The Anonymous Campesino

From Prick of the Spindle – Fiction, Vol. 3.2, June 2009  –  Original Link

After a hard day of gathering stone, the old man trudged home. Nodding at his neighbors as he passed, he thought: We live together, but do not know each other.

“He was old when my parents were children. Was he ever married?” He heard them whisper to each other, as if he was not there and could not hear. For the villagers, his past had faded into a shadow world. They knew him simply as El Viejo.

El Viejo lived outside of La Soledad, a small community high in the rolling hills and nestled against the brilliant blue skies. Of the fifty families, all were mestizo, except the old man. Long ago, the village had been inhabited by Chichimecas, but slowly, over time, they had drifted further into the back country, as miners came seeking cheap land to locate their adobe-walled huts with corrugated metal roofs. Only El Viejo remained of los indígenas. He lived one hundred meters from the nearest neighbor on the path toward the top of the mountain.

The next morning with the first light, the old man cinched slabs of rock wrapped in shredded burlap to the tired and spavin backs of his burros. He talked to them, his old friends, in the language of his ancestors, as he set out on the long journey to Guanajuato to sell his load to Señor Apalaya. “Amelia, Chonco, now is the time for you to earn your feed”; he gently tapped them with his stick. He was not hard on the animals because he had lived alone with them a long time and he knew that they did what they could.

El Viejo marveled at the new buildings on the outskirts of the city where the Taller de Piedra, El Señor’s business establishment, was located. Above the doors and windows of the homes of the wealthy, he saw fine detailing carved from the red stone he and his burros so laboriously hauled into Guanajuato. Although he could read only a few words of Spanish, he knew El Señor paid him no more than a fraction of what his rock sold for in the thriving economy of the big city.

The old man did not like being cheated, but that was the way it had been always been with El Señor and, before him, Apalaya’s father. This is the way of life, he reflected; there is no use to worry about what is not in my power to change.

Change, however, was in the air and had even come recently to La Soledad. On the Sunday after his trip to Guanajuato, El Viejo met a young man he did not recognize on the path wending up past his farm toward the top of the Mountain of the Virgin’s Smile.

“Good day,” the newcomer said in a strange accent with cadences and clipped words that seemed foreign to El Viejo. This was not how the old man’s neighbors talked, but he remembered hearing light-skinned ladies and gentlemen speak in the same manner when he passed the Jardin, returning from a trip to Guanajuato.

As he often went for days without talking to anyone except his burros, his answer was halting. “Hola, Joven, que pasa,” he asked the stranger what he was doing.

“I’m climbing the hill to see the view.”

How odd these city folk are, the old man thought. To climb a mountain merely to look at the scenery had never occurred to him. Generally, he did not question the actions of others, but, surprised by this answer, he asked: “Why?”

“I want to see beyond the summit to the valleys and villages which I must visit,” responded the stranger.

This is an unusual way to spend a Sunday, but these Spaniards are different from people like me. El Viejo kept these thoughts to himself, but asked in his best Spanish, “Who are your mother and father; I have not seen you around here before?”

The young man, a student from the Economics Department of the University of Guanajuato, smiled to himself at the enunciation of this small, antique man. “I don’t have relatives in this region, but I’ve stayed with the family of Jorge Santiago for the last month. We’re organizing miners to defend their jobs against the owners, who intend to replace them with machines.”

As the old man reflected on this answer, he was quiet. The Santiago men were miners, like the men of all the mestizo families. He watched them march off to work at dawn to wrestle silver from the underground mines, laced in networks underneath Guanajuato. In the night, he heard them gasp for breath through sand and slate filtered into their lungs from years of hammering at the rich veins of ore. With merciless regularity, he heard wailing at funerals and observed new plots spring up at the village graveyard. Like the grain falling before the downswing of the scythe during harvest, the miners died young.

Although El Viejo understood the miners were poor, they received a regular salary and could buy things he would never have. Those families with several men working had electricity in their home from the single transmission line that traversed the village from school to church. The women could afford cheap manufactured dresses and some of the older children walked to school in store-bought shoes. When he had money, El Viejo bought hand-woven clothes at the small markets that came to rural hamlets like La Soledad once a year.

