1. "And then he said, `Don Lázaro'--to my face!--the Colonel himself, he said, `Don Lázaro, you've got five boys in Comitán teaching the campesinos how to read. That's subversive. That's communist. So tonight, you have to kill them.' . . . Now, what can I say?--you tell me! What can a man say to something like that, and what's a man supposed to do?" 
2. Before sunrise the next day, the little village of San Martín Comitán lay draped, like a wrinkled quilt, over the sharp ravines that scored the floor of the valley. Nestled in a clearing in the pines that lined the slopes of the mountain range, the highland aldea slumbered in the final moments of a long night as the first faint glow of dawn began to trace the eastern rim of the Sierra Madre. Gently sloping patches of tile roofs seemed anchored just above a blanket of ground fog that stretched through the village and up the valley. A rooster crowed in a corner of some milpa, a remote cornfield behind the town.
3. Then [pumpf!]--an Indian skyrocket streaked into the sky, its grey trail racing above the center of the town, followed by a pale orange and yellow burst. Its dull report echoed back and forth between the mountains. 
4. In mid afternoon the day before, the military commander of the garrison had been little disposed to wasting time in pleasantries. 
5. "Sit down, Don Lázaro," he frowned, eliciting something between a greeting and an order. "You have had a very long walk from Comitán." 
6. A weathered hat in hand, his tussled, raven hair glinting in the sunlight flooding the room through the open doorway behind him, Don Lázaro Emilio Cárdenas, a woodcarver and furniture maker by trade and the mayor of San Martín Comitán, stood stoically before Colonel Julio Alfredo Guzmán. 
7. "There, Don Lázaro, sit down," repeated the commander, rolling a freshly sharpened yellow pencil between his fingers, never moving his eyes from the face of the leathery Mayan stooping before his desk.
8. Saluting the exploding rocket, its echoes reverberating through the valley, the rooster crowed again. It was answered by another more faintly on the opposite side of the village. 
9. [BONK!] . . . [BONK!] . . . [BONK!] . . . The bell in the mission of the town began to clap in a flat, thick bass. From the belfry, a flight of pigeons fluttered aloft and dispersed to roosts somewhere under the fog below. A brilliant, ruby lining now traced the rims of both the dark, grey clouds and the flat, black mountains painted against the horizon. Another flock of birds, a sprinkle of tiny, charcoal specks, swooped out of the fields, spun once over the middle of the valley of San Martín, and drifted to perches in the pines. 
10. Following the colonel's gesture, a wooden-faced soldier, in camouflaged fatigues with a heavy, automatic assault rifle slung over his shoulder, pulled a rickety chair from its position next to the doorway and set it abruptly beside the dusty Indian. 
11. "Sit down!" repeated the commander as he rose from behind his desk with measured formality. 
12. The Indian dropped his eyes to the chair beside him, looked back at the colonel, and gingerly took a seat on the front edge of the chair. Twisting the pencil methodically, Colonel Guzmán walked slowly around his desk and stood directly over the diminutive Mayan peering deeply into the crown of his hat. The wooden-faced soldier stood at attention just behind the chair. 
13. "Listen to me, Don Lázaro. Do you understand me?" 
14. Then at once, from somewhere deep within the soul of the village, a woman's anguish pierced the still, early morning, followed by yet a duet of wails, and then a full chorus of cries. An orchestration of wrenching, penetrating lamentations began to stream from the center of San Martín Comitán and to work its way slowly, first down one rutted street and then another, passing spectre-like toward the crossroad where the graves climbed up the slope of the town's cemetery. 
15. A solemn procession of Comitanes, in full religious regalia, followed the cofrades, the religious principales, in their dark, woolen trajes, or outfits, crimson tzutes tied around their heads with long silken tassels dangling behind--the twelve cofrades, marching in six files, two abreast, carrying before them in outstretched hands the sacred symbols of their rank, the silver monstrances, the barras--tall, slender staffs crowned with the embossed image of San Martín, the village's patron saint. 
16. Colonel Guzmán continued as Don Lázaro sat before him, the Indian's head bowed to hide the increasing terror that gripped his heart. "You have five boys--`catechists'--working for the American priest in Comitán. They're teaching the campesinos how to read. Right?" pressed the colonel. "Maybe even you, eh?" 
17. Don Lázaro's face froze, and his hands began to tremble. He could not face the commander before him. 
18. "I think you understand me plainly enough," said the colonel. "Well, you continue to listen to me! They're communist subversives, these boys," said Colonel Guzmán. "So tonight, Don Lázaro, tonight you have to kill them. Every one of them . . . all five!" 
19. Behind the cofrades paced the catechists, five somber young men in sandals, musty jeans, and second-generation western jackets, in some cases too snug and in others obviously too baggy to have been their own. Following the five boys, wearing the long, white ceremonial tunics accented with a single, central woven panel of red brocading, the principal religious women--their hands over their mouths--wept uncontrollably under lacy, white veils, tinted grey in the heavy mist of the morning. 
