Woes of the True Policeman

worked stubbornly his whole life to get ahead. He was awarded a scholarship by the government of Sonora, and finished his university studies at twenty-eight; he wasn’t a great student, but he was curious and, in his own way, diligent. At twenty-one he published a book of sonnets and cataphoras ( Spell of the Dawn , Tijuana, 1964) that won him the respect of some influential reviewers at northern Mexico newspapers and inclusion, six years later, in an anthology of young Mexican poets edited by a young lady from Monterrey which managed to briefly engage Octavio Paz and Efraín Huerta in a dialectical battle (both despised the anthology, though for reasons that were contradictory and mutually opposed).
    In 1971 he moved to Santa Teresa and began to work at the university there. At first the contract was for only one year, during which time Horacio Guerra finished a study and anthology of the work of Orestes Gullón ( The Temple and the Wood: The Poetry of O. Gullón , with prologue and notes by J. Guerra, University of Santa Teresa, 1973), an underappreciated Oaxacan poet and old friend of the university rector. His contract was extended for another year and then for five and then indefinitely. Now his interests multiplied. It was as if he had suddenly become a Renaissance man. From the sculpture and architecture of the school of Maestro Garabito to the poetry of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Ramón López Velarde, pillars of Mexicanness, he dabbled in everything, sought to learn about everything, studied everything. He wrote a treatise on the flora and fauna of the Mexican northeast, and it wasn’t long before he was named honorary president of the Santa Teresa Botanic Garden. He wrote a brief history of the city’s old town, kept up a regular column called “Memories of Our City Streets,” and finally was named official historian, a distinction that filled him with satisfaction and pride. All his life he would remember the ceremony, which was only an informal gathering but was attended by the bishop of Sonora and the state governor.
    In academic circles his presence was inevitable: he might have been slow on the uptake and not particularly charming, but he made sure he was seen where he needed to be seen. The other professors were divided between those who admired him and those who feared him; it was easy to take issue with his ideas, his projects, or his teaching methods, but not advisable if one didn’t want to be excluded from university activities and social life. Though a serious man, he was up on all the gossip and secrets.
    In 1977 he published a book on the Potosí school of Maestro Garabito, who left his mark on the public buildings and plazas of the north of Mexico ( Statues and Houses of the Border , University of Santa Teresa, thirty photographs and illustrations). Shortly after he was named professor, the book he considered his masterwork appeared: Ramonian Studies , on the life and work of Ramón López Velarde (University of Santa Teresa, 1979). The following year saw his book on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz ( The Birth of Mexico , University of Santa Teresa, 1980), a work that was dedicated to the rector and that sparked a kind of polemic: accusations of plagiarism appeared in two Mexico City newspapers but the slander didn’t stick. By this point something had developed between Guerra and the rector, Pablo Negrete, that could superficially have been called friendship. They saw each other, yes, and sometimes they had a drink together, but they weren’t friends. Guerra knew he was a glorified courtier— courtier , the term wounded and pleased him, filled him with pride and gloom, but it was the only one that fit the facts—and yet he believed that he, too, when the moment came, would be university president and that he would take under his wing another professor in circumstances similar to his own. For years now, too, he suspected that Pablo Negrete had been delegating to him only practical matters, resolving worldly matters without his counsel.
    He lived in a permanent state of agitation.
    At the time when Amalfitano met him, Horacio Guerra was a well-dressed man (this was a quality—like so many others—that he shared with the president, who over the years had become a dandy) among poorly or sloppily dressed professors and students. His manner was cordial, though he sometimes raised his voice excessively. His gestures for years now had tended to be peremptory. It was said that he was ill,