Warped Mirror

“The elephants gave spine chilling screams. The baby cow elephant was lying in the narrow barrier moat on her back her legs up... she could not move... We did what we had to do but it broke my heart.”

Interior of Fraunkirche, Dresden

Close on the heels of its orchestrated witch-hunt of a so-called “holocaust denier” Der Spiegel suddenly executed a seamless volt-face and declaims that the holocaust of Dresden was no big deal, after all.

The declamation takes the form of an “interview” with Frederick Taylor, a purported historian, who has written a revisionist account of the Anglo-American firebombing of the exquisitely beautiful baroque jewel on Elbe river on the night of 13-14 February 1945. Taylor, who is English, was interviewed by Spiegel in 2005, after his book was published in 2004; but it is apparently time for a re-quel.

Taylor’s account is, in fact, largely a rehash of standard Allied self-exculpation. Nevertheless, under current definitions, Taylor’s work qualifies as revisionism in that he seeks to minimize the number of casualties as well as to minimize the moral culpability of the Anglo-Americans for the slaughter of innocents.

The main thrust of Taylor’s polemic is that Dresden was a “legitimate” military target and well ... you know, all’s fair in love in war,

“I remain unconvinced that maximizing civilian casualties -- rather than winning the war by whatever means necessary -- was their chief objective.”

The premise of Taylor’s statement is that there is a distinction between winning a war and the wholesale slaughter of civilians. Not only is the distinction correct, it is the basis for the whole structure of international conventions on warfare, the premise of which is that it is possible to wage and win war with an eye to minimizing civilian casualties.

The scurrilous falsity of Taylor’s “unconvinced” conclusion is found in the prepositional phrase; “by any means necessary” which simply swallows the distinction. By any means necessarily includes maximizing civilian casualties.

This forensic artifice is well known to lawyers. It is the “small exception” that swallows the rule, the “fine print” that destroys any real obligations under a contract or, simply, the “weasel clause”.

The fact is that the British high command had adopted a policy of mass slaughter as a means to winning the war. The evolution of that policy was an issue of intent carried on the wings of happenstance.

The idea of terror bombing preceded the World War and was the brainchild of the Italian General Guilio Douhet who argued that strategic bombing would avoid stalemates on the battlefields, such as those endured for four grim years during the Great War. Douhet saw war as a “battle of wills” and concluded that the quickest, and ultimately most “humane”, way to win would be to directly target the defenceless civilian population, crushing its will to resist or provoking it to revolt. (Douhet, The Command of the Air, (1927) Office of Air Force History, Wash. D.C.)

The Washington Treaty (1922) had outlawed the bombing of non-military and civilian targets; nevertheless, Douhet’s ideas found receptive ears in the United States and Britain. Hugh Trenchard, RAF Commander 1919-1930 and Billy Mitchell both agreed that the enemy’s center of gravity was his will to fight and that this could be undermined by prolonged attacks against the enemy’s “vital centers.” However, they both rejected the idea of targetting civilians directly. In their view both ability and will to resist would be undermined by targetting vital infrastructures (factories, food centers, communications etc.) (Phillip S. Melinger The Paths of Heaven - The Evolution of Airpower Theory (1997) Air Univ Press; Jones, Neville, The Origins of Strategic Bombing (1973) London, Oxf. Univ. Pr.) The tactical differences between Douhet and Trenchard/Mitchell underlay the later distinction between area bombing and precision bombing strategies.

Hitler, who knew a thing or two about many things, worried about English air doctrine. In May 1933 he told an English interviewer that modern warfare had sped up so much that swift bombing machines could lay waste to European capitals within 40 minutes of war being declared. In 1936, Hitler put forward proposals to ban all bombing outside immediate battle-zones. This view reflected German military doctrine that, at the time, viewed air power as a species of artillery. Needless to say, nothing came of it. (J. M. Spaight Bombing Vindicated (1944) London.

In the event, Hitler’s fears were realized; but the initiation of English terror bombing was not a simple issue of applying theory to ground. As usual, it was more a combined question of what people wanted to do, what they were capable of doing, what they thought they could get away with.and what they felt they had to appear to do.

The war began conventionally enough with both sides bombing eachother’s docked fleets. The British Ruhr Plan (1939) envisioned bombing Germany’s industrial centers in the event the Low Countries were attacked. In May 1940, they were. By what is now indisputably acknowledged as a communications mistake, the Germans bombed the center of Rotterdam. The English retaliated by bombing Rotterdam’s oil refineries as well as oil tankers in Bremen and Hamburg. Britain also bombed Aachen for no particular reason than that it was there.

The Germans now bombed installations in the Rhone Valley and conducted an air raid on Paris. The French bombed Munich and Berlin in retaliation. The English bombed an airfield in Rouen and the Germans bombed one in Jersey. The English bombed Kiel and began night raids over Germany. It is now July 1940, and the Battle of Britain has begun.

For the most part, both sides contented themselves with bombing industrial and military installations of various sorts, particularly ports and air fields. However, in late August, Luftwaffe bombers lost course and mistakenly bombed civilian areas in London. Unlike the English, the Germans did not have radar. England retaliated by bombing Berlin. Germany accepted the penalty and refrained from further retaliation; but when England continued with several more attacks, Hitler flew into a rage and ordered the unrestricted bombing of London.

The cat was out of the bag. But as early as the month previous, in July, Sir Charles Portal, then Chief of Bomber Command, wrote a private letter in which he complained of policy constraints on allowable targets. “We have one offensive weapon in the whole of the armory, the one means by which we can undermine the morale of a large part of the enemy people...and at the same time...dislocate the major party of their heavy industry...” (Letter A.M. Portal to A.V.M. Douglas (July 17, 1940) AIR 14/1930)

In so saying, Portal was merely echoing Churchill’s own opinion, expressed ten days before that “ When I look around to see how we can win the war I see that there is only one sure path. .... and that is an absolutely devastating exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country on the Nazi homeland.” (Churchill, Their Finest Hour Vol. 2, (London 1949) p. 505; Max Hastings, Bomber Command (1979) Dial Press. )

The war of intentions now escalated. On September 5, 1940, Hitler made his famous threat that “when they declare that they will step up their attacks on our cities, then we shall erase their cities.” On September 9, 1940 British pilots were told that if they could not hit their intended targets they need not feel any compulsion to bring their bombs back; they could always dump them on secondary targets even if they were in “built up” areas. (The Strategic Air War, 1939-1945 (1998) London.)

