Upon arriving, I made straight for the civil registry. The clerk there shared the necessary details with me, but very reluctantly ~ 500 Pesos assuaged his misgivings, and he even gave me the exact hour of the memorial ceremony. I hadn’t been in the town more than an hour when I learned that the mayor, Majencio Villaboas Moreno, was a nephew of Fulgencio’s on his father’s side, and had actually facilitated his move to this state with promises of a land grant and a great new house built just for him. When he successfully ran for mayor of an adjoining town, Tapetes, three years prior, no one much cared that his brother and cousin were in prison on drug charges. Poor Fulgencio, I thought. I had come this far in search of my identity only to discover that he had been living in a house paid for with drug money, and his legend would be tainted by the naughty deeds of his younger relatives?
Deplorable!
I arrived at the ranch where well-wishers were permitted to view the body. I approached and shook with fore-boding. This man was so alive at the Aguila Desnuda bar, and now was just a carcass. I couldn’t stand it. It was all a big let-down, and I practically ran back to the hotel. My illusions had been shattered once and for all.
Now, I’d just learned, Villaboas was running for governor of Tamaulipas state, and a banner appeared in the capital city mocking Villaboas’s family ties by linking him to the Zetas, a gang of drug hit men: “Welcome to Tamaulipas! Soon to be territory of our boss of bosses, Majencio Villaboas Moreno. The Zetas support you, and we are with you until death!”
So, what’s the poor guy to think?
The drug war was playing in Mexico’s newest elections like never before. Usually a taboo topic hiding in plain sight, narco-terrorism had not figured prominently in electoral campaigns even in regions like the Pacific coast, or in the Gulf states where Reynosa’s border-town status is a major transshipment point for America-bound cocaine. Villaboas’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) denied any collusion with drug traffickers and accused the ruling National Action Party (PAN) of hanging the banner - which it flatly negated.
Ah, the free and open expressions of democracy!
In the previous July 5 midterm elections for 500 congressional seats, notwithstanding, six governors and 565 mayors, President Felipe Calderon’s PAN party was ruthlessly painting opponents as weak on drugs and itself as the only party ballsy enough to defy the cartels.
To me it was obvious that these were the first elections where a party was directly linking itself to the drug-trafficking issue. In the past, it was mentioned in a pusillanimous manner, like an insinuation.
The PAN was banking on an mean-asshole image to keep its grip on power against Villaboas’s PRI party, and which had continued to rule in Tamaulipas after it had lost presidential power in 2000. The PRI was indeed regaining support among Mexicans fed up with this economic slump and drug violence that has killed so many of their ready and willing fellow citizens. At the same time, a growing victim’s group, disgusted with what it perceived as corrupt politics as usual, implored voters to erase all candidates in protest.
Now that was an idea I could support!
Anyway, if the PAN lost to the PRI, it would mean popular support had slipped for Calderon’ and his bloody, American-backed internecine war on the drug cartels. It would also embolden his opponents to block his more polemical measures, including passing laws that would give more police powers to 45,000 troops deployed across the country to counter corrupt law enforcement in the drug war.
You have a corrupt law enforcement structure and their solution was to give the police more power?
The PAN had initiated a campaign featuring some of Mexico’s most popular celebrities warning that a vote against the ruling party would signify a return to times when Mexico’s leaders, namely the PRI leaders, let the cartels flourish and profited by them.
In one campaign commercial, popular masked Lucha Libre wrestler “Mistico” flexes his muscles, bounces around the ring and says: “A lot of people say the fight against drug trafficking has never been as complicated. The truth is, that for many years, nobody had fought against them. Now, the president and the PAN are giving it their all, and we have to support them.”
That would never be enough, of course. Villaboas’s detractors denounced him for manipulating the drug war for political gain. They insisted it was no accident that federal agents arrested 10 mayors after he’d just recruited them to campaign on his behalf for allegedly protecting drug traffickers just a month before the elections. But state officials assured they were merely going after the trashiest areas for drug violence and that PAN members were among those arrested, including the mayor of Ulipanes, where Fulgencio’s ranch is located, and where gunmen on the Monday before I’d left Mexico City attacked an ambulance with a grenade and AK-47s just to kill a wounded rival. Prosecutors then had levied organized crime and drug charges against seven of Villaboas’s mayoral supporters, plus the former state attorney general. The other three mayors detained had not been charged upon learning of Fulgencio’s death, but would continue to be held pending some detective work.
Federal Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora alleged the charged officials helped the La Familia drug cartel. He did not provide specifics about the charges, but whistle-blowers have said the suspects allegedly leaked sensitive “dope” (allegations) to the drug gang. The saddest part of all this is that Villaboas tried to use his great-uncle’s revered name to advance his dirty ambitions, and even tried to get him to act as spokesman for his gubernatorial race.
Federal election over-seers remarked they were watching campaigns like never before to detect any illegal influence doing random checks, forcing political parties to report irregularities, and ordering investigations into anything suspicious such as more wasteful spending by a contender than reported by his campaign. Sadly, they even came to harass Fulgencio for his part in endorsing his relative.
