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  Besides, over the years Antonio dwelled among them, they had come to see their light-skinned patron and advisor with the quetzal green eyes as Kukulcan incarnate. According to legend, Kukulcan, the Plumed Serpent, had been a white man come from across the sea to lift up the Maya many baktuns ago.

  He had given them the gifts of writing, agriculture and other high knowledge only to depart, vowing to return in a future time of great need.

  It was obvious to the simple indio peasants that their benefactor was Kukulcan incarnate, returned as he had promised.

  Antonio did nothing to dissuade them from this belief. After all, it had worked for Cortez when he arrived in Yucatan in the Aztec year called One Reed. He was thought by the original Mexicans to be Quetzalcoatl, the very same Plumed Serpent god, white of skin and heralding a new era, whose return in the next One Reed year had been prophesied by Aztec prophets.

  Cortez did bring gifts, in his way. He ushered in the era of the Spanish conquest. The Aztecs were cast down into slavery. The Maya empire had by then fallen into ruin, the survivors retreating into the jungles to eke out simple agrarian lives.

  The Maya equivalent of Quetzalcoatl, whom they called Kukulcan, had not returned in Cortez. In Antonio, they had their Kukulcan. And as he was their god incarnate, the word of Alirio Antonio Arcila was law.

  The word of Lord Kukulcan was to resist NAFTA by force.

  They took up their Uzis and their AK-47s that had been cached all over the jungle, cleaned off the rust-resisting Cosmoline and began training in earnest.

  The Maya day of 2 Ik was selected because it corresponded with the 1 January 1994.

  "If NAFTA passes, we will strike on 2 Ik," Antonio announced.

  The Maya had accepted this. Kukulcan had spoken. His word was absolute. The demon NAFTA would not survive after that date, no matter how fearsome his fangs and talons.

  On that day Antonio passed out proletariat red bandanas for the first time. It was a very cold day in the mountains above the lush forest canopy.

  "Wear these to protect your faces from the cold and from federalista eyes," he said, drawing on a black ski mask with the hole cut before the mouth so that he could enjoy his one solace-a short-stemmed briar pipe.

  "From this time forward you are Juarezistas. After this day your blood will ignite the jungle, as did the sacrifices of Benito Juarez, the first indio ruler of the Mexican republic, whose cause we now take up and in whose name we struggle. And from now on, I will call myself Subcomandante Verapaz, for my personal struggle is for true peace in Mexico. Our peace. No other peace will be acceptable."

  The Maya accepted this with passive fatalism. Their lives were short and unhappy. Death came soon enough. They would not seek out death, but neither would they shrink from the bony embrace of Yum Cimil, Lord of Death.

  On that first day they seized six towns. On the second day, 3 Akbal, the army descended, driving them out. Many were slain. Subcomandante Luz perished. As did Subcomandante Luna. The survivors slunk back to their mountain stronghold.

  "We have failed, Lord Kukulcan," they told him, shame in their low voices. It was the third day, called 4 Kan.

  "I am no lord, but your subcomandante. I cannot be your lord because I am but a criollo. A usurper. You are the Maya, the true lords of this jungle."

  But they were beaten lords from the look of them.

  It had been an abysmal failure. But because anything was better than working his father's coffee plantations, Antonio racked his brain for another way.

  THE NEW WAY CAME to the Maya farm town of Boca Zotz in the form of journalistas. The cause was irretrievably lost, so Subcomandante Verapaz agreed to meet with them. Perhaps he could trade safe passage to the Guatemalan frontier in return for a few last defiant quotes.

  At the appointed hour, he showed up in a jungle clearing, wearing his black ski mask, his pipe redolent of cannabis-a harmless affectation from his former bourgeois existence. Five bandana-masked Juarezistas surrounded him, fingers on triggers, dark, moody eyes alert.

  The questions pelted Antonio like cast stones.

  "Are you a comunista?"

  "Never!"

  "You are indigena?"

  "With these eyes? No, I am not indigena."

  "Then why do you wage revolution?"

