alternatehistory.com

July 2, 1988
Mexico City

A great city is never silent.

Of course, no city is ever silent in the literal sense. No matter the hour, engines groan in Xianjiang, dogs bark in Kananga and pistons pound in Magnitogorsk. But beneath the cursory activities of their inhabitants, those cities are lifeless. Blinded by smoke and smog, choked by soot and ash and drowned out by screams and cries, a lifeless city has no rhythm and no soul. Its every inch is caked in mud that dulls its native shine, its residents share nothing but the dirt and grit and grime. And on those vibrant nights when a great city flaunts its feathers and dances to its own music, a lifeless city is silent, too stifled by the taste of its own atmosphere to make a single sound.

This was a great city. Just as a city of gold is pure to the smallest speck, Mexico City expressed its vivid history in every brick and riverbed. Any errant cobble might have once been trod by Cortés or Moctezuma; every transient fleck of dust carried within it seven centuries of struggle and solidarity. Every structure was a story, from the frailest hovel to the grandest palace. Every street was an open book, a folk anthology of secrets and sagas that a longtime inhabitant could read as easily as Nervo or Cervantes. And from every crack in age-old asphalt, through every alleyway and mountain pass, there wafted a melody: the music of Mexico, the music of a people who, for countless generations, had felled tyrant after tyrant with the blood in their hearts and the resilience in their arms.

Never in her life had Celeste had much trouble hearing the music as it echoed off the stony edifices of Mexico City. But as she leaned forward to peel the sweat-soaked fabric of her dress off the beige leather of the scalding passenger seat, she suspected that the battered Toyota’s air conditioning system wasn’t the only thing deafening her to the national mood. To pass the time while waiting for Francisco and Román to return from their wandering journey along the city’s darkened streets, she began her thousandth inward rumination on the manner in which a century and a half of interminable repression had been preparing the country for this decisive moment.

Never in her life had Celeste had much trouble making out the music as it echoed off the stony edifices of Mexico City. But as she leaned forward to peel the sweat-soaked fabric of her dress off the beige leather of the scalding passenger seat, she suspected that the battered Toyota’s air conditioning system wasn’t the only thing deafening her to the national mood.

As she waited for Francisco and Román to return from their wandering journey through the city's darkened streets, she began to scour her immediate surroundings. Scanning the adjacent building through the corner of her eye, she encountered the face of her husband leering down at her through the unwelcoming orange glow of a streetlamp. It did not blink and, though the corners of its lips were turned upward, it certainly did not grin. Ever since Cuauhtémoc had announced his presidential candidacy the previous year, Televisa had practically made a weekly segment out of mocking his ever-present grimace. Still, after twenty-five years of marriage Celeste had thought she knew every hidden route and secret passage to the pensive smile he always carried with him just beneath his skin.

But the campaign was changing him. As months of constant abuse from the establishment to which he’d devoted his life took its toll, the hidden grin receded deeper and deeper. Some nights, she couldn’t find it anywhere, no matter how long or how desperately she searched. And with him gone so often for interviews or speaking tours, many nights she had no one to cure her loneliness but that ever-present image. It was a ghost, a perverse contortion of the real Cuauhtémoc. The real Cuauhtémoc frowned outwardly but smiled on the inwardly; this feeble cameo smiled outwardly, but inwardly could think of nothing but how tired he was, and how it dismayed him that the system his father had built and held together with his own two hands was devouring its children. Every time she looked upon that weary shadow of her husband and sensed the exhaustion in his eyes, Celeste felt warm tears gathering behind her own as one more piece of her heart dropped away and shattered like black glass on the boulder of her love. She inwardly prayed that Cuauhtémoc would lose the election, just so that he might be spared from six years of administrative agony.

She knew that it was selfish of her to entertain such wishes. For the first time in six decades, the Mexican people had a genuine chance to cast off the tyrannical class that enslaved them, and if they chose him, it was Cuauhtémoc’s duty before the nation to serve as the first opposition President in living memory. But Celeste couldn’t help but ask whether it would be so terrible for the system to survive for just a few years longer so that the most kind-hearted and conscientious man she’d ever known could escape the mental ravages that came with the most stressful office a Mexican could ever fulfill. She ended her prayer with a word of thanks for the law that banned active campaigning in the last days before a presidential election; the next four days were going to be his, hers, and no one else's, Celeste was going to make sure of that.

Still, she couldn’t help but feel anxious about the uncertainty. She had no idea how Wednesday’s election would go. It seemed that for every peasant farmer she’d met who desired a return to the deepest roots of the Revolution, she’d encountered a zealot whose allegiance to the ruling regime was stronger than his allegiance to God, to Mexico or to his own mother. The previous months had been a dramatic crescendo, a dizzying upward spiral of violins and trombones and drumbeats all building toward…something. But what exactly? How would the 1988 Overture conclude—with the crashing of drums and the triumphant resonation of trumpets, or with the collapse of so much outward momentum into the typical monotone thumping of history? Celeste strained her ears listening for any clues within the elaborate harmony that might deliver the answer.

She, Francisco, and Román had been anxiously discussing this subject an hour earlier when the dullish grey Toyota had blown a tire. [1] None of them were familiar with this neighborhood, so Celeste had stayed behind to watch the car while the other two went out looking for a repair shop. Her diversionary reflections on Mexican history complete, she began to worriedly wonder how much longer she would have to wait beside the poorly-lit street before her companions returned from their automotive odyssey. The sight of a figure walking directly toward the car so relieved her that she barely had time to realize that it was neither that of Francisco nor that of Román. This realization, in turn, so confused her that she did not have any time to realize what sort of object he was pointing at her head. When Francisco and Román returned eighteen minutes later with a spare jack and a fresh tire, there was no figure, no object, and no Celeste. There was nothing but a body with a once-beautiful face that had been blown to bloody chunks by the superfluous force of five bullets.

~

Three hours later, when Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas opened the front door to his residence to see two uniformed Mexico City policemen, he was dismayed at the government’s brazenness. To arrest him now, just four days before the election? That was just poor sportsmanship, and a bit low even for the PRI. But he had no opportunity to say so.

Señor Cárdenas,” one officer began with a well-hidden edge of indignation, “your…your wife…she has been shot.”

Cárdenas had already lost all feeling by the time his body hit the ground.

[1] Our POD. In OTL, Francisco Javier Ovando Hernandez and Román Gil Heraldez (two very high-ranking officials in Cárdenas's campaign) were both assassinated on this night, most likely by the government, though the murder has never been solved. ITTL, Celeste Batel stayed late at the campaign office, asked for a ride home and this tragedy ended up happening.


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