The sun beat down like molten lead on the arid lands of the Villarreal farm. The mountains on the horizon stood out against a sky that promised another night without rain, while the wind brought the reddish dust that got into the eyes, the mouth, and the very soul of those who inhabited those lands forgotten by God and disputed by men.
The Reform War had turned Mexico into a battlefield where liberals and conservatives killed each other in the name of ideals that illiterate peasants barely understood. Don Sebastián Villarreal watched the movement of his workers from the balcony of his mansion. At 52 years old, the farmer had built an empire of silver and the sweat of others.
His tall, slender figure, always dressed in strict black, was known throughout the region. He had been a widower for 10 years, since his wife died giving birth to a child who also did not survive. Don Sebastián channeled his grief into two devotions: the relentless exploitation of his mines and a religiosity that bordered on fanaticism.
Every Sunday, he attended mass in the private chapel of his farm, where Father Anselmo celebrated the service exclusively for him and his servants. That October afternoon, while the foreman Fermín directed the unloading of ore into the carts, two figures appeared on the dusty road that led to the farm.
Don Sebastián narrowed his eyes. They were walkers, probably displaced by the war, looking for work or alms. Nothing unusual in those turbulent times, but there was something in those silhouettes that produced a strange restlessness in him. When the strangers got close enough, Don Sebastián could distinguish their faces.
They were two young men, perhaps in their twenties, with features so similar that they could only be brothers. Both wore dusty travel clothes and wide-brimmed hats that cast shadows over their faces. What disturbed Don Sebastián deeply was the ambiguous beauty of those faces. He could not determine with certainty if he was looking at two men, two women, or something that defied this basic classification.
Their delicate features contrasted with bodies of enigmatic proportions, hidden under loose clothing. Don Sebastián, Fermín called from the courtyard:
“There are some strangers asking to speak with you. They say they are looking for work.”
The farmer went down the stairs with measured steps. His ebony cane struck each step with authority.
When he reached the courtyard, the two brothers took off their hats in a sign of respect. Don Sebastián felt the ground move slightly under his feet. He had never seen creatures like those.
“Good afternoon, boss,” said the one who seemed to be the eldest. His voice was soft, but not feminine, rather neutral, like the murmur of a stream. “My name is Remedios, and this is my brother Refugio. We come from San Luis Potosí, fleeing the war. We are honest workers and we ask for nothing more than a roof over our heads and something to eat in exchange for our work.”
Don Sebastián studied them silently. Their skin was the color of baked clay. Their coal-black eyes shone with a mixture of hope and fear.
Remedios, who had spoken, seemed to be the one protecting Refugio, whose shifty gaze betrayed an almost childish shyness.
“What can you do?” asked Don Sebastián in a hoarse voice.
“A little of everything, boss. Field work, animal care, repairs. Refugio is very good with his hands; he does good carpentry work. I know about medicinal herbs. I learned from the healer in my village.”
Something dark and ancient stirred in Don Sebastián’s chest. A feeling he had not experienced in years, since before his wife’s death froze something fundamental inside him. It was not simple carnal attraction; it was fascination, morbid curiosity, the instinct of a collector who discovers a unique and disturbing piece.
“Fermín,” he ordered without taking his eyes off the brothers. “Take them to the south wing, the rooms in the back, the ones that face the enclosed garden. Ask Jacinta to prepare something for them to eat.”
The foreman frowned, surprised. The south wing had not been used for years, since the lady of the house died. They were the most luxurious rooms in the property, previously reserved for illustrious guests.
“The south wing, boss?”
“No, better the servants’ quarters next to the south wing,” repeated Don Sebastián in a tone that admitted no arguments. “And no one should bother them; they will answer directly to me.”
The brothers exchanged a look of relief mixed with caution. Remedios bowed his head.
“You are very generous, boss. We will not disappoint you.”
As Fermín led the newcomers to the main house, Don Sebastián remained in the courtyard, feeling his heart beat with an intensity he thought was dead. For the first time in a decade, something was awakening inside him, something that respectability, religion, and social conventions had kept dormant. Lethargic.
