La Plaza
by Miguel Quezada
The church bells ring to signal that mass will soon begin. My mother holds my hand. The boots she made me wear tap along the cobblestones. My father and sisters walk in front of us. Our mother drives us with her urgent voice, “Vamos, vamos!” Her voice echoes, ricocheting off the metal frames walls that hold up the mud and straw homes. As we arrive, my mother proudly surveys her family.
My little body can barely contain the excitement, an excitement I hope cannot transfer from my fingertips into my mother’s hands to let her know that, for me, it is more important to be at La Plaza than to be at mass.
La Concepción with its rose gardens, massive wooden doors, and smooth brown steps that rise above the street is the largest and most sacred structure in town. One of its two bell towers holds a massive white clock with black hands and numbers. At the turn of every hour and before mass, un campanario hauls a thick rope to sound the bells.
I squirm on the hard wooden benches of La Concepción. The church pews are full of god-fearing families like mine, parents and children dressed in their best clothes and silent with reverent respect to temple and saints. El Padre dressed in a smock colored in bright designs and crosses appears to me a superhuman caricature as his deep voice booms a chorus of words to announce service. For the next hour, I follow tradition and rise to sing or hear a verse. Though the doors of the church are closed the life that fills La Plaza reaches me from the church’s white domed ceiling. The laughter and music fall upon me and I wonder if anyone else is filled with its energy. Before I lose myself to the thought, the father’s final blessing is given and my family works its way across the church isles; for me these seems to be the longest moments.
After mass, I run down La Concepción’s stone steps toward La Plaza where I meet my cousins and friends including Limita, who grew up with me, to retrieve our stockpiled assortment of fireworks. Palomitas: diamond shaped newspaper tightly folded around a fuse that fits in the palm of your hand and provides an explosive pop. Cebollitas: powder molded into onion form. After the sparks of a match, incandescent rainbows envelop the night. Our favorite, the buscapies: fuseless, brown, and cigar-shaped. The easiest and quickest way to light is to scratch the edge and apply the heat of cigarette. Once lit, they shoot off with a trail of fire and smoke.
Using my fingertips, I scratch the end of a buscapies. My hand tingles as powder collects under my fingernails. With the striking of a match, I light and puff the cigarette to ignite the firework. In unison, my friends, cousins and I inhale the tobacco and light the buscapieses. Smoke chokes the air, burns my lungs, and the bitter gunpowder stings the tip of my tongue. Cheering spectators scatter as we chase the fireworks. We light and throw palomitas and cebollitas into the crowd. With joy in my eyes and laughter in my heart, I dance with the wiggling shadows cast on the night.
La Plaza’s center is an elegant kiosk with green iron railing and a white canopy with gold trim. Brown stone paved lanes stretch out into inner and outer circular walking paths lined with green benches. Short iron fences enclose neat, bright gardens. Red, purple, white, and pink roses divide each path and fill the air with sweet aroma.
The architecture here shaped tradition and custom. La Plaza’s inner benches, La Isla De Los Besos were reserved for younger couples who sought discretion from the prying eyes of reproachful relatives. The outer benches Las Banka’s De Los Enamorados were reserved for couples of all ages and families. The inner court around the kiosk is where, concealed by darkness, lovers made out and danced and drank until sunrise. The familiar faces brought me comfort and a sense of belonging and pride. The lovers and courtiers would make up the next generation to raise families. Sons and children would be born, live in, and some die without ever setting foot outside of the city. They knew my cousins, sisters, and friends. Our grandparents and often great grandparents grew up together. They brought up children there, and buried their share of losses together too.
The outside walking lane around the benches was reserved for courtship. Custom dictated that single boys walk clockwise and the single girls counterclockwise. When a boy sought out a girl, he had to walk across the lane, hand her a rose, and ask permission to walk with her. If she agreed, the couple would then walk and talk in the center lane. Elder sisters, aunts, and even their mothers accompanied many of the girls. What then occurred, a guy could be rejected by the chaperone, even if the girl agreed. When a boy and a girl made a connection, they then would sit on a bench on the outer court to converse under the watchful eye of the same chaperone.
