proven Indian method of election, particularly with the officials of their trade unions and political organizations—and not only in Russia, where it is most necessary. In all other countries, too, where Marx and Lenin are set up as saints the militant working class could achieve success much more surely if they lit a good fire yearly under their leaders’ behinds. No leader is indispensable. And the more often leaders are put on red-hot seats, the more lively the political movement would be. Above all things, the people must never be sentimental.

  3

  Don Porfirio Díaz had himself re-elected every four years when his time as president was up. The gang who waxed fatter and fatter under his regency did the electing. Whoever did not wax fat under his government had no vote. What he had needed was a brazier under his backside the first time he was elected to remind him that there is more than one man on earth who is capable of ruling a people’s destiny; that, in fact, every tenth man in every nation is capable of governing. There is nothing mysterious about it. It is much more difficult to construct a machine which will work than to rule a people where the machinery is already there and in going order. The art of governing is only made out to be mysterious in order to frighten revolutionaries and to prevent the simple subject from knowing how little capacity and knowledge is needed for government. How many half-wits and idiots have governed their peoples for half a century in peace and glory!

  Don Porfirio considered himself the best and greatest and most intelligent statesman on earth. Hence he considered that it went without saying that he should be elected again and again. And everyone below him followed his example. Governors, mayors, police chiefs, secretaries, and engineers remained in office until death relieved the people of them. If they fell into dotage or idiocy, that was no proper reason why they should be retired. They would have demanded pensions. It was better for the finances of the country to leave them in office until they could be buried than to pay salaries twice over, once to the pensioned and again to those in office.

  4

  Amalio was the casique of the Pebvil Indians. He was the elected jefe of the barrio San Andrés.

  Amalio was a drunkard. Another failing he had was that he allowed himself to be influenced by don Abelardo, the secretario. Don Abelardo had contrived little by little to bring the chief entirely over to his side. He had promised him that if he worked well with the government the governor of the state would give him a large piece of the best land, which would be taken away from a hacienda that bordered the Indian territory on the west.

  The secretary put his proposals very cleverly. He knew that the jefe of the Indians would not betray or sell out his people. If, however, by working well with the government he could win a large piece of good land for his nation, it would be to his nation’s advantage. He would settle on the new land with his family and then the land he was occupying would be free for a new family.

  Don Abelardo advised the casique to say nothing about these proposals in the pueblo so that no unnecessary excitement would be aroused. It might happen, he said, that the governor would decide on a different piece of land, perhaps to the east of the Indian territory, and then the people, if they had already counted on this new land’s being to the west, would think they had been taken advantage of. This would only give rise to a lot of talk and discussion which would do no good to anybody. Although the reason given by the secretario had only a vague connection with the matter in hand, the chief thought the secretary did well to advise him to say nothing to the people about the proposal.

  The chief, according to the design laid out to him by the secretary, was to work well with the government, but by that the secretary meant that the Indian should work well with him, since he was the government there; at least, he regarded himself as the government.

  When the working class works well with the capitalists and the middle-class political parties, it has always meant for hundreds of years that the worker pays the costs of the good understanding. It is just the same with the Indians. When they work well with the officials they are skinned for it.

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  With the help of the casique, who was not intelligent enough to see through the tactics of the secretary and who also was of weak character and could not resist brandy when he saw it in front of him, the secretary succeeded in greatly extending his influence. He allowed the governor, the state government, and the federal government an ample share of the proceeds; for the more he allowed them the less did anyone think of investigating his official activities.

  The governor received complaint after complaint about the secretary’s unscrupulous administration—there were charges of unjust taxation, charges of confiscating animals or produce which the Indians intended to take to market but which were taken from them by the secretary in payment of taxes or fines, of whose existence they first heard through the confiscation. Whole gangs of men were levied to work by compulsion on roads and public buildings without receiving either wages or food. The wages allowed for the labor of the Indians appeared in the accounts of the state or federal government and in the budgets and were paid for by taxation, but the money was shared by the governor, the government engineer in charge, and the secretario who produced the men.

  When in the neighboring Mexican town a manufacturer wanted hands, or when a trader was transporting goods through the country and wanted to spare himself the expense of pack mules, they sent messages to the secretary, who the next morning sent them the required number of men.

  The manufacturers got the laborers and the traders the boys who took on the work of pack mules, and the secretary pocketed the wages of the men he dispatched, while the Indians, free citizens of the Republic, had to take even their food with them.

  The secretary could not do all this on his own. He had no power to command these independent Indians. The power of command was in the hands of the Indian jefe, who alone could issue direct commands to his people. This was very clever of the government; for if it had issued commands to this nation of Indians more soldiers would have been needed to suppress rebellions than the government could ever have paid the war office for.

