(2 of 2)
That night the town crowned a queen, pretty Bernarda Morales, daughter of a warehouse watchman, and danced until dawn. For still a third day and night, the fiesta went on. Then, exhausted, Tehuantepec went to bed. Back of the bougain-villea-twined wall, a guitar plunked and a lazy voice rose up:
. . . Lips like crumbled coral, heart-heaven;
Open your arms, sweet mama, for God,
And there let me sleep, heart-heaven.
Ay! Sandunga, Sandunga!
* In the 1858-61 civil war between the Roman Catholic conservatives and the anticlerical liberals. The Catholic Irishmen saw it as a holy war, battled at Tehuantepec for two years, finally fell to the liberal forces of Porfirio Diaz, later (1877-1911) Mexico's Dictator-President.