  Antonio hesitated. He had prepared for this struggle for so long, the rote worker's slogans almost rose up from his throat even though they no longer had meaning. He swallowed them.

  "I fight," he said after taking a long suck on his pipe, "I fight because this has been the struggle of my family for many generations."

  The reporters frowned. They understood revolution, insurrections. But this was new.

  At that point Antonio blurted out the flowery romantic words to cover the tracks that might lead to the Arcila family. But the journalistas were not satisfied with this.

  "Tell us more," one invited.

  "I am not the first Subcomandante Verapaz. My father was Subcomandante Verapaz before me. And my grandfather, his father, was Subcomandante Verapaz, stretching back I cannot tell how many generations. We took up the cause of righteousness, and consecrated our lives to it. In the name of all oppressed indigenous peoples, Subcomandante Verapaz wages war against oppression."

  "Are you sure you aren't a comunista?"

  "I have denied this. I am but the Verapaz of this generation. When I fall-and all my forebears eventually fell to their foes-my son will take up my gun and my mask and he will be the next Subcomandante Verapaz. Thus, I am unkillable and will never die."

  At that point, camera flashbulbs began popping. His Juarezista bodyguards almost shot the head off a reporter until Antonio interceded.

  The video cameras whirred, their glassy, greenish lenses capturing the dashing masked figure whose manly chest was crossed by bandoliers evocative of the romantic Mexican revolutionaries of the past.

  When the press conference was over, Antonio melted back into his jungle cave, that night burning his black ski mask because he knew it was to death to wear it again. All Mexico would know him after this night.

  It became truer than Antonio could ever envision.

  His face was telecast throughout the world. His muffled head, jutting pipe and trademark soulful green eyes adorned magazine covers from Mexico City to Singapore.

  He began to understand when more and more reporters came to visit him. At first he turned them all away. The revolution had sputtered out ignominiously. Chiapas was cordoned off, all escape routes blocked so that no criollo with green eyes could pass through alive. And besides that, he had no concealing Subcomandante Verapaz mask.

  The entreaties continued to be carried to his jungle stronghold. Farmers by day who had been Juarezistas by night, bore the magazines with their glowing articles.

  "You are a hero in Mexico City," he was told.

  "What?"

  "It is said, my lord, the women all adore you. There are toys bearing your likeness. Masks are sold and worn proudly. The students in the universities make speeches in your name. Pipe smoking is all the rage."

  "Increible," he muttered, reading furiously.

  But it was true. The romantic fantasy he had spun had been accepted as truth. He was no longer a failed, causeless revolutionary, but a cultural hero to modern Mexicans. Just like Zapata or Villa or Kukulcan.

  "What shall we convey to these reporters?" his right hand, a Mayan guerrillero named Kix, had asked.

  "Tell them," proclaimed Alirio Antonio Arcila, aka Lord Kukulcan, aka Subcomandante Verapaz, "that in return for one dozen black ski masks, I will agree to another press conference."

  The masks arrived with astonishing alacrity. Antonio took one, with a knife slashing a hole for his pipe stem, and then distributed the remainder among his companeros.

  "From now on, we will all be Subcomandante Verapaz," he proclaimed.

  And his Maya wept with pride, never imagining that by donning these masks, they greatly increased the odds that one of them would take an as
sassin's bullet intended for their leader.

  The press conferences became a monthly ritual. Money poured in. Arms. Supplies of other kinds. A revolution that might have been recorded by history as the last sputtering gasp of Third World Communist insurgency was reborn as the first truly indigenous revolution of the century.

  Learned articles and dissertations were penned to analyze the phenomenon of a spontaneous revolution with no political or social entity motivating it. The first postmodern revolution, the New York Times dubbed it.

  And no one suspected the true leader of all the Juarezistas who continued to fight and spill their blood in the sacred cause of furthering Alirio Antonio Arcila's celebrity-and incidentally forestalling the hated day he would return to the family coffee plantation and concede to his despised father that he had been right all along.

