Shadows of a Faded Past -- 2 --

                                                                                      

Shadows of a Faded Past

In my newly completed novel, Shadows of a Faded Past, Anthony Reza and members of his veterans' support group have finished investigating the disappearance of their friend and group founder, Raul Armena, who failed to return home from a weekend in Tijuana, B.C. After three months of consulting numerous sources, on both sides of the border, Anthony wrote, "The more I read, the more I realized Raul's disappearance didn't begin that last day in Tijuana but back in 1974, when he had received a visit from a CID detective investigating alleged war crimes committed by Raul's recon unit, the Lions Claw, in a place called the Red River Valley, Republic of South Vietnam." 

                                                                                      2.

     Raul told the Army CID investigator he knew nothing about atrocities in Vietnam’s Red River Valley from August to November 1967, at least none that he could remember. The case went to an Army tribunal but was dismissed when military investigators couldn’t find more veterans to corroborate the allegations. The Pentagon didn’t pursue it, coming so soon after the My Lai trials. Finishing his third year of graduate school, Raul hoped he could finally put it all behind him.

     In 1995, a journalist from St. Paul, Minnesota called Raul at his office on campus to request an interview. Apparently, someone had leaked the “real story.” Raul’s recon platoon, the Lions Claw, had carried out months of unspeakable horror in the Valley, some soldiers confessing to slaughtering innocent civilians. Raul told the reporter he’d already talked to a military detective twenty years earlier and had admitted: those months in the Valley had been rough, on both sides, but atrocities, like My Lai? No, nothing like that. Besides, a Pentagon investigation found no evidence of a crime.

     The journalist tried appealing to Raul, saying he owed it to the Vietnamese villagers who lost relatives, and to his fellow Lions, those who had committed suicide, succumbed to alcoholism, or alienated themselves, emotionally, and, in some cases, physically, from their loved ones after their discharge.

     Tired of the accusations, Raul exploded, maybe stronger than he intended, “Atrocities! You want atrocities? How about illegally bombing the shit out of Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam, massacring thousands, mostly innocent villagers. Nobody said boo. Now, after 30 years, you’re going after men with families and jobs, guys who at 19 and 20, followed officers’ orders. If it was a slaughter, go interrogate to the brass who ordered it.”

     The visit caused Raul to obsess about his year in Vietnam. Guilt? Who knows for sure? In fact, Raul had been proud of his military service, especially as a Lion, a guerilla fighter. When they got to the Valley, Raul and his team, with the bare necessities, had trudged through the jungle for months with little relief, rarely a hot meal, shower, or change of clothes, constantly making enemy contact, and always following questionable orders, sometimes, yes, taking the law into their own hands. It fogged the brain. If soldiers malfunctioned, like broken machines, who could blame them?

     Once home, Raul justified the war, saying he was helping save the Vietnamese citizenry from the throes of Communism, keeping the country safe for Catholicism, the religion of his people, and, ultimately -- liberty. If not for U.S. intervention, Vietnam might not have today’s thriving economy, the margin of profit the saving grace.

     He worked hard to control what he once told his own psychologist were “urges of the psyche,” evading the vices and distractions that plagued other veterans, mind over matter and all that, more Jungian than Freudian. He practiced strategies he mastered while earning his doctorate in psychology. He found he could ignore the awful messages his mind was sending his body, but, as one veteran friend had asked, “Wasn’t this just masking the problem?” to which he’d answered, “Masks have always played a spiritual, healing role in every society.”

     When he began his internship as a psychologist, Raul found Chicano vets denied war’s trauma. Like their forefathers, they toughed it out, snickered in trauma’s face. Raul blamed their refusal to discuss their emotions a cultural trait, la raza’s machismo. So, he tried a different tactic. He invited a group of Chicano Vietnam vets he knew, some from graduate school and others from his old neighborhood, to play basketball at a local gym.

     He started with a small group, guys who had finished their degrees and, also, settled into stable careers. They played hard, competitive, maybe even a bit of arrogance or pride due to their personal achievements. Afterwards, they’d head out to a nearby bar, grab lunch and pitchers of beer, and talk about the old neighborhood, friends, grad school and their jobs, a lot of laughter.

     The more they drank, the more they loosened up, and, eventually, someone mentioned the military, more laughter, and the war, their messy personal lives, talking like drunks at an AA meeting, careful about how deep to go in their revelations. They’d taunt each other, downing beers, until, on one session, Kiki Salas, broke down into tears, sobbing, rattling everyone. Those wouldn’t be the only tears they’d shed, but it was the start of Raul’s support group, the “hoop-sessions.” 