In October 1940, Charles Portal was elevated to Chief of the Air Staff and on December 12, 1940 Portal told the War Cabinet that Churchill had instructed that there be a change of policy “from strictly military objectives to a political objective, namely the effect on German morale “although “some” industrial importance still factored in (War Cab. Meeting. (12 Dec. 1940) WM 40 305 12/12/1940 CAB 65/16.

To all intents and purposes, the policy of targetted precision bombing had been abandoned. The only person who didn’t get it was Trenchard himself who, in early 1941, protested from retirement that that the fact that bombed missed their targets did not matter because even if 99% missed their target they “all help to kill damage, frighten or interfere with Germans ...and therefore [are] doing useful work.” (Memorandum Lord Trenchard. 19 May 1941 in SAO IV.) Portal’s wry comment to a colleague was that Trenchard was beating a dead horse, as the policy had already been adopted ( AIR 8/283, June 4, 1941)

Still there was resistance to the policy and there were those who questioned the efficacy of the Douhet’s “will-breaking” theory. Others questioned whether England had the resources to conduct such a campaign when ammunition and planes were needed elsewhere as well. On the 7 July 1941, Churchill, irked by the concentration of too much air power on strictly military objectives complained that “the devastation of the Germany cities is urgently needed.” (Church ill, War Papers p. 909.)

A month later, in August 1941, the War Cabinet released the Butt Report which analyzed the results of English bombing and concluded, unhappily, that less than a third of the sorties flown got within five kilometers of their intended targets. In other words, the British were, despite themselves, engaged in random bombing.

The proponents of area bombing were delighted. If Britain couldn’t be precise she could at least be indiscriminate. The aim of the attacks was now defined an Air Staff paper dated 23 September 1941, as follows

"The ultimate aim of an attack on a town area is to break the morale of the population which occupies it. To ensure this, we must achieve two things: first, we must make the town physically uninhabitable and, secondly, we must make the people conscious of constant personal danger. The immediate aim, is therefore, twofold, namely, to produce (i) destruction and (ii) fear of death."

Then, in February 1942, Sir Frederich Lindeman, Churchill’s German Jewish science advisor, issued the so called Dehousing Paper in which he argued that de-housing the the industrial worker would break German morale. Bombs were not to be wasted on middle class homes since these were surrounded by gardens and open space. More bang for the buck if dropped on apartments and inner city tenements. Accordingly, General Directive No. 5 (S. 46368/D.C.A.S) 2/14/42 provided

“ It has been decided that the primary objective you your operations should be focused on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular industrial workers.”

Bombers were to “employ forces without restriction”.

From time to time, bombing policy was adjusted to the exigencies of the war. Thus the Casablanca Directive (CS (21 Jan. 1943) 16536 S.46368 ACA/AX) provided for “The progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic systems and the undermining of the morale of the German people...”

This brief summary of bureaucratic policy making shows that, despite twists, turns and modulations, British air policy was astonishingly consistent since the early days of Douhet and Trenchard: breaking enemy morale was always a policy goal.

It should not be thought that the bombing of dams, factories, rail-lines, food centers, hospitals and other infrastructures somehow did not kill civilians. It was always understood that it would, just as it was understood that the “military” blockade of Germany in the Great War had induced starvation. The difference in modulation is that by no later than 1942, the pretence of a military target was completely off the table. The direct target of bombing was German civilians and if military targets were collaterally damaged so much the better.

Der Spiegel’s Taylor cannot escape these memoranda, and states “Portal thought that the resulting damage to the German war effort and civilian morale would lead to victory within six months. A second memorandum a year later made a similar argument.”

Aha! So then, Britain, and through her, the Americans, admitedly did adopt a policy of mass civilian slaughter. But, but! Taylor argues, but Portal states these things “only in so far as they aided victory over Germany -- rather than things in which he took some kind of personal satisfaction.” Oh well... in that case....

Here Taylor resorts to another trick from the sophist’s bag of tools: switching focus. The topic under discussion was whether or not the Allies had some sort of justification for bombing Dresden. According to der Spiegel, Taylor is going to explain to us that “there was a clear military rationale behind the attack” Therefore the issue concerns the nature of this military rationale. The issue is not whether Charles Portal is some sort of salivating psychopath creaming in his pants as he reads bombing reports.

Of course, such sophistries have the additional advantage of reducing what purports to be a serious discussion into a trite and imbecilic soap opera in which the world war gets explained in terms of evil stepsisters, growling gnomes, and a whole cast of us-good guys versus them awful, icky-pooh, horrible, yuk-monsters. Sixty years on and we’re still awash in Allied War Propaganda masquerading as history.

IF it is established that there was no legitimate military target at Dresden, then one can go on to ask whether the policy had some deranged personal or collective animus. But asserting that no personal hostility existed does not establish military legitimacy.

In this regard Taylor advances the tired argument that Dresden was an important railway hub “directly linked to the conduct of the war” on the Eastern Front 120 miles away. The funny thing about railroads, is that they tend to be directly linked to places. But according to Taylor “The aim of the bombing was quite deliberately to destroy the center of the city, thereby making the movement of German soldiers and civilians impossible.”

Does Taylor actually whisper the “and civilians” part, hoping we kind-a won’t notice? Taylor avoids outright lying, but he also avoids explaining the murderous policy behind the “and.” He obscures rather than clarifies that the policy was one of so-called “dehousing”.

As a specific matter, the reference to “civilians’ is an unmistakable allusion to the fact that a hundred thousand and more civilians were desperately fleeing into Dresden from the murderous Russian advance to the East through Silesia. One Red Cross worker described the scene,

“ There were so many refugees from Silesia... What I saw there of the suffering and misery can hardly be described. There were women, old men and children in a condition that was not human anymore... a woman came and begged me for milk for her child...and showed me the child.... I wasn’t a doctor but I coud see that the child was dead, it was stiff and blue and must have been dead for several days.”

Taylor does not explain how disrupting civilian flight served a military objective. In fact, as anyone can figure out, the mass movement of refugees from the east would lead to a natural chaos that of itself impeded military movements fromw west to east.

