The Eagle's Throne

40. EX-PRESIDENT CÉSAR LEÓN TO ONÉSIMO CANABAL, PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS

I’m back on the offensive, my distinguished though indistinguishable friend, and am here to remind you of the days when you — figuratively speaking, of course — were in the political bathroom with a towel over your arm and your hand outstretched, hoping for tips. Who dragged you out of there and made you an usher at the party assemblies and then “the man with the microphone” at the conventions, the one who called for order, attention. .?

“It is my great privilege to present the honorable licenciado César León, candidate for the presidency. . ”

From there you rose to the executive committee of the party, and then the golden exile of an ambassadorship in Luxembourg, where we have so many various and pressing interests (don’t laugh — nobody laughs at those bank accounts in Luxembourg) and you fulfilled your obligations as the trusty little guardian-gnome that you are. And now, congressman for the third consecutive time and president of Congress. Goodness, don Onésimo, how far we have come from those toilet bowl days. One should be grateful, don’t you think? And you’ve proved yourself more than worthy of your hometown of Campeche — why, you’re what they call a real campechano, nice, everyone likes you, sure. But you’ve still got to deal with your mortal enemy Humberto Vidales, the so-called Dark Hand of the state of Tabasco. Of course, it might be more accurate to call him the “Hydra Head”—chop one off and a hundred more grow in its place. In his case, however, those hundred heads are what he very proudly calls “My Nine Evil Sons.” In other words, an evil dynasty. Tabasco is better at that than any other state, and Dark Hand has his conspiracies and plots planned up to the year 3000.

You also bear the burden, Onésimo, of sharing your last name with another Tabasco strongman, the implacable anticlerical governor Tomás Garrido Canabal. You may remember what Gonzalo N. Santos, yet another name in our long list of strongmen, had to say about him: “He’s got the balls of a bull.”

And balls were exactly what he needed when he drove every last priest out of Tabasco, shut down all the churches, and even banned crosses in cemeteries. Don Tomás was such a priest-hater that he even prohibited the people of Tabasco from saying Adiós and made them say Hasta luego instead.

Your secret’s safe with me, Onésimo. I know you moved from Tabasco to Campeche to escape Dark Hand and his Nine Evil Sons, so that you could create your own power base, because nobody can compete with Dark Hand. You went to Campeche to make hell for your rival Vidales, and to escape the specter of Garrido Canabal.

Yes, my dear Onésimo, you did your best to get away. Unfortunately, a man can’t hide from his destiny, because it resides in his soul— it’s not a matter of geography. And your destiny, Onésimo, is that of serving the man who protected you and who continues to protect you from the vengeful hatred of Dark Hand Vidales. The person who protected you in the past, and can protect you in the future, your friend César León.

Let’s see just how well I know you. You’re politically neutral. You prefer obedience to debate. You would always rather subject yourself to real power than to the grass roots. And you have a tremendous virtue, Onésimo. You’re a prehistoric politician, and for you public life has become a succession of ghosts that once were important but now are mere shadows in the platonic Cacahuamilpa grotto that is your memory. They’re all “exes,” aren’t they? And you seem to think that they’ve been vaporized, that only you remain because nobody watches you as you watch all the presidential contenders turn into ghosts. Let’s see, who were Martínez Manatou, Corona del Rosal, García Paniagua, Flores Muñoz, Sánchez Tapia, Rojo Gómez? Ghosts, my dear Onésimo, specters of the misty world of Mexican politics. Light one day, dark the next — and burned-out forever.

Now look me in the eye, Onésimo. I refuse to become a ghost. I’ve settled my debt with the past, if that’s how you want to view things. Exiled, battered, mocked, vilified — but not defeated.

Don’t be scared. Your ghost has returned and is going to make you pay your debts. I’ve been watching you, Onésimo — you feel perfectly secure because you go on playing the same old role and repeating the same old lines without realizing that the stage is different now, as is the playwright. We’re in a new theater, and I want to be the star of the show again. You, my favorite friend, will be the man who puts my name back in the limelight.

Re-election? The unmentionable word of our political theater. Although perhaps it’s not quite so unmentionable after all, what with the amendment of Article 59 of the constitution and the resurgence of the spirit of the 1917 constitutional congress: The possibility of reelecting senators and congressmen is what has allowed you, my Solon of Solons, to remain in Congress for ten years. Very well, now we must take this further: Allow for the president to be reelected. Reform that damn Article 83 and pave the way for my return.