It was on the walking paths divided by gardens of roses where, as a 10-year-old boy, I learned what it meant to hold hands with a girl. We shared nervousness when I picked and handed her a bright red rose. Its leathery petals brushed my arm. It took all of my courage to ask her permission to take our first walk. We walked free smiling, laughing, full of life. The sounds of music and families and dancing slipped away from us. Her name was Jany. We had held hands with others before, but only as children when told to in order to cross a street. Jany and I spent many more evenings walking together. We grew older. We ate and danced alongside friends and family. La Plaza bestowed this rite of passage on children when we close the space between innocence and young passion.
A small street filled with puestos selling fresh food and dulcecitos circle La Plaza. Opposite the street are small, one-room tiendas: clothing stores, a music store, a watch repair shop, and an ice cream shop where my friend Pedro greeted me as “Mickey,” never charged me for a paleta, and where his family always asked me to return. Puesto and tienda owners are humble and generous people though they struggle to make a living from their daily earnings. They know each family and street by name, and, despite their circumstance, they often would greet travelers with a free meal out of dignity.
My tía owned a puesto and struggled to make a living off its earnings. They cooked tacos and tortas, and though they were not wealthy they valued hospitality. One night around two am, strangers stopped at the puesto and stayed to talk with us about where they were from and about their family. They did not leave until four am, well past my tía’s closing time. No matter the inconvenience, my tía wasn’t rude to the strangers who had become guests. When it came time to pay, my tía politely refused the money. They needed the money, but to take it would be dishonorable to the spirit of el pueblo.
One afternoon, arriving near the first garden in La Plaza, I passed a group of young men. They stood empty handed, aggressive and alert, surveying the surroundings with anticipation in search of someone or something I could not see. Everywhere else, women walked with groceries and children. The group of young men followed me. A few steps away from my tía’s puesto, they suddenly attacked. A rain of blows battered my head; fire blazed through my knuckles as I fought back then kicks crumpled me. A bottle crashed into my skull and darkness enveloped me.
Unknown to me, the presence of rivals from Tierras Blancas had not gone unnoticed. When I regained consciousness, familiar men, including my friend Limita surrounded me. They had been on the way to confront the intruders. Others men young and old had come to my defense. My uncle, who until then, I knew as a peaceful man, helped me up with one hand while in his other he held a meat cleaver. The entire plaza had come to my defense. When I learned of this the beating rooted in rivalry, it filled me with pride. Not fear.
From then on, La Plaza, unfolded as its own country ruled by its own set of laws. There were activities and people I had seen everyday of my life that I never examined or could have guessed were dangerous. From that perspective, the politics and illicit trade emerged as a corruption that would sweep in to penetrate the peace shared by all. The realization was cemented when I saw white trucks filled with political officials ride into the square bearing gifts of food and blankets to draw out the poor. The politicos were made up of men accustomed to violence, often members of local mafias, and powerful drug cartels, the invisible and de-facto rulers and benefactors in small pueblos.
Using bullhorns, the politicos would spout political slogans and rhetoric of persons perhaps nobody in La Plaza ever heard of, nor would ever hear from again nor see the promises fulfilled. As if to remind the population of the authority, they wielded firearms to show the alternative to voting ”no.” They carried side arms and armed men circled the trucks. With speeches complete, the same armed men would distribute gifts. I would line up with the other kids to ask for the soccer balls and bags of marbles.
The same corruption that made the local economy and government stable, a collaboration between politicos, police and cartels, would, in later years, unleash a wave of tragedy, disappearances, and terror upon the lives of childhood friends with whom I’d once lit fireworks. Pedro would die; he was shot and killed in front of his family standing behind the very counter from which he gave me free paletas for his refusal to pay rent and protection. Limita, with whom I lit and chased buscapieses, would be among countless others to die in the generation overtaken by a drug war. La Concepción which had celebrated their baptisms, first communions, and weddings, became the church that, following custom, rang the bell to announce their ascent to heaven as family and friends followed the funeral procession to their final resting places.
My last year in La Plaza in Tangancicuaro, Michoacán, Mexico, I spent at my tía’s taco stand listening to music fill the air. By then a teen, I watched kids play with fireworks and experience the garden paths, courtship and unity that would forever remain with them in memory, as it has with within me. Then, I still could walk into the tienda where Pedro called me Mickey and hear his family tell me to return.
Miguel Quezada is a writer currently incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison.
