​by Shaiti Castillo

My grandmother would tell me about the little bug people that would roam her garden back in her small pueblo deep in México. This was only when Mamá wasn’t in the room because she’d scold her from spreading tales of brujería in a house that worshipped God. Even as the disease ate away at what was left of my grandmother’s brain, her stubbornness had continued to grow. Rooted deeply within her like an oak tree. I would trade cups of cafecito for tales of the little bug people while Mamá was out running errands.
 
“Who were they?” I would ask in a whisper, as if Mamá would barge in at any moment and catch us exchanging sins.
 
“They didn’t have names. They didn’t speak either.” She would reply. I’d sit there patiently, processing the information before asking another question. Time with her was precious. The more questions I asked, the more lost she seemed to get.
 
“How do you know they weren’t just normal bugs?” I’d ask. She would sit there for a moment and take a small sip of her hot coffee, surely burning her tongue.
 
“Because they looked like people.” The answer was simple, but it wasn’t enough for a curious child like me.
 
“How so?” The slight tapping of my feet against the tile floor exposed my growing impatience. She didn’t seem to notice.
 
“They had faces. Eyes, a nose, a mouth…” She would go on to list general anatomy. I bit my lip.
 
“Bugs have faces.” I interrupted and she stopped speaking. Then a hoarse laugh escaped her thinning lips. It was an unpleasant sound, like tv static. Her childhood spent working in factories had caught up with her lungs.
 
“Smartass,” She said just loud enough for me to hear in her thick accent. It caught me by surprise.
 
“Nana!” It was my turn to scold her. She never cursed, always said it wasn’t very lady-like.
 
“As I was saying,” She paused to let me settle down. “They had faces. But not bug faces. They looked like you and I. Except they were little.”
 
She slightly pinched her fingers together to show me an estimated size of the bug people. I nodded.
 
“They had the body of the bugs, but they all could stand on two feet. Like you and I,” she explained, pushing herself off her seat. I scrambled next to her in case she fell but she swatted my hands away. She set down her mug and proceeded to put her hands on her hips. Stretching her back just a bit to stand proudly. I couldn’t help but giggle at her display.
 
“How’d you find them?” I asked as she slowly sat herself back down. Retreating back to her caffeine.
 
“They were stealing,” She shook her head in a feigned disappointment. “I had planted some sweet grapes for the summer and I caught them in the act!”
 
“Maybe they were hungry, Nana.” I said in defense of the bug people. It’s not a crime to be hungry.
 
“That is no reason to steal.” She sighed. “I forgave them, of course.”
 
“Then what?” I began to grow eager. This was the most I had gotten out of her in a while.
 
“Then we became friends. I would visit them every day after work and bring them whatever I had left over. Even if it was a few beans.” She smiled to herself. “I would make them little chairs and tables out of sticks and leaves I found around the yard. I would sew together little dresses using paper magazines. I left them gifts, and they would leave me some as well.”
 
“What did they bring you?” My hands were resting under my chin. Eyes wide like an owl at midnight.
 
“Random trinkets they would find. Shiny stuff. Sometimes it’d be silverware, sometimes jewelry. Sometimes it’d be a coin or two which made a big difference at the time.” Her smile grew, but stayed closed. Her wrinkles stretched themselves across her face, but the glossiness in her eyes brought a sense of youth.
 
“Then what, Nana? Where are they now?” I jumped up a little in excitement which startled her. She dropped the mug and it shattered across the floor, spilling what was left of the brown liquid. She stayed silent.
 
“I’m so sorry! Be careful and stay there while I clean it up, there’s glass!” I stood up immediately. She sat there, unfazed. I slipped on the sandals that were beneath my chair and stepped out back to grab the broom. When I slipped back inside, Mamá had made her way into the kitchen.
 
“What happened?” She let out a dramatic breath. Throwing the groceries she had carried inside onto the counter. She ripped the broom from my hands and began to sweep. “¿Estás bien, Ma?”
 
There was still no response from my grandmother. She sat there, frozen in time. Her frail hands still shaped around the non-existent mug.
 
“What did you do?” Mamá turned to face me and I stuttered. “Her mind is very fragile right now, you know this.”
 
“I didn’t do anything, I swear! We were just talking.” I aimed to defend myself but the weight of guilt sat itself like rocks, heavy in my stomach. I had asked too many questions. “I’m sorry.”
 
My grandmother spoke a few words for the rest of the day. Simple responses that would please Mamá. I had refrained from speaking to her in fear of only hurting her more. She would trade sweet glances and small smiles with me over dinner. Her way of letting me know things were okay.
 
That night I joined my grandmother in her bed. The window was open and it let a cool enough breeze in that encouraged us to be under the covers. I laid my head on her shoulder, adjusting my weight so as to not crush her feeble body. We laid there in silence as we usually did. There was a full moon out and the sound of crickets chirping lulled us to sleep. As my eyes grew heavy and my breathing became steady, she spoke.
 
“I’m going to die,” She faintly said. My eyes became watery saucers at her sudden statement. When I gained the courage to look at her, she had already fallen asleep. Her eyes were closed, thinning lashes falling over her cheeks. Paired with the same small smile she had given me earlier. To her, everything was going to be okay.
 
She didn’t wake up that morning. The doctor said she had died peacefully in her sleep and that in her position it was the best way to go. I stood at the doorway as Mamá wept at the foot of the bed. A blanket had been thrown over my grandmother’s body as we waited for someone to take her.
 
My puffy eyes looked out the open window. The sun was bright and it was a beautiful day. Something that my grandmother would have appreciated dearly. She hated sad events. The sounds of chirping crickets had transitioned into the chirping of sparrows. Light and airy.
 
At the corner of my eye, I noticed a pop of color. I tilted my head in curiosity, walking over to hover over the windowsill. Sitting there were two red grapes. Perfectly ripe and gleaming. I looked up to the sky and smiled.

