Martin Pale Santiz Rules January 22, 2022
News was slow to travel that Martin Pale Santiz was released from jail. The kingpin of Los Motonetos and its bogus umbrella organization, COMACH, was set free on the very same night his gang closed the city with armed roadblocks, as per their explicit demands. For a while, I was hopeful that local resistance to this indigenous mafia was responsible for our liberation, or perhaps the civil authorities, but it turns out that the police blinked and the bad guys won again. The mass extortions will go on, and so on.
Meanwhile, assaults on foreigners continue. Yesse’s partner, a Basque traveler, was mugged a few nights ago and struck with a metal pipe near his home on the north side. His head required several stitches, but he never lost consciousness and recalls vividly that his assailants were Motonetos bikers. Yesse and her partner own Mayahuel Pulqueria, but they are ready to give up the business, which serves as a haven for so many newcomers of alternative lifestyles. This makes the place a target. At a recent music event, the guest DJ was allegedly drugged so that his electronic equipment could be stolen. For Yesse and her partner, the nightlife of San Cristobal has just become too dangerous. Martin Pale Santiz still rules.
Fortunately, the cold keeps me home on most nights. Even so, I do not feel particularly targeted by these wayward Tzotzil youth when I find myself out and about, even when they ride by me. They are rarely shy about announcing their presence on their red-and-black machines, old-school walkie-talkies dangling from chest straps. They must only feel emboldened by the release of their leader.
The gangsters seem most provoked by outsiders acting rudely, although Yesse’s Basque partner was apparently minding his own business before his attack. More commonly, the victim is someone perceived to be dressing or behaving in a provocative manner; in short, anyone who is expressly different, particularly if they act like they want to change the world. San Cristobal is full of people like that, although I, as an undercover operative, am not one of them. My role is that of a potted plant in sneakers.
Whatever change the barefooted immigrants seek is certainly not what most Chiapanecos have in mind. Practices like “quantum hypnosis” and “sound healing” are especially tone-deaf in a place faced with ongoing human rights violations, pervasive poverty, and corruption on a scale inconsistent with democratic rule. In this sense, Los Motonetos might come to believe that theirs is a righteous and heroic criminality—less Scarface, more Batman. This is the other face of the revolutionary movement, evoking not Zapata but Pancho Villa and his goons.
That said, I have met no one who truly believes the Motonetos are anything other than a bunch of cocky hoodlums. Most avoid the threat by staying close to the Andadores in the late hours, where motorcycles are not allowed. Mayahuel is less than two blocks from one of these Andadores, at Real de Guadalupe, yet even this is apparently within the danger zone. In such a tense climate, many start to think during the night that they are hearing gunfire mixed with the regular explosions, especially if a series of pops seems to be moving, as if the source were on wheels. I am skeptical of these supposed gunshots in the night, however. If there is ever a firefight downtown, I expect police sirens to follow, however late or ineffectual.
For anyone interested in making the biopic of the notorious Martin Pale Santiz, a car chase through downtown San Cristobal would be a cinematic wonder, although someone is liable to get quickly T-boned on one of the many blind intersections, without a single traffic light or even a yield sign—as well as sidewalks as tight as balance-beams, cliff-like curbs, no lights, reckless cabdrivers, loose dogs, late-night bicycle venders, reveling hipsters, all on narrow cobblestone lanes pinched with parked cars, surrounded by a filthy moat.
It is understandable that movie-goers may wonder where this mad chase leads. This is when the deranged tribe from San Juan Chamula shows up, on red and black motorcycles, walkie-talkies drawn.