The Eagle's Throne

43. CONGRESSMAN ONÉSIMO CANABAL TO CONGRESSWOMAN PAULINA TARDEGARDA

My distinguished colleague and loyal friend, you know how I go about these things. I believe scientists call it “mimicry,” chameleons that change color to blend in with their environment. In other words, if they’re sitting on a rock, they blend in with the rock, and if they are perched on a tree trunk they change their color accordingly. Well, my esteemed Paulina, I find myself at a crossroads. A path that is unpaved, muddy, mucky, a valley of slime, some might call it.

I won’t bother to tell you what you already know. Or perhaps I’ll tell you again so that you get the full picture.

The parties are divided. The president’s party, the National Action Party, has splintered into the ultra-reactionary and clerical faction, the center Christian Democrats, and the left-wing faction that associates itself with liberation theology. The PRI, our Institutional Revolutionary Party, has split into eight groups. The far right, which wants order and repression. Dinosaurs who are gathering dust in the Museum of National Political History. Neoliberal technocrats who keep alive the flame of their goddess Macroeconomics. Nationalists who believe that the re-assertion of sovereignty is the PRI’s raison d’être. Then, the populists who promise everything and deliver nothing. Not to mention the factions of agrarians, unionists, and old bureaucrats dating back to the corporate culture of the Cárdenas era.

Take a look around you. Instead of the great steamroller of the once “invincible” PRI, we’re now facing eight mini-parties in search of lost unity.

And then, on the left, we have the Green parties, but they’re only as green as the dollar bill; the Social Democrats following the European model; the neo-Cardenistas who want to go back in time to 1938; the Marxists of the Leninist and Trotskyist persuasions, and Marxists who read the young Karl Marx and proclaim that Marxism is a form of humanism.

And don’t think I’ve forgotten about the indigenous factions, or the strung-out extremists — both sides, anarchists and fascists.

My method for controlling this circus in Congress, as you know, is to pretend not to notice anything and wear my dunce cap as much as possible. I make myself invisible. So that nobody pays me the slightest attention.

As for the tactics of our president and his treasury secretary Andino Almazán, I know them like the back of my hand. First they present the measures that they know our “confetti Congress” will reject because they offend popular or nationalist sensibilities and can be denounced as neoliberal, reactionary, or antinationalist laws: taxes on books, drugs, and food, privatization. . And then, to avoid being taken for lazy slobs (if you weren’t a lady I might use another word), Congress goes ahead and approves bills that the executive would never put forward for fear of offending the wealthy — progressive taxation, higher income and capital gains taxes, etc. You know, the things that really make money for the government, not the tax on aspirins or those Isabel Allende books I know you devour.

That, then, is how you and I manage our unmanageable Congress. That has become our rule, and you are my greatest ally because you’re a woman, because you’re austere to a fault (forgive me, I know you like dressing like a nun, I’m not criticizing you for that), and because you’re from Hidalgo, an improbable state if there ever was one simply because people seem to have forgotten that it exists.

And now, my austere and improbable lady, I need you more than ever to organize the legislative chaos and to face up to the pressures that will soon be upon us.

First of all is the threat of an armed uprising. I have very good reason to believe (as the bolero says, “Stop asking me questions, let me imagine. . ”) that Cícero Arruza is running around spreading panic among officials, local strongmen, as well as the top general himself, Bon Beltrán, or whatever his name is. I can’t spell that name unless I have it in front of me — foreign languages have never been my strong suit. Anyway, Paulina, Arruza wants to declare President Lorenzo Terán unfit to govern on the basis of “grave shortcomings,” as stipulated in Article 86 of the constitution. And since the majority of Congress considers Terán incompetent, the scheme might just work. The only catch is that Congress would then have to choose the appropriate acting president to complete Terán’s six-year term.

I have no idea who Cícero and his allies have in mind for this. But who are his allies? Paulina, you must find out if the strongmen and the defense secretary with the unpronounceable German name are, in fact, joining forces with General Arruza in his attempt to stage a military coup, because that, in the end, is his objective.

The other person breathing down my neck is our ex-president César León, and he’s as shady a character as they get. He’s also trying to manipulate Congress into declaring the president incompetent, but he refuses to reveal who he wants to replace Terán, finish out the rest of his term, and call for elections — that is, only after amending Article 83 so that former presidents (such as César León) can be reelected by the time those 2024 elections come around.

