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April 23, 2007
La Peregrina
(a story, as it was told to me by a Meridian)
Alma Reed, an American journalist, gazed into the intense green eyes of the man who sat opposite. She was a 33-year old tough investigative writer who could hold her own in a man’s world; and he, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, was the charismatic new revolutionary governor of the Yucatan. The electrical spark between them could have lit the street lamps of Merida. The adventuresome Alma was in the Yucatan on assignment for the New York Times to cover the Carnegie Institute archaeological study of the ruins at Chichen Itza. Yet the social reforms ushered in by the new Governor Carrillo piqued her reporter’s sense for news. The Mexican Revolution had ended only three years before and Carrillo was making an impressive name for himself as a reformer.
There were many facets to Felipe Carrillo as there were to Alma Reed and both were intrigued by each other’s intellect. He claimed to be a descendant of the Mayapan king who drove the Itzas from Chichen 700 years before. Under his new liberal leadership, he gave women the right to vote, organized Feminist Leagues, and placed women in governmental posts. He legalized birth control and established the first family planning clinics in the Americas. He supported land reform by forming edijos, communal farming groups. He built schools and roads and encouraged cottage industries for the poor. Most memorably, however, he was a vocal proponent of civil rights for the Maya.
She was an accomplished writer, strong willed, intelligent and very beautiful. At five feet seven, she towered over the Maya men and women among whom she and Felipe walked. When she returned to the Gran Hotel in Merida after that first meeting, she wrote in her diary: “He is the miracle of goodness and beauty.”
They both knew it was love at first sight, but Carrillo was married, with grown children. Nevertheless, the two spend every available minute together. Like a modern Romeo and Juliet, they stood watching while Carnegie archaeologists poked around the breathtaking ruins of Chichen Itza, when Alma asked, “Why did they build this great city—this fantastic city—only to desert it?”
“Perhaps one day you, little peregrine, will discover the answer to that riddle,” he replied.
“Peregrina?”
“Pilgrim—is that not what you are?—a wanderer who will all too soon return to your own far off land.”
After a brief intense affair, in which the two made no secret of their love for each other, Alma returned to New York with a ground breaking story about American Edward Thompson’s pillage of Maya artifacts from the Sacred Cenote at Chichen, which Harvard University had cached in their Peabody Museum. Her revelations allowed the Mexican government to reclaim some of the stolen treasures—though not until 1958. They are now on display in Mexico City, as well as the Peabody.
Alma’s stories were so insightful that The Times decided to make her “their woman in Mexico.” Once she returned to Merida, Felipe swept her away again when he visited with the news that he had made divorce legal in the Yucatan and had become the first to make use of it. He asked her to marry him and surprised her with a love song, La Peregrina, written and composed at his request Its lyrical melody and heartfelt words remain popular today in Merida and through all of Mexico. He also bestowed on her a Mayan name, “Pixan-Halal.” Pixan means soul and Halal is the word for a water reed.
La Peregrina, The Ballad of Alma Reed
Wanderer of the clear and divine eyes,
And cheeks aflame with the redness of the sky,
Little woman of the red lips,
And hair as radiant as the sun,
Traveler who left your own scenes—the fir trees and the snow,
the virginal snow—and came to find refuge in the palm groves,
Under the sky of my land,
My tropic land, The little singing birds of my fields,
Offer their voices in singing to you—And they look at you,
And the flowers of perfumed nectars
Caress you and kiss you on lips and temples.
When you leave my palm groves and my land,
Traveler of the enchanting face,
Don’t forget, don’t forget, my land.
Don’t forget, don’t forget, my love.
Their love for one another was so strong that it forever changed their lives. In October, Alma returned to her native San Francisco to prepare for their wedding in January 1924. But a power struggle on the federal level gave the powerful hacienda interests, who had bridled under Carrillo’s reforms, a chance to get rid of him. Late in 1923, Mexico and the Yucatan were plunged into revolutionary bloodbath. Carrillo, three of his brothers, and six lieutenants were arrested and imprisoned. His pleas for the lives of his brothers and his friends were ignored. On the morning of Jan. 3, 1924, he and his party were marched to the Cemesterio General in Merida and lined up against a high stone wall. Felipe gave one of the nervous soldiers the ring that was to be Alma’s wedding band. “Please see that Pixan-Halal gets it,” he asked.
The first volley from the firing squad hit the wall above their heads. The soldiers refused to kill the brave governor who had acquired the nickname of the “Abraham Lincoln of Mexico” for what he had done to free the Maya from virtual slavery. Incensed, the infamous military commander, Colonel Ricardo Braco, had the firing squad shot by other solders before executing Carrillo, his brothers, and their supporters.
Felipe’s grave, near the wall that still bears the bullet holes, is a large crescent moon-shaped family monument in the crowded cemetery. Poignantly, only a few feet away, under the quiet shade of the cedars and Lebanon pine, the grave containing Alma Reed’s ashes watches over the man whom she remained in love with until her death at age 77 in 1966. Sometimes, in the early evening, visitors to Merida claim they hear the faint strains of La Peregrina on the warm breeze.
Posted by jlsumich at April 23, 2007 11:53 AM