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9. “What did I give the leader Villagrán? Nothing, Lucecita. I wrapped him around my finger. The usual promises. The important thing is that people saw me go in alone. They know their president’s hand doesn’t tremble. Without firing a shot. When I went in, they were shouting ‘Death to Mayorga!’ When I came out, nothing but ‘Long live Mayorga!’ Pure guts, Lucecita, pure guts. They’ll be quiet for the rest of my term. Then we’ll go back to the ranch.”

Chorus of the Family from

the Neighborhood

He left the house because they beat me they stripped me they forced me

My father my mother

Because they both died and there was nobody but me in the house

Because I don’t have relatives

Because the guys told me don’t be an asshole come to the street you’re alone in your house they beat you they give you a hard time they call you rat

In your house you’re fucked you’re lower than a cockroach

I feel so alone bro like a damn beaten insect

So low bro

So attacked bro

Give me shelter with no roof on the street

Be safe take root on the street

Don’t even look at people who aren’t from the street

Here you’re safer than in your house bro

Here nobody asks you for anything

Here there aren’t any fucking responsibilities

Here there’s only the turf

Here we’re the family of the turf between El Tanque and El Cerro

Don’t let anybody by who isn’t family from the neighborhood bro

Anybody who steps over the line smash him in the face

We’re an army a hundred thousand children and adolescents running free

Alone without a family in the streets

Stuck on the street

Do they want to get away from the street?

There’s no place else

Some came to the street

Others were born in the street

The family is the street

We were born to the street

Your mama aborted in the middle of the street

They kicked her in the middle of the street until the fetus dropped out

In the middle of the street

Because the street is our womb

The gutters our milk

The garbage cans our ovaries

Don’t let yourself be tempted bro

Fucking packing for a super Fucking cleaning windshields

Fucking peddling

Fucking guy who wipes the windshield asshole

Fucking kid for falling-down drunks

Fucking damn pimp beggar

Refuse bro

Live on air on alcohol on cement

Better to go dying like a damn cockroach

In streets tunnels garbage cans

Than think you’ve been defeated

The Father’s Servant

1. This town is suffocating. One would say that at an altitude of over three thousand meters, the air would be purer. This isn’t true, and one can understand it. The volcano is a priest with a white head and black tunic. It vomits the same thing it eats: ashen solitude. The proximity of heaven oppresses one here on earth.

The legend insists on repeating that Popocatépetl is an alert warrior who protects the nearby body of the sleeping woman Iztaccíhuatl. They didn’t tell Mayalde the story that one has known since childhood. The priest brought her up here to live, in the foothills of Popocatépétl, on the same day the girl had her first menstruation, and he said to her: “Look. It’s the sacrilegious stain. We have to go far away from here.”

“Why, Father?”

“So you won’t sin.”

“Why would I sin?”

“Because you’ve become a woman. Let’s go.”

They left the sacristy of Acatzingo with its beautiful Franciscan convent and came to live here, where you look at snow and breathe in ash. It was the isolated spot closest to Puebla, and since no one wanted to come where one was, they gladly sent him.

“Are you taking your niece, Father?

“Did you think I’d abandon her? She depends on me. Without me, she’d be a poor orphan. She owes everything to me.”

“Ah!”

“Though let me clarify, Bishop. She isn’t my niece. Don’t burden me with that old story.”

“Ah! Your daughter?” the bishop asked with raised eyebrows.

The priest turned and left the bishopric.

“That man is turning into a recluse,” remarked the prelate. “He doesn’t know how to get on with people. He’s better off going to the mountains.