20. The procession of perhaps fifty or more moved with reluctance under the wrought-iron arch that was the entrance to the town cemetery. The solemn assembly flowed slowly around the faded blue and white tombs and over the crest of the hill until the five young men, each escorted now by an older man, followed the cofrades over the ridge of the hill and dropped down on the other side just out of sight. The small congregation then massed along the crest and peered over the hill, craning to watch the proceedings below. 
21. "And what could I do? How could I do more?" asked Don Lázaro, as he tried to explain to the parents the imperative for waking them so late in the night. "I took the bus that stops at the military post," he continued. "I took that same bus to Dos Padres. Then I had to run and run. Twice I fell--you can see my hands and knees! All the way I ran to reach you even now, now in the night. So I am telling you what the colonel--what that `dog of Satan' himself--told me to my own face. He said that `all five boys' . . ." 
22. Don Lázaro choked on words trying to frame such an unspeakable crime, and, for the moment, he could not continue. The mothers and the fathers exchanged looks of horror, unable to compass the full weight of the words they anticipated from Don Lázaro, their mayor. 
23. "`All five, Don Lázaro, and by morning,'" repeated the Mayor to the parents of the five boys gathered before him in the candlelight of the altar. 
24. "`And you hear me clearly,'" continued Don Lázaro, before the terrified families. "`If those subversives aren't dead by sunrise tomorrow morning, my troops will come to Comitán, and by noon they will kill every living thing in the town and burn it to the ground, and then--before nightfall--they will do the same thing to Santa María Pétzal, to Santa Luz, and to every other subversive town in Sololá!'" 
25. The parents exchanged looks of terror and anger. The women began to moan and wail. "That's what the colonel said to me, your alcalde!" cried Don Lázaro, choking on his own tears. "And that is the message I must bring to you!" 
26. "But what can we do?" they cried. "Where is our priest to be away from us at such a time, but to `kill our own sons'! How can we do such a thing? Such a thing isn't possible?" 
27. "But what else can you do?" asked the sons. 
28. "Have you forgotten what the militaries did in Cuarto Pueblo?" asked Rolando Semitosa, signing the cross in benediction over his head and chest. 
29. "Can you not remember the massacre of Puente Alto," interrupted Josúe Vállez, "how they locked all the women and girls in the school house, threw in the grenades, and burned them up? How they placed all the men in the protestant church and clubbed them to death?" 
30. "And what they did to the small boys," added Marcos San Miguel, "throwing them into the outhouse, leaving them there to die?" 
31. "Surely, they will come and kill us all!" cried Jaime Chopúl. "Perhaps even now, the soldiers are here, up there in the hills already, watching and waiting to see what we will do!" 
32. "What bitches have brought these bastards into the world to do such a thing to us!" cried Don Alvaro San Miguel, lifting his fists and shaking them before Don Lázaro. 
33. "Que putas negras! What mangy, black-souled whores!" cursed Don Pablo Santa Cruz, rising from the bench beside the altar, stomping his feet, and beating his head. 
34. "Why will they not leave us alone?" wept Doña María Mendoza de Vallez, lifting the edge of her shawl to her swollen eyes. 
35. "And where is the Padre to speak for us?" 
36. "He is not here," wailed Doña Lucía Sánchez de Chopúl. "Why, merciful Madre, why is our Padre not here at such an hour?" 
37. "Yes, the Padre is not here, so what choices do we have?" asked Don Lázaro, his open hands outstretched before them. 
38. "What choices do you have?" asked the boys, waiting breathlessly for an answer, scanning the anguished faces of their families for some sign, searching about the room for even a margin of hope. 
39. . . . . . [BONK!] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [BONK!] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [BONK!] . . . . . . . . The bell of San Martín Comitán continued to clap its flat, dull refrain. From the cofrades rose a litany of muted, almost imperceptible prayers lifted in the air on drafts of black incense. And then silence. Even the birds ceased their calling. 
40. The dense mist surged forward, enveloping the whole scene. Seconds later, screeches of sharpened steel on steel sent trembles through the muted congregation, and a chorus of screams went up as women sought sanctuary against the breasts of their husbands and brothers.
41. Then fell the swaths of five machetes, each finding its mark: [thuck!] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [thuck!] . . [thuck!] . . . . . . . [thuck!] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [thuck!] 
42. The dense wall of the congregation collapsed in a mass of wailing bodies. Their lamentations drifted back through the tombs, out the gate of the cemetery, up the rutted road, and back into the town. They echoed across the valley and then wafted toward the rays of morning sun just beginning their stretch across the heavens. 
43. Somewhere away in the pine trees, the ignition of a heavy truck churned and churned and finally fired its engine. The motor revved up once and then again. After a hesitant pause, the drone of the truck slowly dissipated into the rush of a cool wind that began to swirl through the San Martín Valley of the Martyrs, flinging the drifts of clouds and the souls of five young men high into the pines. 

(Go to the Supplemental Materials)

(Return to the Top)

---

This page was last modified on September 5, 2003,
and is maintained by Dr. Geoffrey A. Grimes.