The Years With Laura Diaz

23. Tlatelolco: 1968

“NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT to identify a body. No one has the right to remove a body. We will not tolerate five hundred funeral processions in this city tomorrow. Throw them all in a common grave. Allow no one to identify them.”

Make them disappear.

Laura Díaz photographed her grandson Santiago the night of October 2, 1968. She made her way on foot from the Calzada de la Estrella to watch the marchers enter the Plaza of the Three Cultures. She’d been photographing all the events in the student movement beginning with the first demonstrations — the growing presence of police squads, the bazooka fired against the door of the National Preparatory School, the occupation of University City by the army, the arbitrary destruction of laboratories and libraries by paid thugs, the university protest march headed by the rector, Javier Barros Sierra, and followed by the entire university community, the gathering in the Zócalo, where the crowd shouted to President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz: SHOW YOUR FACE — SHOW YOUR FACE — YOU’RE A DISGRACE — TO THE HUMAN RACE! the silent march of a hundred thousand gagged citizens.

Laura recorded the nights of discussion with Santiago, Lourdes, and a dozen or more young men and women whose passions had been aroused by the events. They met in a room Laura had cleared for them in the Plaza Rio de Janeiro apartment, moving old files and throwing out useless trash that actually represented precious memories, but Laura told Lourdes that if at the age of seventy she hadn’t stored up in her memory what was worth remembering, she’d be crushed by the weight of the miscellaneous past. The past had many forms. For Laura, it was an ocean of paper.

What was a photograph, after all, but an instant transformed into eternity? The flow of time was unstoppable, so trying to save it in its totality would be a kind of madness — time that went on, under the sun and stars, with or without us, in an uninhabited, lunar world. Human time meant sacrificing the totality to give privilege to the instant and the prestige of eternity to the instant. The painting by Santiago the Younger in the apartment dining room said it all: we aren’t falling, we’re rising.

Laura had shuffled the contact sheets nostalgically, thrown the ones that seemed pointless to her into the trash, and cleared out the room for her great-grandchild to come. Shall we paint it blue or pink? Lourdes asked, laughing, and Laura laughed with her. Male or female, the baby would sleep in a cradle surrounded by photography smells, the walls were impregnated with the unmistakable perfume of wet photographs, of developer, of prints hung up with clothespins to dry like freshly washed clothes.

She observed her grandson’s growing enthusiasm and would have wanted to warn him, Don’t let yourself be swept along by enthusiasm, for in Mexico disillusion quickly punishes anyone with faith and tosses that faith out the door. We were taught this in school, Santiago would say to his comrades, kids between seventeen and twenty-five, dark-haired and blond, the way Mexico is, a rainbow country, said a pretty girl with hair down to her waist, very dark skin and very green eyes, a country on its knees that has to be stood on its feet, said a dark boy, tall with very small eyes, a democratic country, said a boy who was pale and short, muscular and calm, with glasses that were always sliding down his nose, a country united with the great revolts in Berkeley, Tokyo, and Paris, a country that won’t ever say “Interdit d’interdire” and where imagination can seize power, said a blond boy, very Spanish, with a full beard and intense eyes, a country where we don’t forget the others, said another boy who looked Indian, very serious and hidden behind thick glasses, a country where we can all love one another, said Lourdes, a country without exploiters, said Santiago, we’re doing nothing more than bringing to the street what we were taught in school, we were educated with ideas called democracy, justice, freedom, revolution; they asked us to believe in all that, Doña Laura, can you imagine, Grandmama, a student or teacher defending dictatorship, oppression, injustice, reactionary thinking, but they showed themselves and we saw their faces, said the tall dark boy, and we cited demands, said the Indian boy with thick glasses, listen here, where are the things you taught us in school? listen here, the dark girl with green eyes added her voice to the chorus, who do you think you’re fooling? look here, said the boy with the full beard and intense eyes, just dare to look at us, there are millions of us, thirty million Mexicans under the age of twenty-five, do you think you can fool us forever? the tall boy with small eyes leaped to his feet, where is democracy in the farcical elections that the PRI organizes with stuffed ballot boxes? where is the justice — Santiago went on — in a country where seventy people have more money than seventy million citizens? where is the freedom in unions handcuffed by corrupt leaders? asked the girl with hair to her waist, in newspapers paid off by the government, added Lourdes, in television that hides the truth? where is the revolution? concluded the boy who was pale and short, muscular and calm, in the names of Villa and Zapata inscribed in gold on the Chamber of Deputies, concluded Santiago, on the statues the night birds shit on and the morning goldfinches shit on again when they write the PRI’s speeches?

It would have been useless to warn him. He’d broken with his parents, he identified himself with his grandmother, she and he, Laura and Santiago, had knelt down together one night right in the Zócalo and together had put their ears to the ground and together heard the same thing, the blind tumult of the city and the nation about to explode.

