Rain of Gold

by Victor Villaseñor

Riding north from Mexico City on fine horses and leading two good mules, Don Pío and his two older brothers passed through the pastoral valley of Guanajuato and saw the rich haciendas and the well-watered fields and the well-fed livestock. But they found nothing they could use. All the good lands had long ago been taken by the Church or the rich and powerful.

That’s where I studied!

“cry if you must, because crying cleanses a troubled heart,

“to respect a fallen star takes much more dignity than to admire the rising sun.”

“Oh, I’m just a visionary from Guanajuato,” he said, “who’s seen that gesture of the hand too many times not to know a tapatío.” A tapatío was what the people from Jalisco were called.