As for purely military movements, what Taylor alludes to is the oft dredged up request by the Russians to bomb the rail communications at Berlin and Leipzig. Although the major thrust of the Russian request was for the British and Americans to tie down German forces in the West, and although the major military thrust of the Russians was directly at Berlin further north, it is true that Russia was concerned about its flanks to the south and that, at the same time, it had its eyes on taking Prague and Vienna, once it reestablished its supply lines and discipline among its own troops, now at the very borders of Germany proper. It may also be assumed for the sake of argument, as the U.S. Air Force claims, that for technical reasons relating to railway networking, disruption of the Berlin - Leipzig line required bombing the Dresden rail junction to the south of Leipzig.

The problem with all these rationales, taken at face value, is very simply that the Allies did far, far more than just bomb the railroads. The air surveillance photos prove beyond doubt that the destruction of Dresden was not the unfortunate and regrettable collateral result of some stray bombs that “missed” their target.

The photos indisputably prove that the target was not “communications” but Dresden.

And Nuremberg

And Cologne

And countless other German cities.

All German cities over 50,000 were 50 - 80% destroyed. By some calculations Germany was 20% destroyed. In June 1945 Gen. Omar Bradley said it was utterly and completely destroyed.

It will never be known for sure how many were incinerated in Dresden. The official accounts of 35,000 (now minimized to 25,000) tabulated only the identified dead based on local records. They cannot possibly account for the streams of refugees, the people who were incinerated beyond recognition, the mass graves of people quickly burned on pyres.

The Nazi count of 400,000 was undoubtedly exagerated, but estimates of in the vicinity of 100,000 to 150,000 are not implausible. At the time, the Red Cross put the estimate at 250,000. But in the end, arguing that only 25,000 victims were incinerated at Dresden is much like arguing that only 35,000 victims died at Theresienstadt. In either case a holocaust is minimized by arguing over a singular detail. Just as the overall impact of Nazi policies on the Jews of Europe was undeniably horrible, so too the overall impact of Allied terror bombing on Germany as a nation and as a civilization was horrible and undeniable. [ FN1 ]

Churchill and, in the United States, Henry Morgenthau, aimed not simply to defeat Germany but to eradicate her. If the blood-thirsty things Churchill said about Germans were put into Hitler’s mouth to be said about Jews, they would be cited as proof-positive of genocidal intent. Morgenthau’s policy paper for the post-war insisted that all of Germany be converted to a cow pasture and Germans reduced eeking out a survival on a “permanent diet of potatoes.”

There are those who indignantly claim, as if it were a self-evident fact, that there can be no moral equivalence. Why not? Why is the death of one child more morally worthy than the death of another? Was Coventry Cathedral more worthy in God’s eyes than Fraunkirche?

The assessment of legal or moral culpability has always been based on examining the two components of act (what was actually done and the resultant damage) and intent. That done, the evaluation goes on to assess circumstances in mitigation, justification or excuse, (as in stealing bread but in order to feed one’s child).

There is certainly enough evidence to suggest a prima facie case of democide by the Allies. The stated British intent was not simply to “terrorize” Germans but to destroy Germany as a physical, demographic, economic and cultural entity. Surely, no one thought it would be possible to “exterminate” all 65 million Germans but the goal was to kill and devastate on such a colossal and catastrohpic scale that the survivors would be reduced to a state of permanently terrorized sub-subsistence. This policy was in fact continued, by other means, after the cessation of hostilities, in what amounted to a program of de-construction and mass starvation. [ FN-2 ]

But Der Spiegel is hardly interested in presenting an even-handed account that provide an objective basis for a comparative assessment of policies. Instead it serves up Taylor’s pseudo history the sole aim of which is to obfuscate and exculpate Allied culpability for what were in fact war crimes. This follows directly on the heels of a two week long witch-hunt in which Spiegel sought to induce a frenzied hysteria over the blasphemous fact that an excommunicated bishop in Argentina had had the temerity to read and believe revisionist accounts of the Jewish holocaust.

Spiegel has nothing to contribute to any serious historical discussion. But that, most evidently, is not its intent. What Spiegel is hawking a species of mandatory self-abasement that minimizes anything done to Germany by the Allies while insisting that Nazi Germany alone committed the greatest evils ever done ever.

This is a warped mirror. National Masochism is not a proper antidote to National Socialism. It is untrue, unnatural and unhealthy and serves only to foster increasing and festering resentment. Ultimately, this is a stupid policy that puts right in the mouths of neo-nazi boors. The bombing of Dresden was a terrible, inexcusable and vile atrocity. Spiegel’s white-wash flies in the face of decency.

It is also a polemical policy that is injurious to us because it promotes the false notion of Allied exceptionalism. -- the idea that as they could no good we could no wrong. Denial of the German Holocaust becomes a necessary correlative within a trite and offensive manicheism that ends up excusing away humanitarian crimes in Gaza and terror bombing in Japan, Vietnam and Iraq. While neither of these war crimes approachthe sheer scale of the World War’s horrors, that is small justification. Better to remember that self-righteousness goes before the crime.

In my view, there is no substitute for fearless and insistent objectivity and this, most emphatically, includes, doubting the “undoubtable” and entertaining the “unacceptable”. It is only when we loose our partiality that we can see the “right” on both sides of the battle field and become truly open to the shortfall of our human existence. That, it seems to me, is a better place to arrive at than some false moral high ground from which we always and inevitably fall.



©WCG, 2009
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Our Status as A Free People

The News: England's Home Secretary has put forth a proposal to have the private sector manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone's calls, emails, texts and internet use 24/7. The proposal's proponents said that it included "tougher legal safeguards to guarantee against leaks and accidental data losses." (But not to safeguard privacy.)

The Note in the News: Sir Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, said the proposed database would be "an unimaginable hell-house of personal private information," he said. "It would be a complete readout of every citizen's life in the most intimate and demeaning detail. No government of any colour is to be trusted with such a roadmap to our souls." McDonald added:

"The tendency of the state to seek ever more powers of surveillance over its citizens may be driven by protective zeal. But the notion of total security is a paranoid fantasy which would destroy everything that makes living worthwhile. We must avoid surrendering our freedom as autonomous human beings to such an ugly future. We should make judgments that are compatible with our status as free people."

The Woodchip Gazette wishes its readers the courage to stand for a Free and Autonomous New Year.


