America del norte, p.1
América del Norte, page 1
Copyright © 2024 Nicolás Medina Mora
All rights reserved.
Published by
Soho Press, Inc.
227 W 17th Street
New York, NY 10011
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mora, Nicolás Medina, author.
Title: América del Norte / Nicolás Medina Mora.
Description: New York, NY: Soho, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references. | Text chiefly in English; some text in Spanish.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023053985
ISBN 978-1-64129-564-2
eISBN 978-1-64129-565-9
Subjects: LCGFT: Political fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PR9200.9.M67 A83 2024 | DDC 823/.92—dc23/eng/20231206
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023053985
Interior design by Janine Agro
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my mother
It is not enough . . . to look at the exploited classes. You also have to look at the exploiting classes.
—Louis Althusser
Events travel through time and grow faint in the distance until they seem to become past, but there are certain regions of the spirit where all that has come to pass remains present. What happened continues to happen. It lives on: a luminous ghost fluttering in the vastness of the night. This is why a watcher of the skies who stood on a particular star and pointed his most powerful telescope toward our world would see, at this very hour, Hernán Cortés and his soldiers gazing over the Valley of Anáhuac for the first time.
—Alfonso Reyes
. . . because America has swallowed the entire world . . . this is why I am writing in English (and not you writing in Spanish) . . .
—Heriberto Yépez
All the characters in this novel—especially the real ones—are imaginary.
Dramatis
Personae
YOUR CORRESPONDENT
• Sebastián Arteaga y Salazar: Mexican reporter. Student at the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program. Insufferable pedant.
THE NEOBAROQUE ARTISTS
• Lee Williams: American musicologist. Sebastián’s partner.
• Esteban de Mier. Mexican filmmaker. Sebastián’s friend from high school.
• The Bear: Mexican painter. Sebastián’s friend from high school.
• Daniel Landero: Colombian ballet dancer. Lee’s former partner.
THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIANS
• Luciano Fernando Arteaga y Salazar: Mexican translator. Sebastián’s ancestor.
• Alberto Arteaga y Salazar: Mexican politician. Sebastián’s father.
• Laura Arteaga y Salazar: Mexican anthropologist. Sebastián’s mother.
• Inés Arteaga y Salazar: Mexican entrepreneur. Sebastián’s younger sister.
• Álvaro Arteaga y Salazar: Mexican college student. Sebastián’s younger brother.
• Luisa Arteaga y Salazar: Mexican gardener. Alberto’s mother.
• Raúl Arteaga y Salazar: Mexican lawyer. Alberto’s father.
• Arnaut Bosch Sr.: Mexican-Catalan heir. Sebastián’s godfather.
• Arnaut Bosch Jr.: Mexican-Catalan drifter. Sebastián’s childhood friend.
• Urbino Graue: Mexican oncologist. Raúl’s lifelong friend. Laura’s physician.
• Fernando de las Casas: Mexican friar. Laura’s confessor.
THE IOWANS
• Mayeli Revueltas: Chicanx student at the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program. Sebastián’s classmate.
• The Decanonizer: American student at the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program. Sebastián’s classmate.
• The Pseudo-Anthropologist: American student at the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program. Sebastián’s classmate.
• The Delightful Kid from Michigan: American student at the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program. Sebastián’s classmate.
• Charlotte “Charlie” Nguyen: Vietnamese-American student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Sebastián’s friend.
• Constant “Connie” Amadea Adler: American student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Sebastián’s astrologer.
• Irina Januta: American professor at the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program. Sebastián’s teacher.
• François Denys Bartholomée Bouvard: French Professor at the University of Iowa. Chair of the English Department. Sebastián’s supervisor.
• Billy Mosley: American undergraduate at the University of Iowa. Sebastián’s student.
• Zoraya Fields: American undergraduate at the University of Iowa. Sebastián’s student.
THE NEW YORKERS
• The Shakesperean: American actress. Sebastián’s former partner.
• Aviva Benhabib: Mexican reporter. Sebastián’s friend from college.
• Claire Lawrence: American reporter. Aviva’s maid of honor. Sebastián’s friend from college.
• Carlos de la Torre-Wells: Dominican-American manager at a little magazine. Alanna’s partner. Sebastián’s friend from Brooklyn.
• Alanna Goodwater: American editor at a small press. Carlos’s partner. Sebastián’s friend from Brooklyn.
• The Revomissionary: American Zapatista. Sebastián’s college classmate.
THE MEXICANS
• Martina Toledo: Zapotec nurse.
• Edwin Mendoza: Poblano grocer.
• Jane Preciado: Guanajuatense hotel worker.
• The Minor Deities: Chilango waiters at El Centenario.
• The Man with the Broken Camera: Chilango photographer. Regular at El Centenario.
THE COPS
• Moisés Sandoval: Mexican Federal Police. Sebastián’s bodyguard in 2016.
• Pedro Campeador: Mexican Federal Police. Sebastián’s bodyguard in 2017.
• Darwin Castellanos: Mexican Federal Police. Sebastián’s bodyguard in 2006–2009. Ludwig’s brother.
