Books: Death of a Cacique

• Share

THE DISOBEDIENT SON (274 pp.)—François Clément—Little, Brown ($3.50).

There is a strong reciprocal attraction between the primitive and the civilized. Primitive man is hopelessly fascinated by the bright trinkets of civilization; civilized man is endlessly curious about the murky depths of the primitive mind.

This first novel is an attempt to get inside the mind of Juanito, an illiterate village Indian from the mountains of Mexico. Every tourist there has seen his like: thin-headed, with a mop of coarse black hair, large-eyed, flat-nosed, full-lipped, looking with impassive dignity from beneath a frayed straw hat. Juanito is the stuff of revolutions, but his private revolutions fail, and he has learned only one thing in life: how to die well.

A series of accidents propel Juanito from Naolinco, his native village, into the outside world. He becomes a fisherman, a night clerk in a hotel, a hired pistolero, and finally returns home to take over Naolinco as its all-powerful cacique, or village chief. He goes from faded canvas pants to the garish socks, yellow shoes, felt hat and necktie that for him are the power symbols of the ruling señores. Juanito kills his first man from passion, his second for self-preservation, his third and fourth from pride. Yet when a lethargic justice at last executes him, it is for the wrong reason.

As drawn by Author Clément, a Frenchman who has lived in Mexico and Colombia, Juanito has animal strength and animal cunning. In a time of trouble he might have become another Pancho Villa. In a time of peace he is simply an anachronism, tolerated by the señores because he keeps his village quiet, but readily expendable when he grows too big and too troublesome. Sitting in his death cell, Juanito reflects that of all his crimes the most serious was the driving of the schoolteacher from Naolinco. Too late he recognizes that "the schoolmaster had been right—the señores had won because they were educated."