​Heading into Los Angeles, Cisco activated the channel to Gus. “Gus, what do you have for me? I’m fifty miles east of downtown Los Angeles.”

“Nada. I don’t have an exact address yet, but I’m working on it. The old area is setup weird with common garages on the street,” Gus responded. “I know it’s near Sunset and Echo Park. The area will be like Old Town. They can still drive on tires there.”

“Traffic is crazy. I’ve had some weird looks from people. This ranfla sticks out like a sore thumb.”

“Oh yeah, something you need to know. I’m getting cross-reference blips from some source I think is trying to track you. I can’t get to the source because it keeps moving around, but will keep trying,” Gus continued sounding a bit worried.

“Is it security headquarters?” Cisco asked.

“No. It is some other source, a low-level old-fashioned scanner. I can’t isolate it.”

“Keep trying Gus.”

The news that someone was tracking him was not a surprise, however it made him uneasy. When Comsys alerted him to his destination, he descended from the aeropath and found himself hovering over the dilapidated baseball stadium. The open air baseball stadium with blue seats sat in a large ravine surrounded by an empty parking lot. A weathered large blue and white sign was still legible as Dodger Stadium. The Los Angeles Dodgers were big rivals for the Chihuahua Cubs and Cisco had seen them play at the Chihuahua stadium numerous times. Apparently, this was the old stadium and no longer in use.

Flying west, Cisco caught his first view of the older area of Echo Park. Surprisingly, he found it hilly with lots of green vegetation. Small houses dotted the tree covered hills. Circling the area again, Cisco looked for a place to touch down. He got lucky and a spot opened near a busy eatery. Parking the red car not too far from the Pioneer Chicken Ranch on the corner of Sunset Blvd and Portia Street, he sat watching lines of people waiting at the restaurant for their food.

The gaudy neon lights of the Chicken Ranch were lit even though it was daytime. Reflections from the neon lights sparkled on ranflas parked around it. They all had a similar style, though very different than the red one he drove. Six or seven ranflas were parked near the restaurant and dozens of young men dressed in an unusual style were standing nearby.
 
Arturo and his gang tailed Cisco into Los Angeles, keeping close as they followed the blip from the red car. They saw him park near a busy corner, but they had to park around the corner and down several streets.

“Flaco, go keep an eye on him,” Arturo demanded. The area worried him. Perhaps the driver had brought the red ranfla to L.A. to sell.

Flaco jumped out quickly, heading in the direction of the red car parked several blocks away. The intersections were busy with people, and he was surprised by functioning traffic signals for both pedestrians and ground-level vehicles.
 
Sitting in the red car Cisco activated the Pcom and heard Gus pick up immediately. “What’s the matter?” Gus asked.

“I hope you got something for me, cause it is not good here.”

Gus had told him the area was rough, though this was not what Cisco expected. The Chicken Ranch seemed a hangout for gangbangers and lowriders. Small groups of young men gathered at the corner whistling and yelling at passing cars and flashing hand signs. A row of decked-out motorcycles were parked near each other and several men in heavy boots and jackets stood near them. They were definitely Hispanic and all wore the same color bandana tied around their foreheads.

Another group of young men were dressed in karate-style clothes. Two were pushing each other, while several others egged on a fight. The situation made Cisco cringe. When Gus said it made Old Town look like Disneyland, he was making an understatement.

“I’m in the middle of a biker and lowrider convention and it doesn’t look good for me,” Cisco said.

“Oh, those must be some of the gangs that control that area. During the financial collapse of the United States, gang wars started in most of the large cities. Los Angeles was overrun by several ethnic gangs who sectioned off the city, running drugs, and taking protection money. The gangs or locals invented names for themselves. The bikers are the Mayans, if they are Hispanic,” Gus explained.

“Yes. I can see that name on one of the biker’s jacket. The lowriders look different. They look more Asian to me,” Cisco said.

“Those may be the Kudo kai, a minor arm of the Japanese Yakuza syndicate. Lots of people just refer to them as japovatos.”

“Japovatos?”

“The Japanese word for mixed is japa, so the locals just started calling the downtown Asian gangs, japovatos. Mostly they are a mixed race of Hispanic and Japanese families who have lived in the area for ages,” Gus explained. “They speak some weird mixed Spanish and Japanese slang.”

“How dangerous are they?” Cisco asked.

“The Mayans are more dangerous. The japovatos can cause trouble, but now the gangs in Los Angeles are more like our Old Town gangs and most of it is show. They usually don’t make serious trouble outside of their area,” Gus told him.

“Well I hope not, because here comes four of them.” Cisco terminated the call.

Cisco watched four japovatos approaching quickly. They wore skin tight shorts with gray silk tops that resembled karate tops. Two wore an orange silk belt wrapped around their waists, another one wore blue, while the man in front had a black sash.

Cisco briefly thought about lifting off and leaving, then decided to get out of the car to meet them instead. In an instinctive move, he removed the Chihuahua Cubs baseball cap.

“Ano, ese, doko vienes?” the black belted japovato asked Cisco as he walked up. His speech was deep and guttural. He pulled at Cisco’s t-shirt saying something else to his friends and laughed. Cisco figured they wanted to know who he was and where he came from. The one wearing a blue belt walked around the red ranfla nodding his head up and down.

“Española, New Mexico,” Cisco lied, forcing a wide grin. At least the car was from Española.
 
As Flaco rounded the last corner, the neon sign of the Pioneer Chicken Ranch blazed in the afternoon sun. Parked on one side of the restaurant was a line of motorcycles. Bikers dressed in leather jackets and black boots stood nearby. On the other two sides, odd looking ranflas gleamed in the sunshine. They were nothing like the lowriders of Española or Old Town Dublán. These were sleek and streamlined. Young men wearing tight-fitting outfits milled nearby. Four of them were talking to the driver of the red car. Turning around, he walked quickly back to where Arturo had parked.