  The successes came often after that. Minor skirmishes were hailed in the press as major engagements. When the old president of Mexico was chased from power, it was hailed as a Juarezista victory. When his handpicked successor was assassinated after expressing veiled pro-Juarezista sentiments, it lent legitimacy to the cause. And when a new, more liberal candidate replaced him, it was also seen as a Juarezista victory.

  Every advance for the people and setback for the lawful government was viewed in the light of a handful of Maya pistoleros led by the unemployed son of a coffee grower, and although no true progress was made on the battlefield, the mere fact that Subcomandante Verapaz struggled on despite every attempt to capture or kill him added luster to the growing legend.

  In the end the federal government declared a unilateral cease-fire and offered to engage in peace talks. They would never give Subcomandante Verapaz any political concessions, of course. But in declaring a one-sided peace, they signaled that Verapaz had grown too great to stop with mere bullets. In death, he could only grow more powerful. He would be left alone if he caused no problems so great it threatened Mexico City.

  But Antonio had not spent ten years in the jungle eating bad tortillas and drinking stagnant water only to spend the rest of the century doing so. Ignoring the peace talks, he stepped up his campaign of words and communiques.

  When he had forced the current governor of Chiapas to step down on behalf of a man whom he had blessed, Antonio began to consider the possibility that while he might never conquer Mexico, it was perhaps possible to seize a measure of political control of events beyond Chiapas.

  The advent of the Great Mexico City Earthquake all but made that an inevitability.

  After all, he was no longer Alirio Antonio Arcila now. Nor really Subcomandante Verapaz. He was Lord Kukulcan, a god sheathed in flesh who had united the polyglot peoples of Mexico in their blind hero-worshiping.

  And most rewarding of all, it was tacitly acknowledged in the capital that it would be politically unacceptable to exterminate the people's hero.

  The road of conquest had been swept clear.

  Chapter 12

  As he followed his god through the cracked and broken streets of Mexico City, Rodrigo Lujan had stripped off the confining necktie. He did not care that the streets lay buckled and cracked all around. Nor that mighty office towers tilted and shed their faces like so many false masks. They were the past. He walked with the future. He walked with serpentskirted Coatlicue whose remorseless tread seemed to make the Valley of Mexico shudder under her petrifying tread.

  Let no one say the word aftershock. It was Coatlicue, also called Tonantzin-Our Mother-who made the very ground tremble.

  He followed her closely down Anillo Periferico, toward the southern outskirts. Toward the mountains. Beyond the mountains lay freedom. Beyond the mountains lay the rich and fecund soil of the Zapotec century to come.

  Sturdy Zapotec women dwelt to the south, Lujan knew. In Oaxaca. And when they beheld him approach with the goddess Coatlicue, they would offer themselves-no, throw themselves at him.

  He, Rodrigo Lujan, would beget a race of new Zapotec warriors that would sweep across the face of Mexico to usher in a new sun and a brighter tomorrow.

  As he flung away the hated confining suit coat, he could taste their chaste, willing kisses.

  As they walked, others followed in their wake.

  Lujan's great heart seemed to burst with pride to see them follow like an army of ants that know sugar lies near.

  The city of twenty million had been clogged with peasants from the countryside. There were the hooknosed Aztecs, the cross-eyed Maya and the barbarian Chichimecs with their thick bodies. The Olmecs were no more. No man knew what had become of them. The Toltecs had long before been assimilated.

  But Zapotecs and Mixtec were plentiful.

  And all of them, whether Zapotec, Maya or Chichimec, fell in behind the striding behemoth that was Coatlicue, crying, sobbing, dancing, their heart pounding with joy.

  Some threw themselves before her juggernaut form, praying, begging guidance, seeking deliverance as the city of wonder broke and splintered all around them.

  Her tread broke their prostrate skulls, splintering their living bones as if they were kindling. They died, their souls liberated. They died indio and so died happy.

  Lujan wept proud tears to see their blood run. It was like the old days he had never known. Before the Spanish had spilled Zapotec blood and mingled their own with the blood of the women who survived to beget the modern mestizo people of Mexico.

