The San Miguel de los Azahares hacienda stood like a fortress of stone and adobe on the outskirts of Morelia, Michoacán. Its thick walls, built three generations earlier, held secrets that the west wind could never carry away, and its cornfields stretched as far as the eye could see on the dusty horizon.
The aqueduct that crossed the property, recently constructed just four years before, was a testament to the splendor that this land once possessed. Now, however, the cracks in the walls and the peeling paint of the main house told a different story, that of a noble family in decline, slowly drowning in debts that grew like weeds after the rains.
Don Sebastián Mendoza y Villarreal had inherited these lands from his father along with the debts that threatened to devour everything his family had built over three generations. At 32, a widower with no children, the newly promoted man paced the halls of his mansion, feeling the weight of loneliness and the financial ruin that was approaching like an inevitable storm.
The candles burned down completely before being replaced. The servants had been dismissed one by one, and the rooms, which had once resonated with laughter and music, now stood closed, covered in dust and melancholy. His wife, María Josefa, had died three years earlier during childbirth, which also took their unborn son, leaving him in an abyss of grief from which escape seemed impossible.
The creditors were beginning to lose patience. Don Fernando Alcántara, a ruthless merchant who had lent gold to his father, appeared at the hacienda every week demanding payments that Don Sebastián could not make. “I’ll give you three more months,” the fat merchant had said the last time, spitting tobacco on the floor of the main room.
“After that, this property will be mine, and you, Don Sebastián, will have to beg in the streets of Morelia like a dog.” The humiliation of those words burned in the promoted man’s chest every sleepless night. It was in the city’s slave market, a place Don Sebastián hated to visit, where everything changed. It was a hot Tuesday in August, and he had gone there looking for cheap labor for the harvests with barely a few coins in his pocket and despair etched on his face.
The market smelled of sweat, fear, and hopelessness. The merchants hawked their wares in shrill voices, displaying men and women chained up under the scorching sun. Some slaves wept silently; others stared blankly into space, resigned to their fate.
Don Sebastián felt nauseous at the sight, but he had no choice. Without workers, the harvest would be lost, and with it, any hope of escaping ruin. He saw her at the end of the line, almost hidden behind the other slaves, a woman with skin as dark as wet earth, robust, with matted hair falling over her broad shoulders.
She had chain marks on her wrists and ankles, evidence of years of captivity. Her dress was barely a few dirty rags that hardly covered her body. But her eyes, good heavens, her eyes shone with a dignity that suffering had not managed to extinguish. While other slaves kept their heads down, she stared straight ahead with her chin held high, as if she refused to let the world see her defeated.
The slave trader, a short, sweaty man named Ramírez, noticed Don Sebastián’s gaze. His small, calculating eyes lit up with greed.
“She’s no good to you, sir,” he said with a smile that revealed yellowed, rotten teeth. “She’s fat, old, and has a terrible temper. She’s been through five masters, and they all sent her back.” The last time she tried to escape, she almost killed a foreman with her bare hands. Nobody wants her.
I’ll give you a special price, 15 cents, and you’ll do me a favor by taking her. Tomorrow I’m going to throw her in the river if someone doesn’t take her. That’s what that untamed beast deserves. The cruel comment drew laughter from other shoppers surrounding the market. One of them, a fat, wealthy man with gold rings on every finger, shouted, “I wouldn’t take her even for free.
She’s probably sick or crazy. Look at her, she looks like she’s going to bite someone.” More laughter. The woman didn’t react to the taunts. She simply kept staring straight ahead as if she were somewhere else, in another time, where cruel words couldn’t reach her. Don Sebastián felt something stir in his chest. Perhaps it was the way the woman lifted her chin in response to the taunts.
Or perhaps it was seeing his own suffering reflected in those eyes that refused to give up. Or perhaps it was simply the desperation of his own situation that made him feel an unexpected connection with that tormented soul.
Before thinking twice, before reason could stop him, he placed the coins in the greasy hand.
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