Manuel Ramos - King of the Chicanos

On another dry, hot summer day in the last year of another century, Pancho Arango stood in line by an open casket in a packed, abbreviated version of a church in northern New Mexico. The good and religious people of Las Trampas had resurrected San Jos de Gracia from ruin. They had patched the crumbling adobe, reinforced the ceiling and walls, and painstak ingly applied a thick coat of sealant to the wooden floor that covered graves dating from the eighteenth century. Although he tried to lose himself in the heavenly mythology of the tor pid funeral mass and the somber throng of mourners, he found himself reflecting on the secular life and times of a man he had loved and hated, feared and pitied.

He had promised himself that he would not attend the funeral of Ramn Hidalgo. The promise did him no good.He failed in the same way that he failed when he had tried to erase the part Hidalgo had played in his life. When the time came, Arango broke the promise without understanding what it meant. He had to be present when Hidalgo received his peace and his place in history and thus he broke his promise without hesitation, without calculating what the cost would be, what the price for attendance had to be.

The sunburned farmer ahead of Arango in the viewing line wore an ill-fitting black suit that exposed frayed cuffs of a shirt that once had been blazing white and an inch-and-a-half of gray socks that once had been midnight black. The mans bushy, gray eyebrows, full head of gray hair that hung over the frazzled shirt collar, and the glassy, yellow eyes shielded his identity for several minutes, but just as he moved away from the coffin Arango recognized the scarthe mark of the man who had stood next to him while policemen jabbed heavy metal batons at both of them, who had run with Arango when an errant missile of tear gas landed at their feet and exploded in the faces of the policemen.

Hidalgos dark, waxen face, surrounded by silk and velvet,glowed with serenity. Arangos dulled senses strained against the uneasy peace that tried to overwhelm him.The inert body in the lustrous coffin, the deep-eyed, gravely-voiced priest, the somber,medieval church, the tense mourners: these images served their orchestrated purpose and what should have been a loud, wild celebration of a wild, demanding life was only another church funeral, one more procession of grief and prayer and fear. The fiery, glowing eyes were closed and the half-smile beneath the thin mustache betrayed the irony that even in death Hidalgo understood.

Arango found his way to a pew and sat on the hard wooden seat. Summer burned the wild flowers and weeds and heated the earth but inside the cool air of the adobe building comforted all.A panel of brightly colored, vividly detailed retablos framed the altar. San Isidro smiled ambiguously as a sweating angel plowed his fields. San Francisco stared off to the distant right, a skull in the background. San Miguel brandished a sword that dripped blood. The black San Martn de Porres lovingly cradled the Christ child, and The Little Flower clutched her heart and cried the tears of martyrdom for those who refused to see the beauty and power of the one true God.