©WCG, 2008

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Four Postcards from Mexico - Postal Cuarto

The following afternoon, Saturday, we were scheduled to travel up the foothills of Ixtlazihuatl, for dinner with the Hinojosas, friends of Lara’s at San Isidro Labrador. “They’re very amable,” she said, “buena gente, but... conservative.” “Ya me imaginaba” I said. I had met one of their sons, Eduardo, several years back and we formed an instant liking for one another based on our shared feeling for Benito Juarez, Mexico’s great Liberal Liberator whom Eduardo called a paricidio, corrupto, ingrato, apóstata y traidor. Needless to say, Juarez is something of a fault-line in Mexican political history.

“And don’t go talking about ‘indians’,” Lara mock-admonished me. Juarez was a full blooded Zapotec Indian, so that playing from a politically correct deck of cards, a person who despised him is supposedly a white racist who deprecates “los indios” -- the currently correct term for which is “indigenas” But, life is never that simple. When, during that lunch several years back, I made reference to “the Indians,” Eduardo had another outburst. “Se les llama indígenas!” “Ya, ya.” I replied, “but “Indians” is a perfectly fine word...even Las Casas (their great protector) referred to the natives as ‘indians’.” As far as I was concerned it all depended on how the word was used. Eduardo would not be convinced and after a cascade of contrary explanations concluded with “my skin may be white, but my heart is brown!” Now, five years later, Lara and I looked at one another, put hand to heart, finger to air and simultaneously broke out laughing... “pero my corazón es moreno” Nevertheless, I promised to speak only of ‘los indigenas’. ”

Everything about San Isidro bespoke privilege; not luxury, but the well-being one enjoys when fate has been kind. Impeccably maintained, the house rests on rolling green slopes overlooking the entire valley. Mt. Ixtlazihuatl forms an impressive backdrop, the visual equivalent on this grey-sky day of a Bach fugue.

We arrived late, because another fire had broken out and Lara had to do her round ups. Don Hector Hinojosa a tall, portly man, in open shirt and suspenders, had waited the time with a copa or two and greeted us amiably at the gate.

Lara was nervous, still worrying about the fire. “Mira mi querida,” Don Hector said at once authoritative and gentle, “come inside, ya, and relax. You’ve done what you can do, so now let it take care of itself.” “Bienvenido a su casa,” he said to me, as he draped his arm over my shoulder and led me inside.

Clean and comfortable, the hacienda was far from grand. By size and privacy of style it was more of a rancho, not that anyone in their right mind would turn their nose up at it on that account. Don Hector’s wife, Eugenia, came out from the kitchen and after introductions and greetings we stood around chatting while a delayed dinner was got together.

Standing there in the living room, I noticed a large polished wood and glass display case which contained an exquisite meter long model of a turn of the century steamer. Don Hector saw my interest and walked me over to it.

“This was sent to Don Porfirio, in the days before the internet.” I looked at him quizzically. “Well today,” he explained, “they would simply send some imagenes en PDF, but in those days.....” “

Ah, yes, I see your point... Well it’s quite beautiful.”

"Yes, the shipbuilders in Bremerhaven were hoping to sell it to the Mexican Government. Desgraciadamente, the model never made it to Mexico (City) and Don Porfirio never saw it.”

"The Revolution?"

"Yes."

"Ah."

It didn’t take a shipbuilder to figure out my next question, and so Don Hector went on to explain, how for near 50 years, the model languished in a crate at the warehouse in Veracruz. When as an young engineer he went to work for the port city, his boss was clearing out the warehouse and gave it to him as a wedding present.

“Very nice gift,” I said. Don Hector thought so too.

La comida was ready and we made our way into the comedor. Don Hector sat at the head of the table with his wife at his left. He pulled out a lacquered placard of sorts and read from one of several printed prayers on the board. “... make us mindful to seek sustenance for our souls as we gratefully receive this sustenance for our bodies....” We all crossed ourselves, before passing around the serving dishes of a very comida familiar of white bread, salad, rolled tacos, beans and several varieties of soft drinks.

Our table talk was inconsequential except for a brief political interlude in which the topic of NAFTA came up when I remarked that the tortillas appeared to made of white corn. Most NorteAmericanos, were taught to think of NAFTA as friendly neighbors trading sugar for flour over the fence. To the extent that they think otherwise now, it is in terms of “jobs lost overseas.” What they do not realize, even now, is that NAFTA was simply a protocol for economic conquest, connived at with Quislings in the Mexican Government.

Under its terms, Mexico was prohibited from providing agricultural price supports to its own farmers, whereas no such prohibition applied to the United States. As a result, large corporate agribusiness, simply flooded the Mexican market with cheap industrial yellow corn, underselling Mexican growers who traditionally had grown a high percentage of white corn, which is now virtually non-existent. Also virtually non-existent are thousands of small and medium Mexican farms, whose campesinos, fled economically devastated villages and illegally migrated up north “seeking to take advantage of our way of life.” As the New York Times put it sanctimoniously, NAFTA has “ shaken up Mexican farming — mostly for the better” The Times went on to instruct that “ Mexico needs investment to increase yields and move out of corn and into more lucrative crops” while and the Mexican Government “ will also need to help more rural Mexicans find jobs outside agriculture.”

It was hardly surprising that once the Mexican peasantry was destroyed, large U.S. Agric-Corps would buy up huge tracts of land, and convert them into food factories, worked by Mexican campesinos, at last freed from their feudal bondage. The only difference between these holdings and the villainous pre-revolutionary corporate haciendas is that Cargill, Arthur Daniel Midland and Tyson dispense with manorial facades.

“No,” came the reply, “this corn is grown locally.” “That’s nice to know,” I said before going on to say in a classic Freudian slip, “it’s terrible what el Tratado, has done to los indios”. Eduardo choked and Lara kicked me under the table.

“You oppose the present government?” one of Eduardo’s younger brothers asked, as he fed some pablum into his infant’s mouth. “Of course he does,” Eduardo said emphatically, “if people do not like the present regime es porque aman a la patria.”

Don Hector smiled and made an irrelevant comment, the effect of which was to put the table talk back on track of the ordinary and happy. Two of Don Hector’s other sons popped in with their wives, children and infants, and after everyone standing up and getting introduced and making some smaller talk, popped out again.

As we sat around the table drinking coffee, Don Hector told his wife to bring out the foto albums of their honeymoon. Soon we were looking at browning colour pictures from the early sixties that showed newly weds and friends at some country grove pic nic and then the couple alone, standing next to a wrought iron park bench on the flagstone pathway in front of the cathedral at Aguascalientes, a slim young man in sweater-vest and slacks with his young wife, in a plain cotton dress with a sweater draped over her shoulders and looking new to the role of señora.

