nada’s Reviews > Battles in the Desert > Status Update

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.

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: