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• seven  “Not a Stone upon a Stone” N o quedará piedra sobre piedra” (Not a stone will be left upon a stone).This was the anathema that the bishopwas supposed to have pronounced about Guerrero some one hundred years before, and in 1950 it was coming to pass.To coincidewith the bicentennial of its founding, Guerrero was to be destroyed by water, as decreed from above—not heaven but the national capitals of Washington and Mexico City. After twenty years of talks between Mexico and the United States, a treaty had been concluded between the two countries, providing for the construction of several dams on the Rio Grande.The first of thesewas to be constructed near Guerrero. Those cheering on the project—especially the commercial farmers in the Lower Rio Grande Valley—saw great benefits resulting from the dam, primarily expanded irrigation, flood control, and hydroelectric power. However, collateral damage would also result from the project, such as the flooding of thousands of acres of agricultural land and the destruction of several communities on both sides of the river, the largest and oldest of which was Guerrero. Naturally, those who would lose their property and their way of life saw little benefit in damming the river, but the public debate was couched in terms of progress prevailing over backwardness, and progress won. In 1950, as the cataclysm approached, the dire prophecy of the bishop reverberated whenever guerrerenses speculated fearfully about their future. No one knew for certain who had uttered the fateful words, and two different versions—perhaps both apocryphal—of the story still survive . One is related by Lott and Martínez in The Kingdom of Zapata and makes no mention of a bishop. The authors attribute the prophecy to a newspaper editor in nineteenth-century Guerrero who, “disgusted with “ • 158  From the Republic of the Rio Grande the indifference of the people[,] . . . suddenly decided that he had had enough” and, locking up his shop, walked out of it and never went back. “Asked why, he replied that one of these days a town like that would just fold up and die” (145). The second version is more dramatic and more memorable. Lilia Treviño Martínez and Eduardo Treviño de León, in their history of the two Guerreros (the old and the new), recount that in 1862 a Catholic bishop visited Guerrero, just as the anticlerical provisions of the Leyes de Reforma (Reform Laws) promulgated by Juárez were causing friction between church and government officials. During this visit, the bishop took offense at the treatment he received from the local authorities, and from the pulpit of the church the prelate fulminated against Guerrero: “In a town such as this, not a stone shall be left upon a stone” (70–71). Prophecy or curse, the bishop’s words found their mark and remained in the collective memory of Guerrero because Guerrero was, indeed, a city made of stone—of the distinctive sandstone that lined the banks of its river, the Salado, which emptied into the Río Bravo/Grande. Its houses were built of blocks quarried from the riverbanks, and its church—Nuestra Señora del Refugio—from a dedicated quarry known as las piedras de la Virgen. The settlers who followed Don Vicente Guerra from Coahuila and Nuevo León to found Revilla (Guerrero’s original name) clearly did not immediately build stone houses, which was just as well since they had to move three times (each time to higher ground) between 1750 and 1754. Since they had to build quickly, the first shelters they made were jacales, huts made of logs and mud with thatched roofs. The humbleness of these early abodes undoubtedly also reflected the absence of government financial aid in the founding of Revilla, the cost being borne solely by Don Vicente Guerra and the settlers. These first structures were haphazard in location, as well as construction , according to Tienda de Cuervo’s inspection of Revilla in 1757 (as cited by Eugene George), and were not arranged around the customary plaza but were scattered over broad areas, “typical of communities devoted to ranching” (George 24). However, once Revilla was located where it remained for two hundred years, the settlers built fortress homes that protected them not only from the elements but also from their enemies, los indios bárbaros, the nomadic tribes that raided as far south as the environs of Monterrey. George describes these permanent constructions as fortified stone structures, windowless...

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