Chapter 39

Jorge Guerrillero and Maria Velazquez were still trying to come to grips with Mexico's huge problems that they had inherited two weeks earlier when they had ousted the old corrupt P.R.I. government. The economy was at a near standstill. Despite Jorge's calls for fair trials for the corrupt officials from the old regime, summary executions became the norm, despite his condemnation of such actions. Human rights groups that had been observing the Mexican situation became more and more horrified as the bloodlust of those who had suffered under the old regime increased. Jorge and Maria feared that the revolution was rapidly getting out of control.

One of Jorge's first acts as the new Mexican leader was to re institute government price supports for food to make it more affordable for the poor. The problem was that a large number of the farmers and small food vendors were among the most ardent supporters of the revolution and many of them had formed into roving revolutionary vigilante squads searching small towns and the countryside for officials and others who benefited from the old regime. As a result, food shortages soon began to occur in the cities, which led to increased unrest from the people there. Soon, revolutionary vigilantes began roaming the cities looking for targets. And the food shortages got worse.

Jorge's government began working on the details of land reform, starting with the huge estates that had belonged to high officials in the previous government who were either dead or had fled the country. The new government interpreted the flight of any former officials as an automatic guilty plea to obtaining their property through illegal means. This meant that these estates were soon divided among the peasants who had either toiled on them or had lived nearby.

After these first estates were redistributed, the government then turned to other large landowners and began confiscating their property. The burden of proof was on the landowner to prove that he or she had not obtained their property or their wealth through illegitimate means. The revolutionary courts that held these trials were heavily stacked against anyone with a fairly large amount of wealth or any ties at all to the old regime. What became normal procedure at these "trials" was that the landowner would come into the court, show documentation that they had earned their wealth legitimately, the judge would declare these documents fraudulent or forgeries, and would then find against the landowner. If the landowner complained about injustice, he would often then be held for an immediate trial for disagreeing with the revolution, would be convicted, would be taken out to the town square, where he would then be summarily executed.

After word of these trials began to circulate, the few remaining large landowners fled to Guatemala, and from there to the United States, where they tried to start a new life. This flight of some of their most talented business people would continue to hurt Mexico for decades.

Maria had mixed feelings about what they were doing. It had felt good to tell the I.M.F. to go fuck themselves, but that action had some very serious consequences for the new Mexican government too. First, foreign investment, which had increased under the Salinas administration and the first part of his successor's, had slowed in the past two years as the world economy continued to worsen. Now, with the default, foreign investment had dried up completely. Foreign trade came to a complete halt because most countries had frozen any Mexican assets pending the settlement of any claims against the government. Mexican companies that imported components to be assembled and then exported as finished products began to close due to a lack of parts being imported into the country. These companies tried to line up local manufacturers, but in many cases, they didn't have the machinery or trained personnel to run them and were unable to produce the needed goods in the quantities needed.

A depressed and exhausted Jorge was discussing their predicament with Maria over dinner.

"I just don't know what we can do, Maria. Everyday, the situation just seems to get worse. The whole revolution seems to be getting out of our control. I'm supposed to be the leader of this country, but I feel as if I'm being dragged along by forces I can't contain. I now know how Gorbachev felt when the forces he unleashed under Perestroika became much more than he could handle and swept him completely in their wake. I fear that the same thing is happening to us here. I feel like we're downstream from a large dam that has just burst and has released this huge lake that had been stopped up behind it for years and is devastating everything in its wake. Whether we will be drowned in it or just deposited somewhere downstream, I just do not know what we can do."

"I don't either. I've been thinking about it quite a bit myself. I knew that when we defaulted, we would face some serious consequences, but I didn't think it would be this bad or happen this quickly. I also thought people would be more restrained than they have been. We need to try to come up with a way to try to calm the people and to get them working together again. The problem is how do we get the genie back in the bottle?"

"I don't know," replied Jorge with a grim smile on his face. "I've never been able to get a genie into a bottle."

"I haven't either, but we have to see if we can figure out how it can be done."

"Maybe we can ask for our three wishes, and then see if the genie will voluntarily go back in his bottle," Jorge said facetiously.

"Somehow I don't think that will work," answered Maria. "Hey, I've got an idea!"

"What!?"

"Maybe we can appeal to their nationalism, their pride in being Mexicans."

"That's a good idea. Explain to the people how their actions are hurting the revolution."