  The secretary always had regulations of some kind on hand to show why the Indians had to produce so many men for public works: because the government respected their communal land—instead of confiscating it; because it allowed the Indians to use the state roads to take their produce and cattle to market—and there pay the appointed tax on every sale; because it did not forbid them to hold festivals in their own territory; because it allowed them to drink brandy—and to pay for it; and because it did not even think of depriving them of the rights to fish and hunt game within their own boundaries.

  All these rights, which the Indians had possessed in any case as long as American soil existed, had to be expressly purchased afresh from the government every day and freshly ratified. Otherwise there would be no need of a government.

  The Indian jefe obeyed the regulations of the government, and obeyed them in the form in which the secretario, who could read and write, chose to expound and interpret them.

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  Quite often the Indians had extremely intelligent and quick-witted men as their jefes, men who were such good diplomats that without openly opposing the government they continued to be very sparing of the labor and money which they yielded to it. During their periods of office their nation increased in prosperity, and ruthless exploitation and injustices were hard to put into execution.

  The jefes had to be good diplomats. They had always to face three ways: there was the government, the secretary, and their own people. When it came to the art of government, the jefe of a large independent Indian nation in a situation like this had to be ten times more diplomatic and adroit than the man who was at the head of the Mexican Republic. The jefe was not excused by his people when he made mistakes: he was answerable for each one. It was his duty to hold the balance among the three parties. He had to see that the people were not harried and robbed
, and that not a reproach could be made against him for having at any moment neglected their advantage. But in refusing the demands of the government, he could not go too far; otherwise a battalion of soldiers would be quartered in the place and in a few months the pueblo would be so pillaged that not a sheep or a goat would be found on the pastures—for when soldiers are quartered on an Indian pueblo they pay nothing for what they consume or waste for their pleasure. The jefe would be made answerable for the arrival of soldiers, because he ought not to have let things get so out of hand.

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  It is therefore quite understandable that don Abelardo, when he had been blessed with so feeble and slow-witted a jefe as Amalio, would exert all his influence to keep him in office until he had filled his pockets and could give up his post as secretary.

  The present jefe had made himself thoroughly unpopular with his people. The whole nation was only waiting for a new man to represent them in the cabildo; and just because the man who was most likely to be elected by his barrio was the direct opposite of Amalio, it was as good as certain that he would be elected. If for no other reason, it would be done to annoy the secretario, for every child knew that there was no one the secretary hated so much as this man whose election seemed certain.

  Don Abelardo was afraid of this man because he knew him to be a forthright, sagacious, and self-willed man, who would make it almost impossible for him to get what he wanted.

  So don Abelardo began to take earnest measures to keep in office a jefe with whom he got on so well. He wrote a long report to the governor, expressing his view of the system of yearly election which was the practice in Pebvil. He said outright that it was nonsense; for as soon as a jefe had got into the saddle and was just beginning to reap the benefits of his experience, he had to give up his office because another jefe had been elected.

  What the secretary said was nothing new. The same thing has been said for thousands of years. It is the reason why there are hereditary kings, why there are presidents and deputies elected for life, and why there are dictators. The officials of labor organizations, too, who do not want to take a back seat though the time has come around ten times over, fall back on the same argument.

  The report made a deep impression on the governor. He saw at once that the system was not favorable to a stable, conservative regime. There was the danger that such a system might be taken as a pattern; and if you were to have a new president and a new governor every year, the people might come to believe that one person could govern as well as another, for in twenty years you would have twenty regents and all of them knowing how to govern. From this it might appear that ruling was not so difficult as the ruled were made to believe.

  Besides this, the governor was a man who wanted to keep his office forever, because it was comfortable and brought in business as nothing else could. And then at the top, at the very head of the nation, was a man who did not mean to get off his chair, however the chair might be shaken and pushed about.

  As don Porfirio intended to sit there for life and as the governor, too, hoped to be a lifelong governor, the governor declared the system in vogue at Pebvil a stupidity and a proof that nothing good could be expected of Indians, who were still sunk in barbarism. He commanded by decree that the present jefe, Amalio, had either to be elected again, or else to remain in office by virtue of the last election.

  Don Abelardo read out the decree in the presence of Amalio and a few Indians who happened to be in the cabildo.

  It was not easy to make out whether the jefe was pleased by this decree or not. He said, “If that is the government’s command, we can only fall into line.”

  “No question about it,” don Abelardo threw in. “Orders are orders. You remain jefe, don Amalio. There is no more to be said.”

  The other Indians who were present said nothing. They listened quietly without a movement or any change of expression.

  It was November when that happened.

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  On the morning of the last day of the second week after the arrival of this decree, a deputation from the San Miguel barrio came to the cabildo to speak with the secretario. San Miguel was the district whose turn it was to elect the jefe for the following year.

