Cordero’s hands were tied behind his back, but when they tried to drag him over the cobblestones he stood up over the heads of the Federal soldiers, and said with the resignation of a Chiapan martyr, “Please. I’ll walk willingly, in your stride.” The children of Chiapas broke free from their mothers’ embraces and ran to attend to their hero. “Señor Cordero, why won’t you fight? Señor Cordero! They’ll kill you if you don’t fight!” The evening sun (who at that time was sympathetic to passion as it pertains to the leftist cause) found the subcomandante alone and withdrawn, with his back to the western-most wall of the sixteenth century Church. The cigarette was still lit and his hands were still bound. He had refused, as a dying wish, the blindfold, and he watched the firing squad take its place on a patch of dirt, fifteen paces ahead of him. He was surrounded on all sides by the Federal Army, and each soldier had his eyes on the dying subcomandante, and the flicker of light between his dying lips. The firing squad took aim. “It’s out of our control,” whispered the soldier that had bound the rebel. “I’m sorry, subcomandante. You were a great hero.” “Last words?” reflected Zurbián. And for the next few seconds, no one spoke throughout all of Chiapas and its neighboring towns. The world was hanging on the corner of a white stucco wall over broken glass, and it was silent to hear the words of the soldier who spoke with his guns in their holsters. “Always,” said the immortal soldier, spitting out the cigarette. “I just wanted to tell you that you were right, General.” “About what? The war?” “No.” Cordero laughed. “How can I say this without embarrassing you in the presence of your men?” Zurbián crossed his arms over his ammunition vest and waited. “You were right in that her war is insatiable,” cried Cordero. “Like an immortal soldier!” Javier Zurbián lost his breath and Manuel Cordero inhaled deeply under his thick moustache with waxed tips. The condensation on his scalp and on his shirt from his lover’s farewell kiss had evaporated, and he was cold and anxious for another. “Zurbián! Finish me!” The foreman for the Federal Firing Squad glanced over his shoulder. “The order, my General?” “Finish me, Zurbián!” The general didn’t move. “Finish me!” He glared at the immortal soldier with such ferocity that the wind broke before it hit his face. War in Mexico is not a political upheaval, but rather an affair and its consequences, he thought. “I thought she warned you,” he cried to the immortal soldier, “about love in times of war!” And as he turned to march north into Mexico City, he said to the men behind their guns, “Untie this man and send him home. I want him kept alive.”
- David Delmar-Sentíes
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