That night, Don Sebastián could not eat anything during dinner. Jacinta, the cook who had served the Villarreal family for 30 years, noticed her master’s agitation. She knew him well enough to know that something extraordinary had happened.
The farmer dismissed the servants early and retired to his office, where he kept a collection of books that few in the region knew he possessed: anatomy treatises, medical texts forbidden by the church, illustrations of malformations and natural curiosities that he had acquired on his trips to Mexico City.
He spent hours hunched over those yellowed pages, seeking explanations for what his eyes had seen. Hermaphrodites, as the ancient Greeks called those who were born with characteristics of both sexes. Modern medicine, in its arrogance, considered them aberrations, errors of nature, living proof of the imperfection of the world. The Church, even more cruel, declared them children of sin, marked by the devil, unworthy of the sacraments.
But Don Sebastián, in the darkness of his office, dimly lit by the light of a candle, felt something different. He felt that God, in His unfathomable wisdom, had sent him a gift, or perhaps a test, a temptation as exquisite as it was dangerous. He looked out the window that faced the south wing.
The lights were on in the rooms he had assigned to Remedios and Refugio. Would they be sleeping? Would they be scared in that unfamiliar place? Did they understand that they were no longer simple workers, but something more precious and terrible? Don Sebastián clenched his fists. He had to be careful. The conservative society of Zacatecas would not forgive the slightest scandal.
His reputation as a devout and irreproachable man was his greatest asset, but he also knew that he possessed absolute power within the limits of his property. Here he was God and judge. Here he could do whatever he wanted with those who depended on his charity. The brothers had arrived seeking refuge, and refuge they would find.
But it would be a refuge with invisible bars, a golden cage where he would be their only benefactor, their only contact with the outside world, their only judge. The night wind rattled the shutters. Somewhere on the farm, a dog howled desperately. Don Sebastián smiled in the darkness, a smile that no one should see. What happened on that farm was just the beginning of an obsession that would defy the limits of morality and sanity.
Because there are secrets that history preferred to bury. Because in the lands of Don Sebastián Villarreal, where dust mixed with blood and prayers, a story had just begun that no priest would dare to confess and no judge would wish to judge.
The first days of Remedios and Refugio at the Villarreal farm passed in a deceptive calm. Don Sebastián had assigned them light tasks. Refugio worked in the carpentry shop, fixing old furniture and carving frames for the religious paintings that decorated the mansion.
Remedios, for his part, was assigned to take care of the private garden of the south wing, a space neglected since the death of Mrs. Villarreal, where medicinal herbs grew among the weeds. The farmer visited them every afternoon, always with some pretext. He inspected Refugio’s work with obsessive detail, running his fingers over the freshly sanded wood, getting closer than necessary to observe the movement of his hands.
With Remedios, it was different. He would sit on a garden bench while the young man pulled weeds and asked him questions. Questions that, at first, seemed innocent, but that, as the days passed, became more and more personal, more invasive.
“Where were you born?” asked Don Sebastián one afternoon, while the sun tinged the adobe walls orange.
Remedios did not take his eyes off the plants.
“In a small town near Real de la Patrón, a place so poor that it doesn’t even have a name on the maps,” he replied.
“And your parents?”
There was a long silence. Refugio, who was working nearby pruning a wild rose bush, tensed visibly. Remedios squeezed the earth between his fingers before answering.
“They died when we were children. A fever decimated almost the entire village. We raised ourselves, boss. We learned to survive. No one else in the family, no one. Just the two of us.”
Don Sebastián nodded slowly, and something shone in his eyes that Remedios could not quite decipher. Satisfaction, relief.
The farmer stood up, brushing dust from his impeccable black suit.
“Better that way. Family ties are sometimes chains that bind us to places where we shouldn’t be. Here on my farm, you can start over under my protection.”
That word “protection” resonated in the air with a strange weight. Remedios felt a chill run down his spine despite the suffocating heat of the afternoon.
