Commonwealth and Foreign
A DAY AT THE GENERAL'S
By GRAHAM GREENE
IT was four hours' drive from San Luis Potosi into the brown and stony hills. The cacti pressed up along the road like a child's stick drawing of human beings, leaning in odd intimate conversations, a whole people stretching up out of sight into the hills, waiting for someone to pass.
The State of San Luis Potosi is a small capitalist pocket in Socialist Mexico, controlled by General Saturnino Cedillo. He is not officially the Governor, but there is a private tele- phone line between the Government offices and the General's ranch at Las Palomas, and because the General is an Indian and he is determined to give his Indians what they want, the anti-religious laws are a dead letter in San Luis. As for the President—the President can only watch and wait, with five hundred Federal troops at Las Tribas, the nearest railway station to the ranch, for the General, if driven to it, could put twenty thousand armed men into the field. An air of mystery surrounds Las Palomas : the General doesn't seek publicity, and promises had to be given over and over again, after hours of waiting at the end of the private line in the Governor's office, that to no one in Mexico would one so much as mention a visit to the ranch. Rebellion was in the air : there were tales of an American with much money who had come dustily into town one night from Las Palomas ; the oil negotiations had broken down, and the men of property spoke too optimistically of the General as President in the next six months.
The road, after passing a private passport-station set up by the General without even the excuse that it was on his own land, comes up on to the precipitous edge of the hills and curves down—so narrow it could be held against a regiment—into a great flat bowl, and in one obscure corner a few cultivated fields, some scattered white buildings in a dusty yard, a verandah where a little crowd of men waited for the General to appear, guns on their hips, the holsters and the cartridge belts beautifully worked, a decorative death. (The law against carrying arms does not operate in San Luis Potosi : you can buy guns in the market for a few pesos among the potatoes and beans.) A small domestic whirlwind raised a pillar of dust in the yard, and everyone stood patiently waiting while the hours passed—waiting to get something : money, an appointment, a promise—one man had come from as far as Yucatan. A blind-from-birth boy called Tomas with slit unreflecting pupils felt his way from face to face, laughing at his own defect : " Someone said, the light's gone out. I said what's that to me ? ' " Then everyone stood at attention as if a National Anthem had been played, and up the stairs from the little dusty yard came the General—the only man without a gun—looking except for the dark Indian face like any farmer, a good and well-worn suit and a coarse shirt and no tie, an old hat perched back from the damp bull's-forehead.
There had been stories of German officers and Fascist intrigue, but the moment you saw the General you believed they were absurd. I don't think he even knew what Fascism meant. One asked him formal questions—about Fascism and Communism and Catholicism, and what he would do if he were President and if he meant to stand, and he loosened his shirt and sweated with the intellectual strain. Every now and then he swelled out indignantly like a bull frog : he had an idea, I think, that he was being got at, teased, made fun of. He used the word Democracy, but you could tell he'd been taught that. You alvays slipped it in when people talked politics. In his bungalow, with its hideous art nouveau furniture, there was a coloured picture of Napoleon, but it was lying on the floor beside an alligator skin. I don't think it repre- sented any pride or any ambition. He was ageing, he had fought enough ten years ago. I think he would have been quite happy to be left alone in the State of San Luis, driving a well on his farm, irrigating his fields with canals, talking with the campesinos who loved him. He gave them no wages, but food and clothes and shelter, and fifty per cent. of everything the farm produced, and ready cash if they asked for it and he had it. They even took the fifty chairs he bought for his little private cinema. '
That was the chief trouble—ready cash : people milked him and he had to milk the State, and then there was a drought and the water system was antiquated and the Gover- nor had no money to deal with it—and the trade unionists complained to the President. He had to get money—from the State, from capitalists—and people wanted things in return and so politics crept in—that is how I see it. And he was inclined, underneath his hospitality, to dislike the man who came bothering him with questions about Fascism and Communism. He swelled and sweated and said " Democ- racy." He was happier at sunset, jolting over the stony fields in an old car, showing off the meagre crops.
The dark came down on Las Palomas, the oil engine chugged and a few lights—not many—went on correctly, and the foundry rang and rang under the blackening hills. The peasants drifted in to the cook-house and smoke went up and the dust settled. Every few hours a car arrived and more men got out with their guns and stood and waited and milled a bit boisterously on the verandah. The blind boy wandered round, roaring with laughter, feeling a stubble chin and a holster, saying " Juan, it's Juan." If the General hadn't time for them that day, they'd stay the night and eat his food (two oxen had been killed in five days) and see him in the morning. It was all rather movingly simple and, in spite of the guns, idyllic : it didn't seem to belong to the same world as the capital twelve hours away, with the Palace of Arts, and the opera, and the smart cabarets, and the Americans buying tourist trophies. You couldn't picture this Indian or his armed campesinos really " making " the capital. There was a coloured picture on the wall of the• young Cedillo—the innocent Indian face under a big hat seated on a horse, rifle in hand. He didn't look like a future President.
But it wasn't, I suppose, as idyllic as it seemed. The guns were nearly ready to go off. The farm gates swung open and a man waved a rifle cheerily in the headlights, and one drove back at two in the morning into a violent storm. The cacti leapt up like sentries on the mountainside against the green flapping light : the lightning stood and vibrated in the ground ; and a car of officers drove by, going to La.; Palomas. They bore news that the President had dismis5, the General's friend, the military commandant of San Lui-, and that fresh uncontaminated troops were being moved into the zone. The President—so some people believed—was trying to provoke a rash act. But one couldn't picture the stout shrewd Indian farmer sacrificing his new canal and the corn-crop and taking to the hills in middle age. The only chance, I think, is the bull-frog rage, the hot word, and among the boisterous younger men on the verandah one finger teo ready on the trigger. " Who will rid me of thil pe.stilent
Previous page