     Sometime, in the mid-80’s, Raul, pushing 45, had divorced and received joint custody of his daughter. With little explanation to any of us, he abandoned psychology and accepted an administrative position, which, some friends claimed, led to his downfall. Professionally, he climbed the administrative ladder quickly, from dean to vice-president, his eye on a presidency somewhere. He still attended our group sessions, when he had time, up until September, 2001, when he crossed the Tijuana border and didn’t return.

                                                                        *****    

     He arrived in Tijuana for the kick-off of border city’s annual fiesta, and its Sunday afternoon climax, a bullfight spectacular, El Espada de Oro, which he attended every year.

     He was reported to have been seen walking to La Coahuila, three or four-square blocks filled with streetwalkers, where inside the seedy bars, men made drug deals, optioned prostitutes, sealed contracts to smuggle pollos across the border, or involved themselves in the hundreds of vices available in border towns across the Southwest.

     The first time Raul visited La Coahuila he was fourteen. His uncle had married a woman from Tijuana, and they invited him to visit her family, who lived in a stark, cinder block house in the mountains overlooking the beach, la colonia Ramon Morales, an illegal settlement, where Raul learned, without a doubt, he was more American than Mexican.

     In 1960, Las Playas de Tijuana stood nearly empty, for miles, except for a few scattered farms, modest housing developments, a couple of beachfront hotels, and the new 25,000 seat Plaza Monumental de Toros that catered to the North American bullfight aficionados who had outgrown the old wooden downtown bullring, El Toreo de Tijuana.

     Some days, Raul would break away from the other boys and sneak into the mysterious, circular concrete structure. He’d leap the barrera and stand in the ring, the hard sand under his feet, and he’d look up at the rows, imagining the raucous crowd, the music, the celebration, and the thunderous hooves of a bull charging in to the arena.

     His aunt’s younger brothers laughed at Raul’s romantic notions of the bullfight and his promise that one day he would stand in front of a bull in front of thousands of people. Still, the boys of colony liked the pocho from Venice, California, and together they roamed the mountains, hunted jackrabbits with old .22 rifles, and made the long trek across a stretch of farmlands to swim in Tijuana’s rough surf.

     One Sunday, the boys took Raul on a bus into downtown Tijuana to see a movie. Later, in front of the theater, a grand palace that held 400 people, as night approached, and the masses strolled through the streets, the boys ate nickel tacos from street venders and drank strong Mexican Coca Colas in glass bottles. Not ready to return home, the boys decided to take Raul to explore La Coahuila.

     Laughing and nudging each other as boys do, they had walked the few blocks, rounded a corner, and stepped onto sidewalks filled prostitutes of all ages. He couldn’t comprehend exactly what he was witnessing, but he knew the streets reeked of sex, and the sights and sounds carved passageways into his psyche.

     Now, forty-some odd years later, Raul walked the same streets. Tijuana had changed little. Women, more than he could remember, even Caucasians, African-American, and Asians joined the other women on La Coahuila's sidewalks. They milled about outside the bars. An Anglo minister stood on a wood crate and preached in stodgy Spanish against the evils of the flesh and the fires of hell. Some people booed him. Others listened politely. A Conjunto played a rousing rendition of a Tigres del Norte song on the adjacent street corner as Tupac’s voice boomed from one of the many bars.

     A bartender claimed to have seen Raul walk into the dimly-lit bar, order a beer, and watch as nicely dressed American men--probably San Diego professionals--crowded in among the border's shady characters, indulging in underworld cool. Coupled bodies filled the dark booths along the walls.

     Did it remind Raul of the portable Vietnamese bars that sprouted up overnight whenever his unit operated in a new location? After each mission, behind thin plywood walls, young G.I.s, lost themselves in drugs, booze, and female flesh, many for the first time. The war justified it, a gift from the American tax payer. Impending death encouraged it, and though his body had craved it, Raul had not indulged, the words of Catholic School nuns and priests warning of hell’s damnation. 

     His ex-wife once asked him after they’d been married a year, and he lugged her home drunk from a friend’s wedding reception, “How can you be so God-damned controlled, Armenta? Aren’t you tired of always being so responsible?"

     He’d responded, “You’re drunk. One of us has to be in control.” He realized her drinking was becoming more habit than social.

     She’d said, “At least I have fun and can sleep at night and don’t stand in the living room, alone, staring out the window until the sun comes up.”

     She’d seen the worst of it, whatever it was he carried, and that’s what he regretted most—that she’d seen it. So, it wasn’t as hard the day he packed his bags and walked out, infuriating her. Speaking of his ex-wife, it appears that's how this whole thing started.