In the following weeks, Don Sebastián began to change the rules in a subtle but systematic way. First, he ordered the brothers’ meals to be served in their rooms, not in the workers’ common dining room. Then, he forbade them from leaving the limits of the south wing without his explicit permission. When Remedios protested timidly, arguing that he needed to go to the town market to get seeds for the garden, Don Sebastián smiled with condescending patience.
“It is necessary. Tell me what you need and I will get it for you. There are many dangerous people on the roads. Bandits, soldiers, people who could hurt you. You are safe here.”
Refugio, more naive or perhaps more scared, accepted the restrictions without question. As Remedios began to feel the walls of the south wing close in a little more, each day the luxurious rooms that at first seemed like a gift now began to feel like an elegant prison.
One night, while they were having dinner in the room, Refugio whispered:
“We should be grateful, brother. He is treating us better than any other employer. We have soft beds, plenty of food, and decent work.”
Remedios stared at his younger brother. Refugio had always been like that, trusting, unable to see the evil in others until it was too late. Because of this, Remedios had taken on the role of protector since childhood, the one who made the decisions, the one who kept the truth about their bodies a secret.
“Don’t you realize?” murmured Remedios. “We are not workers, we are something else. The way he looks at us, as if we were rare animals in a collection.”
“You are imagining things? Don Sebastián is a devout and respectable man. The whole town talks about his generosity toward the church.”
“Devout men can be the worst monsters,” retorted Remedios, but he did not insist on the subject. He didn’t want to scare Refugio even more.
The breaking point happened on a Saturday night. Don Sebastián appeared in their rooms unannounced, something he had never done before. He was carrying a bottle of Spanish wine and three crystal glasses. His face was flushed, his movements less controlled than usual.
“I came to celebrate,” he announced with a slurred voice. “My mines produced more silver this month than in the whole last year, and all thanks to the good luck you brought me.”
Refugio smiled shyly, flattered. Remedios remained alert, all his instincts screaming danger. Don Sebastián poured the wine with trembling hands.
“Drink with me, it’s an order.”
Refugio took his drink without hesitation. Remedios accepted, but barely moistened his lips. The wine was sweet, too sweet, with a strange taste he couldn’t identify.
“You know?” continued Don Sebastián, sitting between them on the red velvet sofa. “I have been studying a lot lately, books about medicine, about natural philosophy. There are so many wonders in this world that ordinary people cannot understand. Phenomena that nature creates to challenge our small certainties.”
His hand rested on Refugio’s shoulder. The young man tensed, but did not pull away. Don Sebastián smiled.
“You are special, unique. God created you different for a reason, and I want to understand you, protect you, and keep you safe from a world that wouldn’t appreciate you as you deserve.”
“Boss,” said Remedios with a firm voice, standing up. “It’s late, we should rest.”
Don Sebastián’s eyes hardened. For a moment, the mask of benevolence fell completely and Remedios saw something dark and hungry in that gaze.
“Are you kicking me out of my own house, from the room that I provided for you out of pure Christian charity?”
“No, boss, just sit down.”
It wasn’t a request, it was an order. Remedios obeyed slowly, feeling fear tighten his throat. Don Sebastián finished his drink in one gulp and poured another. His expression softened again, as if that moment of fury had never happened.
“Forgive me, the war makes me nervous. The news coming from the capital is terrible. Juárez and his liberals want to destroy everything we have built. They want to take power away from the church, distribute the farm lands. We live in dangerous times.”
He stayed with them for another hour talking about politics, religion, and philosophy, but his hands kept moving, touching Refugio’s arm here, caressing Remedios’s hair there, gestures that could seem paternal, but that had a hungry tone.
When he finally left, it was past midnight. Refugio fell asleep immediately. The wine had begun to take effect. But Remedios remained awake, staring at the ceiling, feeling the walls of his golden cage close in a little more. The next day, he discovered that Don Sebastián had ordered new locks to be installed on the doors of the south wing. Locks that could only be opened from the outside.