  Natividad, the man whose election was certain, was not in the deputation. The men who composed it, seven in number, were ordinary Indians to look at—small peasants. They wore sandals on their naked feet. They had spotlessly clean white cotton shirts and trousers on. These articles of clothing were in some cases so patched that not a piece of the original cloth appeared to have survived. All carried their jorongos—their ponchos of gray wool with a long fringe at each end—thrown over their shoulders. Their trousers were pulled up high above the knee according to the custom of their nation; and their muscular calves and legs looked as if they had been carved out of old hardwood, like those wooden statues of Christ which are centuries old.

  The men took their hats off as soon as they entered the office. Each one in turn stepped up to the secretary, told him his name and touched his hand with his fingertips, and with a bow stepped back to his place. Don Abelardo offered them cigarettes. Each took one and began to smoke. Then the secretary asked whether they would not like to sit on the bench. They replied that they preferred to stand.

  All of them had brought their machetes and three their shotguns, the ordinary Spanish muzzle-loaders, but they had left their weapons outside in the portico of the cabildo. Two men who had come with them squatted on the trodden earth of the portico smoking and talking. The dogs that had accompanied this delegation chased each other on the open space in front of the cabildo and quarreled and played with the dogs of the place.

  9

  After the men in the office had smoked for a time the secretario asked them, “Qué puedo hacerle?” What could he do for them?

  One of the Indians stepped forward. He was called Tomás and had been appointed spokesman for the deputation.

  “We have heard that a decree has been made for our comarca.”

  “That is true,” said don Abelardo.

  “We have the right to know what this decree for our territory says.”

  “You have the right,” replied the secretary. “The decree of the governor in Tuxtla declares that the system of election used in your nation is null and void.”

  “Neither the governor nor the federal government of the Republic of Mexico,” replied Tomás, “can set aside the system of election which holds good for our comarca without first obtaining our consent. Our customs bind us alone—we do not force the Ladinos or any other Indian nation to follow our practices and customs. For this reason we allow nobody, not even the president of the Republic, the right to force upon us customs whose usefulness we have not tested and of which we do not see the benefit for our people. We have no objection to looking into the advantages and disadvantages of a new way of voting and to testing its usefulness, but we cannot and will not permit the government to interfere with rights which concern our own comarca only.”

  Tomás did not say this fluently and all at one go. He said it slowly and very deliberately and spoke in halting Spanish. Sometimes he spoke a few words first in his own language so as to make his thoughts clear to himself and to let his companions, only two of whom spoke Spanish, understand what he was saying.

  The secretary understood the language spoken in Pebvil, although he could only speak it with difficulty. He sat at the table with his legs crossed and listened with composure. Then he lit another cigarette and handed the package around, but not one of the men took any.

  “It is a government decree,” he said at last. “I can do nothing at all about it. I did not ask for the decree.”

  The men knew from long experience that no decision, least of all a decree touching on the affairs of an Indian nation, would be made without the secretario’s being asked for his advice and comments. The secretary is the middleman between the Indian nation, to which he has been appointed secretary, and the government. A decision would scarc
ely, if ever, be reached, unless the secretary who lived with the Indians and knew their customs, as well as their peculiarities and tendencies, had given it his blessing, or at least had given no warning.

  Knowing this, the men took the word of the secretario for what it was worth. They did not say that he could easily have prevented the decree if he had wished. They made no criticism either of his conduct or the government’s.

  Tomás, the spokesman, said, “We have come to say that we do not consider that the decree exists for us. We shall elect our jefe as we have always done; and for our nation no one is jefe unless we have elected him. We have nothing to do with a jefe whom we have not elected or whose term is over. You will soon find out whether you or the government can do anything with our nation with the help of a man whom we do not recognize as our jefe.”

  “The decree is not in the least meant to injure the great and noble nation of Pebvil,” the secretary said. “Amalio is an excellent jefe. He has learned a great deal by working with me in the cabildo. A new jefe will have to learn everything from the beginning before he understands it all and can be of real use to you.”

  To this Tomás said, “It is not our business to decide whether Amalio is a good or a bad jefe for us and that is not why we have come. Suppose him to be an excellent jefe, the best we have had for dozens of years. That is no reason why we should alter our ancient customs in one day. It might easily happen that another jefe would not be so good as Amalio and we would not be able to get rid of him when we wanted.”

  “The Republic of Mexico is a thousand times greater than Pebvil,” said don Abelardo, “and in this great Republic of Mexico don Porfirio has been jefe now for thirty-two years. He has always been re-elected time after time, and it has turned out very well. Year by year he has enriched his experience and been able to make use of it for the good of the people. The governor of this state has also been re-elected time after time, just as the governors of the other federated states have been too.”