knight of national independence against the gringos. Who would dare fight against a Latin American dictator, no matter how sinister, when the United States is attacking him? Huerta has used the occupation of Veracruz as a pretext to intensify his conscription of troops, saying his pelones, his ‘bald boys,’ are going to Veracruz to go up against the Yankees, when in fact he’s sending them north to fight Pancho Villa and south against Zapata.”
The young students of the Xalapa Preparatory School mustered in their French kepis and their navy blue uniforms with gold buttons and marched off with their rifles toward Veracruz to fight the gringos. They didn’t get there on time. Huerta fell, and the gringos withdrew; Villa and Zapata battled Carranza, the Maximum Leader of Mexico’s revolution, and occupied Mexico City; Carranza took refuge in Veracruz until the fearsome General Alvaro Obregon defeated Villa at Celaya in April 1915 and retook Mexico City.
All this passed through Xalapa, sometimes as rumor, sometimes as news; as songs sung as corridos and ballads when newsprint was under embargo; and only once as a cavalry charge accompanied by shouts and crackling rifle fire from some rebel group. Leticia closed the windows, threw Laura to the floor and covered her with the mattress. By 1915, it seemed that peace was returning to Mexico, but the habits of the small provincial capital hadn’t been much disturbed.
Rumors reached them of a great famine in Mexico City, when the rest of the nation, convulsed and self-regarding, forgot about the luxurious and egoistic capital, stopped sending it meat, fish, corn, beans, tropical fruit, and flour, reducing it to the squalid products of milk cows in the Milpa Alta area and of the gardens scattered between Xochimilco and Ixtapalapa. As usual, there were many flowers in the Valley, but who eats carnations or calla lilies?
The rumors spread: merchants were hoarding what little food there was. Into Mexico City marched General Obregon, whose first act was to make the shopkeepers sweep the city streets, to put them to shame. He
emptied their shops and reopened communications so supplies could flow into the famished capital.
This was all rumor. Just to be on the safe side, Doña Leticia. slept with a dagger under her pillow.
Photographic images of the Revolution appeared in the newspapers and magazines Don Fernando consumed by the cartload: the dictator Porfirio Díaz was an ancient man with a square face, Indian cheek bones, white mustache, and a chest covered with medals saying farewell to the cowntry (as he pronounced it) from the German steamship Ipiranga, sailing from Veracruz; Madero was a tiny man, bald, with black beard and mustache, dreamy eyes astonished by his triumph in bringing down the tyrant; those eyes announced his own sacrifice at the hands of the sinister General Victoriano Huerta, an executioner with a head like a skull, black sunglasses, and a mouth like that of a serpent, with no lips; Venustiano Carranza was an old man with a white heard and blue sunglasses, whose vocation was to be the national paterhe; Obregon was a brilliant young general with blue eyes and haughty mustache, whose arm was shot off during the battle of Celaya; Emiliano Zapata was a man of silence and mystery, as if a ghost manifesting himself for only a short time: Laura became fascinated with the enormous, ardent eyes of this gentleman, whom newspapers referred to as “Attila of the South,” in the same way they called Pancho Villa “Centaur of the North.” Laura had never seen a single photo of Pancho Villa in which he wasn’t smiling, showing his white teeth like corn kernels and his little slits of eyes that made him look like an astute Chinese.
Above all, Laura remembered being under the mattress and the scattered shots in the streets below, now that she was staring at herself in the mirror, so straight and tall, “such a cutie pie,” as her mother said, making ready to go to
The young students of the Xalapa Preparatory School mustered in their French kepis and their navy blue uniforms with gold buttons and marched off with their rifles toward Veracruz to fight the gringos. They didn’t get there on time. Huerta fell, and the gringos withdrew; Villa and Zapata battled Carranza, the Maximum Leader of Mexico’s revolution, and occupied Mexico City; Carranza took refuge in Veracruz until the fearsome General Alvaro Obregon defeated Villa at Celaya in April 1915 and retook Mexico City.
All this passed through Xalapa, sometimes as rumor, sometimes as news; as songs sung as corridos and ballads when newsprint was under embargo; and only once as a cavalry charge accompanied by shouts and crackling rifle fire from some rebel group. Leticia closed the windows, threw Laura to the floor and covered her with the mattress. By 1915, it seemed that peace was returning to Mexico, but the habits of the small provincial capital hadn’t been much disturbed.
Rumors reached them of a great famine in Mexico City, when the rest of the nation, convulsed and self-regarding, forgot about the luxurious and egoistic capital, stopped sending it meat, fish, corn, beans, tropical fruit, and flour, reducing it to the squalid products of milk cows in the Milpa Alta area and of the gardens scattered between Xochimilco and Ixtapalapa. As usual, there were many flowers in the Valley, but who eats carnations or calla lilies?
The rumors spread: merchants were hoarding what little food there was. Into Mexico City marched General Obregon, whose first act was to make the shopkeepers sweep the city streets, to put them to shame. He
emptied their shops and reopened communications so supplies could flow into the famished capital.
This was all rumor. Just to be on the safe side, Doña Leticia. slept with a dagger under her pillow.
Photographic images of the Revolution appeared in the newspapers and magazines Don Fernando consumed by the cartload: the dictator Porfirio Díaz was an ancient man with a square face, Indian cheek bones, white mustache, and a chest covered with medals saying farewell to the cowntry (as he pronounced it) from the German steamship Ipiranga, sailing from Veracruz; Madero was a tiny man, bald, with black beard and mustache, dreamy eyes astonished by his triumph in bringing down the tyrant; those eyes announced his own sacrifice at the hands of the sinister General Victoriano Huerta, an executioner with a head like a skull, black sunglasses, and a mouth like that of a serpent, with no lips; Venustiano Carranza was an old man with a white heard and blue sunglasses, whose vocation was to be the national paterhe; Obregon was a brilliant young general with blue eyes and haughty mustache, whose arm was shot off during the battle of Celaya; Emiliano Zapata was a man of silence and mystery, as if a ghost manifesting himself for only a short time: Laura became fascinated with the enormous, ardent eyes of this gentleman, whom newspapers referred to as “Attila of the South,” in the same way they called Pancho Villa “Centaur of the North.” Laura had never seen a single photo of Pancho Villa in which he wasn’t smiling, showing his white teeth like corn kernels and his little slits of eyes that made him look like an astute Chinese.
Above all, Laura remembered being under the mattress and the scattered shots in the streets below, now that she was staring at herself in the mirror, so straight and tall, “such a cutie pie,” as her mother said, making ready to go to
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