Leaning in the window he said, “Crazy shit, ese. There are crazy-looking ranflas. Some of their gang are talking to the vato. This is not so good. We need to get out of here.”

“You’re a culón,” Arturo called Flaco a chickenshit. “Go back and keep an eye on him,” he growled.

“I’m telling you, we got to get out of here. There is a biker gang and a bunch of weird looking ranflas. There are four of them talking to the driver of your car.”
 
Blackbelt’s dark slanted eyes turned into long slits. “Nani ases koko?” He demanded to know why Cisco was here, making hand gestures when he spoke. Cisco noticed calloused formations on the first two knuckles of each hand.

As Blackbelt continued to express his displeasure at Cisco’s presence, his three cohorts walked around the car making comments and touching it. Cisco was not sure if they liked it or thought it was weird.

“Mi primo vive aquí en Echo Park, ese,” Cisco told him he was he here to visit his cousin. Very slowly he slid his right hand down to the side of his pants and felt for the tiny laser in his pocket. “¿Ese, tienes problema con eso?” he asked calmly if that was a problem. He tried to speak in street slang like a lowrider and made no threatening moves.

Blackbelt’s lips tightened and his right hand retracted to his side into a fist. “Anata wa koko no eres bienvenido aquí debes irte,” he hissed in his lingo near Cisco’s ear. The odd mixtures of Spanish and Japanese slang told Cisco he was unwelcome and should leave, now.

“No problema,” Cisco assured him, “I’m just visiting my cousin, ese. I’ll be gone in the morning.”

“Horale mishiranu hito,” BlackBelt hissed. “¡Ano ne, vamonos!” Blackbelt called to his friends to leave.

As the four japovatos strode away, Cisco watched them jump into a sleek silver and black aerorider. It lifted and headed west above Sunset Boulevard. He got back in the red car and sank low into the seat. Slowly he breathed in and out, trying to relax after the encounter with the strange japovatos. He activated the channel to Gus.

“Hey Cisco, you okay?” Gus asked.

“Yes, so far. The japovatos spoke in a mix of Japanese and Spanish, good enough for me to understand. They told me to leave now. I need a place to go.”

“The car is still parked on Echo Park Ave. I just can’t figure out for sure which house they might be in. I’m searching the utility records and stuff like that to try to figure it out. Is there a shopping center or parking lot where you could chill for a while?” Gus asked. Cisco thought and remembered the empty Dodger Stadium parking lot and told Gus about it.

“Good. Go there and I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”

Cisco started the ranfla and drove ground level on Alvarado Street. Staying on ground level seemed like a good idea with the japovatos patrolling the sky. Shortly, he found Stadium Way and wound toward the stadium parking lot. The parking area’s gate was ripped from the hinges and hung as a twisted reminder of a bygone time. The asphalt was cracked with humps of pavement buckled in a long ridge across a wide area. Weeds and small bushes pushed up through the cracks. Cisco wondered why the old stadium had not been demolished. Parking in the shade of a large tree, he opened the windows and stretched out his six-foot frame as much as possible and tried to relax.
 
Flaco headed back toward the corner of Sunset and Portia. He was a block away when he realized the red car was gone from the parking space. “Mierda,” he cursed. Running back to Arturo, he was out of breath when he jumped into the blue car.

“He’s gone!”

Arturo glanced at the scanner, which had not blipped. “Fuck, he’s on the ground. You fucking let him get away you idiot,” Arturo cursed.

“He can’t be far, ese, he’s tire level. We’ll find him,” Flaco whined.

Arturo lifted the blue car and headed down Sunset Blvd hoping to spot the red car driving on ground level. The hand held scanner showed nothing. Not a very powerful scanner, it could only locate the beacon if it was airborne and within about ten miles. He crisscrossed Echo Park Lake, flew back over the Chicken Ranch, and hovered over a large park. The red car was nowhere. Arturo lifted higher and flew off west on Sunset Blvd.

A sleek black and silver ranfla came up behind him and one of the passengers made hand signs. Arturo knew the signals were not friendly, but there was no way he was leaving without finding his red car.

“Hey,” Flaco said. “I saw that ranfla at the chicken place. It’s the same guys that talked to the pinche vato.”

Flying above street level, the late afternoon traffic was getting heavy, forcing Arturo’s car to slow down. The silver and black ranfla was on his tail. After several blocks, Arturo grinned when he saw Comsys light flash red to indicate an impending stop. Accelerating, he deliberately flew through the intersection and made a sharp left turn. The traffic infraction set off an alarm on his Comsys. The black and silver ranfla tried to follow, but was stopped in the middle of the intersection.

“With luck the police will get them and not us,” Arturo said hoping the traffic control police were the same here in Los Angeles as most of the rest of the Jalapeño Republic. With any luck, the traffic police would assume the local gang was the source of the problem. Arturo circled another corner and landed on a street not too far away.

It did not take long for the LAPD’s traffic control officers to recognize a familiar ranfla stopped in an intersection. The LAPD officers forced the Comsys of the black and silver car to land. The japovatos were not surprised by the turn of events. They knew the procedure well.

“Baka, pinche vatos, los mataré,” the driver swore, vowing to kill the fucking vatos in the blue car.
 
Cisco groaned bumping his knee on the dashboard as his body stretched on the uncomfortable seat. Disoriented, his brain thought he was back on Mars in his small sleeping pod. The single bed in the pod was barely enough for his large frame and how he and Monica managed to have sex took a bit of contortion. Dozing off again, he pictured Monica’s face, but it quickly morphed into Vivian’s. Images of stripping the rose-colored bodysuit from Vivian’s firm body were etched in his brain. Her body had only aged in a good way from when they were teenagers. Her breasts and hips slightly plumper, while her body tone was tight and muscular.