I was taken back and taken aback. I recognized the scene as I had been through Aguascalientes in those very years when returning home by bus or train during school vacations.. But I had forgotten how relatively deserted Mexico was in those days. The whole country had only 60 millions, up 20 million from a decade before. Still, the country was a ways from being awash with people and at el tiempo de la comida, and at other times, the streets of provincial cities would be well nigh deserted.

The only other person in the photo was an Indian woman in the near background, making her way up to the cathedral on her knees, as Sr. and Sra. Hinojosa stood smiling and facing away toward the camera. They were not ignoring the woman in any despective way. No doubt they had seen her, the way one sees people praying in church, the way one sees balloon vendors, or couples on a park bench. The woman on her knees was simply going about her prayer-business, and it was no one else’s business to gawk or fuss. I held the photo as long as I politely could. One doesn’t see much of that either... in the new Mexico.

“...we had a wonderful spiritual advisor up there, right my darling?”

“yes,” Doña Eugenia nodded, “he was a wonderful being...”

“... but they wouldn’t let him leave his diocese, even though we begged the bishop...”

“Spiritual advisor...” it was said in the way one would speak about the gardener, or cook. People walked on their knees, people had spiritual guides, while others, apostates and parricides, made revolution; it was all quite usual.

Don Hector led me over to a mueble on which stood a thicket of photos. One by one he showed me pictures of his sons, who stood with their arms around their wives or holding an infant; all except for one young who stood alone by some flowers in a garden dressed in a brown Franciscan habit... "Does he continue in his vocation?" I asked. “No, he left. He wanted to get married.” Then Don Hector added, “I don’t ask about my sons’ lives. Solo quiero que sean felices and that they know that whenever they want, for whatever reason, they can come to me.”

At that point, Eduardo came over, and said, “Let me show your around.” We walked outside and he started showing me the grounds, his stables, his collections of bridles, the orchards, and a big dry pond. “It was wonderful, when it was filled with water,” he said, “we used to eat Sunday lunch out here, and we kids swung from a rope from that tree over there..”

“What happened?” I asked “Los campesinos needed the mountain run off for their fields.” he said this with resignation but without bitterness. It was inconceivable to deprive people of water they needed to survive. So that was that; everything passes.

With or with-out a pond, it was a very beautiful spot, and I told Eduardo that he was lucky. He knew it. Still, I asked, had he ever travelled abroad? He replied, somewhat off-handedly, that perhaps someday he would go to Europe. He would like to visit the Louvre and the Prado. Had he ever thought of going to the United States, I asked. “Para que?” Came the terse reply, “For what?” My mind ran through a quick stack of postcards: the Empire State, Maine fishing village, Grand Tetons, Golden Gate. He waited until he could see by my look that I had answered the question for him, whereupon he tacked on the inevitable conclusion: "No me tiene ningun interés."

Nor apparently for anyone else I was meeting. It’s not that they are unawares of the United States... the din from north of the border is inescapable. It’s rather that, at best, they think the U.S. is tiresome.

A part of me wanted, to say that the United States is not all Hollywood trash, bad manners, rapacious exploitation, and neocon monsters; that interesting things are being done and there are good people here too. But the look in their eyes answers, “So what?” And yes, “So what?” -- It’s not as if there aren’t good and interesting people elsewhere. In fact, at all times, under all regimes, there have been good people doing interesting things. Why should the U.S. think that its “good and interesting people” make it exceptional or provide a saving exception? The fact is that for the past 50 years the U.S. has brought depredation and destruction the world over. People in the U.S. are oblivious to this precisely because we have benefitted from this program of plunder. Not elsewhere. So, there are good people in the U.S. too. So what? People shrug and go about their business.

Of course not all Mexicans feel this way. Especially among the middle and upper middle classes in Mexico City there are large segments of people whose habits and expectations in life are entirely americanized. And of course, there are millions who have been sucked up into le standard by those disgorging cloacas of globalized consumer culture. All this is as true in Mexico as it is in China, France or Argentina. But in the provinces and even more in the pueblos ... it is otherwise. They are not anti-American... it is more lethally indifferent than that.

Many of these campesinos are the same people I meet in the United States. “So, how do you like it here,” I ask. “Pues ya sabe...no?” Comes the defeasing reply. They don’t have to explain. They don’t like the “here” en el norte They think it’s cold, unfeeling, uptight, ungracious, un-everything. So why are they here? “Pues, ya sabe ...no?” They don’t have to explain that either. Life in Mexico, loved as it is, is “muy dificil” if not outright impossible and downright pinche

But not for the Hinojosas. “Yes,” I replied to Eduardo. “why leave at all?” Just then a herd of sheep came barrelling down upon us.

It finally came time for us to take our leave. Back at the doorway, Don Hector put his arm around my shoulder and shook my hand. It had been, a pleasure; aqui tiene su casa; come back whenever you wish. I told him he had a lovely house, that I would make it a point to come back soon. “Not too soon,” he laughed

After hugging Lara, and making arrangements to “conectar” again in the coming week. Eduardo walked us to the truck for the bump back down to San Pablo. As we made our way through the darkened car-paths and alleys, I thought of Don Hector’s amiable greeting, his boat, his honeymoon pictures, his children, his placard with table prayers and his “... spiritual advisor...” “What are they, I wondered... Opus? Legionarios de Cristo? “ It didn’t matter. Don Hector had welcomed me to his ranch, let me know what he believed, showed me the fruits of his life and told me he was happy.

Next morning, I was up at the crack of dawn. Lara drove me to the bus station at San Martín for the trip back over the mountain passes into the Valley of Mexico. The sun was bright and the sky was clear. There were as yet no cars on the road and the countryside was bathed in Sunday morning tranquility as we sped past chocolate coloured fields, small villages, church spires with fading paper pennants hanging from the bell-tower, mounds of village garbage being scavenged by dogs and, then, deep phalanxes of pine trees pointing upward at 9000 feet.

How many times I have travelled this mountain road between the two great valleys of the Mexican altiplano, joining the short span of my life to a train voyagers through centuries past. They used to call it El Paso de Cortez. but even before him it was journeyed by Aztec warriors and, before them by, merchant traders from Teotihuacan heading south with obsidian for jade. As we sped down the maguey covered slopes into Mexico City, in the emollient morning sun, I was filled with a rooted and abiding sense of familiarity

It being Sunday, the air in Mexico City was breathable. Being early, there was little traffic, and from the window of the bus, I could see that the el gobierno had planted playgrounds, trees and parks along either side of the road. Early morning joggers and exercisers were out doing their motions. I was glad at least that through the interminable stretches of barrio on either side, there was at least this scrubby green belt people could use, early enough, to get out in the still fresh air.

