The Jaguar's Children Read Online Free PDF Page B

is hungry again. I would prefer to trust a jaguar.
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    My god, it is too hot to speak.
    I must give César some water.

4
    Thu Apr 5—17:41
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    It is better now—cooler, but the heat of the day is like a fever and all of us are feeling it. People’s clothes have been wet so long now they are having problems with their skin. It is impossible to be comfortable. The bottom of the tank is wet and the metal is so hard—in the night it pulls all the heat out of you and in the day some parts are too hot to touch. My pants are wet so I took them off and put them on my bag to dry. I am sitting on my shoes with my feet on my bag. I rolled César onto his side because the baker said it’s not healthy for him to stay in one position so long. I tried to make a bed for him from his backpack and a sweatshirt he had in there. I made him a pillow with his socks, trying to keep his skin away from the hot metal.
    Now it is only César’s phone that has minutes and a good battery together, and I am waiting for the deep night when maybe reception will be better. But I hope you can find us before then.
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    It was an accident how we came here, César and me, and if it hadn’t happened we would still be in Oaxaca now, which can be its own prison. I wonder if you even know where Oaxaca is, because it is far—two thousand kilometers from the border. Maybe you heard of Puerto Escondido and the surfers who go there? That is in Oaxaca. Maybe you know Monte Albán, the great Zapotec city with the pyramids all around? Once I went up there with my school. My favorite part was the planes flying out of the airport—so close you can look in the windows, but when I waved no one waved back. If you never heard of Monte Albán and do not surf and are afraid to go to Mexico, I can tell you something about it. They say Oaxaca is the second-poorest state. We have fifteen indio languages and a hundred dialects. There are people in my pueblo—my Abuela Zeferina was one—who never learned Spanish. Not in five hundred years. But it doesn’t matter, the same Spanish families control Oaxaca now who controlled it since Cortés came. You don’t see them much, but when they come out for a wedding at the botanical garden in el centro, you can spy them through that gate on the corner of Reforma and Constitución. Very tall and beautiful women in there—blondes sometimes even—with the leg muscles shaped like diamonds and heels sharp enough to kill a man.
    Our capital—wait—there is a plane—
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    Thu Apr 5—17:49
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    The plane is gone. It never came close. But to hear such sounds is a reason for hope, no? If you want to live, there is no choice in here but to think this way.
    I was telling you about my home, where I lived until last week. Oaxaca de Juárez is a famous colonial city with many churches and busy markets and quiet plazas. It is named for Benito Juárez, our hero and liberator who stands on the Llano with the crown of Spain broken at his feet. Benito Juárez was a Zapoteco—one of us, and he took the power and the lands from the Spanish Church and gave them back to the Mexican people. At the same time you had slaves in el Norte, here was this dark-skin indio in charge of a country where power and white skin go together like beans and rice. He was even the friend of your Abraham Lincoln. Hard to believe it, no? It didn’t last because in my country we have learned to enslave ourselves.
    After Benito we had a dictator again—Porfirio Díaz, and he was the cause of our great revolution one hundred years ago. Porfirio Díaz was a Oaxaqueño too, and he was also part indio—mestizo—so his skin was dark. He put white powder on it trying to look like a güero, but it didn’t work, everybody knew what he was so he only looked like an ugly Michael Jackson. Of course many indios and mestizos wish their skin was more white. There are