I could gun the engine, but where the hell am I gonna go? It’s a straight shot down to Zacatecas and the next turn off isn’t for another fifty miles. Better to meet them here in the open, where I have more options, than have them run me off the road.
I pull over to see if they’ll pass, the engine still running. The convoy’s a good twelve or thirteen cars long. Trucks, APCs, a goddamn tank. They’re not cartel, they’re army. Or if they are cartel, this country’s more fucked up than I thought.
Behind me one of the trucks pulls over and stops. A soldier jumps out of the back with a flashlight and an assault rifle. I make sure the Browning’s good to go and hide it behind the door. I scribble “CONFíA EN Mí” onto one of my stickers and slap it on my chest. “Trust me.”
I roll down the window. The soldier’s young, early twenties maybe. Crew cut hair, earnest face. Nervous. If I was him I would be, too. With the bullshit going on between Los Zetas and Cártel del Golfo out here, some random guy on an empty stretch of road in the middle of nowhere is nothing but trouble. Any stop could end with him dead. It has for some of his fellow soldiers. Their ghosts cluster in so close they might as well be hanging off him like Christmas ornaments. Dead soldiers, dead civilians. So many dead. Did he kill them? Or was he just there when it happened?
The thing that really grabs my attention is the scapular, a piece of cloth hanging on his chest from a braided cord around his neck. It’s a Catholic thing. They’re not big, usually have a prayer on them and they come in different colors. Red for The Passion, blue for the Immaculate Conception, black and blue for St. Michael. Lot of Catholics down here, so that’s not too surprising.
But this one’s enormous. Black with red edging and an embroidered image of Santa Muerte hanging from a red, black and white cord. Catholics don’t flaunt their scapulars, they wear them under their clothes, keep them private. But with Se?ora de las Sombras, you wear that shit like it’s a fucking badge.
Above it all hangs a gold crucifix. I’ve seen this sort of thing before. Some in L.A., but much more frequently down here. The cognitive dissonance is something that tweaks a lot of people.
The Catholic Church has been denouncing Santa Muerte for years, but she’s gained a foothold in the public consciousness, anyway. Otherwise good Catholics are turning to her not because they’ve lost faith, not because they’re denying their god, but because she’s more accessible. When your god doesn’t answer your prayers, why not try talking to Death?
The soldier asks me who I am, what I’m doing down here. I tell him I’m a priest coming down from the U.S. to work with poor kids in Mexico City. He pauses at that, stammers a bit. Finally just nods. He asks me about my sunglasses. It’s after midnight, and there are no lights on this stretch of highway. I say I have an eye condition. He isn’t sure what to say to that, either, but the Sharpie magic does its thing and he seems to buy it.
“Everything all right?” I say, my Spanish purposely stilted. Better to sound like an out of towner than a local. He might give me more crap, but it also excuses a lot of behavior.
“Yeah,” he says. He glances back at the truck idling behind me, mosquitoes and dust dancing in the headlight beams. His nervousness doesn’t seem focused on me anymore.
“When’s the last time you gave confession, son?” I say. It’s mean. And yes, I know, I’m a dick. I think that’s been pretty firmly established by now. But the sudden look of fear in his eyes tells me everything I need to know.
“A long time,” he says, frowning.
He’s a good kid. Grew up right. Made his abuela proud when he joined the army. Only, well, it ain’t so simple. Maybe he took a bribe. Maybe he looked the other way when a commanding officer did. Maybe somebody’s got something over his head that he can’t seem to shake.
Whatever it is, he knows he’s compromised. His perch on the moral high ground is cracking beneath him, and he doesn’t know what to do. Eventually he’s going to have to make a choice. Keep fighting the good fight or don’t.
The crime down here is savage, sudden, and a big moneymaker. Kidnappings, murders, marijuana and heroin carted up to the border. There’s cash in murder, money to be had in brutality. Violence is currency.
Not to say it’s like that everywhere in Mexico, but only an idiot doesn’t recognize that the cartels are the real kings. Ruling through fear and intimidation. Criticize too much and end up missing your head, or with a slit throat and hanging from a bridge with half a dozen others.
The cartels are holding the nation hostage and every time the government thinks they’ve cut one down it regroups under a new name, a new look and the same old bullshit.