A town story by Lupita Ruiz.

1.- Publicado originalmente en: Writers, A literary magazine, 2010. Disponible en: http://www.up.edu/showimage/show.aspx?file=15990

2.- Se reproduce en esta página única y exclusivamente con fines culturales y educativos por lo cual no se violan derechos de autor.

3.- Foto original de Miguel Romero.

      The Cristeros would burst into Las Zarquíllas on horseback and take

everything they could, sometimes even the townswomen. After dusting

over the church with their governing horses, they would retreat to a

spot near La Agua Santa in the outskirts of our village to celebrate

through hard sips of fine Tequila. My grandmother Mama-Chuy, engraved

these clear memories of the Mexican Revolution and other

countless town stories into our heads, just as sharply as the Ave Marias.

This eighty-two year-old little lady who was raised in the tiny town of

Las Zarquíllas praying the Rosario through passionate whispers and

with eyes closed, now sits daily on the left side of the old couch in her

Salem apartment. In her left hand, she holds the fifteen-minute prayer

book that was once white. With her right hand, she rubs her bad knee

with one of those thick, strong ointments she swears by, extracted from

some special animal somewhere in Mexico. Sometimes I think she puts

it on because it brings her a piece of home. It brings her the smell of

crowded little ladies veiled in black and passionately whispering

prayers to the sick and deceased, and the smell of the house where her

parents, Antonia Maciél and Isidoro Hernández, raised a family

through tough and humble years.

Mama-Chuy chuckles every time we request her father’s story. Her

gold-plated loop earrings dangle heavily from her ears, and she lets out

short and tired breaths as she shifts around on the couch, preparing to

talk for hours. She always squints her eyes and looks upward, as if physically

reverting to that thirteenth day of February.

It was my great-grandfather Isidoro Hernandez, Adolfo Ruiz, Santiago

Ruiz, and David Ezquivel under the Guamúchil tree behind the

Secundaria. Three men secured the rope around the four necks and

shrunk the nooses; they had been planning to kill my great-grandfather

and his comrades for their money. My great-grandfather and the two

other shaken men, watched the lynching of Adolfo Ruiz with their own

damp eyes and without a shadow of a doubt that they were next. The

men yanked both of Adolfo Ruiz’s legs until his face purpled, his fingers

trembled, and not a hint of life exhaled from his parted lips. My greatgrandfather

was next.

We follow my Grandma’s arm as she explains, with admirable precision,

the way the rope rested on her father’s shoulders. She carefully

places her fifteen-minute prayer book on the lap of her apron. With one

hand she clenches an invisible rope around her neck, and with the

other she raises a stiffened index finger. Firming her eyebrows and raising

her arm, she continues to explain how my great-grandfather’s

courageous words saved his life that evening.

“I’d rather lose against bullets than be taken by this damn rope,” she

gently grunted, trying to mouth the exact brave words of her father.

As the lynchers continued to yank the dying Adolfo Ruiz, my greatgrandfather

quickly ducked out of the noose and sprinted away from

the Guamuchil tree. Santiago Ruiz and David Ezquivel took advantage

of the lynchers’ shock and hurried after my great-grandfather through

the town. They sprinted far into what marks the starting point of Las

Zarquillas, near a body of water called La Presa. It was said that this

area was where the first inhabitants of the town established themselves.

A man by the name of Don Guillermo from Sahuayo de Hidalgo had

built all the adobe houses there, and he visited the town every eigh

days to check on his livestock and land. It had turned dark, and by the

time my great-grandfather and the two men had recognized one of the

adobe houses, they could only make out three faint beams from the

pursuers’ flashlights. They caught their breath and rushed to seek

refuge in Dorotéa’s little house on top of the hill.

“Do you have a pinch of salt? I’m on my way home and don’t have

any,” my grandmother whispered, trying to maintain her father’s worry

with a gentle pitch and the joining of her brows.