So far, they couldn’t find any evidence of narco-traffickers handing over money to their political puppets. The Federales were limited in their policing, as drug traffickers could offer bribes under the table or use threats to cut deals with ever-corruptible candidates.
The issue was dominating political discussions from sleepy beach towns to elegant suburbs. Candidates who used to focus on joblessness and pot-holes, even as drug violence plagued their states, were pretending to meet it head on while they, including Villaboas himself, quietly accepted the bribes.
After he had won the nomination in Tamaulipas, PRI leader Beatriz Paredes coolly remarked that the Federales assured the party he was not under criminal indictment. The candidate’s brother, Humberto Villaboas, however was in prison for drug dealing, while his cousin, Rafael Moreno, was arrested in Los Angeles in a 1997 sweep that dismantled meth-amphetamine and cocaine trafficking rings across the U.S. South-West.
There is no evidence that Fulgencio was tied to drug trafficking, even if Villaboas was. Nevertheless, the PAN national leader German Martinez wondered aloud whether Villaboas would pugnaciously fight drug gangs, while consoling Tamaulipas voters that there are no such doubts about their own PAN gubernatorial candidate. But the drug-war strategy would backfire for the PAN when a plain-speaking PAN mayoral candidate was recorded telling supporters that drug traffickers had contacted all leading political contenders in the country seeking their loyalty, which admission took the heat off of Villaboas. The would-be mayoral blabber-mouth also suggested in the recording that he would avoid standing up to the Beltran Leyva cartel, which controlled his representative suburb, to maintain the peace. The recording was leaked to Mexican media, which broadcasted it nationwide last week (giving poor Fulgencio some negative publicity), prompting calls by political enemies for his withdrawal from the race. This suited Villaboas just fine.
The poor sap acknowledged making the remarks, but he said they were taken out context. For many Mexicans, the scandalous recording pointed out a weak spot for all the parties: Some voters preferred peace to the mayhem that comes with confronting drug lords.
And, many Mexicans firmly believe that the recording revealed a truth long since taken for granted. The sacrifice of having a completely clean city would be too terrible in human terms, and I believe it is naive to think they could do away with drug-trafficking entirely. More violence would come without changing anything, and few people seemed really to care.
If I could vote, I too would mark “X” through my ballot and join the protest vote. All Mexican politicians, I have come to believe, belong to a criminal class uniquely their own, or at least have to work with organized crime to get anything done!
Therewithal, just as they were burying Fulgencio, tainted by the drug war with the final eulogies, narco-related recriminations were being carried out. In revenge for the assassination of Drug-lord Arturo Beltran Leyva, drug gang hit-men shot dead the grieving mother, brother, sister, and aunt of an elite Mexican marine who’d perished after taking part in a raid that killed the notorious drug lord.
Gunmen burst into the family’s home in Matamoros in the north-east of the state just before midnight on Monday, firing assault rifles. They had ruthlessly broken the door down with a sledgehammer and sprayed them with bullets in the living room and bedrooms, or so alleged the local deputy police commander. A neighbor who’d witnessed it all reported, “It all happened in less than a minute.”
It was clear that any legal reprisals could spur revenge attacks and fan fresh violence despite the simple victories of the flagging drug war, and as rival cartels seek to take over territory from the drug lord’s weakened cartel. In separate assaults, sicarios (delinquents) shot to pieces the tourism secretary in narco-terrorist-plagued Sinaloa, and another gang fired on a restaurant in the northern border city of Piedras Negras where the state prosecutor was snarfing down some tacos with other government officials. It was just one story like this after another filtering through the official news agencies. Just Disgraceful!
Broad daylight shootings are typical of Mexican street justice. Torture, decapitations, and other atrocities are all too common.
The rising bloodshed had again alarmed tourists, which further damaged Mexico’s image as a relatively secure destination for foreign investors. The attack on the family home in Matamoros came hours after Fulgencio’s funeral, thus upstaging a ceremony which should have been a national observance. President Calderon’ condemned the attack even while eulogizing Fulgencio, saying: “We must not be frightened by the unscrupulous criminals who commit barbarities like this, even while mourning the passing of one of our greatest artists.”
Hence, Fulgencio had been lauded as a hero by respectful country-men while his grand-nephew was indicted for associating with drug-traffickers. This was a tragic post-script to the life of a great man. Sadness now would accompany me back to America.
Goodbye, old Soul. I guess I will have to wait to see you!
THE STORMS THAT
BRING OUT THE STRESS
November passed away, and all preparations were underway for the grandest Christmas celebrations of them all. Now with Fulgencio buried, and nothing left to propel my mission, I decided to head for Veracruz, and go straight for Becky’s finca, which, she insisted, contained the final clue to the fulfillment of my purpose: to learn the why-fore of my name. She had left instructions with her caretaker to present me with a document she’d procured for me before I’d arrived in Mexico. In it I would find the reason why I was named.
