It was said
by the hacienda empresarios of old
that, were a peasant to possess a fish hook,
a shotgun,
and a cassava,
they would be dispelled from their labors,
and the haciendas would wither and recede
into the chaparral.

Unconscionable, of course, to the empresarios;
so what to do?
Well, what boundless forms of hobbling
have been shown to exist
at the confluence of depravity
and greed?
It has been, and continues to be,
a matter of creative ambition.

And oh, how creative they were.
One need only gaze
upon the unfurling canvas of history
to know as much;
to see the violent shades of ochre—
blood and bile and dirt—
that tell a story
written in horrid register—
a story that remains unfinished.

The heart of this story
is a magic show; a slight of hand.
Tout the coruscating luster
of the plow, of its promise
and its civility.
The abundance of order!
Eat well, but eat only this;
do not look there, look here;
because, tada—
What you seek no longer exists.
I am the father, and you dine
at my table.

But the table is a pot.
And the pot is set,
imperceptibly,
to a slow boil,
and that old saying shows itself
in a thousand ways
across a thousand shores.
And the peasants and the indígena,
cast from their kivas
into the subaltern world,
grasp at memories
that evaporate above them
into a rapidly enveloping dark.

This is how it is.
Because history is a march
through a vast and formless desert,
and we favor one foot over the other,
and by some strange carceral force
we walk ourselves in circles, trapped
in patterns
of our own making.

It is at the terminus of this great circuit
where the empresarios look upon
their haciendas
and find them made anew—
forged, now, from glass and steel,
far from the abiding presence
of the chaparral.

But distance is only an illusion,
and these usurpers
wielding their great siphons
dangle the promise of abundance
from up high in their aeries;
a paternal gesture, of wicked-kind.
Shush, now—father knows best.

And yet, within this infantilizing,
obscured in metaphor,
lies another truth, well-known
and enduring—
that it is a child’s obligation
to disobey its makers.

So while the empresarios clink their glasses
in their regnant certitude,
they do not see the secreting away
of fragments of memory,
lying in wait, coiled, and steady:
A seed of cassava;
a hook made of bone;
a gun, hidden in the brush,
bundled, known to few.
A reckoning
in three parts.

And the children wait;
the indígena organize;
the peasants bury the seed.
And memory is made manifest,
the circle is broken,
and the desert blooms
anew.