Suddenly the Pcom chirped him out of his visions. “Shit,” he cursed shaking his head as he opened the channel on the Pcom. It was after 6:30 PM and deep twilight shadows cut across the Dodger Stadium parking lot.

“Did you have a nice sleep?” Gus asked and laughed. “I was going to wake you, but not much is happening, so thought I’d let you sleep.”

“You got the address for the sedan yet?” Cisco asked trying to shake the sleep from his brain.

“The car is parked in a single garage on Echo Park Avenue between 2225 and 2227 on the west side of the street,” Gus answered. “It’s moved twice today, but always comes back. I checked the satellite records. The satellite signal from 2227 had 97 calls for 245 minutes, 2225 had one. My guess is that’s the house, but you’ll have to check it out from the ground.”

“You sound groggy,” Gus said.

“Still a little space weary, I guess. Have you picked up anything from security headquarters?” Gus had told Cisco he would monitor the secure channels of the Republic for any chatter about the case or anything he thought odd.

“No. Nothing much. They sent out two operatives in opposite directions, maybe as subterfuge or maybe on legit assignments. Not sure. I saw your report to headquarters go through. The beacon is not working, so they are most likely confused.”

“What about the tracking signal you noticed?”

“It stopped. It was probably nothing.”

“Thanks. I’ll call you when I get to the location. I just want to get the girl and get out of here.”

Starting the car, he lifted from the old Dodgers Stadium parking lot and turned northwest. Flying low he told Comsys the address and let it map the route. According to Gus, it should not be far.
 
Arturo had almost given up finding the red ranfla. It was like finding a needle in a haystack without the use of the scanner. They had been cruising for several hours and the rush hour traffic was getting crazy and busy.

“This is stupid, Chingon,” Oso whined. “It’s getting late and I’m hungry.”

“Me too,” Flaco chimed in. “Drop me off and I’ll pick up some chicken. That place on the corner is always busy, so it must be good.”

Turning back toward the Pioneer Chicken Ranch, Arturo landed nearby and Flaco jumped out. About ten minutes later, he returned with three bags and sodas.

“Damn this is good,” Oso said as he devoured the crispy chicken. The breading of the fried chicken had a spicy kick.

Suddenly the scanner chirped. A blip was moving and it was nearby. Throwing his bag of half-eaten chicken on the seat, Arturo lifted the blue car and headed toward the blip. “I got you now vato,” he grumbled.

​Robert Alvarado is a native of Phoenix Arizona. His award-winning saga, The Young Pistolero Series, won several first place finishes in The Latino Author top-ten list and the International Latino Books to Movie Award. Three of his recent works, Jalapeño Republic, Just Vanished and The Spanish Sword were finalists for an International Latino Book award in several categories. He holds an Engineering Degree from Arizona State University, although spent most of his career representing a large computer company throughout Latin America. Proud of his ancestry, Alvarado’s passion radiates in his writing of stories from a Hispanic perspective.

¿Qué somos en esta vida?
Just what are we in this life?
Un costal lleno de huesos, 
A sack full of bones.
Y una cosa corrompida, 
And rotten stuffing.
¡Ay, ay, cuán amarga es la muerte 
Oh how bitter is death
Y qué dulce fue la vida!
And oh how sweet was life!
—Miguel Casías, San Juan, New Mexico, July 7, 1989

