the toes turned in. The barrels of the rifles followed his descent and stopped at the correct angle.
“Aim!” The order reaffirmed the position they had already taken up.
“No … No … A priest … Confession. I’m a Christian …”
“Fire!” Rifle butts on the ground. Coup de grâce, because that was the drill. Crying of seagulls. A very short silence.
“Throw him into the sea,” said the Head of State. “The sharks will finish the job.”
This business was finished and done with. But there was still another, perhaps more serious: Doctor Luis Leoncio Martínez, whose potential as a leader and fighter had been scorned and disregarded by us during the urgent emergency of military action, was free and active in Nueva Córdoba, from whose town hall he was sending out manifesto after manifesto attacking the government. He had built up a strong, a very strong position in the city, where he had gathered around him students, journalists, ex-politicians, provincial lawyers, those with socialist views, besides a few young officers, fresh from the School of Cavalry at Saumur, who constituted the army’s intelligentsia—an intelligentsia opposed to such men as Walter Hoffmann, but who, like him, had been formed by German instructors and were devotees of the pointed helmet. United there in permanent session, sleepless and with shirts undone, smoking cigarettes by the gross, drunk on black coffee and bad cigars, arguing, discussing, rounding on one another, cursing, their purity of aims worthy of a Committee of Public Safety, the rebels were drawing up a plan of reform that became ever more radical as the hourspassed, and which having settled the matter of trials to investigate peculation and illicit gains, embarked on the risky project of reducing large estates and dividing them up as common land. The Head of State had learned from letters received that same morning that events which at first he had viewed with a certain irony were really happening: “Utopian vegetarian notions,” he had said. Yet now, in Nueva Córdoba—among meetings, rallies, proclamations, and factions—intensive military instruction for students and workers was going on, under the leadership of an obscure Captain Becerra—a spare-time entomologist—who had been named Military Chief of the town. And, observing that the movement was gaining strength, with signs of syndicalism inspired by foreign, anti-patriotic doctrines, inadmissible in our country, the United States Ambassador offered a speedy intervention by North American troops, to safeguard democratic institutions. Some battleships happened to be manoeuvring in the Caribbean.
“It would be humiliating for our sovereignty,” observed the Head of State. “This operation won’t be difficult. And we must show these filthy gringos that we can manage our own problems by ourselves. Besides which, they are the sort who come for three weeks and stay two years, carrying out huge business deals. They arrive dressed in khaki and go away laden with gold. Look what General Wood did in Cuba.”
Three days passed in inspecting and preparing the East Railway, and after a grand campaigning Mass, at which they begged the Divine Shepherdess to grant triumph to the national forces, several convoys set off towards the new front, with a great noise of cheering and laughter under their regimental flags. It was almost midnight when the last train left, with a whistle and hiss of escaping steam. On the roofs of wagons and trucks men in ponchos and women in rebozos were singing hymns and songs together, while bottles of whiterum circulated by the light of lanterns, from the coal tender at the front to the rear lights on the guard’s van: “If Adelita sleeps with another, I’ll follow her by land and sea, by sea in a warship, by land in a troop train.”
Night lay behind them, and frogs croaked in the black marshes of Surgidero, now restored to the peace of its slow provincial activities, with
“Aim!” The order reaffirmed the position they had already taken up.
“No … No … A priest … Confession. I’m a Christian …”
“Fire!” Rifle butts on the ground. Coup de grâce, because that was the drill. Crying of seagulls. A very short silence.
“Throw him into the sea,” said the Head of State. “The sharks will finish the job.”
This business was finished and done with. But there was still another, perhaps more serious: Doctor Luis Leoncio Martínez, whose potential as a leader and fighter had been scorned and disregarded by us during the urgent emergency of military action, was free and active in Nueva Córdoba, from whose town hall he was sending out manifesto after manifesto attacking the government. He had built up a strong, a very strong position in the city, where he had gathered around him students, journalists, ex-politicians, provincial lawyers, those with socialist views, besides a few young officers, fresh from the School of Cavalry at Saumur, who constituted the army’s intelligentsia—an intelligentsia opposed to such men as Walter Hoffmann, but who, like him, had been formed by German instructors and were devotees of the pointed helmet. United there in permanent session, sleepless and with shirts undone, smoking cigarettes by the gross, drunk on black coffee and bad cigars, arguing, discussing, rounding on one another, cursing, their purity of aims worthy of a Committee of Public Safety, the rebels were drawing up a plan of reform that became ever more radical as the hourspassed, and which having settled the matter of trials to investigate peculation and illicit gains, embarked on the risky project of reducing large estates and dividing them up as common land. The Head of State had learned from letters received that same morning that events which at first he had viewed with a certain irony were really happening: “Utopian vegetarian notions,” he had said. Yet now, in Nueva Córdoba—among meetings, rallies, proclamations, and factions—intensive military instruction for students and workers was going on, under the leadership of an obscure Captain Becerra—a spare-time entomologist—who had been named Military Chief of the town. And, observing that the movement was gaining strength, with signs of syndicalism inspired by foreign, anti-patriotic doctrines, inadmissible in our country, the United States Ambassador offered a speedy intervention by North American troops, to safeguard democratic institutions. Some battleships happened to be manoeuvring in the Caribbean.
“It would be humiliating for our sovereignty,” observed the Head of State. “This operation won’t be difficult. And we must show these filthy gringos that we can manage our own problems by ourselves. Besides which, they are the sort who come for three weeks and stay two years, carrying out huge business deals. They arrive dressed in khaki and go away laden with gold. Look what General Wood did in Cuba.”
Three days passed in inspecting and preparing the East Railway, and after a grand campaigning Mass, at which they begged the Divine Shepherdess to grant triumph to the national forces, several convoys set off towards the new front, with a great noise of cheering and laughter under their regimental flags. It was almost midnight when the last train left, with a whistle and hiss of escaping steam. On the roofs of wagons and trucks men in ponchos and women in rebozos were singing hymns and songs together, while bottles of whiterum circulated by the light of lanterns, from the coal tender at the front to the rear lights on the guard’s van: “If Adelita sleeps with another, I’ll follow her by land and sea, by sea in a warship, by land in a troop train.”
Night lay behind them, and frogs croaked in the black marshes of Surgidero, now restored to the peace of its slow provincial activities, with
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