“I know the Santiago family,” nodded El Viejo, as if responding to an inner voice. Although he understood the word, he was not sure what the youth meant by “organizing”; and the idea of substituting machines for people seemed strange. Nevertheless, there was something about the idea that the miners might resist the harsh conditions of their life that the old man liked.

“Well, well, Joven, watch your footing. The Blessed One may be smiling, but the path is steep and slippery.” The young student started up the mountain. Before he had gone too far, the old man whistled and pointed in the other direction to the student who had taken a wrong turn.

Early next morning, El Viejo directed his burros to the well on the periphery of the village. As the only source of drinking water, the well was a gathering spot for social contact and gossip. The old man greeted the slight children and worn women hauling buckets of water. The women acknowledged him and the children smiled. As they turned, the memory of him disappeared like the ripple after a rock is dropped into the stream.

In the late afternoon returning home with wood, El Viejo passed their husbands, the big-chested miners, endlessly spitting phlegm, as they plodded home after their shifts. When they looked at the old man to greet him, they saw the rich bronze of his skin, the color of the oxidized metals which infused the rock and shale of the landscape.

“Buenas dias, El Viejo, is your land producing well? May you always have good health.” They repeated ritualistically as they passed El Viejo, but they never invited the old man to their house, or visited him at his.

El Viejo was aware of this separation, as he wished them well in return. Observing their varied tints of brown, the old man again was reminded that he was from different origins than the villagers.

As he reached home, the wind blew mist from the over-grazed summit and covered the small stone dwelling where the old man, and his father before him, had been born. The ceiling was low, but that was not a problem for El Viejo. A taller man would have had to stoop, but it had been many years since a visitor had entered the old man’s house.

The roof was made from a thatching of local grasses, which mostly kept the rain out. In the summer, the stone walls preserved the cool from the night to lessen the heat of the day, but in the winter, the chill was always present. On bitter nights, El Viejo would sleep with his woolen hat pulled low over his ears and his poncho on top of his blanket.

At twenty five hundred meters, there were not many trees left, except an old seven-foot tall cactus, a Tree Cholla, weathered and beaten by the winds, which survived behind the house. In the wet season, if it remembered, the cactus brightened the old man’s life with its purple flowers; but because of dryness, or stubbornness, it had not flowered for many years.

Ten kilometers away, Guanajuato, the colonial state capital, stretched across a broad valley. El Viejo visited the city once a month with the stone he sold to Señor Apalaya and to buy small things he needed but could not make. Its light, a small crescent above the hills to the south, glowed through the thick blackness of La Soledad’s night.

El Viejo did not remember exactly when he was born, but a long time ago. His father had died of some disease when he was a child too young to remember much, except the damp of the night and the salt taste in his mouth as he struggled to wake. His father looked sad, blood frothing at his lips as he died, speaking words of goodbye in Chichimeca to his wife and son.

His mother had told him once: “Chichimeca, the dog people, is the word the Spaniards call us; but we are Xi’úi, the people of the red face.” Although his mother lived until he was a young man, it was so long ago that he could no longer fix in his mind exactly what she looked like. They had lived alone together many years, raising goats and selling vegetables from their small garden, and those of their neighbors, which he carted on his burros to villages at lower elevations.

After the death of his mother, El Viejo had taken an indigenous woman from a community buried further in the interior as his partner. “Ixtita, my wife, is in great pain and bleeding down there,” he had explained to the midwife of La Soledad during her first pregnancy. After examining Ixtita, the mid-wife told him that there was infection and blockage that she could not treat. “You must get a doctor with antibiotics from the city.”

“Where is a doctor for women?” El Viejo begged strangers in the street using his best Spanish, after running over the mountains into the city. Finally, pointed in the right direction, he tapped on a large and solid teak door with its brass knocker. “El Doctor, I think my wife is dying; you must come with me to La Soledad,” he pleaded.

The doctor, looking at the color of the man’s skin and his clothes, had no intention of going. “You must bring your wife here, young man, if I am to treat her.” As an afterthought he added, “You will need to pay fifty pesos for the examination, if there are no complications.” It was at that moment, the old man feared he would not be able to save his wife. Refusing to accept what his heart told him was already his future, he raced back to La Soledad on his bloody feet, alone with his despair. When he reached home, Ixtita was in high fever. By morning, both Ixtita and the baby within her were dead.

