Free Mexico City Noir by Paco Ignacio Taibo II Page B

But our mamacita covered her face with her hands and began to tremble like a puppet with Huntington’s disease; she ran and locked herself in her bedroom.
    On Good Friday the news was no less bloody. Every year from time immemorial, the Ixtapalapa neighborhood commemorates the Seven Mysteries of the Crucifixion of Jesus with a festival that draws thousands of people from places like Azcapotzalco and Xochimilco, so they can experience “live and in person”—as my Grandmother Eufrásica used to say—“the passion of Christ and all the chingaderas those damned Jews did to him.” So this festival began like every other, except that the compadritos from the Brotherhood of the Redeemer from over in Milpa Alta, wearing the appropriate attire to represent centurions and Roman soldiers, got drunk early and, with the pretext that Pontius Pilate was “a degenerate puto who was constantly sticking his hand between people’s legs,” decided to give him a good thrashing, beating him with fists, swords, and spears, which caught the Pharisees, the Mary Magdalenes who accompanied Christ, and the multitude of gentile onlookers on Calvary off guard and made it impossible for them to get away.
    “The Romans are being total jerks,” we heard Tomás Perrín, the newsreader, announce on station XEW, the one our mother used to turn to every night to hear the radionovelas and her favorite program, the Crazy Monk. “They’re throwing punches left and right. They already beat Pontius Pilate to a pulp and now—what monsters!—they’re striking Barabbas with their wooden swords …”
    Later, the newsreader had to yell so that he could be heard over the noise of the firecrackers and the howls of the mob, but he continued narrating how the Romans of Milpa Alta made mincemeat out of Dimas and Gestas, the thieves, and how they tore the cheeks of the poor man playing Christ with the thorns of his own crown, and how this had caused everyone who could to flee and take refuge in the cellar over at Samsom’s Cures.
    Then the newsreader screamed: “Oh, they’ve broken my nose and beat the crap outta me!” It seemed they’d snatched the microphone from him; all we could hear was chaos—whistles and sirens indicating the presence of the cops who’d arrived to calm the rabble and send the pranksters to jail.
    We were all excited by what we’d heard. But my brothers couldn’t disguise their disgust at the Romans’ transgression. My sisters, contrite and weepy, questioned the heresy and crossed themselves, sure of the punishment waiting for them in the flames of hell. Only our father smiled, with a manic, macabre look, his eyes bright, his brows furrowed, and he announced a decision that had been long in coming and that, to our shame and pain, he would act out the following day.
    “It smells of the blessed blood of revenge!” he said with an expression that made my mother shiver. He ignored her, turning to his sons. “Come with me, boys. We still have much work to do.”
    So, without a word, we followed him to a small shed located in a corner of the yard. There, Don Domitilo Chimal had installed a workshop to make huge dummies, which we called Judases, and which, according to our traditions, are exhibited and burned on the streets of Tacuba every year on Saturday during Holy Week.
    The workshop was a mess. There were twigs and reeds all over the place, buckets of glue, old newspapers, pieces of cardboard, scraps of paper, coils, tins filled with brilliant colors of paint, and, leaning against a stone wall to avoid an explosion or devastating fire, firecrackers and rockets in many sizes whose wicks were covered with pieces of foil that came from the gum that the kids in our neighborhood used to chew.
    My father had already hung some of the enormous Judases from wires and cords that stretched across the shed, including ones representing Miguel Alemán, president of Mexico, and several of his henchmen, such as Ernesto Uruchurto and the hated