​​Every day in Mora two or three new graves were dug to accommodate the victims of the previous day’s scourge. So many people had died in such a short time that in some precincts the people tired of opening new graves and they began to bury the dead one on top of the other. Enriqueta Vásquez fell sick with the illness on a cold January day. She had buried her husband and seen her father-in-law, an older sister, two uncles, an aunt, and three of her cousins buried in the span of the month and a half that the influenza had raged in the mountain valley. Enriqueta was Julia Pacheco de Steiner’s granddaughter, and people often talked about the striking resemblance she bore to her grandmother. Enriqueta was a young bride about whom people said, “She is like Julia in every way.” Later, when people tried to make sense of her death, they said that the reason Enriqueta had fallen so quickly was because she had been weakened by the birth of her second daughter. “She had not yet rested the forty days a new mother should before she was out burying her kin,” they said.
Enriqueta’s second daughter was born in the first days of the influenza, and her birth brought hope and joy. Cándida had the blue eyes of her German great-grandfather and the soft dark skin of her mestiza great-grandmother. Enriqueta cradled the child in her arms and nursed her with the sweet milk of her breast in the amber light of the oil lamps that lit the rooms of her home.
One Saturday afternoon, Enriqueta felt soreness in her shoulders and she retired to her bedroom even before the sun had gone down. She laid Cándida beside her in the bed and picked up her missal and prayed the Divine Praises in preparation for hearing Mass the next morning. She could not keep her eyes open and left off reading at the epistle for the first Sunday after Epiphany at the verses “Be patient in turbulence and persevering in prayer.” She slept until Cándida’s cries woke her. So deep was her sleep that at first she thought she had only napped, but her breasts were heavy with the night’s milk and she thought, “I must nurse Cándida.” At midmorning, Enriqueta began to shiver with chills and she complained of drafts through the house. Corina Lucero, the médica that attended her, did not let her up from bed, and Enriqueta slept soundly for several more hours. She awoke drenched in a copious sweat that had formed an outline of her delicate body on the sheets of her bed. On Sunday afternoon, Cándida began to show the first signs of having contracted her mother’s illness, and Corina Lucero had her crib moved to an adjoining room where she could better watch over the child. Cándida’s eyes had lost their natural brilliance and had dulled to the color of gray river rock. She cried and dozed in fits and spurts. The silver sliver of a waning moon hung over La Jicarita, and Cándida’s shrill cries threatened to rend the ice-blue sky of that January evening.
At a quarter to seven on the morning of the second day, Enriqueta spoke, but her words confounded those around her. She looked at Corina and said, “Are you the devil?” and pointing at the darkened corners of the room, she continued, “And are they your consorts?” She rubbed her fist against her left eye and shouted, “This horrid smoke, it burns my eyes! Open the dampers on the stoves!” Then she fell into a deep coma and did not regain consciousness. The fever continued to consume mother and daughter, but try as Corina might, nothing she did quelled its progress. Neither the sponge baths, nor the paper-thin slices of potatoes to cool the forehead, nor the herb tea, nor the prayers to San Ramón broke the fever’s grip. At nine o’clock on Tuesday morning, Enriqueta’s breathing sounded like sand running through a sieve. Corina strained to hear a heartbeat. It was distant, like thunder in a snowstorm. The old woman advised the family: “Call the padre, Enriqueta is at the very edge of this life.” The Dutch priest, Padre Munnecom, was presiding over a funeral at Chacón in the upper valley and did not arrive till midafternoon. After giving Enriqueta the last rites, he said, “She is dead. Bury her quickly.” Before leaving, he inquired about the child’s health. Corina looked down at the floor and answered, “Gravely ill, she is very weak, Padre.”
A delegation of penitentes came to bury Enriqueta. After praying over her, those hermanos who had known her grandmother as a young woman asked each other, “How can it be that one person can be reborn into life as another?” They did as the family asked and buried Enriqueta next to her grandmother, Julia Pacheco de Steiner. They lowered the simple wooden casket into the darkness of a fresh grave at the upper campo santo on the road to the village of El Oro. Enriqueta’s sister, Lourdes Paiz, her eyes swollen and red from days of mourning, had reached her wit’s end with worry and fatigue. That evening as the family gathered to console themselves and fortify their weary bodies with sweet breads and strong coffee, Lourdes lost her composure when the old woman Corina said in resignation, “It must be God’s will.”
“Shut up, you old witch,” cried Lourdes, “if we didn’t have to depend on your foolish remedies and your useless hand-wringing, Enriqueta would be alive now! Look at the Americans,” she said, “their doctors keep them from such misery.” ’Mana Corina responded, “Child, the American doctors have their understanding of things and I have mine. But it seems that compassion is not a part of their science of things. Have you ever seen an Americano doctor cross the threshold of one of our homes? It is what we have, mi hija, foolish remedies, cure patches, and tea baths like those that cooled your old man Romaldo’s body when his skin peeled back from his flesh after the boiler exploded at Don Tito’s sawmill in Chacón.”
When Lourdes was calm again, she said, “Forgive me, Corina. It’s just that these blows that life has dealt us have been so fierce. I did not mean to blame you. You have done what you could. When Cándida’s fever breaks, send her to me.” Lourdes continued, “I will raise her and she will not want for anything nor will she know what it is to be an orphan.”
Cándida’s crying subsided, drifting into quiet sobs, then stopped altogether, but the fever would not break. Like her mother, she fell into a coma and her life grew fainter and fainter as the hours of the night pushed toward the new day. At seven the next morning, her tiny body wrenched in violent spasms and she coughed up a wad of mucus and coagulated blood. An hour later she was cold and her arms stiffened like the limbs of a doll. Her eyes were open, but she was dead. Cándida was dressed in a white gown. Corina placed a pair of brown shoes on her feet and on her head an ornate crown fashioned from an old piece of tin. Then she placed a branch of piñón wrapped with faded crepe paper and adorned with gourds for a staff at the child’s side. She was presented to her mourning family as an angelita, a little angel, because she had died without knowing either the stain of evil or the false joy of this world. All during Mass and during her Rosary, the villagers imagined Cándida’s soul winging its way to heaven along the shafts of sunlight that pierced the rolling winter clouds above them. ’Mana Cortina refused to follow the cortege to the cemetery and she turned back at the first stop. “This sickness be damned,” she cried as she touched Cándida, lying in the black cardboard casket, one last time. “Little messenger,” she whispered, “tell Almighty God in his Glory that his people suffer much upon this earth. Tell him, my child, in case He has forgotten us.”
Lourdes Paiz asked that as a proper and fitting thing the infant Cándida be interred with her mother. Again the penitente brothers opened the grave they had closed only a day earlier. The wet earth sliced open like clay on a potter’s wheel until their shovels sounded hollow drumbeats upon Enriqueta’s pine coffin. The men heaved, grasping at the edges to pry back the coffin’s lid and deposit the infant daughter. In the dark pit they drew back the white shroud, their lanterns swinging high over Enriqueta’s face until they could see it clearly.
“Ay, Dios,” came up the gasps of the men who were waist deep in the shallow grave. Enriqueta’s eyes were open and her face was contorted, her mouth agape as though locked in a silent scream. Her hands were not clasped upon her chest in peaceful repose, but were tangled in the long strands of Enriqueta’s raven black hair. Her fists were full of the tufts of hair she had torn from her head. “Ay, Dios mío,” those at the graveside shouted in horror as they stepped back, “Enriqueta was buried alive!”