El Viejo grieved in isolation and resolved never to live with another woman. Having reached for happiness, he would not open himself to such risk again. He did not think of leaving his home or moving to where other indigenous people lived. This was the farm and house of his fathers; he would not give up what they had wrested from the remorseless land.

Obstinately, he confronted each day, rising to eat and work his small farm. He roasted his own coffee beans, crushed and steeped them in a battered pot, and reheated the contents until he had drunk the last dreg. Before dawn, he woke to savor the strong and bitter brew, brought to a boil on a grill over a mesquite fire. The old man did not complain about, or even contemplate, his destiny.

Three weeks after meeting the student, the old man again loaded his loyal burros with rock, and made the trek to Señor Apalaya’s. As he walked over the hills, on the thin path threading the ridges leading to Guanajuato, he rehearsed his upcoming meeting with El Señor, startled as new ideas crept into his imagined dialogue.

On arrival, he greeted Apalaya as in the past. “Señor, may God’s blessings rain on you and your family.” The old man, partly hypnotized by the wart on Apalaya’s neck, listened patiently as El Señor responded. It was a litany typical of Apalaya about the responsibilities and problems of running his wholesale business of rock for construction, concrete decorative columns and grave markers. Dismayed, El Viejo almost abandoned what he had intended to ask, until he recalled the delicate approach to his concern that he had crafted on the journey there.

“Señor Apalaya, life is hard for us all, I know, but I have sold rock to you for ten years now and before you to your father, would it not be possible for you to pay one peso more per load than in the past? Most things I grow myself, but medicine I sometimes must buy and prices always go up, never down.” El Viejo waited for an answer, having delivered the most consecutive words he had uttered in months.

Like dark clouds massed suddenly in front of the warming sun, a frown formed below El Señor’s neatly-manicured mustache. Apayala recalled, irrelevantly, the unpleasant discussion with his son that morning. “I don’t want to be a merchant, immersed in the daily commerce of cheating the poor to augment the soiled pesos of the rich.” His son had made this declaration to inform his father that he had decided to be a poet, not a businessman. Apalaya was by no means finished with this dialogue, but his dream of a third generation building an empire from the rock of the countryside had curdled in his stomach like overripe milk.

“I hardly make a profit as it is,” Señor Apalaya replied to the old man curtly. As he talked, he calculated the razor-thin margins of his business, which he had manipulated like a magician into substantial wealth. “All my suppliers are charging higher prices; if I must pay you campesinos more money also, there will be nothing left for me. I might as well close my business and beg in front of the markets.”

El Viejo did not respond at first. His dark-brown eyes reflected his thoughts. I have spoken my piece. It would still be only justice to increase the price you pay me. “A peso is such a small coin,” he murmured quietly.

El Señor felt uncomfortable, then angry, at the stubbornness of the old man. Apalaya believed he was a fair man, but knew in business you had to draw a firm line. “If you don’t like the price I pay, go to the other stone dealers; see what you get there.” In response, El Viejo nodded slowly.They both knew that he would sell this load to Señor Apalaya at the old price and the subject was closed.

As the old man tramped back to the village, nudged now by his burros carrying no load and with a meal to reward them at home, the black shadow of this conversation washed from his mind. He thought only of being home, sitting in the rocker he had made, smoking a pipe of tobacco and dreaming of the past. El Viejo was proud of his house, which had been built by his ancestors, and held all the comfort and luxury he desired in this life.

He saw the young student, who had introduced himself as Oscar Salvedra, again that next week. Oscar had begun to visit miners in a region whose path often took him by El Viejo’s stone hut. Despite the reserve of the old man, their greetings began to mature into conversation.

El Viejo liked to hear about his neighbors from this new friend, who described the individuals of El Viejo’s timeless world as if they were an organic whole with a collective life and will of their own. Each, in their own way, began to look forward to these meetings and a brief chat.

Oscar perceived the self-contained dignity of this squat, strongly built old man and thought of Mexico’s history. Indios, he knew from his university courses, worked the land, not the mines. In the long distant past, the mine owners had decided indigenous peoples were of no use to them. When abducted from their ancestral territory and forced to labor underground, they became resigned, dying too rapidly to be of value.