• Ludwig Castellanos: Mexican Federal Police. Sebastián’s bodyguard in 2006–2009. Darwin’s brother.
• Emiliano Catrín: Mexican-American memoirist. Former Border Patrolman. Alumnus of the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program.
THE MUSICIANS
• Jean-Philippe Rameau: French composer, eighteenth century.
• Chavela Vargas: Costa Rican–Mexican chanteuse, twentieth century.
• The Troubadour: Mexican busker, twentieth century. Regular at El Centenario.
• Alan “El Contra-punk-to” Espinosa: Mexican cumbia arranger and synthesizer virtuoso, twenty-first century.
THE WRITERS
• Nezahualcóyotl: Mexica poet-king, fifteenth century.
• Hernán Cortés: Spanish novelist, sixteenth century.
• Christopher Marlowe: English playwright, sixteenth century.
• Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora: Mexican polymath, seventeenth century.
• Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Mexican poet, seventeenth century.
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: German philosopher, nineteenth century.
• Friedrich Nietzsche: Stateless writer of Zoroastrian fan fiction, nineteenth century.
• José Juan Tablada: Mexican poet, twentieth century.
• Ezra Pound: American poet, twentieth century.
• Walter Benjamin: Stateless traveling magician, twentieth century.
• George Orwell: British essayist, twentieth century.
• Alfonso Reyes: Mexican essayist, twentieth century.
• José Gorostiza: Mexican poet, twentieth century.
• Carlos Pellicer: Mexican poet, twentieth century. López Obrador’s teacher.
• Antonieta Rivas Mercado: Mexican belletrist, twentieth century. Vasconcelos’s lover.
• Alejo Carpentier: Cuban novelist, twentieth century.
• Juan Rulfo: North American novelist, twentieth century.
• Gabriel García Márquez: Colombian nonfiction writer, twentieth century.
• Roberto Bolaño: Chilean poet, twentieth century.
• Andrea de Olivares: Mexican poet, twenty-first century.
THE MESSIAHS
• Maximilian von Habsburg: Austrian emperor of Mexico.
• Nazario Moreno: Mexican cartel leader and memoirist.
• José Vasconcelos: Mexican politician and memoirist. Pellicer’s teacher. Rivas Mercado’s lover.
• Andrés Manuel López Obrador: Mexican politician. Pellicer’s student.
THE UNACCOMPANIED MINORS
• The Boy with Spiked Hair: Kaqchikel parkour artist. The Girl Who Did Not Speak’s brother.
• The Girl Who Did Not Speak: Kaqchikel teenager, about whom we know almost nothing. The Boy with Spiked Hair’s sister.
THE LORD-IN-BONDAGE
• Moctezuma Xocoyotzin: Great speaker of Tenochtitlan.
Prologue
Mexico City
September 1847
In which the outcome of this tale is revealed from the start.
Entre las naciones como entre los amantes
Like the Spaniards before them, the Americans landed in Veracruz and marched west, away from the malarial fevers of the Tierra Caliente and up the jagged slopes of the Sierra Madre, past taciturn agaves and stern oyameles and the bl inding snowcaps of half-asleep volcanoes, until they reached the high valley where the air was thin and clear and the white light of the autumn sun fell vertical and merciless on the ill-defended capital, casting angular shadows on the barricades where the remnants of an army of barefoot conscripts whiled away their final moments, dulling terror with liquor and gambling, gathering stones to throw when their obsolete muskets ran out of ammunition, not so much resolved as resigned to die in a futile stand against an enemy destined to rule the continent.
The truth, however, is that none of it was fated. At the start of the nineteenth century, conflict between Mexico and America was likely but not inevitable. The war that transformed the United States from an uneasy federation of small Atlantic republics into a global empire was but one of infinite possible outcomes: trusting coexistence grounded on commerce, friendship born from shared commitments to self-determination, even a gradual blurring of the lines that in due time could have brought about the death of two nation-states founded on genocide and slavery—and given birth to a North American Commune.
But history is the transmutation of contingency into necessity, and what need not happen did. In the cool hours before dawn on September 12, 1847, the artillerymen of the United States Army trained their howitzers on the last significant fortification between them and Mexico City: Chapultepec Castle, a stone complex atop a steep hill, built as a manor, that now housed a military academy. Sixteen-inch rounds began falling on walls adorned with ornate masonry but offering scant cover. The thousand men of the garrison—among them cadets as young as thirteen—had no choice but to stand under fire for twelve hours, watching shrapnel tear and shred their friends.
The following day, hundreds of US marines charged up the hill, taking cover behind venerable cypresses decorated with long hanging moss, dear alike to Cortés and Moctezuma. When they reached the parapet, they leaned siege ladders against the walls and began to climb in a swarm. At first the marines died in scores, their bodies tumbling on their brothers and dragging them to their deaths. But they were many and their adversaries were few. By midmorning the defenders had been overrun.
In the years after the battle-dust settled, the Mexican republic would try to make sense of the humiliation it had suffered. The future had looked so promising just decades earlier, when New Spain broke free from its hemophiliac metropole to become one of the largest countries in the world: a vast realm, rich in silver and in people, that stretched from the forests of Oregon to the jungles of Darién. Now, however, Mexico City had been conquered a second time. How to look in the mirror? What to tell the young?