​Cada día en Mora se sacaban dos o tres sepulcros más para acomodar las víctimas de la plaga del día antes. Tanta gente había muerto en tan poco tiempo que en algunos precintos los vivos se cansaron de abrir nuevos sepulcros y comenzaron a enterrar a los difuntos unos sobre otros. Enriqueta Vásquez se puso mala en un día frío de enero. Ella había enterrado a su esposo y había visto morir a su suegro, una hermana mayor, dos tíos, una tía y tres de sus primos hermanos en lo que iba del mes en el que la influenza había arrasado con los pueblerinos del valle.
Enriqueta era la nieta de Julia Pacheco de Steiner, y la gente solía comentar el parecido asombroso que guardaba con su abuela. De Enriqueta, recién casada, decían, “Es la dijunta Julia en todo y por todo”. Más tarde cuando la gente se puso a averiguar la causa de su muerte, se aseguraba que se había enfermado tan repentinamente por la débil condición en que se hallaba tras el parto de su segunda hija: “No había descansado los cuarenta días del parto cuando ya andaba enterrando a sus parientes”.
La segunda niña de Enriqueta había nacido en los primeros días de la influenza, y su llegada trajo esperanza y júbilo. Cándida tenía los ojos azules de su bisabuelo alemán y la tez blanda y morena de su bisabuela mestiza. A las tres semanas de nacida, Enriqueta la apechaba en brazos y la amamantaba con la dulce leche de su seno en la pálida luz de las lámparas de aceite que alumbraban las salas de la casa.
Un sábado por la tarde, Enriqueta sintió un dolor en los hombros y se retiró a su cuarto a descansar antes de que el sol de aquella tarde cayera. Acostó a Cándida a su lado en el lecho de su cama y agarró su libro de oraciones y rezó las Divinas Alabanzas para prepararse para asistir a la Misa del día siguiente. No pudo resistir el sueño y dejó de leer la epístola del primer domingo después de la Epifanía a lo alto de los versos, “Tened paciencia en la turbulencia y preservad en la oración”. Durmió hasta que los lloriqueos de la niña la despertaron al alba. Tan rendida estaba al sueño que quiso creer que sólo había dormitado, pero sus pechos llenos con la leche de la noche la desmintieron. Pensó, “Tengo que amamantar a Cándida”. Unas horas después, Enriqueta sintió escalofríos y se quejó de las corrientes de aire que atravesaban la casa. Corina Lucero, la médica que la atendía, no quiso que se levantara para salir a Misa, y Enriqueta se volvió a acostar y durmió unas horas más. Cuando despertó, estaba empapada en un copioso sudor que había dejado perfilado su delicado cuerpo en las sábanas de su camalta. El domingo por la tarde, Cándida comenzó a dar indicios de que se había contagiado de la enfermedad de la mamá. Corina Lucero hizo que trasladaran la cuna de la niña a su cuarto para poder mejor ver de ella. Los ojos de Cándida perdieron su fulgor natural y se volvieron gris como las piedras boludas en el lecho del río. Cándida comenzó a llorar y a dar sobresaltos y estallidos. La astilla de una luna menguante colgaba sobre la cumbre de la Jicarita, y los chillidos de la niña amenazaban con rasgar la bóveda helada del cielo azul de aquella tarde de enero. A las siete menos cuarto de la mañana, Enriqueta habló, pero sus palabras trastornaron el pensamiento de los que la rodeaban. Miró a ’mana Corina y dijo, “¿Eres el diablo?”, y señalando con el dedo las sombras en las esquinas del cuarto, siguió maldiciendo, “Y aquellas son tus consortes?”. Se alisó el ojo izquierdo con su mano derecha y gritó, “¡Ay, qué feo humo! ¡Me arden los ojos! ¡Abran los apagadores de los fogones!”. Después se desmayó y no volvió en sí de nuevo. La calentura seguía consumiendo tanto a la madre como a la hija, y por más que Corina Lucero lo intentara, no pudo abatir su progreso. Ni los remojos, ni las rabanadas de papas que colocó en la frente de Julia, ni el té de estafiate, ni las oraciones a San Ramón pudieron contra aquella fiebre. A las nueve de la mañana el martes, el aliento raspaba como arena que cae por un cedazo. Corina quiso pulsar el latir de su corazón, pero se oía distante como truenos apagados por el peso de una gran nevada. La médica les dijo a los familiares, “Llamen al padre, Enriqueta vacila entre la vida y la muerte”.
El párroco holandés, el Padre Munnecom, asistía a un funeral en Chacón, en el valle de arriba, y no llegó hasta después de mediodía. Después de darle los últimos auxilios a Enriqueta, les dijo a los presentes, “Está muerta. Entiérrenla”. Antes de irse preguntó por la niña. ’Mana Corina no alzaba la mirada del piso y respondió, “Malita, grave. Ella tampoco da de sí, Padre”.
Una comisión de la hermandad de penitentes se encargó de abrir la sepultura de Enriqueta. Después de rezarle la encomendación del alma, aquellos que habían conocido a la abuela de Enriqueta en su mocedad se preguntaron unos a otros, “¿Cómo puede ser que una persona renazca en otra?”.
Hicieron lo que la familia les había pedido y enterraron a Enri- queta a un lado de su abuela. Bajaron el ataúd de madera con cuidado, depositándolo en una sepultura recién cavada en el camposanto de arriba en el camino que sube al pueblo de El Oro.
Lourdes Paiz, la hermana de Enriqueta, sus ojos hinchados y rojizos tras días enteras de congojas y duelo, estaba loca del dolor. Aquella tarde cuando se reunió la familia para conformarse y for- talecer sus cuerpos con tazas de espeso café y empanadas dulces, Lourdes perdió su compostura cuando oyó a ’mana Corina decir con resignación, “Será la voluntad de Dios”.
“Se me calla, vieja bruja”, le gritó Lourdes Paiz, “si no tuviéramos que depender en tus inútiles remedios y el esdrujar de tus manos, Enriqueta estuviera buena y sana ’hora mismo.” “¿Que no ve a los americanos”, dijo, “sus dotores los apartan de esta miseria?”. ’Mana Corina le respondió, “Mira, hija, los americanos tienen su cono- cimiento y yo tengo el mío. Pero parece que tendremos que esperar hasta que la compasión entre en su ciencia de las cosas. ¿A caso, has visto que pase un dotor americano por el umbral de una de nuestras casas? Esto es lo que tenemos, mi hija, remedios, parches y baños de té como los que entibiaron el cuerpo de tu viejo, Romaldo, cuando se le despellejaba la piel de la carne cuando explotó la vaporizador de la máquina de rajar de don Tito en Chacón”.
Cuando Lourdes se repuso, le dijo, “Discúlpame, Corina. Pero es que estos golpes han sido tan brutales. No quise echarte la culpar. Sé que has hecho lo posible. Cuando se le pase la calentura a Cándida, mándamela a casa. Yo tendré cargo de que no le falte nada y la criaré y no sabrá lo que es ser huérfana”.
Los lloriqueos de Cándida se fueron apagando y se tornaron en pucheros, pero no se le quitaba la calentura. Igual que su madre, se desmayó y su vida se hizo cada vez más tenue a medida que las horas de la noche avanzaban hacia el nuevo día. A las siete de la mañana, su pequeño cuerpo se acalambró y la niña vomitó una bola viscosa de sangre coagulada. Una hora más tarde su cuerpo estaba frío y sus bracitos se entumecieron como los de una muñeca. Sus ojos siguieron abiertos, pero estaba muerta.
A Cándida se le vistió en una bata blanca. ’Mana Corina le calzó los pies con unos zapatitos marrones y le colocó una corona hecha de un pedazo de estaño en la cabeza. Luego puso a un lado de la niña la rama de un árbol de piñón envuelta en papel barato y adornada de guajes amarillos para que le sirviera de bastón. Se le presentó a la familia como una angelita porque había muerto sin conocer la mancha de maldad, ni había entrado en el retozo falso de este mundo. Durante la Misa y durante el Rosario, los aldeanos se imaginaban que el alma de Cándida volaba al cielo, subiendo por los rayos de luz que perforaban las nubes revueltas que pasaban por encima.
’Mana Corina no quiso acompañar el cortejo al camposanto y se volvió en el primer descanso. “Malahaya esta enfermedá”, sollozaba al tocar por vez última el diminutivo cuerpo de Cándida que yacía en un ataúd hecho de cartón negro. “Linda angelita, mandataria nuestra”, dijo, “dile a mi Tata Dios que en su reino ’stá, dile que su gente sufre demasiadas penas sobre la tierra. Díselo, niña, por si se ha olvidado de nosotros” Lourdes Paiz pidió que como justo y propio se enterrara a la niña Cándida con su madre en la misma sepultura. Otra vez los hermanos penitentes abrieron el sepulcro que acababan de cerrar la tarde antes. La tierra húmeda se rebanaba como barro en las manos del alfarero hasta que sus palas vinieron a sonar huecos golpecitos sobre el cajón de pino abeto de Enriqueta. Los hombres se esforzaban asiéndose de las orillas para levantar la tapadera y para depositar a la hija infanta. Corrieron a un lado el sudario blanco, columpiando sus faroles en alto sobre la fosa oscura hasta que el rostro de Enriqueta se dejó ver por completo.
“Ay, Dios mío”, se oyeron los quejidos de los hombres que estaban parados a media rodilla en el pozo. Los ojos de Enriqueta estaban abiertos y su cara estaba torcida, su boca estaba abierta, asida en un alarido sigiloso. Las manos de la difunta no yacían sobre su pecho en actitud de paz y reposo, sino que estaban enmarañados en los bucles de su lindo y negro cabello. Tenía los puños llenos de los mechones de pelo que se había arrancado de la cabeza. “¡Ay, Dios mío”, dijeron los que rodeaban la fosa, al tambolearse hacia atrás, “Enriqueta fue enterrada viva!”.

