A Ballad of Love and Glory(116)
“And here we are, goin’ back with you, sir,” Peter O’Brien said.
John looked at her. “But how?”
“The church,” she said. “The priests helped find them and made sure my letters got to them. They forced the government to honor the agreement you made with them, that they would pay for passage of any San Patricio who may wish to travel home.”
His frown deepened, and then, after her words sunk in, he burst into a laugh. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, woman, you sure beat all!” He took her and their little girl in his arms and spun them around.
Then he embraced his men, one by one. “Ye are a glorious sight to behold, my boys!”
All the men were branded on their cheeks, though John was the only one with the two brands. The Yanquis had tried to shame them by marking them like cattle, but Ximena hoped that one day, John would learn to see those marks as a badge of honor. Because that is what he was, an honorable man who had stood up for what he believed. The D was not for deserter. But rather defender.
“We’re goin’ home, my brave fellas!” he said. “And fight we shall for the good of Ireland.”
Alexander McKee took out his flask and said, “Bás in éirinn!”
The ship sounded its horn, and it was time for the passengers to be taken aboard on the rowboats. The locals gathered to watch them leave, and as she was being rowed away, Ximena waved goodbye. Would she ever see her compatriots again?
As they left the shore, Ximena stood on the deck, enjoying the spray of the waves breaking against the ship. Seagulls skimmed the surface of the waters, and pelicans plunged in to pick up their breakfast. She took out her brooch and tenderly caressed the Mexican eagle as she watched Vera Cruz drift farther and farther away. The white houses, the churches, the sand dunes, the fortress San Juan de Ulúa, they all receded into the horizon until there was nothing left of her country but the blue of the Mexican sky and the lofty mountain of Orizaba peeking through the morning clouds that enveloped its snowy bosom like a lacy mantilla.
No, this was not an eternal farewell. Not adiós, but hasta luego.
John came to stand beside her and pulled her close. “A long time ago I crossed an ocean, and now this gulf will return me to that same ocean—the great Atlantic—and back to my son and my homeland. I shall be a wanderer no longer.”
“No, you will be a brave son of Erin who has come home,” she said. They looked at their daughter, with Mexican and Irish blood flowing through her veins. Ximena knew that she and John, haunted by the horrors of war, would always carry battle scars within them, but they, had survived, hadn’t they? One way or another, they would find a way to thrive.
They walked along the deck to where the San Patricios stood watching the sailors work the ropes, the canvas sails bending with the breeze, and together they turned to face the future that lay before them, praying it would be as splendid and boundless as the golden waters rippling ahead.
A Note from the Author
The Mexican-American War has been called the war that the US cannot remember and Mexico cannot forget. Like most children attending school in the US, I was never taught about this war. Not until I took a Mexican history class as an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, did I learn about it. I was in my twenties by then. How I wish I had known earlier that the state I called home, California, had once been a part of Mexico, and that my native tongue, Spanish, was spoken here long before English. Knowing that might have lessened the trauma of growing up Mexican in a country that made me feel I didn’t belong, that told me in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that I should go back to where I came from.
I wrote A Ballad of Love and Glory to learn more about this war—or invasion, as it is called in Mexico—a conflict that led to my native country losing half its territory and that helped the US fulfill its dream of Manifest Destiny. I wanted to probe deeper into the complex relationship that exists between the two countries, and to gain further insight into the US–Mexican border, the “herida abierta [open wound] where the third world grates against the first and bleeds,” as Chicana scholar Gloria Anzaldúa described it. Most important, it is my dream that A Ballad of Love and Glory will help readers understand our history by bringing to the forefront a defining moment that in the United States is relegated to a mere footnote. I hope that the more we know about this history, the more we can remember that Mexicans are native to these lands, that we belong in this country, that we aren’t “foreigners” or “outsiders.”
I have written about immigration throughout my career, mostly about my own experience as an immigrant. But writing and researching this novel gave me the opportunity to explore another migration experience. At a book reading in 2013, someone asked if I had heard of the Saint Patrick’s Battalion, an artillery unit composed of mostly Irish soldiers who’d deserted the US Army and fought on the Mexican side. I had never heard of them. “You should write their story,” this person suggested to me.
Out of curiosity, I googled the Saint Patrick’s Battalion and learned about its leader, John Riley. As I read books by historians Peter Stevens (The Rogue’s March), Robert Miller (Shamrock and Sword), and Michael Hogan (The Irish Soldiers of Mexico), my fascination grew. I learned that almost half of the US Army fighting the war was composed of foreign-born soldiers, mostly Irish, German, and Italian immigrants. Due to the racism and religious rancor they encountered in the army, many of these foreign soldiers swam across the Rio Grande, risking their lives to find something better on the other side. On April 12, 1846, Private John Riley deserted the US Army and joined the Mexican ranks as a first lieutenant. Later that year, Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna created the Saint Patrick’s Battalion, with Riley as its leader.