To Oscar, El Viejo seemed to step straight from a mural of Diego Rivera or José Chavez Morada, whose work the young man admired at the Museum of the Alhóndiga. The indigenous masses crowded the background and rattled their chains.

The old man, for his part, registered the even white teeth of the student, the angularity of his nose, and the fine, almost feminine, features of his face. The student was tall and leaned forward when he talked, especially if he was excited. Often El Viejo could not understand what the young man was saying.

One late afternoon, after the old man had finished feeding his animals for the day, the student stopped on his return from a cluster of homes over in the next valley. El Viejo rested against the small enclosure he had made for his chickens and smiled slightly as the student approached, waving, “Hola, Abuelito.”

Oscar had taken to calling the old man, “little grandfather,” and, in truth, El Viejo liked this. “How are you doing and is your farm thriving?” The young man delivered this conventional greeting as if it was a joke just between them. El Viejo was amused because he had a sense of humor, although not much opportunity to use it.

“My chickens are fat and potatoes many, so I can’t complain,” answered the old man. He had offered a chicken to the student before, but the young man had graciously declined. Conscious of the old man’s poverty, Oscar had created an excuse so as not to take so important a resource as a chicken. “I cook for myself and am often away overnight; I couldn’t eat a whole chicken before the meat went bad.”

Although a little hurt that the young man would not accept his gift, El Viejo forgave him. He is still a youth after all. Weighing this further, the old man realized that, despite their differences, he liked the student. He has a good heart, decided the old man, even if does not yet understand the courtesy of our people.

When invited, however, Oscar would join El Viejo for a cup of coffee. After hitting his head several times on the doorway and ceiling beams, he had learned to walk in a crouch inside the house. He had been startled at first by the sparseness of the one–room house with only a rocker underneath the lone window and a homemade chair placed next to the rough table. The floor was hard-packed dirt, which the old man kept clean by frequent whisking with a broom made of twigs. The only additional furniture was a low mattress in the corner that, from its lumpy shape, appeared to be filled with corn cobs and husks. The student ached a little at the poverty of the home.

As they drank their coffee that evening, the old man looked across the table at the student. “Tell me what you are doing with the miners, Joven.” He realized that Oscar liked to talk about his work. Although El Viejo did not understand all the student’s words, he admired the youth’s enthusiasm.

Oscar was touched that the old man was interested in his organizing. The student suspected that El Viejo might also simply enjoy a human voice, interrupting the loneliness of his life.

As he sipped his coffee, Oscar tried not to gag on its bitterness. “There’s a Canadian company coming to Guanajuato to take over the mines. This company is very modern and will bring massive machines with them.” Warmed gradually by the scalding coffee and his outrage, the student scowled. “Men are not tools to use up and then discard like garbage.”

Seeing that the old man was confused, the student added. “You know the Santiagos and the families like them, they depend on their jobs. How will they feed their children if the mining companies use only machines, not men, to mine the ore?”

Oscar was rattled by the sound of rats scurrying in the dark corners of the room, which broke the following silence. Straightening in his chair, the old man did not seem to hear this noise and the broad chest on his small body expanded.

“There is even talk that they will cut pensions for the older ones who can no longer work, but still cough up the remains of bitter lives into their handkerchiefs.” Oscar concluded his story.

El Viejo was quiet at the end of this tale, and then acknowledged haltingly. “People should always be respected. I have seen that life is very difficult for the miners.” Reflecting further on the student’s words, the old man thought: We are maybe not so unlike, he and I. He cares about the miners whose existence is so different from his own, and I, too, sympathize with what they suffer.

Oscar told him proudly that the youth wing of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) had called for a demonstration in front of the Governor’s Mansion in Guanajuato the next day. Many of the miners from this area would be going and he listed ten family names, most of whom El Viejo knew.

The darkness slowly began to pull on the day and Oscar rose to say “Goodbye” to the old man. As they parted, El Viejo felt his mind beginning to shape the standard farewell, “Vaya con Dios,” and surprised himself instead by saying, “I will come, too; it is not right how they treat the miners.”

Oscar was startled and very touched by this declaration. “Abuelito, it will be complicated, this demonstration. The mine bosses have money and influence. The politicians will do their bidding and there may even be violence against those who join in.”