​The last few years have been good for books on the Northern New Mexican region.  In 2015 out came Farolito, a poetry chapbook on elder abuse set in Mora by Karen S. Cordova.  Last year, 2017, came the wonderful book about penitentes, El Hermano by Carmen Baca (featured on Somos en escrito along with her latest book set similarly,Las Mujeres Misteriosas) and The Book of Archives by Gabriel Melendez, a finalist for the International Latino Award.  


The Book of Archives is a novella of vignettes based around oral history of the hispano people of Mora, New Mexico.  It is a dual language book, the novella first in English, then in Spanish, New Mexican Spanish that is, known for retaining some archaic usages.   


Dr. Melendez has already written books on persevering New Mexican literature and culture—check out his book The Writings of Eusebio Chacón, a literary figure part of a literary renaissance in Las Vegas, New Mexico in the 1880s, something almost lost to history.


The Book of Archives takes on quite a lot—to create a book of oral tales and histories of Mora county metaphorically through the fictional book of archives, even more metaphorically destroyed by the US bombardment of Mora for its part in the Taos Revolt.  What was that, the Taos Revolt?  You mean the US bombed the town of Mora and burned all its ranches?  If you ask these questions, it exemplifies one of the needs for a book such as The Book of Archives.
Quickly, as the motif of the book of archives relates, the Taos revolt arose from New Mexicans interested in resisting the US invasion as, deceived by a paid off Mexican governor, they found themselves already occupied and offered no resistance. The likes of Kit Carson marched on to California, where he burned native villages and Californio ranches.  Pueblos and hispanos attacked Americans in the New Mexican colony and then the soldiers upon their return. The US army took revenge and bombed Mora and burned everyone’s house and ranch.  And here we get to the fictional book of archives.  The book which recorded our history and tales was hit by an American cannonball, sending pages to the wind.  The Book of Archives attempts to recreate a record of the things the US has decimated—our history, our memory, our stories.