Back at TAPO, I dragged my rolling duffel over to the dispatch cab booth. Sitio cabs are supposed to be safer than free roaming street cabs, although a modicum of sense would alert one to the dubiousness of this proposition in a country where the police themselves have been caught in theft, drug and, now, kidnap rings. Still, a hope and prayer seemed better than a prayer alone.

The access to the airport is always under construction and, as the cab wound its way through unfamiliar streets, I wondered if there was anything I could say that would not disclose that I was completely lost and totally at his mercy. “Very sunny, morning, eh?” “Si señor, hace mucho sol” he replied non-commitally. At last, some hangars appeared in view and I relaxed, tipping him handsomely as he unloaded my bags.

Mexico was never this way. This fear hangs over the city like a moral smog far worse than the 75 tons of dessicated feces that supposedly float about in the air. No one cared all that much when it was only the filthy rich and the filthy politicians who had to run about with guarda-espaladas, but as society becomes more and more economically polarized anyone above zero can be considered “filthy rich” by those who have nothing. With typical ingenuity some bands engage in “virtual kidnapping” -- a kind of blackmail based on a telephone call which pretends to have kidnapped a loved one whose personal data have been stolen and whose habits were previously observed. I doubt people will be able to put up with it much longer.

I had worried that, getting struck in some horrible traffic or highway snafu, I would miss my plane; but, as things turned out, I had arrived four hours early and thus had plenty of time to sit around and contemplate the brutal surroundings of the newly remodelled airport.

Thinking to have a good breakfast before a long day, I got a table at a chain restaurant called FLAPS, and ordered the “specialty of the day” -- a ranch style steak breakfast. What was special about it was that the steak was quite rotten. Equally special was the manager’s refusal to admit it. I was annoyed and disgusted but not surprised. It has always been the case -- notwithstanding the Department of Public Health -- that the worst places to eat at in Mexico are not the “dirty” open air street stands but the “tourist safe” eateries like Sanborns, Dennys, and now Flaps.

Leaving the steak and no tip on the table, I decided to get security over with once and for all, and went to lie back in one of the waiting rooms where I closed my eyes and let my mind drift back to the plains and slopes of Puebla and to how far Lara had come, in the six years, since she first inherited the property. I was glad she had opted not to turn San Pablo into a spa for the pampered.

“They are always, reminding me of my mother,” she had said, “tu mamá fue tan buenísma persona...” I could hear it in my mind. “Ah, la señora Irma, was such a fine person. When she found out that the children in the school had no books, she took it upon herself to speak to the Governor himself...” The obvious and necessary response to such “recollections” would be to ask if the books were still in use. “Ayyy, señora, pues fijase que.....” So perhaps it was the villagers’ memory of my cousin’s mother that had pushed her along. In all events and alongside the ongoing struggle to rehabilitate San Pablo Lara had become, as she said, “del pueblo”.

The call for my flight sounded over the loudspeaker and I was soon enough being propelled antiseptically through the skies back to the United States.Upon landing we lost ourselves in the jumble of baggage carousels and immigration lines, snaking through the maze of ropes. As I stood in line inching along, I noticed the brushed steel logo of Homeland Security lit tastefully and sharply by recessed lighting. Empires are all equally ostentatious. I also noticed small black spheres discretely dispersed along the moldings. Thinking of Winston, I blanded my mind of any grousing thoughts.

At last my turn came. I stepped up from the yellow line to the immigration counter and handed the ICE officer my passport.

“Looks like you’ve had a long day,” he said. as he pecked the keyboard
“Actually longer, I started at six by bus.”
“Are you bringing anything back? he asked as he looked at the screen
“Nah, just a couple of nic nacs”

He handed me back my passport

“Well...welcome home.”
“Thanks; it’s good to be back.”


©WCG, 2008

Four Postcards from Mexico - Postal Tercero

On the way back from Los Vientos, we got lost and we ended up driving into the neighboring state of Tlaxacala before doubling back, the very long way, to Puebla and San Martin, arriving home late at night. The following day we slept in late and did not do much of anything.

As Lara, Stefo and I sat in the kitchen having a late morning coffee, Lara asked me what I thought of the association proposal. Upon retiring from politics, Gustavo had purchased an hacienda which he wanted to convert into a hotel histórico. The genre started to popularize itself in the Sixties, about the same time that French chateaux were being converted to exclusive retreats. The hacienda hotels aimed at a somewhat broader base of lodger but the appeal was essentially the same: a taste of luxury with a hint of forbidden elitism. From his presentation, I gathered that Gustavo wanted to popularize the genre even further. Phrases like “historical tours” and “railway connections” cropped up during his presentation.

Stefo said that it seemed to him Gustavo couldn’t get any financing from the government going hat in hand himself, so he wanted to put together an “association.” I asked Lara if she wanted to convert San Pablo into a spa or if she thought the association goals could be expanded to cover agricultural needs like irrigation and seed money.

Lara wasn’t sure but did not like the idea of turning San Pablo into a resort. “Don Hector, with whom we are going to have dinner on Saturday, refuses to have anything to do with it,” she said.” I asked her why. Because, she replied, once an hacienda is declared a patrimonio cultural, one can’t do anything without bureaucrat approval. Two of the hacendados had been in favor of the idea, and two others were skeptical.

The day was slipping by quickly and so I asked Lara to give me a ride back down to San Martín where I could take the bus to Puebla to buy some souvenir talavera for some friends back home. From the Puebla “TAPO” I took a cab to the center of town and arranged with driver to pick me up in two hours. As it turned out, I got my shopping done in 15 minutes and had time to kill; so I walked around the city centre.

About 15 or so years ago, everyone made off for the new malls being built on the outskirts of the city, and the zocalo was left desolate and decaying, What had once been a place of congregated liveliness had become sullen and seedy. I was delighted to see that things had reversed course, that the zocalo and in fact the whole city center had recovered and even surpassed its former vibrancy, as buildings were repaired, renovated and given new uses

I walked around the town taking random videos and pictures. As I stood in front of the cathedral I noticed a bright coloured patch of stone at the crest of the facade. I zoomed in and to my astonishment the coat of arms of the Spanish Crown filled my sights. During the terrible war of Independence, the people had chiselled and smashed virtually every royal and aristocratic coat of arms, so that none are to be seen on any of the country’s ancient buildings. Evidently, someone in Puebla had decided to rectify matters as part of the city’s renovation and as I walked about I detected a number of additional replaced coats of arms.