“It’s for their safety,” explained Fermín, the foreman, without looking them in the eyes. “Orders from the boss.”
Remedios then understood the terrible truth. They were no longer workers, they were no longer even guests, they were possessions, objects of a private collection that Don Sebastián had begun to build. And in those arid lands of Zacatecas, where dust mixed with blood and a farmer’s power was absolute law, no one would come to rescue them. No one, except themselves.
Three months passed since the locks appeared on the doors. Three months in which the routine of Remedios and Refugio became a predictable and suffocating cycle. Don Sebastián visited them every night, always after the servants retired, always with some elaborate pretext. He brought books to read aloud to them, medical treatises with anatomical illustrations that he studied with morbid fascination while forcing them to sit next to him.
He brought gifts of fine jewelry that had belonged to his late wife and perfumes imported from France.
“I want you to look beautiful,” he would say as he put a pearl necklace around Refugio’s neck. “Worthy of the uniqueness you represent.”
Refugio had stopped resisting. Fear and confusion had turned him into a docile creature who accepted Don Sebastián’s whims with silent resignation. But Remedios watched, calculated, and waited. Every night he memorized the guards’ schedules, the sound of the farmer’s keys, and the routines of Jacinta and Father Anselmo when they visited the farm.
The Reform War was intensifying outside. The news arrived in fragments, brought by muleteers and merchants who passed by the farm. Juárez had enacted the reform laws, nationalizing the clergy’s assets. The conservatives, supported by the Church, responded with violence. Mexico was bleeding in a civil war that seemed to have no end, but in the south wing of the Villarreal farm, the war was of another kind, quieter, more intimate, more destructive.
One January night, Don Sebastián arrived with Father Anselmo. The priest was a small, nervous man with rat eyes, who avoided direct contact. He carried a worn leather briefcase under his arm.
“Father Anselmo is a man of science, as well as a servant of God,” explained Don Sebastián with barely contained enthusiasm. “He studied medicine in Guadalajara. I asked him to examine you. It is important to document your condition.”
Remedios stood up immediately.
“No.”
The word echoed in the room like a gunshot. Don Sebastián blinked, surprised. For months, neither of the brothers had dared to contradict him directly.
“What did you say?”
“I said no. We are not animals for exhibition.”
Don Sebastián’s face hardened. He walked slowly toward Remedios and, for the first time, his hand was raised threateningly. The blow never came, but the intent hung in the air.
“Everything you have, I gave you,” hissed the farmer, “the clothes you wear, the food you eat, the roof over your head. You owe me everything, and you dare to deny me this, this small thing I’m asking for?”
“You owe us nothing,” retorted Remedios, although his voice trembled. “We work for you. We fulfill our obligations.”
Don Sebastián laughed a dry and cruel laugh.
“Work. When was the last time you did something productive? No, my dear brothers, you stopped being workers a long time ago. You are my… guests, my protégés, my…”
He stopped as if he was about to say something that even he didn’t dare to pronounce out loud. Father Anselmo cleared his throat, uncomfortable.
“Don Sebastián, perhaps we should come back another day when they are more willing.”
“No,” the farmer’s voice echoed in the room. “This is going to happen now. Fermín, Jacinto, come in.”
Two robust men appeared at the door. Remedios recognized them. Don Sebastián’s trusted workers. Men who had seen too much and knew when to keep their mouths shut.
“Hold him,” ordered Don Sebastián, pointing to Remedios.
What followed was pure humiliation. While Refugio wept in a corner, helpless to help, Father Anselmo examined Remedios as if he were a laboratory specimen. He took measurements, made notes in a leather notebook, muttered medical terms in Latin that sounded like condemnations. Don Sebastián watched every detail with an intensity that went beyond scientific curiosity.
“Extraordinary,” murmured the priest. “Truly extraordinary. Ancient texts speak of such cases, but I never thought I would see one with my own eyes. Nature is capricious in its designs.”
“Is it the devil’s work, Father?” asked Don Sebastián.
Father Anselmo hesitated.