“The hell that is Mexico,” said Santiago. “Are we predestined for crime, violence, corruption, poverty?”

“Don’t talk, son. Listen. Before I photograph, I always listen …”

She wanted to bequeath to her descendants a luminous liberty. The two of them raised their faces from the icy stone and looked at each other with a questioning look filled with tenderness. Laura understood then that Santiago was going to act as he acted, she was not going to say to him, You’ve got a wife, you’re going to have a baby, don’t get involved. She wasn’t Danton, she wasn’t Juan Francisco, she was Jorge Maura, she was the gringo Jim at the Jarama front, she was the young Santiago the Elder shot in Veracruz. She was those who doubted everything but never hesitated to act.

Her grandson Santiago, in every march, in every speech, at every university gathering, incarnated change, and his grandmother followed him, photographed him, he paying no attention to being photographed, and Laura watched him with the tenderness of a comrade: with her camera, she recorded all the moments of change, sometimes change brought on by uncertainty, sometimes change brought on by certainty, but the final certitude — of acts, of words — was less certain than doubt. The most uncertain thing was certainty.

Laura felt during those days of the student revolt, in sunlight or torchlight, that change was certain because it was uncertain. Through her memory passed the dogmas she’d listened to all her life — the almost prehistoric antagonisms between the Franco-British allies and the Central Powers in the 1914 war, Vidal’s Communist faith and Basilio’s anarchist faith, Maura’s Republican faith and Pilar’s Falangist faith, Raquel’s Judeo-Christian faith and also Harry’s confusion, Juan Francisco’s opportunism, Danton’s greedy cynicism, and his brother Santiago’s generosity.

Through his grandmother, this new Santiago was heir to them all, whether he knew it or not. The years with Laura Díaz had formed the days of Santiago the New, which is how she thought of him, like the new apostle in the long line of namesakes of the son of Zebedee who had been a witness at Gethsemane of Christ’s transfiguration. The Santiagos, “sons of lightning,” all violently killed. St. James pierced by the swords of Herod. St. James the Less garroted by the Sanhedrin. Santiago saints: history recorded two; she, Laura, had four of them, and a name, said the grandmother, is a manifestation of our most intimate nature. Laura, Lourdes, Santiago.

Now the faith of the friends and lovers of all the years with Laura Díaz was the faith of Laura Díaz’s grandson, who, along with hundreds of young Mexicans, men and women, went to the Plaza of the Three Cultures, the ancient Aztec ceremonial center Tlatelolco, with no more illumination than that which came from the dying afternoon in the old valley of Anahuac. Everything was old here, thought Laura Díaz, the Indian pyramid, the church of Santiago, the Franciscan convent and college, but also the modern buildings, the Foreign Ministry, the apartment buildings. Perhaps the most recent things were the oldest because they’d stood the test of time least, being already cracked, with peeling paint, smashed windows, sagging clotheslines, the lamentation of too many sobbing, penitential rains coming from the walls: the streetlights in the square were beginning to come on, the spotlights on prestigious buildings, lamps in kitchens, terraces, living rooms, and bedrooms; hundreds of young people were coming in on one side, dozens of sol diers surrounding them were coming from other sides; nervous shad ows appeared on the roof terraces, fists covered with white gloves were raised, and Laura photographed the figure of her grandson Santiago, with his white shirt, his stupid white shirt, as if he were asking to be a target, and his voice saying to her, (Grandmother, we don’t fit into the future, we want a future that will give room to young people, I don’t fit into the future my father invented, and Laura said to him, yes, that with her grandson she too had come to understand that all her life Mexicans had dreamed of a different country, a better country, her grandfather Felipe who emigrated from Germany to Catemaco and her grandfather Díaz who left Tenerife for Veracruz, both dreamed of a country of work and honor, as the first Santiago had dreamed of a country of justice and the second Santiago of a country of creative serenity and the third Santiago, this one entering Tlatelolco Plaza with all those students on the night of October 2, 1968, continued the dream of those whose name he bore, his namesakes, and seeing him enter the plaza, photographing him, Laura said, Today the man I love is my grandson.

She fired her camera, the camera was her weapon, and she fired only at her grandson, realizing the injustice of her attitude, since hundreds of young men and women were coming to Tlatelolco Plaza to demand a new country, a better country, a country faithful to itself, and she, Laura Díaz had eyes only for the flesh of her flesh, for the protagonist of her descendance, a boy with his hair tousled, his white shirt and dark skin and honey-green eyes and bright teeth and sturdy muscles.