                                                                              *****

     Early that Saturday, Rosalie, Raul’s ex, had driven their daughter, Iliana, back to her dorm room at a private university in San Diego after her semester break in Los Angeles. Raul followed in his car, carrying Iliana’s possessions.

     After unloading everything, Raul and Rosalie, a hotshot attorney living in Brentwood with her new bank executive husband, had stood at the curb arguing, Iliana at the balcony watching. Raul, had stood, hands in his pocket, letting Rosalie vent, about what? Probably money. 

     Raul wanted Iliana to find a job on campus, live on a budget, mature and be independent. Rosalie said that as long as Iliana was a student, she should have an unlimited income so she could concentrate on her studies. It was an old argument and Iliana, of course, sided with her mother. After the argument, Rosalie had stormed off and driven her Mercedes north, back to Los Angles. Raul hopped into his Range Rover and headed south, to the international border at San Ysidro.

     It was something he did a few times each year, visit Tijuana, to get his head straight. Usually, he’d drive his car across the border and drive to the Playas de Tijuana, eat shrimp at the food stands on a bluff above the shore and talk politics with the locals. He’d attend the bullfights, either at the new bullring by the sea, or downtown at El Toreo, depending on the time of the season, always taking a seat in the first row, shady section. As he aged, he began seeing the spectacle just as violent and agonizing as it was mystifying, different from the glamour of his youth.

     After each corrida, he’d wander among the crowd and enjoy the music, food, and festivities. He’d have dinner downtown, at a nice restaurant, and, after, drive home, often getting stuck for two-hours in the line of cars heading back into the U.S., but he always needed the convenience and control of being in his own car.

     This particular afternoon, he broke tradition, and instead of driving to the Playas when he arrived at the border, he parked his car in a San Ysidro visitor’s lot, walked across into Tijuana, and he took a cab downtown. After he explored La Coahuila and the adjacent neighborhoods, he checked into the famous Hotel Cesar, on the main boulevard, Calle de la Revolucion, where he remained in his room until a little after midnight, when he emerged.

     In his mid-50s, still a robust, handsome man, somewhat distinguished, he surveyed his surroundings. Each Saturday night, teenagers and young adults--many obscenely drunk, filled la Revolucion. Cops handcuffed teenage boys, who had lost all sense of reason, their heads shaved clean as cue balls, nails for eyes, and outrageous baggy clothes, larger even than those worn by the pachucos of his day. On the streets, lines of cars and motorcycles barely moved. Boom boxes and car horns blared, revved engines screamed, and music from the bars echoed in the night air.

     He climbed three flights of multi-colored lighted steps, entered a club, and watched young American coeds dance on raised stages as a gaggle of men cheered them on. He sat for an hour. One girl, an American, at a nearby table, nodded to him. He hoped she wasn’t a former student. In college classrooms and offices, he had encountered thousands of students throughout his career, and years later, many would approach him to offer thanks or just introduce themselves. It was flattering but disconcerting.

     The young woman walked up to him, said a few words, and kissed him lightly on the lips. She walked back to her table and friends, laughing. He paid for his drink and left.

     He’d been seen jumping from club to club, “Senor Frogs” “Iguana-something or other” “Key Largo,” flashy, glitzy names. Did they evoke memories of his R & R in Bangkok, a 20-year-old soldier, paying a driver and a pretty young woman to accompany him the entire week. He visited at her home above the Chao Phraya River, her mother preparing home-cooked meals for him. He bought the family food and household goods at the local PX, all in exchange for five-days of her company and service, anything to help him forget the hell he would face when returning to the Valley.

        Between 1:30 and 2:00 A.M., he headed back to his room at the Hotel Cesar, home to the world-famous Cesar Salad. Through 1930s Yankee Prohibition up until the 1960s, Cesar’s was the most prominent hotel in Tijuana, playing host to presidents, diplomats, celebrities, and millionaires from around the world. Raul knew that great bullfighters and celebrities had taken up residence there before each Sunday’s corrida.

     Hotel Cesar had been Pasadena-rich, old money, posh, dark wood, Cuban cigars, Chivas Regal, Carey Grant, and Grace Kelly. He had known about Cesar's history from all the bullfighting books he'd devoured in his youth. In a journal, Raul had written how, as a teenager, he dreamed of spending a night there. Has he, finally, fulfilled a dream?

     The clerk who had run his credit card said Raul had marveled at the bullfighter’s trajes de luces, photos of movie stars, and dignitaries behind glass cases in the lobby. The heads of famous bulls were mounted on the walls. Raul also knew that in 1960s, the old place had fallen on hard times, when the postmodern elite saw the once proud hotel as stuffy and conservative.