Reforming the constitution takes time, you say? I know that. That’s why we have to start now, nearly three years before the next election. Start raising the issue discreetly with the grass roots, the strongmen, governors, local legislators, businessmen, labor and agricultural leaders, intellectuals. We have to modernize the presidential succession just as we modernized the status of the legislators. Long live re-election.

Don’t think I’ve been wasting my time doing crossword puzzles. I’ve already spoken to your nemesis, Dark Hand Vidales (though not his Nine Evil Sons), and he seems quite sympathetic to my ideas. He takes the long view, because he’s the patriarch of a dynasty. But I must admit, Vidales is his own man. He doesn’t like being in debt to anyone and I’m afraid — alas! — that he wants to use me, and knows how to use me, more than I know how to use him.

You, on the other hand, are my beloved Play-Doh. You can and will do what I want because you owe me everything. You have one political virtue that will give you staying power, Onésimo. You’re ugly but not outrageously so. You’re ugly, fat, dark, and short in the most typical sense. You’re not even pockmarked or scarred. You could pass for a truck driver, or a rest room attendant, which is what you were when I met you. But since you’re invisible you’re not dangerous, and since you’re not dangerous, you know how to placate and handle large groups of insecure men. And who could be more insecure than our vociferous legislators?

Oh, Onésimo. Let’s work together. Remember, you can keep on pretending to serve the current president as you start to lay down the rules that will pave the way for me — and you, of course. The real problem of the presidential succession is not who, but how. You just keep on assuring the outgoing head of state, Lorenzo Terán, that you’re going to protect his property, his privileges, his family. That’s more than enough. Security is gold. In fact, it’s priceless. We all dream of it. Let the incumbent and his people dream of it, too.

Do you realize what a massive banquet of vengeance is going to take place in three years? Who is exempt? Our shameless Tácito, with his closet full of skeletons? The irreproachable Andino, with a wife who cheats on him all day long with every pair of trousers that comes her way? The untouchable María del Rosario, cold as an iceberg but who, like any iceberg worth its name, keeps three-quarters of herself submerged, revealing only the tip of her true self and none of her secrets? The upstanding, energetic Bernal, whose love affair with the aforementioned is a mere screen behind which lies an even bigger secret that will soon come to light? My old predecessor under the arches in Veracruz, keeper of another secret that he holds on to like a domino player hanging on to that double-white? And then we have the mysterious wild card in this great game, the callow Nicolás Valdivia, hoisted up to the position of undersecretary of the interior, thanks to the efforts and good graces of María del Rosario, and who, consequently, has set his sights on becoming secretary so that when Terán leaves office he can become a presidential candidate. There isn’t a single one of them, Onésimo, not one, I’m telling you, who isn’t expendable. But let me give you three rules of good political conduct.

First, kill your political enemy and mourn him for a month. Second, if you’re going to be the executioner, make sure you’re invisible.

And third, be afraid of the ghost of the political enemy you’ve killed. In other words, my near-illiterate Onésimo, you’d do well to read a little play called Macbeth, and wait for the day when the woods of your crimes begin to move toward the castle of your power.

And don’t rule out pure dumb luck. Like the kind that came my way the day three separate strikes broke out simultaneously on my watch and I crushed them, causing the death of thirteen strikers, but nobody realized because that was the day Axayácatl Pérez — the so-called Sultan of the Cha-cha-cha, and the most popular musician at the time— died. Everyone went to pay their respects to the great idol at the Gran León dance hall and then followed the coffin to the cemetery, and everyone forgot all about the nameless dead. The ones I was responsible for.

I write to you openly, Onésimo. I know that you’re the very soul of discretion, simply because nobody believes in your disclosures and you’re able to hide conveniently behind a veil of silence. Keep on doing that and keep me informed.

P.S. Don’t worry about keeping this letter. As soon as you’ve finished reading, it will self-incinerate chemically. You can’t copy it or show it to anyone, you bastard. Didn’t you ever see Mission Impossible? The past is full of lessons for our present situation. Just ask yourself, in these dark days of our republic, how many letters, how many tapes, how many cassettes are being destroyed by their terrified recipients as soon as they read or listen to them? Just imagine. And don’t burn your sweet little fingers with my message.