  Passing a shattered peasant woman, Lujan paused and reached into the raw kindling that was her rib cage to extract her heart, still warm and beating. And walking backward behind his goddess, he held the dripping, pinkish organ over his head for his growing retinue to behold.

  "Behold, children of old Mexico. See your future. The day of the machine is over. The tyranny of the chilangos is over. Time has turned in on itself like a serpent devouring its own tail. A new era dawns. I am Zapotec. I call upon all of my blood and related blood to follow me into the glorious past which now stretches out before us."

  And they did. In growing numbers.

  The chilangos were struck dumb by the sight. Dazed and whelmed by earthquake, they had shrunk from the sight of the oppressed of the earth throwing off their yoke. Ladino clothes were cast off. Men marched in their underwear or nothing at all. Women walked bare of breast and unashamed of their rich indio skin.

  At times police officials, seeing this affront to their so-called civilization that had brought sick air and a quiet desperation of spirit, fell on them.

  But their guns held but handfuls of bullets. Some fell. And after they expended their futile lead missiles, they were fallen upon and torn limb from limb by the blood-crazed crowd.

  Soon many walked holding the pulsing, bleeding hearts of the oppressor in their hands.

  And before them lumbered Coatlicue, implacable, remorseless, all but oblivious to the revolution that she led, her only words the same single-minded incantation droned over and over again: "survive, survive, survive..."

  Chapter 13

  The Extinguisher was making wicked excellent time. The LAV's lightness was an advantage. It may have been the military equivalent to a Volvo, but it covered road like a speeding-jeep. Its light frame meant gasoline went farther, too.

  The towns and villages along the Pan American Highway zipped by. No one stopped or questioned him. For the Extinguisher drove a Mexican police vehicle. No one questioned the Mexican Federal Judicial Police.

  Out here the Federal Judicial Police were the only law that mattered.

  Now with night falling, even that thin brown line of authority was fading. The law of the jungle was supreme.

  That was fine with the Extinguisher. The law of the jungle was his kind of law. Of all the predators in the jungle, he was the most predatory of them all.

  Eventually his gas ran out. There were two spare jerricans, which he used to replenish the tanks. That bought him another hundred miles. But by the time the lights of Tapanatepec came into view, the LAV was bone-dry.

  Out here gas stations didn't e
xactly rub shoulders fighting for business. It was the end of the line.

  The Extinguisher flicked on the dome light and checked his maps. They were throwaway maps, ripped from magazines, but they were good enough.

  Also torn from magazines were photographs of his quarry, Subcomandante Verapaz. Since he had made good time, the Extinguisher had time to refresh his battle memory regarding the foe he sought.

  The pictures showed a jaunty man in a black ski mask. The soulful poet's eyes were the same in every picture. That was important. That meant while many wore the black ski mask of the Benito Juarez National Liberation Front, there was only one Subcomandante Verapaz. The man may have doubles, but they did not pose for the press to confuse the issue.

  Well, that was Verapaz's mistake. If he didn't understand the fine art of confusing the enemy, that was his tough break.

  When they at last came face-to-face, the Extinguisher would know those jungle green eyes. There would be no mistaking them ever.

  And when it came time to extinguish them, well, that was what the Extinguisher did.

  Chapter 14

  The ground had grown quiescent when the retinue of Coatlicue, now thousands strong, had passed through the mountains.

  The aftershocks came, making the belly quail, but at greater intervals. Popocateped still smoked. The sky hung brown and brooding, and the air below was filled with warm ash. Men, women and children captured the falling benedictions between their hands like children cavorting in their first snowstorm. They smeared their fleshy, halfnaked bodies with the pungent unguent in blasphemous parody of their castoff Ash Wednesday rituals.

  The too-warm air awoke the spring wildflowers early. Birds roosted silent and pensive in the trees. Now night fell. The first night of the new sun. The night after which all nights would be forevermore changed.

  "We must stop to rest, Coatlicue," said Rodrigo Lujan, walking backward before his goddess. He wore a cloak trimmed in rabbit fur over a cotton girdle that protected his manly loins. The tyranny of confining garments lay in his past, along with his necktie and shoes.