“That is as it may be,” responded El Viejo, “but I will come.”

“You are a good man, abuelo,” Oscar responded, still skeptical that the old man would appear, or that he even understood what a demonstration was.

It was spring on the cusp of the wet season. “Hurry home, Joven, a storm is brewing,” warned the old man. As the student left, he saw El Viejo place a candle on the table near his chair. Because candles cost money, which the old man did not have, he generally went to sleep with the dark and woke up with the dawn. Tonight, however, he wanted to think.

On reaching the Santiago house, Oscar was amazed as the gathering night erupted into a hurling, quenching rain. How had the old man known? He wondered. After the deluge stopped, the arid land came alive with the croaking of tiny frogs asserting their territory against the pulsing chatter of the crickets.

The next morning at first light, Oscar, to his surprise, noticed El Viejo walking at the end of a lagging stretch of thirty miners and their families, who had met and started toward Guanajuato in the dark. The student dropped back to say “Good Morning” to the old man, who nodded and smiled shyly at him. The others also politely bid the old man “Good Morning.”

In a way none of them could have put into words, El Viejo’s company gave them courage for the coming confrontation with Los Patrónes—the mine owners, the politicians they bought and the police that served them. Although the miners and their families were familiar with the old man, much as you know the mountains and streams you grow up with, for El Viejo to join them was to see the land itself rise up and embrace their cause.

They walked in silence, but rapidly against the cold and fear of the act they had begun. A stone kicked loose by a careless footfall cascaded down the hillside, ricocheting against the quiet. With a sharp croak, a lone magpie jeered their march and flew away. Even as the rising sun peeked over the mountains and the warming rays began to dissipate the early morning chill, the troop of determined marchers moved quietly, each contemplating the rupture with the customary way that they had embarked on.

El Viejo thought about what he was doing and what it might mean. I am an old man and yet today I am marching with the miners to support them. I have known these families, and those before them all my life, but we have never come together like this before. We meet on the trail and greet each other, but we have lived in our separate ways. As he pondered these thoughts, he also worried. What will happen to me for involving myself in this matter?

The protest gathered supporters as they passed other shabby villages and isolated houses of the countryside. By the time they entered the first neighborhoods of Guanajuato, they were three hundred strong. Swinging down from a wide callejon, an alley leading from the University, a stream of one hundred and fifty students joined them.

The swelling protest snaked through the poorer neighborhoods, gaining additional support. The smell of rotting garbage, urine leached into the walls, and of human life lived too close distressed El Viejo. They are poor as am I; he thought, but how can they live like this, on top of each other, in these conditions?

The demonstrators surged into the barrio where the rich lived and the state Governor’s Palace stood in the grandeur of its rose-tinted sandstone and decorative flourishes. The building was massive, festooned with windows, little balconies, and ornate wood and stone furnishings. This message of power was not lost on supplicants seeking help from the government.

In a tight mass, the demonstrators stood, somewhat uncertainly, in the cobble-stoned square before the Palace, while a phalanx of police guarded the door. Some of the miners, the bravest, joined the students in raising the signs they had brought—“People, not Machines,” “The People United Will Never Be Defeated,” “Justice for All.”

The Governor, unable to ignore further this interruption to his routine and to a leisurely breakfast, downed his second cup of espresso faster than he intended, slightly burning his tongue. Pushing himself from the table, he rebuckled the belt that he had loosened to eat. As he addressed the crowd, a small clot of strawberry jam stuck to the jowl of his left cheek. “We understand and feel your concerns, my compatriots. The PAN, the governing party which I head in Guanajuato, promises to review this matter.” This was his introduction, and he intended to continue that their protest was unproductive and they should go home to tend to their farms and jobs.

Shockingly, however, a slow rhythmic undercurrent of noise began. Three wizened ladies in the front row, who had come with their families, repeated, “Shame, shame.” Soon a chant, led by the miners and students, swelled above the censure of the grandmothers, who barely reached the chests of the men. “Si, se puede”; the noise distracted the Governor.

As the slogan was caught up by the others, the Governor was drowned out, until in disgust, he issued orders to the police. “Let them continue their morality play for thirty minutes, then move them out.” When he returned inside, he was irritated and no longer hungry for his breakfast.