     About 1965, a resurgence in Hemingway’s writings, especially, the Sun Also Rises, began to take hold, and Hollywood rediscovered Tijuana and the romance of the bulls. For those with no time to fly off to Pamplona, they headed across the border and enjoyed the cockiness of new, modern La Sierra Motel & Lodge two blocks from the downtown Tijuana Bullring, El Toreo, on the old road to Ensenada. Lines of limos pulled up to the front doors and dropped off celebrities and aficionados, the waiters and footmen rushing to meet them and carrying their luggage inside.

     These new aficionados were the film industry’s elite, like Stephanie Powers, Robert Wagner, and Natalie Wood, hot tickets, new money, open shirt-collars, and gold chains--pre-Laker courtside, before the adoration of the Shaqs, Kobeys, and Jordans.

     They idolized the young, handsome, dynamic toreros of the day, Ramon Tirado, Paco Camino, and the wild dramatist, El Cordobes, and each Sunday, they filled the old bullfight arena to capacity.

     Earlier in the day, Raul had taken a taxi to La Sierra Motel and Lounge, surprised the place hadn’t been razed, even if it appeared neglected, run down, actually. He walked the grounds, maybe think back to his teenage years, those days he stood outside and watched beautiful, buxom blonde women and handsome, tanned men stroll about the pool and upper balconies, marijuana smoke wafting in the air, the waiters running from one side to another, their trays filled with drinks.

     By 2001, the once swanky motel of his youth, with its quasi-art-deco design, vibrating pulse, and tropical sensuousness, had fallen into decay. Broken chunks of cement disfigured the once beautifully curved lines. It was no more than an aging, crumbling motel.

     Across the street, a new 100-room hotel graced the side of a mountain. It looked like Spain’s Alhambra. Mercedes, Lexus, Land Cruisers, and Escalades filled the parking lot. Probably, none of their owners came for the bullfights. Many tickets had gone unsold.

     The cars, more than likely, belonged to business people with interests in the maquladoras, the state-of-the-art factories sharing Tijuana's dry mountains with hundreds of shantytowns just outside of the city limits. Progress never stops. Many maquiladoras had begun closing as American corporations found cheaper labor in China, Indonesia, and, ironically, Vietnam, now an American ally.

     At about 2:00 A.M. Raul entered the Cesar’s lobby, nodded to the clerk. Then, without a word, Raul turned, and stepped back out onto Calle Revolucion. 

     He entered a strip club, El Nido del Aguila, the exterior typical of the city’s 1940s and ‘50s dives, but inside, the place was no longer a dumpy, Tijuana strip joint. A long, hand-carved wooden bar, liquor bottles from floor-to-ceiling, state-of-the-art lighting equipment and sound system, the entire production stank of wealth. The men inside dressed smartly, no college students here, no maquiladora cowboys, or off work taxi drivers. Suits and ties, blazers, loafers, maybe an Armani or two roamed the room.

     A drink went for $6.00, pricey for Mexico in 2001. Around the perimeter of the club, topless women danced on stages and hung from poles. They could have dropped right out of Playboy. And not only Mexican women but Asian, black, and Caucasian beauties strutted across the room. They spoke both Spanish and English, some Japanese.  

     According to the bartender, Raul had two more drinks, back-to- back. A young woman approached him. The woman, Beatrice Salinas, lived in San Diego’s Barrio Logan. She received her degree in accounting with a minor in Spanish lit from San Diego State and was studying for an MBA. She crossed the border each night to work at El Nido, to supplement her income, which helped support her mother, two sisters, and an elderly grandmother. She earned more in one night at El Nido than she earned all week at her part-time job at a small accounting firm in San Marcos.

     Raul had smiled one of those smiles meant to discourage her from expecting anything more than a free drink. He told her he was an educator. She engaged him in subjects from literature to NAFTA and the NFL to China as a world power. An hour passed, maybe more.

     She could tell he had a high tolerance to alcohol. She wouldn’t say much about what followed…something regarding a discussion of the psychology behind Carlos Fuentes novel, Aura. They walked to his hotel, where she, “took him into the eye of a hurricane.” He thanked her, and she left.  The next day, he checked out of his hotel, some say heading to the border, and other claim they’d seen him at the bullfights, where a strange scene unfolded. He had leapt into the arena, none of it verifiable.

     Two days later, his car was found abandoned in San Ysidro parking lot, no sign of him leaving Mexico, not even on the border video cameras. In New York, terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center. Media reports of a drunk American Vietnam veteran suffering from PTSD, who disappeared in Tijuana, hardly merited any news coverage in either country.