“The Church teaches that every deviation from the divine norm is the result of original sin, but it also says that God does not make mistakes. Perhaps, perhaps they are simply a test of faith for those around them.”
When they finished with Remedios, it was Refugio’s turn. The young man did not resist. He allowed himself to be examined with a vacant look, as if his spirit had left his body and only an empty shell remained.
That night, after Don Sebastián and Father Anselmo left, Remedios hugged his younger brother while he sobbed uncontrollably.
“We have to escape,” whispered Remedios. “It doesn’t matter where now, any place is better than this.”
“We can’t,” groaned Refugio. “The guards, the locks, the dogs would catch us before we even reached the main road. And then, then it would be worse. Worse than this, worse than being treated like monsters.”
Refugio raised his eyes, and in them was a resignation that chilled Remedios to the marrow.
“At least here we have food. At least no one stones us in the streets. Out there, brother, out there we are less than nothing. Here at least we are something valuable to someone.”
Remedios felt nauseous. What had Don Sebastián done to them? How had he managed in such a short time to break Refugio’s will, turning him into an accomplice of his own imprisonment?
The following days brought darker changes. Don Sebastián began to ask them to wear the clothes he had bought for them: women’s dresses for some days, men’s suits for others, or strange combinations of both. He photographed them with a phototype camera he had brought from Mexico City. The images, he explained, were for his personal archive, his private collection of natural phenomena.
“Someday,” he would say while adjusting the lens, “these photographs will be studied by scientists from all over the world. You will be immortal. I am giving you eternity.”
But it was not eternity that Remedios saw, it was death in those endless photo sessions. The slow death of their dignity, their humanity, any hope of living as something other than curiosities in the collection of an obsessed man.
One dawn, while Refugio slept, thanks to the laudanum that Don Sebastián now provided to calm his nerves, Remedios managed to force the lock of a window. The cold February air hit his face like a slap, bringing him back to life. He could jump, he could run, he could. He looked at his sleeping brother; he couldn’t leave him, he could never. And Don Sebastián knew it.
The farmer had found the perfect chain, the love between brothers transformed into invisible shackles. Remedios closed the window and returned to bed. For the first time since they arrived at the farm, he cried. He cried for everything they had lost and everything they would still lose in the following months. Because in that golden cage in the south wing, where time had stopped and the outside world seemed like a distant dream, Remedios understood a terrible truth. Some monsters have no claws or fangs. Some wear impeccable suits and pray the rosary every night before sleeping, and those are the most dangerous of all.
April 1859 arrived with dust storms that darkened the sky and turned day into night. The workers of the Villarreal farm murmured that it was a bad omen, that God was punishing the land for the sins of men. The war continued to bleed Mexico. Juárez controlled Veracruz while the conservatives dominated the capital.
Every week news arrived of battles, executions, cities razed by one side or the other. But Don Sebastián barely paid attention to the outside world. His universe had shrunk to the south wing of his farm, to the two creatures he kept locked up, to the obsession that consumed every hour of his existence. He stopped taking care of the business in the mines.
Fermín, the foreman, took control of operations while the newly promoted man spent entire days locked away. With Remedios and Refugio, studying them, photographing them, writing endless notes in leather notebooks that he kept locked in his desk. The servants began to talk. Jacinta, the cook, confessed to Father Anselmo during confession that she heard strange things coming from the south wing. Screams, pleas, the sound of a photogram camera operating late at night. The priest, caught between his loyalty to the farmer and his pastoral duty, remained silent. After all, Don Sebastián was the parish’s greatest benefactor. Who was he to question the eccentricities of a powerful man?
Refugio was no longer the same. The young man who had arrived at the farm seven months earlier, shy, but with a glimmer of hope in his eyes, had been replaced by a shadow. He spent hours staring at the wall, answering in monosyllables when spoken to, moving only when Don Sebastián ordered. The laudanum that the promoted man provided him every night created an addiction that turned him into an obedient puppet.
