Characters |The Cross | The Cruzob | E-mail Tom | Form of the Book | More on the Setting | The Opening | Thomas Jarrett | The Title | author photo

Rio Hondo is set in the Yucatan in the mid-1860s, during what is called the War of the Castes, when the Maya took up arms and nearly drove the non-Maya from the peninsula.

Despite the historical setting the book is not a historical novel in the genre sense. The book is not so much about the setting or the war as it is about love in a time of factionalism, terrorism and its rationales and consequences, and the choices of individuals conscribed by large forces of history.

More on the Setting

The Yucatan in this period was sharply divided between ladino (white) and Maya populations. Ladinos controlled the north and west and Maya the south and east of the peninsula. The book's main locales are the two group's capitals, Merida and Chan Santa Cruz, the latter hidden deep in the jungle. There is also a storyline related to international politics, with settings in Rome, Paris, Brussels, and elsewhere.

The Cruzob

The name derives from the word for "cross." They were "the people of the cross." They were Mazehualob (Maya) who considered themselves God's truest believers.

The Cross

The miracle cross that talked like a man was located in the capital of the Cruzob, the community of Chan Santa Cruz, deep in the sothern jungles of the Yucatan.

The Form of the Book

Rio Hondo is a novel in thirteen chapters (each with an introductory section displaced from the main action); it has some of the formal qualities of a dramatic tragedy.

The Title

Today the Rio Hondo ("Deep River") marks the border between Belize and the Mexican state of Quintana Roo in the south of the Yucatan peninsula. At the time of the story it was generally observed by the Cruzob as the southern limit of their territory. It is a place where the local and international stories intersect.

Connection with the Howard Hawkes / John Wayne movies Rio Bravo and Rio Lobo

None.

A Few Merida Characters in Brief

A Few Chan Santa Cruz Characters in Brief

A Few International Characters in Brief

• Tomas Fuentes, a printer
  
• Maria Marta Ordoñez de Medina, organizer of imperial ball
  
• Colonel Esteban Medina de la Cruz, counter-terrorism specialist
  
• Xavier Medina de la Cruz, bishop of Merida
  
• Hernando Montejo, conservative conspirator
  
• Alfonzo Poot, a spy

• Vicencio Reb, Secretary of the Cross
  
• Ricardo Pano, spiritual leader (Tatich) of the Cruzob
• Ay Xilam, military leader (Tata Chikiuc) of the Cruzob
  
• Ixchel, healer, weaver, midwife
  
• Ixchup, a young woman
  
• Joya, Ixchup's friend

• Napoleon III, emperor of France
• Pope Pius IX
  
• Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph, Archduke of Austria and emperor of Mexico
  
• Carlota (princess Charlotte of Belgium), empress of Mexico
• Jose Maria Gutierrez de Estrada, advocate for monarchy
  
• Hugh Blake, English diplomat
  
• Henri Selavy, French diplomat
• Aruwarire, Garifunda leader
  

The Opening

Chan Santa Cruz, 1865

The spring was sacred. Of course it was, it was all that kept them alive through the dry years. No, it was more than that. It was a channel to the otherworld, a current to the gods. To God, corrected Xavier, his narrow shoulders slumped--there is only one. Yes, they agreed. Their voices were clear and unhesitating, though the sounds were foreign; to Xavier's ear they were not completely human. And this is his True Cross. Hear it speak.
      Xavier set down the rum and tortillas of communion and wiped his forehead with a tattered amice. Once pure and bright, the linen was now a dirty gray. The dry season was drawing to a close, and Xavier's best estimate was that today was the Feast of the Visitation of Maria. He laughed bitterly at the impossibility of dressing in the liturgical color for that day, which was white. He picked up his chalice, a hollowed-out coconut. He saw his perspiring fingers reflected in its dark surface, which had been worked smooth as glass. He glanced at his squatting acolyte, who was humming an ancient melody in a strange key, his eyes lidded slits, his voice soft and faraway, though Xavier knew he was watching him closely. Even in this dim room that smelled of earth his head burned; he imagined that his companion's gaze was boring into it. Fever could kill him as much as his captors, or his friends--who might never come or else might come and kill him along with the others--or even the British gunrunners from Belize. Or whoever else might be drawn to this, the last place on earth.
      Xavier had grown thin and weak--thinner and weaker; he had always been thin and weak. Yet even here, in this unforeseen place, he had duties to perform. Those duties were what had kept him alive when the others had been put to the machete. Their blood had fed the spring as the Talking Cross had instructed, and the power of the Cruzob had swelled accordingly.
      Outside he heard howler monkeys screaming in the jungle canopy. The sound was like the shrieks of the insane.
      "Very well, then." Xavier whispered, turning to his companion. "Let us go."
      He had been summoned to the Nohoch Balam Na.

Thomas Jarrett

has lived in Central and South America. He is director of publications at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Rio Hondo is his first novel.

E-mail Tom

E-mail me at "tom [at symbol] thomasjarrett [dot] com."

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