An Excerpt From The Lieutenant of San Porfirio By Joel D.

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Young Machado had been born in a rural village in the interior of Venezuela, on the great plains from which meat was exported to consumer nations across the oceans. His father had been a simple peasant who worked on the finca owned by a white family descended from the colonial conquerors. Theyd held the land in perpetuity for over three hundred years, ever since they had received it as a reward for some forgotten act performed for the Spanish monarchy. The finca consisted of over thirty thousand hectares, which were sub-divided among a few hundred families who held and worked the land. For this honor, they paid huge percentages of their yearly earningsfor protection, the landowners had always said, but Machado had never seen any protection and never understood what they were to be protected from. They had nothing that even poor thieves would want. The Machado family home had been built with love and care by his father and older brothers. It had mud walls and a dirt floor that his mother constantly swept, hunched over with her old broom made of branches and the long, strong grass that grew prolifically in the surrounding marshes. In her futile attempt to keep a well-ordered house for her family, she harvested the grass as often as possible, being careful to avoid the huge old anaconda that lived in the deep pool at the end of the narrow path toward their garden. The Machado family plot had been given to them as a wedding gift from the overseer who had taken it from another family when the father had become sick and unable to work the land. In the house were two large rooms. One was the living room, where the family of seven spent most of their timewhen they were not in the fields or with the cows, of course. The second room was for sleeping. Machado recalled with nostalgia the feeling of warmth and companionship as they spread out together on the hard floor covered by blankets for their short nights sleep. On the walls of the living area were old posters of the Virgin Mary and Jesusthe European version portraying them as blond, blue-eyed Caucasians. Given as a Christmas present by the landowner family, they served to remind the peasants of the true natureand raceof the Holy Family. The room also contained some rough furniture made by hand by the elder Machado. These consisted of a few chairs, a table, and a bookshelf to hold the five- or six-book library theyd carefully collected over the decades. The roof was made of sheets of zinc, a thin metal that was fantastically loud during the long, powerful rainstorms that fell on the plains. During these downpours they would huddle together, using their two buckets to collect the rainwater that flowed freely from the holes in the roof that the elder Machado could never afford to fix. The whole house smelled musty, like the odor of an early mountain morning earthy and clean. The kitchen, where Seora Machado spent most of her time, was out back behind the house.

In the late afternoons, when he was back from helping his father and brothers, the young Juan Marco frequently listened to the sizzling of his mothers cooking as she prepared inexpensive but nourishing meals assembled mostly from ingredients grown on the land by their own hands. Very soon we will get lucky. We will have a crack season when we birth enough cattle and harvest enough crops, and Ill buy a The elder Machados planning would be interrupted by a bout of coughing, the early signs of the tuberculosis that, untreated, would seal his fate. Eeeghem, well buy a small place in town. Well even get a small TV and a car. Those will be the days, going together to get a cold cerveza, smelling the tangy sweetness and toasting to our freedom He would turn and look toward the powerful mountains in the distance, eyes glazing over as he assumed the faraway gaze of memory mingled with hope and salted with despair. A much younger Juan Marco had cherished those moments when his family was seated together on the porch in the homemade chairs and looking across the massive plains toward the towering Andesthis was his home. A mist rose from the plains. Relieved as another scorching equatorial day released its hold on the land, the wild animals moved about more freely and openly. The mountains turned slowly red, then purple. The snow caps turned a fluorescent pink before the small pinpricks of stars came out, covering the sky in a blanket of shining diamonds. They would smoke unfiltered, hand-rolled cigarettes from tobacco grown in their little garden out by the kitchen. The sweet, pungent smell took them together to a different place. Here he comes. Often a mouse or a rabbit would run breathlessly through the compound. Hes only a few minutes away, the meadow creatures would say to Juan Marco, solidarity with their co-inhabitants of the land overcoming their natural timidity at talking to humans. They were, naturally, referring to Enrique, the overseerwhom they hated as much as did the peasants, for his cruel traps placed to catch unwitting rodents for his evening stew. There you are, lazing around again. I pay you too much. Too often, their simple camaraderie was interrupted by the dreaded snarling voice of the landowners primary enforcer. Enrique lived in the small village at the center of the finca. Hed been hired by the landowners to manage the finca and all his peasants, officially making sure that they were paid. But more importantly, he and they knew, though it was never formally written, that his primary job was to make sure that the peasants were registering each calf born and each kilo of crop harvestedprotecting the compounding wealth of the landowners. Machado remembered Enrique as a brutal, hard, dark man with thick black hair and a thick black beard whose own parents had been peasants but who had curried favor with the landowner family through his excessive loyalty tinged with fanaticism and his unjust sense of justice. He often went beyond the call of duty, making a habit of going around to each of the peasants households and demanding an increased share of their cropsfor himself, naturallyand oft-times even a private moment with one of the peasants daughters in exchange for giving a good report back to the landowners in the capital. Ive come to inspect your finca. Enrique never cared at what time he came to the Machado home. But that smells good. I think Ill join you for dinner first.

He didnt care that there was barely enough food to feed the large family, either. Then we can go look for the cattle. I heard, of course, that you have some new ones. I wanna make sure youre branding them correctly. Enrique stormed past them into the hut. Young Juan Marco Machado had hated Enrique, and his hatred extended out to the landowners and beyond, to all those unseen but complicit in his familys misery.