Egon Erwin Kisch, the Raging Reporter: A Bio-Anthology

An Indian Village under the Star of David

An Indian Village under the ~tar ofDavid The night was pitch dark and on the cool side when I got up this morning at seven sharp in order to be in Venta Prieta. I had already heard something about this village and its Jewish inhabitants in Mexico City, but Ihad no idea where it was and had also forgotten its name. Then the day before yesterday I happened to be riding toward Pachuca , the silver city, when some eighty-three kilometers from the capital I came across a sign that read "Venta Prieta." Wasn't this the name? I got out and uncertainly asked about the Jews. The person I asked replied, pointing: "The caballista over there is one of them." The caballist? As far as the eye could see there was no one around who could be taken for an authority on the Cabbala, an interpreter ofnumbers and signs. Only a peasant who was dismounting quite unmystically from ahorse. Then it dawned on me: horse in Spanish is caballo; hence a caballista would be a rider. I went up to him, asked what I wanted to know, and he answered: There is a service every Saturday at seven in the morning. Seven is hardly a pleasant hour. But what was there to do? So Ijumped from the warm feathers of Pachuca in the gray of dawn in order to greet the cool Sabbath. I must confess I was ready for something grotesque, and was in· a bit of an ironic frame of mind. An old song was running through my head that had been popular in the days ofharmless dialect humor. All decked out in Indian feathers and Apache war paint, but with the side curls of an orthodox Egon Erwin Kilch, the Raging Reporter Jew from East Europe and in the prayer shawl worn in the synagogue, the Viennese comic Eisenbach leaped onto the stage and belted out: Mein Vater war ein klaaner Jtidischer Indianer, Meine Mutter, tief in Texas drin, War eine koschere Ganslerin ... (My father was a lit-tIe I Jewish Indian; I My mother, deep in the heart ofTexas, I Raised kosher geese ...) I got to Venta Prieta too early. Some Indians or Mestizos, in no way distinguishable from other Indians or Mestizos, were standing around in the November fog in linen pants, shirts, and sandals. One of them, stocky and wrapped in a red wool sarape, was Senor Enrique Tellez, the head of the Jewish community. He was the person I was supposed to check with for authentic information. Senor Tellez also happens to be the richest man in the village, which in itself is no indication of real wealth. Venta Prieta consists of a hundred and fifty people and relatively few houses. Two-thirds of the inhabitants are Otomi Indians, although no longer purebred. They work in the mines ofReal del Monte, cultivate the corn fields in back ofthe village, or raise havadas, guinea fowl, which, like their owners, are products of crossbreeding. Houses, slapped together from adobe, street mud, and horse dung, stand on only one side of the country road. The only building made of stone is the school. A boundless plain stretches on. the other side of the road: an army base and an airfield for a branch line to Guajutla in the districtofTampico. A row of barracks gleams in the distance. "The other third of the town," Senor Enrique Tellez tells me, "is made up of us Jews, thirty-seven adults. We are just a big family, or actually two families, related by marriage, the Tellezes and the Gonzalezes." "Have you been here ~ long time?" "For almost two generations. We used to live in Zamora, in the state of Michoacan. But forty years ago a pogrom against the Jews broke out and my maternal grandfather was seized. His name waS Roman Gison. They demanded that he be baptized and that he renounce his old beliefs. When he refused, ~bb An Indian Village under the Har of David they sewed him into a cowhide and set fire all around it. The cowhide shrank and in thIs way crushed my grandfather. All the Jews then fled from Zamora. My father found this ranch here, which belonged to a distant hacienda. The earth is completely dry, nothing but clumps of soil. But my father bought it nonetheless, since there weren't any houses here; he had no desire any more...