Be very careful, Paulina, because the ex-president is a sly snake in the grass who knows every trick in the book and is fueled by an ambition that knows no limits. Go to the old ex-president, who sits around all day playing dominoes under the arches in Veracruz — visit him, see if you can get any information from him. Don’t even try to seduce César León, because he only lets himself get taken for a ride by center-folds. Although, who knows, he’s so lecherous that even you might strike him as a sort of Venus from Hidalgo. I say that with all due respect, Paulina.

But to go back to the old man in Veracruz, the most I’ve ever gotten out of him — so far, but you know better than anyone that I’m stubborn as a mule (my enemies call me pigheaded and my allies persistent) — is this:

“Mexico already has a legitimate president,” the Old Man says.

“Of course, Lorenzo Terán,” I reply.

“No, another one, in case Terán resigns or dies.”

“Resignation? Death? What are you talking about, Mr. President?”

“I’m talking about fucking legitimacy.”

(Excuse me, Paulinita, all due respect to you.)

“That’s all?”

“That’s all, Onésimo.”

You know that the Old Man is half mummy, half sphinx. And, since I don’t get anything but riddles out of him, I put on my little holy innocent face and turn to the cabinet in search of advice. They all tell me the same thing, with their own particular ifs, ands, and buts:

“The constitution’s clear on that,” says Herrera of the interior office. “If we’re left without a president during the last four years of his term (as would be the case now), Congress names an acting president to finish the term and then calls for new elections. That’s the law, and it’s crystal clear.”

“The constitution could be changed, and we could have a vice president,” Tácito de la Canal remarks. “But that would require the vote of two thirds of all present congressmen and the approval of the majority of the state legislature. How long do you think that might take?”

He scratches his bald head and answers his own question.

“One, two, three years. It’s irrelevant to our situation.”

“Why don’t you have a vice president like we do?” the U.S. ambassador, Cotton Madison, asks me. “Kennedy gets shot, Johnson takes over. Nixon resigns, Ford takes over. No problem.”

I try to explain to him that, during the nineteenth century, when we had vice presidents in Mexico, these fine, upstanding characters spent most of their time undermining and overthrowing the presidents they served, starting with the revolt of Nicolás Bravo against Guadalupe Victoria in 1827. And then Santa Anna, “the immortal leader from Cempoala,” according to our national anthem, struck out against his own vice president, Valentín Gómez Farías, even though old “Fifteen Nails” (that’s the one-legged Santa Anna, Paulina) actually managed to overthrow his own government in the end, a maneuver that the sinister Hugo Chávez, admirer that he is of Bolívar, imitated to perfection not twenty years ago.

I could give you a laundry list of disloyal vice presidents — Anastasio Bustamante against Vicente Guerrero, for one. And I could also tell you about generals who preferred to strike out against their leaders rather than defend the country from foreign invaders, which is what happened with the traitor Paredes Arrillaga during the war against the Americans. That’s a depressing story, no doubt, but it’s one worth keeping in mind, my discreet friend, if you want to keep all the cards in your hand and don’t want to be surprised in the middle of a siesta, like Santa Anna was by the gringos at the Battle of San Jacinto, which cost us Texas.

As I said before, you’re going to want to know the opinions of local bosses like Cabezas in Sonora, Delgado in Baja California, Maldonado in San Luis, and the fearsome Vidales in Tabasco. Without a doubt they’ll lie to you.

Sonora: “Our problem is creating assembly plants, not conspiracies,” Cabezas will say.

Baja California: “We’ve got enough problems with the waters of the Colorado and dealing with the drug traffic in Tijuana,” Delgado will say.

San Luis Potosí: “The only thing we’re concerned with around here is protecting foreign investment,” Maldonado will say.

Tabasco: “In this state, the buck stops with me,” Vidales will say.

So they say, so they say, so they say. . Lies, all of it. But they won’t (forgive me) try to seduce you. No. Let us, then, interpret the lies in reverse to find out the truth. The seduction will not take place because, in the first place, let’s just say you inspire more respect than that magistrate’s wife, doña Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez, heroine of our independence, and secondly (I’ll say it again) because you’re from Hidalgo, and Hidalgo’s a state that doesn’t register on Mexico’s political radar.

Keep me informed, my dear and respected friend.