The factual record offered no answers. And so the nation’s patriotic scribes reached for myth, or rather for epic: a form where the beauty of heroism is enough to redeem defeat. The scribblers set out to find Hectors for their North American Troy—and found them in the cadets of Chapultepec. Over the course of countless retellings, the memory of the child-soldiers underwent a process not unlike the one Freud describes in The Interpretation of Dreams. Truths too painful to contemplate became half-truths, which in turn became wish-fulfilling fantasies, which were then passed off as truths.
The logic of literature replaced that of history. Nonfiction became fiction. Soon the central story Mexicans told about the war was the tale of a handful of boys who’d fought to the end, long after all hope was lost, retreating to the highest tower rather than surrendering with their older comrades. When the Marines reached the platform, the last surviving cadet tore the Mexican flag from its pole, wrapped it around his adolescent body, and leaped off the cliff.
The dreamwork allowed Mexicans to convince themselves that the Americans had defeated them not because they were worthier but merely because they were stronger. But to believe one’s fantasies is the definition of madness. And so perhaps it would behoove us to counter the epic of the Heroic Children with another tale—one taken from history rather than from dreams. A few weeks before the cadets of Chapultepec committed ritual suicide, a very different young Mexican arrived in Washington for a secret audience with the secretary of state, James Buchanan, who would later become president. His mission was simple if not easy: negotiate an informal agreement that would protect the interests of the Mexican aristocracy.
The secret agent, don Luciano Fernando Arteaga y Salazar, was the scion of an old family from Durango, a horse-breeding clan whose founder had received his hacienda in recognition of his services to Cortés. He’d been sent to England at a young age to receive a proper education, then travelled the continent armed with letters of recommendation that introduced him to the best minds of the age. By the time he returned to Mexico, he’d become something rarer and more dangerous than a cosmopolite: a translator.
When it became obvious that the war was lost, the notables of Mexico City summoned Arteaga y Salazar to a private meeting at the country estate of the archbishop’s illegitimate son. They explained that, while patriotic honor demanded that they continue to publicly support the war effort, their responsibility as unacknowledged stewards of the nation compelled them to look at things unsentimentally. The countless revolutions and counterrevolutions that had kept the country on fire ever since independence suggested that the people of Mexico were simply incapable of pursuing their own best interests. Reunion with Spain was not only impossible but also undesirable—the notables remembered the condescension with which their peninsular cousins had treated them. But the American invasion, perfidious as it was, offered an unexpected opportunity. And so Arteaga y Salazar assumed a false name and sailed from Campeche to Philadelphia, where he made contact with American agents.
On that day in September, however, almost nobody in Mexico City knew of the young translator and his secret mission. After the fall of Chapultepec, the surviving Mexican forces fought on throughout the day, putting up fierce resistance near San Cosme. But then, at nightfall, the Americans fired artillery shells on the crowded city center. The Mexican commander-in-chief, don Antonio López de Santa Anna, that one-legged Simón Bolívar impersonator, gathered the dregs of his army and quietly abandoned the capital, declaring that he hoped to spare its inhabitants a week of house-to-house butchery followed by nights of looting and rape. It was only much later that the people of Mexico learned that Santa Anna’s retreat had nothing to do with protecting the innocent—and everything to do with the agreement Arteaga y Salazar had brokered in Washington.
At dawn on September 14, the Americans marched into Mexico City. Terrified of ambushes, they advanced in perfect silence, surprised to encounter no resistance. As rumors spread, crowds gathered on rooftops to watch the ghostly procession of the conquerors. Once his troops had secured the central plaza, the Zócalo, General Winfield Scott, known to favor fuss and feathers, dressed in parade uniform and mounted a handsome white horse, hoping to cut a fine stamp on his entrada. He rode onto the square, where he supervised the raising of the Stars and Stripes and reviewed his triumphant ranks as they broke into a spontaneous rendition of “Yankee Doodle.”
The corpulent general took possession of the National Palace and climbed to the balcony to address his troops and the people they’d conquered. He’d just begun a pompous speech when a group of women who’d gathered in the plaza interrupted him with heckles: “¡Cállate, puerco!” Then a shot went off from some high window, wounding a US officer in the leg. The Americans turned their cannon on the crowd and opened fire with grapeshot munitions.
When news of the victory reached Washington, the American republic debated just how much land to annex. Some rallied behind the cry of ALL OF MEXICO, arguing with the governor of Virginia that SLAVERY SHOULD POUR ITSELF ABROAD WITHOUT RESTRAINT AND FIND NO LIMIT BUT THE SOUTHERN OCEAN. But in the end the rulers of the newborn empire decided to keep only the northern half of the country they’d defeated. The reasons, in the words of one Senator Calhoun, Democrat of South Carolina, were straightforward:
To incorporate Mexico would be the very first instance of the kind of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians . . . I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race. The great misfortunes of Spanish America are to be traced to the fatal error of placing these colored races on an equality with the white race.
