The Gates of Paradise

The Gates of Paradise, La Cuidad Juarez, Summer 2010

In Juárez, since January 1, 2008, when Presidente Felipe Calderón declared war against the drug cartels, 6,000 people have been murdered. The number for greater Mexico is over 28,000 but Juárez is certainly the epicenter of the bloody vortex. The government blames the vast majority of the violence on a turf war between cartels, particularly the Sinaloa Cartel and the Juárez Cartel. The normal human response to such violence is more violence. Calderón dispatched the Mexican army to Juárez but the army has become part of the problem, responsible for murder, disappearances, home invasions and other human rights abuses.

Death and the terror are the facts
that matter in these stories.
What does a man or a woman do?
How will you be when an SUV pulls up next to you,
its windows black, the electric window glides down,
a gun is pointing at you?
Statistics are irrelevant,
even if they were considered true.
Who is doing the counting
and what are they not counting?
What about the dead buried in the desert
or burned at the dump and shoveled under?
Nobody trusts the authorities,
the mayor is a liar,
the president is a liar,
the army is in cahoots with El Chapo,
the people don’t trust the cops,
they don’t trust the newspapers or their TVs.
They certainly don’t trust the killers.
Why should the killers speak the truth?
And the soldiers and the police
are just other gangs of killers.
So the citizens pass along rumors
and innuendos and fables because
these fictions stink of the truth.
Just a little bit of the truth is like food.
What is truth anyway?
The number of dead people on a Tuesday night?
Those are black ink in a newspaper.
\A very clean abstraction.
The people on the streets know what is happening,
they can see the rivers of blood
seeping from the mountains of corpses.
They want stories from the people
who have been there.
People who have seen it with their own eyes.

Here’s another story from another friend, a man who grew up in Juárez. He said when he was a kid his granddad used to tell him that every town or city has its wise men and wise women hanging around in the shadows of cities and little towns. His grandfather was talking from his experience as a little boy during the Revolution. So many people had died then. But no matter how forlorn things became, there was somebody out there who understood. His grandfather had met some of these men and women. He would sit at their feet and listen to them. Mexico, his grandfather told him point blank, is rich with such wise men and women. They have stepped off the railroad track. The train rumbles by with all its chaos and confusion, but these men and women have found a little something that let them be at peace with themselves. And they have stories and wisdom and even techniques and pieces of herbs to help others along. But as my friend grew older he began to laugh at the memory of his grandfather telling him about the wise men and women who scatter themselves through the cities and countryside. His grandfather didn’t trust God, he said. “God doesn’t listen.” That’s what his grandfather told my friend when he was a little boy.

As the violence grew worse my friend began remembering his grandfather and what he said. He wished it were true, but even if it was, he figured that Juárez didn’t buy the right ticket. Juárez feels like the unluckiest city in the world in the summer of 2010. So much blood and death so it’s no surprise that all the wisdom sort of was leached out of the city.

Then six months ago his mother told him the story about an old man named Jacobo. A small wiry man. Half-Mexican, half-Lebanese or some Arab-thing. A hodgepodge of roots. Puro meztizo. He was very brown, almost black, the color of mud. His hair and his beard were speckled with white but it was difficult tell his age. A strange looking guy. He liked to hang out behind the cathedral downtown Juárez under the flag of Mexico. The tri-color. He wasn’t comfortable in front of the plaza. So many people there. Jacobo loved those people. They are the color of earth, he said, and sometimes in the hottest parts of the day, he’d sit with them on the benches and the walls in the precious shade of the trees. But there was too much bustling and commerce for Jacobo. Too much religion. The Catholics scurrying off to mass, the Pentecostals preaching in the plaza, and even the Aztec dancer with his crown of feathers and his leather breechcloth and the rattles and drums. Jacobo said he felt happier behind the cathedral. Not so much chaos. He could do his exercise movements—like a dance, his skinny legs and arms slowly swirling around his meager frame—and he could sit at peace, his eyes half-shut, the noisy world a fragile shell in which he rested. And besides a bookstore was across the street connected to the art school. The art school has a nice clean bathroom with toilet paper, and the bookstore clerks liked him because he read books. They let him use the bathroom when he wanted. He could take a book into the bathroom where he could read and do his business. It was a cool clean place to spend a little bit of the hot afternoon.