I am your comrade, Laura said to Santiago from afar, I’m no longer the woman I was, now I’m yours, tonight I understand you, I understand my love Jorge Maura and the God he adores and for whom he licks the floor of a monastery in Lanzarote, I say to you, my God, take away everything I’ve been, give me sickness, give me death, give me fever, chancres, cancer, tuberculosis, give me blindness and deafness, cut out my tongue and my ears, my God, if that’s what’s necessary to save my grandson and my country, kill me with evils so my nation and my children may have health, thank you, Santiago, for teaching all of us that there are still things to fight for in this sleeping and self-satisfied and tricky and tricked Mexico of 1968, Year of the Olympic Games, thanks, my son, for teaching me the difference between the living and the dead — then the commotion in the plaza was like the earthquake that toppled the Angel of Independence, Laura’s camera looked up to the stars and saw nothing, then, trembling, it looked down and found the eye of a soldier staring at her like a scar, the camera firing and the rifles firing, extinguishing the songs, slogans, voices of the young people, and then came a horrifying silence, and one heard only the moans of the wounded and dying young people, Laura looking for the figure of Santiago and finding only white gloves against the sky, closing into insolent fists, “mission accomplished,” and the impotence of the stars to tell the story of what had happened.

Rifle butts beat Laura out of the plaza, chased out not for being Laura the photographer, grandmother of Santiago, but because all witnesses are being chased away, they want no witnesses, yet under her full skirt Laura hides her roll of film, in her panties, next to her sex, but she cannot photograph the smell of death that rises from the plaza soaked in young blood, she can no longer capture the blinded sky of the night of Tlatelolco, she cannot print the widespread fear of the great urban cemetery, the groans, the screams, the echoes of death … The city grows dark.

Not even Danton López-Díaz, the powerful Don Danton, has the right to remove his son’s body? No, not even he.

To what do the young widow and the grandmother of Santiago, young rebel leader, have a right? If they wish, they may go to the morgue and identify the body. As a concession to Don Danton, personal friend of President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz. They may see him, but they may not remove or bury him. No exceptions. There will not be five hundred funeral processions on October 3, 1968, in Mexico City. It would make traffic impossible. It would break the rules and regulations.

Laura and Lourdes entered the ice shed, where a strange pearly light illuminated naked bodies laid on wooden pallets mounted on sawhorses.

Laura feared that death would strip away the personalities of these stripped victims, victims of the sedition of a President gone mad with vanity, overweening power, fear, and cruelty. That would be his final victory.

“I haven’t killed anyone. Where are the dead? Come on, let them speak out. Let them talk. Me kill anyone?”

They weren’t the dead for the President. They were agitators, subversives, Communists, ideologues of destruction, enemies of the nation, the nation incarnated in the presidential Sash. Except the eagle, that night at Tlatelolco, flew off the Sash and away, flew far away, and the serpent, ashamed, thought it better to shed its skin, and the cactus grew wormy, and the water of the lake once again caught fire. Lake of Tlatelolco, throne of sacrifices, where the Tlatilca king was thrown from the top of the pyramid in 1473 to consolidate Aztec power, from the top of the pyramid the idols were cast down to consolidate Spanish power, from all four sides Tlatelolco was besieged by death, the tzompantli, the wall of skulls cemented together in an immense funeral necklace, thousands of skulls forming a defense and warning about power in Mexico, raised up, time and again, over death.

But the dead here in the morgue were singular, there wasn’t one face like another, not one body identical to another, not even uniform postures. Each bullet had left a different rosette on a murdered man’s chest, head, thigh; each man’s sex was in different repose, each woman’s sex a singular wound, that difference was the triumph of the young people sacrificed in their defeat of a violence that went unpunished, a violence that knew itself to be absolved beforehand. The proof was that two weeks later, President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz inaugurated the Olympic Games with the release of a flock of peace doves and with a smile of satisfaction as wide as his bloody snout. In the presidential box, covered with smiles of national pride, were Santiago’s parents, Don Danton and Doña Magdalena. The nation had returned to order, thanks to the President’s disciplined energy.

When they recognized Santiago’s body in the improvised morgue, Lourdes, in tears, threw herself on the naked body of her young husband, but Laura caressed her grandson’s feet and hung a tag on his right foot:

SANTIAGO THE THIRD

19501968

A WORLD TO BE MADE

Clasping each other, the old woman and the young woman looked at Santiago for the last time and walked away, sharing a diffused, unplaceable fear. Santiago had died with a grimace of pain. Laura lived wishing that the dead boy’s smile could restore peace to his body and to her.

“It is a sin to forget, a sin,” she repeated to herself over and over, telling Lourdes, don’t be afraid, but the young widow did feel fear, every time there was a knock at the door, she wondered, could it be he, a ghost, a murderer, a mouse, a cockroach?

“Laura, if you had the chance to put someone in a cage like a scorpion and leave him hanging there without bread or water—”

“Don’t think such thoughts, daughter. He doesn’t deserve it.”

“What do you think about, then, Laura, aside from him?”

“I think there are those who suffer and because of their suffering they cannot be replaced.”

“But who takes on the pain of the rest, who is exempt from that obligation?”

“No one, daughter, no one.”

The city had been turned over to death.

The city was an encampment of barbarians.

Someone was knocking at the door.