Remedios, on the other hand, had hardened. His initial resistance gave way to a more calculated survival strategy. He learned to read Don Sebastián’s mood, to anticipate his whims, to give him just enough of what he wanted to keep him satisfied, but not so much as to fuel his insatiable appetite. It was a delicate dance on a razor’s edge, and Remedios performed it with the desperation of someone who knows that a single wrong step could mean total destruction.
On a full moon night, Don Sebastián arrived at the south wing, more agitated than usual. He had bloodstains on his shirt and smelled of gunpowder. He collapsed on the velvet sofa, trembling.
“Five men were killed today,” he murmured. “They were found hiding in a cave near the old mine. Conservative soldiers executed them against the cemetery wall. I had to be there. I had to give my consent as a local authority.”
Remedios remained silent, not knowing what to say. Don Sebastián raised his eyes, and in them was something broken, vulnerable.
“Am I a monster?” he asked in the voice of a frightened child. “Am I a bad man?”
It was a trap. Remedios knew it. Any wrong answer could unleash his fury.
“It is not for me to judge you, sir,” he replied carefully.
Don Sebastián laughed bitterly.
“How diplomatic you are. How smart you are, Remedios. Always calculating, always measuring your words, not like your brother, who is all heart and no brains.”
He stood up and walked toward Remedios, who was sitting near the window, his gaze lost somewhere on the dark horizon. Don Sebastián caressed his hair with a disturbing tenderness.
“Sometimes I think I should let you go,” he murmured, “that it would be the Christian thing to do, the right thing. But then I remember how things were before you arrived. The emptiness, the loneliness, this huge house full of ghosts and dead memories.”
“Then let us go,” said Remedios firmly. “If you really care about us, let us be free.”
Don Sebastián turned to him with an unreadable expression.
“Free. Free for what? To be raped on a deserted road? To be sold as slaves to some traveling circus? To be burned alive in a public square when some fanatical priest declares you children of the devil?”
“That is the risk we have to take.”
“No.”
The word fell like a final sentence.
“I will not allow the world to destroy you. I protected you, I gave you everything, and I will continue to do so, even if you hate me for it.”
He took a small pistol from the inside pocket of his coat. It was a French-made weapon, elegant and deadly. He placed it on the table between them.
“Look at this. If any of you want to leave, if you really believe that you would be better off out there, you can take this pistol and kill me. Shoot me right here. No one would blame you. They would say it was self-defense, that old Don Sebastián finally lost his mind.”
Remedios looked at the weapon. He could reach it in three steps. He could end this nightmare in an instant. Don Sebastián smiled.
“But you won’t. You know why? Because, deep down, you know. You know that I am the only thing between you and a world that would tear you apart. Here you are special, unique, precious. Out there you are abominations.”
The truth of those words hit Remedios like a punch. Don Sebastián was right, at least partially. Mexico in 1859 was no place for people like them. Society, whether liberal or conservative, had no space for those who challenged established categories. They would be rejected, persecuted, destroyed. Don Sebastián took the pistol and put it away.
“I know this, I always knew it. That’s why this works. You are not my prisoners, you are my refugees, and I am your only sanctuary.”
In the following days, Don Sebastián’s behavior became more erratic. He began to drink frequently, something he had never done before. His nightly visits stretched until dawn. He no longer worried about keeping up appearances. Jacinta found obscene scribbles in his desk, detailed descriptions of his obsessions, letters never sent to European doctors, offering them the opportunity to study unique human specimens in the American continent.
The breaking point happened on a night in May. Don Sebastián broke into the south wing completely drunk, screaming incoherently about war, about God, about the end of the world. He tried to force Remedios to pose naked for the camera, while Father Anselmo, also drunk, recited biblical passages about Sodom and Gomorrah. Remedios resisted for the first time in months. He fought with all his might. The blow he dealt to Don Sebastián threw him to the ground. The newly promoted man remained motionless for an endless moment, blood dripping from his cut lip. Then he laughed, a terrible and demented laugh.
“That’s how I like it, that you have fire, that you remind me that you are real, not an invention of my imagination.”