The taxi driver never reappeared as arranged, and as it was getting dark, I hailed another cab and returned to the bus station and back to San Pablo

When I got back, Lara was in a state because a fire had broken out further up the mountain. It had been a dry season, and she was concerned since the government does virtually nothing to fight the fires. We got into Lara’s truck and drove around the paved and unpaved roads through the maze of hills and pueblos trying to find one of her crew-leaders while at the same time trying to get in touch with her foreman, Juanito, on the celular.

We had planned a leisurely supper and the day before, Epimenio, her “estate carpenter” -- it seems far too fancy a title -- had promised that his wife would prepare us a real -- not canned -- mole and, at my request, fried plantains with rice. As we pulled up to his adobe house, with its rough hewn wood slat fence and ambling chickens, Epimenio and one of his little boys or girls came out and after seeing it was us, went back inside and emerged with an assortment of differently colored plastic bowls and containers which I put between my feet and held on my lap.

Oiga, Epimenio, Lara asked, no has visto a Juanito por ahí...? No... he hadn’t seen him recently.... the last he saw... Lara explained the urgency and told him to tell Juanito to get in touch with her as soon as possible

At this altitude on the skirts of Ixtlazihuatl there is no need for topes, although occasionally for a few meters, one hits a smooth spot. As we bumped around this warren of pathways, ambling dogs, small plots, and half finished and half decayed huts and houses, I knew that to the inhabitants of this patch of Puebla, it all had a structure and logic unknown to outsiders and not visible on any Google Earth. Somehow that made me happy.

Lara pulled up to Pablito’s house, just as Juanito came on the line. Espera un segundo, she said putting the celular in her lap and leaning over me as Pablo came running up to my side of the truck and as I balanced supper. Mira, Pablito.... Pablo looked up toward the white smoke on the mountain. He knew what was coming. With a pained look on his face he hunched his shoulders and held up his hands,

“Ayyyy señora, fíjase.... “ he had just this very moment, killed his pig and he simply had to dress it... Si no fuera por eso.... but his hands were, if not tied, covered with pig fat.

Of course Lara understood perfectly, leaving the matter with a request that he at least see if he could send two of the local muchachos up the hill. “Si, si...” He would do his best.

Oiga Juanito... estas ahi?

Juanito is a young good humored man going on 30 who has worked with Lara for the past six or so years. He has his own ranchito where his family lives and where he keeps several milking cows. Although Lara pays him for his work, the relationship goes beyond “working for”. When Lara first arrived at San Pedro, she knew virtually nothing of country life -- at least nothing over and beyond the coddled, vacations of childhood. “I couldn’t have done it with out him,” she said. “He’s completely trustworthy and indispensable.”

Mexico -- at least old Mexico -- is full of these relationships borne of mutual respect within positions of inequality. To be sure, the relationship has a material basis; Juanito would not work for someone who couldn’t pay him just as my cousin is not throwing money at vagabonds. But that does not mean they are connected simply by exchange values. The material is the working context for something more personal and, in this case work had made them friends.

The semblance of a working party was at last put together, and Juanito and Stefo led a crew up the mountain side to beat out the fire while Lara and I (still not acclimatized to the altitude) sat in the kitchen, drank some wine and watched the supper get cold.

At length, about 9.30 when supper was quite cold, Lara and I decided we might as well eat although by then the chicken itself might just as well have come out of a can.

Finally, about an hour later, Stefo and Juanito came tramping into the kitchen covered with sweat and dust. A frightened zorillo had taken a bite into Juanito’s thumb, which he had wrapped up in some dirty strip of cloth. Lara insisted he clean and bandage it, and as they went off, I poured Esteban some wine and started re-reheating supper. When Juanito and Lara came back, we all sat down to the second half of dinner and talked into the night. The fire had been contained.

Next morning, Juanito arrived with a thumb that was quite swollen. No se preocupe... no es nada he said with an así es smile. Como que 'no' ? Lara wouldn't hear of it and took him to the doctor.

©WCG, 2008

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Four Postcards from Mexico - Postal Segundo

The comida was to be held at hacienda Los Vientos at the other end of the state, and so the following day, at mid morning we set off to cross the expansive, soil rich, plains of Puebla, lush and green under the clear skies and bright blue celestial dome of the alti-plano.

It was almost a three hour drive through a vast expanse of tree-dotted plains ringed by mountains in the distance and yielding their crops under a bright clear sky. As warm air blew through the pik op we chatted idly about this and that over noise of the engine and the buffeting wind. Driving through a small town, we passed a roadside display of colorfully painted clay pigs. Somewhat beyond that we passed a small rocky hill-mound on top of which stood a white-washed votive niche and a cross. "Have you read Diarios de Motocicleta?," I asked Lara. No, she hadn't. I went on to tell her of a story related by el Ché

"....so he and Alberto were riding the bus through the high mountain villages of Bolivia, when they came to the crest of the mountain at the top of which stood a big pile of rocks and a white-washed cross. Half the Indians in the bus cross themselves, the other half spit. ..."

Lara gave me a look.

"...pues sí, eso también se preguntaba Che-- what gives? Well, as it turns out, before the Spanish came, the Indians had this custom of taking a stone with them whenever they climbed or crossed a mountain. When they got to the top, they'd cast down their stone and their cares and leave them behind. The friars forbade the practice and erected crosses over the piles of stones. So now, some Indians cross themselves while others, for want of a stone, spit."

Stefo and Lara let out gleeful, laughs. Lara loved the idea and said she was going to put up a pile of stones on the ridge above San Pablo.

Arriving at last, we turned into the confines of Los Vientos one could immediately see that the hacienda had seen better days. The huge safe, accountant’s desks and barred cashier’s window in the hacienda office, now preserved as a museum display, indisputably pointed to a villainous pre-revolutionary past. Thanks to the propaganda of a faction and the visual rhetoric of Mexican muralists haciendas have been tagged with images of haughty Spaniards in the saddle sneering at despairing Indians hunched over under their masters’ spurs. Such propaganda was false because it blamed the facade not the realities.