All the same, I had arrived as the climate deteriorated. Tourists fled the ports as a Hurricane roared its way through the Gulf, but many slum dwellers in Orizaba, the town where-from my mother’s maternal ancestors hailed, worried about looting, and refused to give-up their imperiled shanties. The damned storm would be a Category 4 hurricane with winds near 145 mph (230 kph), and would rake this region of humid jungly topography fringed with picturesque beaches and fishing villages by nightfall.
Police, firefighters and navy personnel drove through shantytowns trying to persuade some 10,000 people in the Orizaba area to evacuate their primitive shacks. Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry about such accommodations. Nonetheless, For my safety and of families all along the coast, we had to board a vehicle and head to the nearest shelter. The same advisory was bellowed over a loudspeaker by a fire-fighter as his fire-truck wound its way through the sandy streets of a slum built along a stream bed that regularly springs to life when a hurricane hits.
While the storm’s eye was forecast to pass west and north of the city, another 20,000 were expected to evacuate elsewhere along the coast.
I stayed in the shelter for a few hours, but the danger alert was called down long enough for me to head for the Ange-Ingel family finca near Puerto Alvarado. The Mexican government went on to declare a state of emergency for the lower states of Tabasco and Campeche, and many ports were closed. Rescue workers from the Mexican military and the Red Cross prepared for post-hurricane disaster relief. Two Mexican Army Hercules aircraft loaded with medical supplies arrived, dropping them within the boundaries of the finca itself. Children on the property ran through strong gusts of wind waving pieces of paper and trash bags under bands of intermittent rain as they received me. They expected a foot of rain, but already the dry stream beds had turned into gushing torrents.
The finca caretaker, an older man named Hilario, snapped photos outside the mansion, enjoying the driving winds before welcoming me inside. “The waves have been great,” Hilario gushed. “I think we’re going to be out of harm’s way as far as major damage. We’re in a very good structure here.”
Well, that was reassuring enough for me.
Most of Hilario’s family lived in the nearby shantytown of Chuburna, where they maintained a brick-making operation. After conversing with me about Becky’s poignant departure months before, he warily eyed a growing stream that rushed past the great eastern gate. “We are here with our nerves on edge,” he said. “If this hits, many of the workers quarters are not going to hold. Other storms have passed but not this strong.”
Hilario then recalled the hurricane that killed several people and caused millions in damages in September 2001 was the most frightening one in the storm-prone state’s history. This storm had already made a raging 12-day trip through Mexico and the southern United States. Many tourists left Mexico even though Christmas festivities were under way. I would stay and take my chances.
After twelve hours the storm moved on, and I could leave for the American border the following day.
In the meantime, Hilario led me to the foyer where the old document Becky found was awaiting me. On it was genealogical information which showed tables of family history extending back to the early 17th Century. At the bottom was an addendum with a prophecy which stated that the last Lord of Lagos would return after the generation which had fought in the Revolution was consumed. My father had told me that the demise of the last Lord of Lagos, a rogue if ever there was one, spelled the end of the family fortunes after four centuries in the New World, but I didn’t believe him. Legend said that the family fortunes would rise again when a descendant would be named for him.
Well, here I was. Here I was waiting to make sense of my purpose in life. Here I rendezvoused with mystery, with fulfillment, and with the end of my journey. Only the future now; only an emptiness so vast in which I would plunge my imagination, and never return to this place of reckoning ... never return to the same old complacency, and conventionality, and hypocrisy.
So, I was named for a rogue? I was named in expectation of the resurrection of a dynasty virtually extinct by the time I’d made it down here? I was left numb. I was left disillusioned. I was left ... elated! All that I could think of from there-on was that the time had come to leave Mexico.
THE REASON WHY I WAS
NAMED WHAT I WAS NAMED
At last I had come to the point of my quest: to find out who I am! While I was growing up, no one would tell me why I was named Federico since neither my immediate ancestors nor my uncles were named with this not very common name. I was the anomaly, the o
ddball, and no one would tell me why. By the time I arrived back in Chihuahua I had learned enough, and was ready to say my goodbyes to Billy, to Becky, to Corazon, to Nena, to everyone. Nonetheless, I had no room left in my conscience to mourn for nostalgia.
In fact, I spent my last hours in Mexico studying the document, reflecting on the life of a man I was led to believe was mythical, but it turned out he had been real enough. He was a legendary character my father mentioned once, an unmourned Jalisco ancestor of his who had first defended the honor of Porfirio Diaz just before the outbreak of the Revolution. He had switched sides and committed rapine, pillage and murder on behalf of Emiliano Zapata. Afterwards, once the latter’s forces had captured the capital in 1914, he offered his services to Pancho Villa, all the while touting that he lived to serve the cause of Christ and his Church, the true masters, in the fanatical opinion of others like him, of all Mexico. His insurrectionist activities and devotion to a Christian cause presaged La Cristiada, or the Cristero War, that was fought between the socialist government and Roman Catholic fascist-rebels after 1926.
A Wetback in Reverse Page 39