But something had changed. Fermín, alerted by the noise, appeared at the door with two guards. He saw the scene: Don Sebastián on the floor bleeding, Remedios with clenched fists, Refugio huddled in a corner. Father Anselmo staggering, drunk.
“Leave,” ordered Don Sebastián to Fermín. “This is none of your business.”
But the foreman did not move.
“Don Sebastián, with all due respect, this has to stop. People are talking. The workers are afraid. They say this house is cursed.”
“Cursed is your insolence, get out of my sight.”
Fermín withdrew, but Remedios saw in his eyes something similar to compassion and also something similar to determination. That night, while Don Sebastián slept off his drunkenness in another room, Fermín silently entered the south wing. He carried a bunch of keys and a bag of provisions.
“Listen carefully, because I won’t repeat this,” he whispered. “There is a wagon leaving tomorrow at dawn for Guadalajara. The driver is my cousin. He will take you without asking questions, but you have to go now, before he wakes up.”
Remedios looked at Refugio, still lost in his haze of laudanum.
“He can’t walk, he can barely stand.”
“Then either you carry them or they stay here forever. The choice is yours.”
It was the hardest decision of his life. Remedios knew that Refugio would not survive the trip in his condition. He knew that Don Sebastián would hunt them down. He knew that the outside world could be even worse than his golden cage, but he also knew that, if they stayed another day, they would lose the last traces of their humanity.
“Let’s go,” said Remedios, hoisting his brother onto his shoulders.
Fermín guided them through dark hallways, avoiding the night guards. The cold air of dawn stung their faces as they emerged. The wagon waited for them on the road, hidden among the trees. When the sun began to rise, Don Sebastián woke up and discovered that his most precious collection had disappeared. His cry of fury echoed throughout the farm, and on the dusty road to Guadalajara, Remedios held his unconscious brother, not knowing if they were fleeing to salvation or to an even worse fate. It was a world very far from the Mexico of the Reform War, where each day brought new violence and compassion was a luxury that few could afford; two broken souls desperately sought a place where they could exist without being collected, studied, or destroyed.
The question was whether such a place existed in any corner of that blood-soaked country. The wagon moved slowly along the dusty roads of Zacatecas, while the May sun beat down mercilessly. Remedios held Refugio, whose body shook from lack of water. The driver, a taciturn and time-hardened man named Jacinto, looked at them occasionally in the rearview mirror, but did not ask questions. In those times of war, everyone had secrets and no one wanted to know too much.
They had been traveling for two days when they heard the first rumors in a town called Fresnillo. A farmer from Zacatecas had offered a generous reward for the capture of two fugitives. The description was vague, but sufficient: brothers of unusual appearance, ambiguous features, probably traveling south. Don Sebastián had mobilized all his influence and money to recover what he considered his property.
“They cannot continue like this,” said Jacinto that night, while they shared tortillas and beans in a miserable little restaurant. “Everyone will be looking for you. You really need to disappear, change your appearance, your names, everything.”
“And how do we do that?” asked Remedios desperately.
Refugio lay beside him, sweating cold, drifting in and out of consciousness. Jacinto remained thoughtful.
“I know people in Guadalajara, liberals, anticlericals, people who hate those who came to power like Villarreal. They could help you, but you would have to do something in return.”
“What?”
“Tell your story, publicly denounce what he did to you. The liberals are looking for cases that demonstrate the corruption and depravity of the landowning class allied with the Church. You would be the perfect scandal.”
Remedios felt nauseous. Exposing his most intimate secret, becoming a political symbol, being put on display again, even if for a different cause. Wasn’t it the same thing Don Sebastián had done?
“Think about it,” insisted Jacinto. “It’s your only real option. Either you hide behind the liberals or Villarreal will find you eventually, and when he finds you…”
He did not need to finish the sentence. Everyone knew what Don Sebastián was capable of.
They arrived in Guadalajara a week later. The city buzzed with revolutionary activity. Liberal soldiers patrolled the streets. Churches had been stripped of their wealth, and in the public squares, the new laws that would separate church and state were hotly debated. It was a different world from the conservative Zacatecas of Don Sebastián, but not necessarily friendlier.