The men told Dorotéa what happened, calmed their anxiety for a

few, and then made their way home through what seemed like the

longest and darkest walk. Later that night, my great-grandfather and

great-grandmother loaded the mule and led their family to the little

chapel of La Virgen del Refugio. They fled with the certainty that the

men would burn down their house at night. Joining her hands between

her chest, Mama-Chuy explains to us who La Virgen de Refugio is

again. She tells us that the Virgen, the patron saint of Las Zarquillas, has

dripped tears in her eyes from pity for those suffering. And long, long

ago, in her cathedral in Totolán, a man wiped the artificial tears from

her statue with a linen and it is believed that actual tears transferred

from her stone face to his cloth. This man’s story seemed to comfort my

grandmother in knowing that it was La Virgen del Refugio’s haven that

protected her family that night.

They headed for Peribán the next morning; my great-grandparents,

my grandmother, and her siblings. Peribán was a small town beneath

the hill of La Cometa, near Pajacuarán and Parácho. It was quite a walk

away from Las Zarquillas, and the loaded mule slumped speed even

more. Two baskets hung from the sides of the mule’s belly, on one of

them, my grandmother, and on the other, her sister Joventina. In the

baskets, they were tightly cushioned between pillow cases stuffed with

rags and other belongings. My great-grandfather limped behind with

Abelito in his arms and Roberto on his back, while the rest led the way

before the mule and through the muddy trail of the towns ahead. By the

time they arrived in Peribán, they were smeared with mud from slipping,

and drenched from the rain. There they lived for two years.

Years after their return to Las Zarquillas, a man by the name of

Manuel Maciél was after my great-grandfather. On the seventh of

February, Maciél came into town with a loaded gun, and approached

my great-grandfather who was fixing the remnants of his father-in

–law’s house. Mama-Chuy takes a moment to describe her grandfather,

Francisco Maciél, or Papa-Pancho. He was a light-skinned, handosome

man with a sharp nose. Papa-Pancho lived a lonely life after the death

of his wife, Juanita Paníagua, but my grandmother said his sense of

humor was of gold. With his age came dependence, and my grandmother

and siblings squabbled over who would help him to the bathroom

and who would help him put on the crisp shirts that his daughter

Antonia would knit for him. When they would go to the market in

Sahuayo de Hidalgo, they asked Papa-Pancho if he needed any favors.

He always asked for two whistles for when he needed someone’s assistance,

an extra one in case the other one broke. After joining Mama-

Chuy in a few giggles, I subtly remind her to continue with her father’s

story by asking if Manuel Maciél was the man who killed him.

She crosses her arms in silent contemplation and says, “Ah yes, he

shot him multiple times in the back, and then he took off.”

Word of my great-grandfather’s murder spread through town, and

finally to my grandmother’s family. My grandmother’s brother Gabriel

Hernandez was nineteen at the time. Gabriel was the rough one, always

rebelling and never filtering the bad words that came out of his mouth

and my grandmother considered “grocerias”. Rumor even had it that

various people had seen him drunk at night, on top a hill near the entrance

of town, calling out to the devil to prove that he did not exist.

“He was really, really mad,” my grandmother says, closing the description

of her brother’s reaction.

Gabriel quickly cocked a gun and ran after Manuel Maciél through

the path that joined Las Zarquillas and a nearby town, El Varal. By the

time the two men were at an eye’s distance away, they each had only

one bullet left. Manuel Maciél missed a shot at Gabriel, shortly before

Gabriel shot him right between his two eyes. To make sure he was dead,

he pounded a rock on his head until, according to my grandmother,

there was brain matter everywhere.

After hearing ‘the story’ yet again, we remain in awe and try to dig

up questions for Mama-Chuy before she picks up her fifteen-minute

prayer book again. Something about her stories makes her smile wider,

toughen her little voice, and her looped earrings dangle more than ever.

What occurred sixty-seven years ago is ingrained in her memory, a

memory that sometimes forgets to take daily medicine or what day of

the week it is. Her father’s story is always the one that makes her shift

in her couch the most. Perhaps it is because it brings back his memory,

and she can tell us about how he knew everything and everyone. But

sometimes, by the way she prolongs the name of Las Zarquillas or

shifts to a story about Papa-Pancho and his whistles, I get the feeling

that her stories place her back in the town where she lived for eighty

years.