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At one particular event, for example, a prolonged silence aroused the suspicion of the porter at the Colegio Nacional, who found everyone in the lecture hall asleep: the sixty-six people in the audience plus the lecturer, Secretary Barragán himself.
    The health secretary, Abundio Colmenares, performs his job with a certain aplomb, panache even. He’s an incorrigible lech who uses his political position to get his jollies, all under the pretext of healing. Quite a piece of work, but he can be awfully nice when he wants to. They say he’s both tough and passionate: Neither the men he hates nor the women he desires stand a chance when they’re in his clutches.
    The environment secretary, Madame Guillermina Guillén, sparkles with good intentions. She’s so full of fantasy that all she has to do is the opposite of what she thinks in order to be realistic. She protects bird sanctuaries by fumigating them to the point of killing off anything and everything that flies. She hands out logging licenses, turning a blind eye to the fact that soon there’ll be no more forests to protect. Problem solved. She recently divorced her husband because she discovered that the good man only put on his false teeth when he visited his lover.
    The labor secretary, Basilio Taracena, is exactly the opposite of what he appears to be. Just look at his eyes, the eyes of a
criollo
straight out of Guadalajara—light, but not serene. Hooded, clouded over, misty, and if there’s anything that gives him cause for labor, it’s his own body. Notice the copious collection of nervous tics, the way he constantly scratches himself, his neck, his armpits, his inner thigh, as if he were plagued by lice. . . .
    The agriculture secretary, don Epifanio Alatorre, has been a fixture in national politics ever since the days of López Mateos and is famous for his predictions regarding crops and weather: “Depending on the rains, crops this year might be good, they might be bad, or they might be the very opposite.”
    Since he’s been in politics for over half a century many people have asked him how he’s survived so much change, from López Mateos to Fox to Terán. And don Epifanio just licks his index finger and raises it in the air as if to say he always knows which way the wind blows. Don’t ever get into a debate with him. It’s like arguing with a mariachi band.
    You should also be careful not to trust the communications secretary, Felipe Aguirre. You’ll notice that his face is the same color as his socks, a sure sign of a vile nature. Or at least a lack of imagination. His famous adage about marriage just about sums it up: “Want to become an old man? Then spend your whole life with the same old woman.”
    While the advice may be amoral, his conduct is not. He’s grown old with the same old woman, a voluminous matron who inspires terror in all who cross her path because she walks with her eyes closed, like a fat vampire blinded by the sun. Proof that our head of communications communicates best via silence and darkness, and by awarding contracts that provide him with some very lucrative commissions. Now, why does the president tolerate him if he knows that the secretary sees nothing and steals everything? A singular and ancient theory, my dear Nicolás: No government functions without the grease of corruption.
    Corruption lubricates, but look at the pained face of our national oil company’s chairman, don Olegario Santana. He welcomes U.S. capital without denationalizing the industry, but when we defend the price of oil, the U.S. government penalizes us, thus penalizing its own investors. That’s Washington’s eternal contradiction, caught between the sweeping international claims and the small local interests: The textile factory in North Carolina will always win out over the Brazilian factory and the World Trade Organization, since the latter two don’t vote in U.S. elections. As you’ll see, the chairman has got the expression of someone who