During the 19th century some of the great industrial haciendas were simply corporate enterprises dressed up as grand manors. They were oppressive and destructive of community life not because they were “haciendas” but because they were corporations. They did not draw from and sustain but simply leeched and suppressed...and often on a gigantic scale.

By the looks of it, Los Vientos had not been one of these 300,000 acre mega haciendas; but it had been large. Now, a little short of 100 years later, Los Vientos is a profitable but much smaller broccoli farm hiring a fraction of the workers it used to have on the payroll.

Still, remnants of a greater past glory remained, among them, a handsome chapel all but conjoined to century tall tree that shaded the resting places of gentry past.

Miguel, the haciendas' tall, slim, middle-aged scion greeted us at the door with an air of fatigued remove. He led us up to the first floor balcony where the other hacendados were already seated around a table drinking “escoch,” rum, beer, or sherry and enjoying hors d’oeuvres of chips, cheese cubes, and olives. They were dressed in waist jackets, open collar shirts, slacks or jeans and dusty boots. Despite the grandness of the structure, the tenor of the affair was much more in the manner of la pequeña burguesía than the aristocratic pretensions of the Limantours, Escandons and Creels and other great names of the pre-revolutionary Porfirian oligarchy.

As I sipped my jerez, Miguel’s mother, a neatly dressed, somewhat bony woman in her 6o’s sat down next to me. Some moments later, she lifted up the hors d’oeuvre platter. Se le ofrece un queso? she asked as she held the cheese in front of me. “Oh, no, no thank you very much.” I replied. “Ah,” she said, looking suddenly chagrined. Several minutes passed, and she again lifted the platter and held it before me. “Por favor, no se le ofrece un antojito?” I chuckled politely, “You’re very kind, but no, thank you very much.” “Ah,” she said, looking even more chagrined than before, as she put the platter down in what was almost a gesture of despair.

I figuratively slapped my forehead and berated my stupidity. Too damn long in Gringolandia. In Mexico, in just the reverse of the United States, it is an insult to refuse any offer of hospitality. I might as well have told the poor woman that her cheese wasn’t good enough for me. I back-pedalled as best I could. Mumbling something about “en dieta...” I reached for a slice of jicama and thanked her for her offer. She eyed me suspiciously.

As we mingled around before dinner, my cousin remarked that Doña Rosaura, had asked her why I spoke so “strangely”... “What does she mean strange.? ... Never mind; did you explain? ” “Yes.” “What did she say?” “Pues , ‘Ah’.” Yes, I had been living among the savages up north. That explained everything.

When just about everyone had arrived, we proceeded to the dining room - a small rectangular room adjoining the kitchen, furnished with an assortment of chairs, stained-wood sideboards from the turn of the 19th century with collected bright ceramics and plastic nic-nacs from the 20th (including a Donald Duck), miscellaneous prints of imaginary squires hunting equally imaginary fawns and the obligatory Last Supper by Da Vinci hanging directly under a strip of flourescent lighting.

As Miguel and one of the mozos brought us our courses, the other hacendados talked about drainage ditches and milking cows, the rain this year and similar matters of concern and interest to the agricultural set. Doña Rosaura discretely eyed me from her end of the table. As it turns out, I was hungry and the food was nothing I didn’t like anyways even if, as my cousin later said, she must have gotten the mole sauce out of a can.

En familia Mexicans will eat mole or beans by tearing off a piece of tortilla, and rolling it into a scooping spoon. It is not considered gauche but rather a sign that you've enjoyed your food. As I scooped Doña Rosaura palpably relaxed.

When they brought the coffee and desert, the talk turned from drainage ditches and cows to the proposed association, the advantages of which were explained by Gustavo Ovando, the proponent of the idea; but not before first intoning obligatory and florid encomiums of gratitude to our hosts for the magnificent “reception,” and “delectable” food, after which Gustavo went on to note and commend everyone for anything he could think of -- all not without light jokes, judiciously interspersed amidst the laudations.

Such after-dinner effusions are universal. But in Mexico, they retain an antique flavor that could come straight out of the Iliad or a scene from Henry V, where gentle provenance and valiant deeds are duly remembered and praised in turn. Some of my Spanish acquaintances tell me that they get a kick out of Latin American archaicisms and regret the clipped, functionality of modern Iberian Spanish. In this respect Mexico is still in its own time warp. As I sat there enjoying the roll of rococco flattery that spilled from our speaker’s lips, my cousin leaned over and whispered, “He was in la politica.” “Se nota” I said


After the meeting broke up, we all milled about chatting and wandering through the restored rooms which did recapture the ambience of the waning days of the Porfirian epoch.

At length some of us wandered over the dusty expanse that had, in those bygone days been a vast pond, toward the chapel. The streamers hanging on the outside, and some flowers on the altar inside, indicated that it was still in at least occasional use.

There was a large, statute stood in the central niche behind the altar. Someone remarked that Doña Rosaura had said it was Michael the Archangel. “No, I don’t think so,” I said, “look at the dragon at his feet. It’s obviously St. George.” The person I was speaking to, ran over to Doña Rosaura and said, “Dice él que es San Jorge.” “Eh?” She came over. “You say it’s St. George?” “Yes, look at the dragon.” A moment of doubt flickered in her eyes, before she rejoined emphatically. “Pero como? Look at the wings...” Q.E.D. “But what about the dragon?” I said feebly. Another archangel blew his trumpet. “That’s not a dragon! It’s the devil.” The matter settled, she gave me a broad smile and walked away.

Eventually, before taking our departures, we all drove over to a hillock to get a commanding view of the valley. A large rustic wooden cross hung with paper streamers stood almost hidden amidst the grey pines. As I wondered if I should spit, Gustavo came over, lead me to the edge of the hill and explained that by those mountains at the far end of the valley, they had recently uncovered the remains of an Olmec metropolis of an estimated 100,000 souls. 500 BC “The Olmecs, this far west?" I asked.” “Yes, imaginese...” Mexico hoards it secrets and there is so much we still don’t know about the time-aliens that once lived here.

As we milled about, one Luis B, who had arrived late, took me aside and asked if Lara was of the same Manrique-Villas as were connected to the Villa-Carrascos. “Yes, yes...” His eyes brightened up and he ran over to Lara to announce that his "grandfather era pistolero for Don Maximiliano!"

©WCG, 2008

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