My grandfather’s side, Fernandezes, as well as Pachecos and Arguellos, are from Mora.  Many of the families talked about in The Book of Archives would be my distant and not too distant relatives.  Some of the tales are familiar and some are rather pan-hispano, Juan Tonto or Stupid John for pochos such as myself.  Mora is a place of high altitude, around 7,000 feet, enough for a coastal person like myself (cowabunga) to draw an extra breath while walking the family ranch. I remember going to Mora for family reunions and visits since 1977 (I can remember being quite young).  Sparsely populated, many ranches and sheep, which have now given way to those Alpaca-monsters.  The Mora accent is singsong.  I joke it sounds like singsong Mexican with movie Apache.  Men of my grandfather’s generation spoke rather curt, but when I think of Mora I think of some of the kindest people who love jokes and throwing parties (hey, I’ve always been a visiting relative, your mileage may vary).  And you always have to eat.
While Mora is an out of the way place, it and its inhabitants have figured in Chicano literature.  Fray Chavez, often called the godfather of Chicano literature, grew up in Mora and became an important historian and genealogist of New Mexico. Some of his stories display some of the not so great aspects of the hispano character, but more on that later, as it comes up wonderfully in The Book of Archives.
Mora is a beautiful place.  It’s full of traditional houses and churches, wooded mountains, grassy hills and antelope, as well.  The Book of Archives gives a good sense of place and the earliest histories of Mora being a stopover place and how native people and hispanos in the early 1800s finally made something more permanent there. Comancheros, villains in such books as Lonesome Dove, have never been more than impoverished New Mexicans who sought out Comanches to trade for their buffalo hides, booty from their raids, and unfortunately captives--slaves. Though out of the way, trade routes to New Mexico have always been important and fictionalized (take a look at the bandoliered Jawas as they trade robot-captives on la frontera of Tatooine).


Mora is still a rural place, though I recall in the 1970s, you could only see the ranch house and the original shack my great great grandfather built on Rancho Fernandez.  Now that house burned down and they built a new one for my great aunt Maclovia before she passed away along with another house on the ranch and several neighbors.  Rural existence is tough, you can’t pay your land tax in sheep, so many people go far to look for work.  There are many land issues and displacements going on today as gringos having finally considered the land there valuable enough to buy up and have put the community described in The Book of Archives at risk of dissolution.


Melendez seems to have gleaned many documents and spoken to many people for the history of Mora.  Perforce many Chicano books are postmodern (thanks to Dr. Melendez for spelling it out), Old Testament-like mixes of legends, myths, letters and histories. 

The Book of Archives is even more so as it includes notes from tax documents, land titles, military reports, as well as the aforementioned myths and histories, including those within recent memory of family history (the adopted Quintana who was raised by Carmen and Mama Clarita comes to mind). 


Many pieces contain some sadness, some can be even terrible—hispanos of the area survived the US invasion, hunger, influenza and poverty. While The Books of Archivesis mostly realistic, like Cien años de soledad, what is fantastic moves further away as the stories approach the modern era, save for some potential Santo Niño sightings and speaking on the Niño de Atocha, and the Blue Nun towards the end. Witches become spoken of less as everyone thinks they must have left the valley until on old man gets accused in the newspaper of hecheria.
 
Several story lines and characters repeat, though most stories are not too connected, but all are set in the town of Mora, the area, and the mountain of Jicarita.  The beautiful Maria appears in several tales, along with the sad tale of her granddaughter.  Old Man Vilmas and the Black Poet Garcia, two New Mexican folk tale figures, who seem to be preternaturally old, appear in tales and perform the traditional entertainment of arguing  until the radio causes people to forget all about them. 


The length varies from vignette to vignette, which seems another very Chicano form,House on Mango Street and Drink Cultura come to mind.  Perhaps a people who suffer with the dangers of erasement and lack of representation exist in fragments and authors pick these pieces up and shine them up to present to us readers to draw a wholeness from. Moving from the long to the short to the shorter and the long makes for an engaging read—as well as the variance of people and topics.  It’s a collection of flash fiction and short stories that make a novel, or create the sense of a novel.


Many things written on Northern New Mexico seem either to decry our insistence for Spanishness or go through many tangles and hoops to support it. Denise Chavez speaks of it on her father’s side in her memoir, A Taco Testimony.  Fray Angelico Chavez came from Mora.  His characters go through long, tortuous explanations on how they are Spanish. For some reason, native blood and mestizoness gets disowned.  The movement didn’t miss Mora, but aside from self-hate, the US invasion caused many a hispano in Tejas, Colorado, California, and even indios, to declare themselves hispanos puros so they could own land and not be hunted, as our Indian brothers and sisters were literally. I also see it as something cultural…out on the frontier, you were on the one side culturally or the other, though these things got knotted and tangled, as someone with the last name of Duncan can tell you.  Melendez addresses this Spanish issue and is probably one of the best you’ll find in Chicano or Latin American literature dealing with it (this kind of thing isn’t limited to Northern New Mexico). A man whose grandmother was a Comanche captive goes about declaring his pure Spanish blood and looks the fool (he even tells the beautiful Maria that he will overlook her imperfect blood in light of her beauty).


Dr. Melendez has done the amazing, he has made a wonderful book that amasses functions and stories like stone hedge gathers ley lines: He has created a book of archives, giving this place in northern New Mexico a history, and validates our existence, our tales, records family histories, and keeps the memories, and moreover acknowledges and helps preserve the New Mexican brand of Spanish. This is a book for anyone who likes stories, but for Latinos it functions as an elder who remembers and will tell you all, if you would just sit and listen.

​A. GABRIEL MELÉNDEZ is Director of the Center for Regional Studies (CRS) at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He is the author and editor of a number of books, among them: Santa Fe Nativa: A Collection of Nuevomexicano Writing (UNM, 2010), Hidden Chicano Cinema: Film Dramas in the Borderlands, (Rutgers University Press, 2013) and The Legend of Ponciano Gutiérrez and the Mountain Thieves (UNM 2013) an illustrated book for young readers. University of Oklahoma Press. Copyright © 2017 A. Gabriel Meléndez. Available at OU Press.

​Scott Russell Duncan, a.k.a. Scott Duncan-Fernandez, recently completed The Ramona Diary of SRD, a memoir of growing up Chicano-Anglo and a fantastical tour reclaiming the myths of Spanish California.  Scott’s fiction involves the mythic, the surreal, the abstract, in other words, the weird.  Scott received his MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California where he now lives and writes.  He is an assistant editor at Somos en escrito. See more about his work and publications on Scott’s website https://scottrussellduncan.com/