Xtabentún: A Novel of Yucatan

Story

Xtabentum: A Novel of Yucatan is a story of two young women set in the years following the Mexican Revolution in Mérida, Yucatán, one of the wealthiest cities in the world at the time. Amanda Diaz is from the “divine caste”, a small group of families of European descent who dominate the politics and economy of the region. Carmen, Amanda’s lifelong friend, is from the opposite end of the social spectrum, a Mayan Indian who is the daughter of one of the Diaz family servants. Against the true historical background of rebellion and assassination in the unstable country, the whipping of Carmen by a Diaz neighbor exposes the sheltered existence of the two women and drives them apart. The story follows Amanda through her horror at the social injustice of the two-class Mexico to the sacrifices she makes in the name of friendship. Parts of the story take place in modern times, where the discovery of an old birth certificate sets Amanda’s granddaughter in search of a secret about her father’s birth. Her search, told in the first person, is blended with a third-person account of the lives of Amanda and her contemporaries in the 1920s.

Plot summary

After rushing from Chicago to Mexico City to say goodbye to her dying grandmother, Rosa discovers documents revealing a family secret: her father is not actually the son of the man Rosa grew up knowing as her grandfather. This discovery sets Rosa on a quest to understand the early life of her grandmother, Amanda Diaz.

Amanda grows up in Mérida, Yucatan during the years of the Mexican Revolution, as the country struggles to throw off centuries of repression of indigenous people by their masters, who are of European descent. Amanda is part of the “divine caste”, but her troubled mother ignores her from the time of her birth and Amanda grows up under the care of her Mayan Indian nurse JOVITA and Jovita’s daughter CACHO, who is the same age as Amanda and her best friend. As the girls become young women, they begin to move in circles that include FELIPE CARRILLO PUERTO, the progressive governor of Yucatan, his fiancée ALMA REED (both true historical figures), and CARLOS ANCONA, a journalist who chronicled the Revolution at the side of Pancho Villa but now seeks a more peaceful life working for his friend Felipe back in his native Mérida. Amanda’s family pictures Carlos as a suitor for their daughter.
Just as a coup topples Felipe’s government and leads to the arrest of the governor and his family, a Diaz neighbor whips Cacho almost to the point of death. After the culprit turns up murdered the next day, Carlos confesses to killing her and is taken to the same jail where Felipe is held. Amanda is convinced that Carlos’ confession is a ruse to get near Felipe.
Carlos is desperate to find a way to help Felipe. He befriends an old jailer who is sympathetic to Felipe’s politics, and together they plot an escape using a Mayan herb that will induce sleep in the guards. One night, Carlos hears his cell door unlocked and follows a path to freedom through a series of open doors. But Felipe is not part of the escape, and is executed along with his brothers and closest advisors.
During the weeks that Carlos is in jail, Amanda nurses Cacho back to health. But their relationship has changed; for the first time, Cacho has shared the indignities suffered by her people and she withdraws from the Diaz family. One morning, Cacho is gone, and Amanda learns from Jovita that Cacho has left for the United States to join her brother.
As Amanda suffers both the loss of her best friend and disillusionment with her own class, she discovers that it has been her mother, not Jovita, who has left a small bunch of xtabentum flowers outside her door every morning for as long as she can remember. Trying to reconcile this act of love with the lack of affection she has endured her entire life, she confronts her father for the truth about her mother’s apparent madness. She hears a story of how her mother’s brothers, who ran large henequen haciendas, were hacked to death with machetes for trying to change the status quo and improve conditions for indigenous workers. Amanda’s mother held the key to their success in this endeavor, but was unable to help her brothers because of her pregnancy. She learned of their deaths just as she went into labor with Amanda, and now she cannot look at Amanda without feeling the guilt of her brothers’ deaths.

Amanda feels so much a victim of the circumstances that surround her that she resolves to take control of her life. Higher education is not open to women in Mexico, so she decides to enroll in college in the United States, and while there find and reconcile with Cacho. With the blessing of her father, she boards a ship bound for New York and a new life. On board, she meets and falls in love with ALBERTO MOLINA, a civil engineer traveling to the United States to further his craft. They enjoy a brief romance, but part ways in New York, vowing to stay in touch and meet again.

Through mutual friends, Amanda locates Cacho and travels to Chicago to see her. She finds Cacho nine months pregnant, suffering from tuberculosis, and living with a co-worker and the co-worker’s brother. The friends reconcile, Cacho’s son is born, and Amanda promises to care for the child if Cacho dies from her disease. As her condition deteriorates, Cacho tells Amanda for the first time about her relationship with Carlos and that it is true that Carlos killed the neighbor who had whipped Cacho. She also discloses how she had bribed a guard at the jail, with both money and other favors, to secure Carlos’ escape. Cacho dies without knowing if her baby is the son of Carlos or some unnamed guard. Amanda claims the baby as her own, obtains a birth certificate with false information, and prepares to return to Mérida.

After learning enough of this story to think that Amanda and Carlos are her true grandparents, Rosa discovers that Carlos is still alive and living in Mexico City. She arranges to meet him under false pretenses. Carlos recognizes her family name and immediately begins to ask questions about her grandmother. He tells Rosa his story about his love for Cacho, his escape from jail, and his travel to Chicago to see Cacho, only to see her pregnant and living with another man. Before he can confront Cacho, Carlos is arrested as a potential subversive, held in jail for several months, and deported to Mexico. When Rosa shows Carlos the birth certificate she had found among her Amanda’s possessions, they both realize that Carlos may be Rosa’s grandfather, but Amanda may not be her grandmother.
They decide that they have learned enough, and the Molina family welcomes Carlos as its newest member. For the first time, Rosa sees her father and Carlos Ancona together, notes how similar their eyes are, and recalls an expression her grandmother had for those blue eyes: “eyes like the Caribbean Sea.”

Historical note

The characters Felipe Carrillo Puerto and Alma Reed are true historical figures. Carrillo Puerto was a progressive governor of Yucatan and is still honored by the indigenous people of the region. His downfall and death were as depicted in Xtabentum. Alma Reed was famous in her own right; she campaigned successfully as a journalist against the death penalty for minors in California and worked tirelessly for the restoration to Mexico of Mayan relics. While Carlos Ancona is fictional, his father Eligio Ancona and his brother Antonio Ancona are historical figures, and are the great-great-grandfather and great-grandfather, respectively, of author Rosa Hugener. Some of Carlos Ancona’s background, including being the personal journalist of Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution, was actually lived by Antonio Ancona and passed as family lore to his descendants. The book has Maya numerals at the beginning of the chapters.