Anyway Jacobo would show up most afternoons around 3pm. When he was there, a few men and women would come talk to him. It was like a ritual, a way to pass the time away, get something in their hearts to carry home and to think about. They’d bring him a bottle of water or a diet coke. Maybe cold slices of mango or a banana. Jacobo liked fruit. They’d pester him with questions. They wanted to know why is it that Juárez had to endure so much suffering. What about God? Didn’t God care? Jacobo would look over at his interrogator and whisper little short answers. He didn’t want to talk about God. God is another question. And the wrong question at that. He asked them instead questions about themselves. About their families. He wondered how they spent their days with all these big questions. He told them stories. Little teaching stories from all over the world. Sometimes he’d give little talks. Short things. About living in the moment, the right now, the heat in the sky, the nice cold slice of mango. He never gave them any answers, he didn’t tell them how to live but still the men and the women seemed satisfied. They’d show up the next day with more questions although one or two would disappear. They’d get a job. Something needed done at home.

One day a tall man showed up. He had a big square head and a black moustache. He was dressed up to look like a rich cowboy. He was wearing a big white Stetson hat and hand-tooled cowboy boots, and tight blue jeans, an expensive black silk t-shirt, a black windbreaker. Black aviator sunglasses. Thick in the chest. A paunch starting to hang down over his silver belt buckle. He looked dangerously cool. And mean.

“Are you Jacobo?” the man grunted.

Jacobo looked up at the man. The guy was a giant compared to him. He asked, “Who are you?” Jacobo’s voice was so soft the man could barely hear him.

“None of your fucking business,” the man said.

“Well, so be it,” Jacobo said and turned to talk to a young woman. But the woman was gone. She was afraid.

“Look, old man, don’t fuck with me. I came here to ask you a question.”

Jacobo turned back around. “Yeah? About what?”

“I want to know about heaven and hell.”

“Heaven and hell? Why do you want to know about those places?”

“I’ve killed a man. I’ve killed 12 men. Maybe 15 men. What’s going to happen to me?”

“So I ask you again, who are you?”

The man looked at Jacobo. Then he said:

“I’m one of the Aztecas. That’s who I am.” He pulled out a pistol, an automatic that was tucked into his belt under his windbreaker. The other watchers, like birds on a wire, drifted away. One lady murmured a prayer. She was almost running. A clumsy awkward gait, pulling along a shopping bag.

“The Aztecas,” Jacobo said, “they were a handsome race. They had handsome noses, they had long shining hair. You don’t look like an Azteca. You look like a thug. A stupid ugly thug. A thug with a big gun in his hand. A fucking common gangster.” The profanity sounded coming from Jacobo’s mouth.

“Shut the fuck up,” the man said. He put the gun to the side of Jacobo’s head.

Jacobo looked at the gun. He took a deep breath. He didn’t want to die.

“So you have a big gun. And that makes you a man? It makes you an Azteca?”

The man was breathing hard. At least a minute passed, Jacobo and the thug staring at each other. Then the man clicked off the gun’s safety, he was locked and loaded. He was leaning over Jacobo, close enough so that the two could smell each other’s sweat. And Jacobo could smell the clean oily smell of the automatic. The man took good care of his gun. The city rattled in their ears. They could pick out little pieces of the white noise. A kid’s whimpering in her mother’s arms. Sssh. Sssh. A bus coughed and roared down the street. A man and a woman were laughing somewhere across one of the streets.

Jacobo, almost whispering, said, “So here open the gates of Hell.”

“What?”

“You are walking through the gates of Hell. Right now. This place. The gun in your hand opens the gates of hell.”

And again there was silence. A long silence like before. The men looking at each other. Jacobo was such a little man. He didn’t seem afraid. Like he was at peace. How could he be at peace if he was about to die? The man took a deep breath and clicked the safety back on. The gun dropped to his side.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He took a few deep breaths. He could feel his heart beating. Like a time clock. He was still bent over, leaning down close to the old man’s face. He said, “And thank you, old man.” And then strangely, he reached his big hand and touched Jacobo on his cheek.

“Here open the gates of Paradise,” Jacobo said. “Right now. This place. Your hand.” The man let out a deep sigh, his hand trembled. He stood up straight, he slipped the gun back into his belt.

“Thank you again,” the man said. And he walked away.


Bobby Byrd

Posted over on his site White Panties and Dead Friends