“But who is this?” he said with more insistence than he’d intended, gesturing to the woman’s face on the stencil.
“I don’t know exactly, but I’ve made contact with one member who says she is their leader. Which, I must say, is pretty fucking badass in a machista culture like ours.” Mercedes paused to sip her drink. “So, about a week after I managed to convince this … member to speak with me, I get a letter at the paper’s office, no return address, and it didn’t come by post, offering to bring me to their compound to hear what they are about and bring word to the people down the mountain.”
“Really now?” Prieto said, trying to mask the nervous energy that had begun to bubble up in him.
“There were a number of conditions laid out. I would have to agree to be blindfolded, to have my phone confiscated for the journey, to only use one of their devices should I feel the need to record, and, most unusually, to bring you.”
“Me? Specifically?”
“Most specifically.” She now pulled the letter from her purse and read, “‘And, of course, we hope you will arrange to bring your friend, the Honorable Pedro Acevedo, known once as the people’s champion on the mainland.’” She showed it to him. He knew the handwriting immediately; the word “once” triple underlined. His mother. So subtle.
“Hmm,” Prieto offered.
“So, will you do it?”
His mother, the enigma of his life, was luring him in, but he was unsure if it was a trap or something else. His nervous energy, he realized now, was not that of excitement, but that of dread.
“Yes. Of course. When do we go?”
Two days later they found themselves in the parking lot of Mercedes’s office a few hours before dawn, a challenging feat given the curfew still in effect. Indeed, it was a police detail that initially approached them in the empty carpark. They had worked out a story should this sort of thing happen, but as the vehicle drew near, they saw that both of the passengers’ faces were shielded by black bandanas, guns drawn in their direction. The story was unnecessary. They raised their hands in surrender.
* * *
BY THE TIME they reached their destination and were told they could remove their blindfolds, the sun was high in the sky. From the police car, they’d been transferred to a helicopter. After the helicopter, an SUV. He had no clue how long the journey had taken. Mercedes, as his proxy, had agreed to all of the Pa?uelos’ conditions for the meeting while offering only one of their own—that they would be back in the parking lot no more than twenty-three hours after their departure. They had only the Pa?uelos’ word that they would adhere to that concession, and Prieto was now starkly aware of how insecure their footing was.
It was only after they were instructed to get out of the truck that worry gave way to wonder. There, not even a hundred yards ahead of them, surrounded by bare ceiba trees and bald shrubbery, was a large, two-story structure, painted jungle green, with big, open windows through which they could see oversized ceiling fans, blades twirling. Electricity. In the midst of the forest. For a moment, Prieto assumed it was a generator, until he noticed the solar panels on the roof and, in the distance, a large wind turbine, all of which somehow survived the storm.
A young man named Tirso approached the vehicle. He wore a Brooks Brothers shirt with the sleeves rolled up and no bandana. As he greeted them by name, he offered what he assured them was fresh filtered water and cool wet towels. Their welcome rivaled an arrival to Fantasy Island, minus the three armed Pa?uelos standing behind them. Tirso informed them that he would be taking them on a brief tour of the compound before taking them to meet, as he phrased it, “Leadership.”
“She doesn’t like that term, as we are intended to be a decentralized organization, but, for practical purposes, labels can be helpful, no?” he asked. They nodded before being frisked one more time and the guns, finally, put away.
The building they had seen on their first approach was, on their tour, merely a pass-through. Beyond it lay the courtyard of a much larger compound, all formed in a clearing of the now storm-ravaged forest. The edifices of the series of small buildings were each emblazoned with murals: Pedro Albizu Campos, Che, Zapata, Ojeda Ríos, and, to his disbelief, his own mother. Everywhere people were at work: some repairing damaged roofs, others carting water.
“In the main building,” Tirso explained, “we have our classroom—for the children of our membership as well as for cultural studies and, as needed, learning opportunities for members who’ve been previously disenfranchised from their right to a proper education, either by economic or systemic discriminatory practices.”