Señor Apalaya, a PAN supporter, had been at the office that morning, trolling to win another business concession. Coming outside to hear the Governor, he scanned the rally with disgust, loathing for the students who so disdained their own privilege and amazement at the audacity of the campesinos and miners he saw filling the square. At the back, Apalaya spotted El Viejo. The sight electrified him with the same outrage he had felt the time the acolyte dropped the Crucifix during Holy Week. This is what is wrong with the world, he thought as he stepped forward; everyone wants to advance by complaining, instead of hard work. Elbowing through the edge of the crowd, he bullied his way to El Viejo. “Old timer, what are you doing here?” he demanded.

Uncomfortable at such a direct challenge, the old man avoided moving his eyes from the brown-speckled wart on the neck of Señor Apalaya, glaring malignantly back at him. “I am here with the miners because they need their jobs.” El Viejo struggled to explain his actions further, but as nothing came to mind, he subsided.

El Señor was enraged. “You old burro, what are you doing letting the communists suck you into their machinations?” he shouted. “Go home to what you know and do not get mixed up in politics, or you will never sell more stone to my business.”

El Viejo shrank, as if he could not breathe. Uncertainty flickered in his eyes. He did not notice the miners edge closer in a circle around the two. Finally, digesting Apalaya’s threat and insult, the old man responded in a faltering voice, as he regained his breath: “I and my people lived before you were born and I will endure if you take your patronage from me.”

“You insolent dirt from the countryside,” Apalaya, now purple with indignation, roared. Pushed beyond limit by the events of the day and this challenge to an established order where he had risen to the top only through ceaseless effort, Apalaya, in his rage, pushed El Viejo.

The old man stumbled and then, regaining his footing, straightened. This time he looked directly up into Apalaya’s eyes, speaking in a soft, but unwavering voice. “My people are born from the land, it is true, and of that I am proud. My people are Xi’ úi and I am called Uhatúil.”

El Viejo suddenly became aware that the knot of people around them had tightened. A huge miner, with a deep chest and arms hardened like the rock against which he wielded his hammer, stepped between him and El Señor.

“You are no longer wanted here. We are fighting you and your kind. If you do not leave this moment, I cannot promise you safety, but I guarantee, if you push El Viejo again, I will crush you like the bugs that swarm to suck our blood in the evenings, as we depart hot and sweaty from the mines.”

Apalaya, not a big, nor a brave man, suddenly realized that the calculus of this situation was different than he had ever before experienced. He left muttering threats, but quietly, because the miner was a giant.

As the speeches were to begin shortly, the group that had formed around El Viejo carried him forward. The old man found himself with the grandmothers, who had started the first chant. This diminutive front row was now shaded by the crowd surrounding them. When one of the leaders of the miners started speaking the crowd went silent.

The old man understood only snatches of the speeches. I stood up, he thought with pride. Then considering further: Yes, but how will I make money for things I must buy from the store? They are powerful men, and I am just a little person.

“We are not animals, but they treat us worse than donkeys. We have given our lives to extract silver from the depths of this land to enrich others, and now they tell us we are not needed.” The speaker continued to recall the suffering of the miners and their vitality which had bled into the land so they could earn a small living. The listeners nodded as they heard their tale told.

The old man reflected. I have been like a donkey much of my life. It is not such a bad thing to be a humble animal, to work hard and not complain. Today, however, I have told the world that I am also a man, that I have a name and pride. I will find a way to survive, even if I can no longer sell my stones.

A student leader addressed the crowd next. “We are students, but our mothers and fathers were campesinos and workers. By participating here, we honor their sacrifice allowing us to be educated for a better life. We will never forget our parents, or where they came from. Today, we are proud to unite with the miners to fight for a more just world.”

EL Viejo tried to listen carefully, but did not comprehend all the words, except something about unity. That is a problem for me. I have been alone too long. Who will help me? he wondered. But as people jostled and heaved around him, it suddenly occurred to him, I am here today with the miners and part of their struggle.

The student speaker was interrupted at first by small cries of “Si, se puede” and “La gente unida, jamás será vencido.” Then these shouts merged into one long roar. El Viejo did not know the words of these chants and did not join in, but he grasped the meaning of what was occurring. His heart pulsed with the thunderous beat of the crowd’s exultation.

