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I never again saw Rosales or anybody else from that era. They demolished the school, they demolished Mariana’s building, they demolished my house, and they demolished Colonia Roma. That city ended. That country is finished. There is no memory of the Mexico of those years. And nobody cares — who could feel nostalgia for that horror? Everything came to an end the way the songs on the jukebox come to an end.

Rosales is fucking with me, it’s a stupid joke, he’s always been an asshole. He wanted revenge because I saw him down and out with his box of chewing gum and me with my tennis whites, my Perry Mason in English, my reservations at the Plaza, and my tennis racket.

I saw death everywhere: in the pieces of animal about to become sandwiches and tacos along with the onions, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, crema, beans, guacamole, jalapeños. Living animals, like the trees they’d just chopped down on Insurgentes. I saw death in the sodas: Mission Orange, Spur, Ferroquina. In the cigarettes: Belmont, Gratos, Elegantes, Casinos.

I’m surprised you haven’t heard anything till now. Remember, I didn’t want to be the one to tell you, that’s why I hid, not because of the chewing gum. Carlitos, don’t look at me like that. Are you crying? I know, it’s terrible and hideous what happened. I was in shock, too, like you can’t believe. But you’re not going to tell me, seriously, at your age, that you were in love with Jim’s mother.

Rosales tried to escape, but I caught up with him. Ridiculous scene:

By the time the Christmas holidays rolled around, everything had changed for us. My father had sold the factory and been hired as a manager for the North American company that had absorbed his brand of soap.

My parents thought the punishments, the confession, the psychological testing — the results of which I never saw — had cured me.

I started going to a new school. I didn’t know anybody. Once again I was the foreign intruder. There were neither Jews nor Arabs nor poor kids on scholarship nor battles in the desert, although there was, as always, mandatory English. The first few weeks were hellish.

My mother always insisted that our family was one of the best families of Guadalajara.Honorable, hardworking men.Devout women, selfless wives... Obedient and respectful children. But then came the revenge of the Indian hordes and the rabble against decency and the wellborn. The Revolution — that is, the old caciques — stole our land and our house on Calle SF with the excuse that our family was full of Cristeros.

How was it that Jim’s father held such an important position in the government, wielding so much influence over the business world, yet Jim was attending a second-rate school, a school befitting the likes of us denizens of the very downwardly mobile Colonia Roma, hardly the spot for the son of Alemán’s superpowerful bosom buddy and banking partner, a man who earned millions every time the president sneezed:

I didn’t understand anything. For me, war, any war, was the stuff of movies. Sooner or later the good guys win (who are the good guys?). In Mexico, fortunately, there’d been no war since General Cárdenas defeated the Saturnino Cedillo uprising.

At that moment, however, the Cristero War was less remote from us than our childhood is from us now. A war my mother’s family participated in as more than mere sympathizers. Twenty years later they were still worshipping martyrs like Father Pro and Anacleto González Flores. On the other hand, nobody remembered the thousands of dead peasants, the agrarian reformers, the rural teachers, the press-gangs.

When we played, we divided ourselves into two camps: Arabs and Jews. Israel had just been established, and there was a war against the Arab League. The kids who really were Jews and Arabs only ever called each other names or fought. Our teacher, Bernardo Mondragón, would say to them: You were born here. You are as Mexican as your fellow students. Don’t pass on the hatred.

There was, however, hope. Our textbooks confirmed: As can be seen from the map, Mexico is shaped like a cornucopia, the horn of plenty. Universal well-being and abundance were predicted for the unimaginable year 2000, without any specifics about how we were going to achieve this. Sparkling clean cities free of injustice, poor people, violence, congestion, and garbage.

We wrote in our punishment notebooks thousands of times: I must obey, I must obey, I must obey my parents and my teachers. They taught us the history of the fatherland, the national language, the geography of Mexico City — the rivers (there were still rivers), the mountains (the mountains could still be seen). It was the ancient world.