The escalating tension had now become upsetting to the dignitaries and someone gave the signal to the waiting police. As they moved forward, one old woman, so light and small she did not even reach the level of vision of the approaching squadron, was knocked to the ground.

Without thought, El Viejo stepped forward to place himself protectively in front of her. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a club attached to a large arm, level with a corpulent and angry red face, start its downward trajectory toward his head. Steeled for the crushing blow, he did not see the large miner, who had previously confronted Apalaya, snatch the club like a toy from the officer’s hand, thrusting the man and his anger back into the onrushing police. Other miners and students took up rocks and cobblestones from the street and there was a tense stand-off. The scene momentarily resembled a tableau from a Diego Rivera mural where workers and indigenous peoples confront the bloated bosses and their lackeys.

The police froze, unsure how to confront this unexpected resistance, but the Governor had returned and saw the threat inherent, either in moving to crush the demonstration or in letting it continue. The Governor stepped forward. “Stop!” he ordered the police. Turning to the protest leaders, he assured them: “I will convene a formal meeting next week to consider your requests and we will issue findings concerning the status of the new mining company.”

The miners and their student supporters were cynical, but they realized that a point had been reached where, if they went further, what would happen was dangerously unknown. It made sense to declare their victory and regroup to consider options for the future.

The crowd flowed out of the square in front of the Government Palace and marched triumphantly through the center of town toward the university, followed somewhat tentatively by the police, hobbled by uncertainty at this new and startling situation. Past the ornate Teatro Juarez and the Basilica de Nuestra Señora de Guanajuato, built with the wealth of the mine owners and the expended lives of the miners, they marched. In the teardrop-shaped Jardín Unión, lovers huddling in the shadows of the well-tended trees, families buying ice cream, and vendors making their living, all paused to watch the parade pass. Many more joined the protest now that the struggle for justice seemed to have the upper hand for the day. As they swept past the university, the students veered off to the cheers of the others. Eagerly dispersing to the bars and coffee houses, the students relived their brush with oppression and relished the taste of victory.

Oscar, full of pride at the surprising success of the demonstration, hesitated before following the other students, as he searched for his friend. He realized that the old man, by joining with his neighbors in their struggle, had also stepped forward for himself.

At a loss for words on discovering him, Oscar hugged the old man. He tried to remember El Viejo’s real name, but could not recall the unfamiliar language. “Abuelito, you inspired me with your bravery today.” His eyes filled with tears, as he towered over El Viejo in his embrace.

“No, I had much fear” muttered the old man; “it is from being together with you and the miners that I gained the courage to face this day.” But he smiled broadly as they disengaged and he was swept forward by the crowd of workers who surrounded him.

Late in the afternoon, the initial core of protesters whom the old man had joined, it seemed so long ago, crested the last ridge above La Soledad. El Viejo found himself repeating “Vaya con Dios,” as families detached themselves for the little paths leading to their own houses, and he received their blessings in return. Now, the old man heard a comforting song in his neighbors’ parting acknowledgments, like the prayer and response of a mass.

Eventually, he was also home. As he approached, he saw the obstinate old cactus, nourished by the recent rain, winking its bright flowers at him, as shadows crept down the mountain. In his favorite chair, his pipe gripped between his teeth, he contemplated the events of the day. The glow of his reflections lasted through a frugal dinner, another pipeful, and as he slid under his blanket to go to bed. As his eyes closed and sleep approached, he smiled.

When he woke the next morning, later than usual, he heard the noise of little feet at his door. By the time he had thrown on his poncho and pulled on his pants, he could see only the back of a small boy retreating into the distance. A plate of warm tortillas was on his doorstep, which a neighbor had sent with her son.

None of the villagers could fashion the sounds of his name in Xi’úi. Some continued to call him El Viejo, but more often Abuelito, because he was part of them now. Local people hired him and his burros to carry their farm produce from village to village to sell, as he had in his youth. They invited him to their homes on festivals, or visited to talk after work.

From time to time, the student would hike from the city to visit his old Indio friend. The miner’s struggle continued, as did life. Although he never sold stone to Señor Apalaya again, the old man survived well enough with his neighbors’ help. As the patterns of life returned to normal, El Viejo never again forgot that he was a man called Uhatúil, no longer alone in La Soledad.