Jacinto took them to a safe house on the outskirts of the city, where a group of liberal intellectuals ran an underground newspaper. The leader was a young man named Ignacio Ramírez, a poet and activist who had dedicated his life to fighting against what he called the obscurantist superstitions of the old guard. When Remedios told them his story, Ignacio listened with growing attention. It was not morbid curiosity that shone in his eyes, but genuine indignation.
“This is exactly what we need,” he said, slamming his fist on the table. “A case that shows the barbarity of those who came to power, how they use their power to satisfy their perversions while hiding behind religion. We are going to publish your testimony. We are going to create a scandal so big that Villarreal won’t be able to hide.”
“But that would expose us completely,” protested Remedios. “All of Mexico would know who we are, what we are. And that is worse than living on the run for the rest of our lives.”
Ignacio leaned forward.
“Look, I know it’s not fair to ask this of you. I know you’ve suffered enough, but think of other people like you, hidden, terrified, being exploited by powerful men. Your story can change something. It can make society reflect on its prejudices.”
Remedios looked at Refugio, who was finally recovering slowly from his addiction to laudanum. His younger brother had lost weight. His face was gaunt, but his eyes were beginning to regain some life.
“What do you think?” asked Remedios to him.
Refugio took a while to answer. When he did, his voice was just a hoarse whisper.
“For months I felt like an object, something he could use, study, possess. If telling our story means regaining a little humanity, even if only a little, then it’s worth it.”
The article was published in June 1859 in the liberal newspaper El Siglo XIX. It did not include the real names of Remedios and Refugio, but it included a detailed description of the abuses of Don Sebastián Villarreal. The scandal was immediate and devastating. Other liberal newspapers republished the story. They organized demonstrations in front of the bishop’s house in Zacatecas, accusing him of covering up the perversions of the promoted man. Father Anselmo, terrified by the implications, fled to Mexico City. Don Sebastián tried to deny the accusations, hired lawyers, bribed conservative journalists, threatened to sue for defamation, but the damage was done. His reputation as a devout and irreproachable man was destroyed. The other newly promoted men in the region began to distance themselves from him, afraid that the scandal would splash onto them. His own workers began to desert, scared by what was really happening in the south wing of the farm. Fermín, the foreman who had helped the brothers escape, was fired and threatened. But it didn’t matter anymore. Don Sebastián’s obsession had been exposed and, with it, the building of lies that supported his life had collapsed.
In August, news arrived in Guadalajara that chilled Remedios’s blood. Don Sebastián had abandoned his farm, leaving it in the care of administrators, and had headed south. Rumors said that he was looking for the brothers, that he had sworn to find them and recover his property. He had with him a group of gunmen and enough money to bribe half the country.
“You have to go further,” warned Ignacio. “Go to Veracruz, where Juárez has total control. You will be safer there.”
But Remedios was tired of running, tired of hiding, of changing his name, of living in fear, and above all he was furious, furious at what Don Sebastián had stolen from them: their dignity, their innocence, months of their lives that they would never recover.
“We are not going to run anymore,” he declared. “If Villarreal comes looking for us, let him find us, but this time it will be on our terms, not theirs.”
Ignacio looked at him with concern.
“What do you plan to do?”
“Confront him publicly, force him to admit what he did.”
It was a three-week wait. Three weeks during which Remedios and Refugio prepared themselves. They trained with some former liberal soldiers who sympathized with their cause. They learned to defend themselves. They would never be victims again.
Don Sebastián arrived in Guadalajara at the beginning of September. He had aged a decade in those few months. His black suit was dusty, his face gaunt. His deep eyes shone with a mixture of despair and madness. The gunmen who accompanied him seemed more mercenaries than bodyguards, men accustomed to violence and not asking questions.
The encounter happened in the main square, in broad daylight, surrounded by witnesses. Ignacio had ensured that there were reporters, artists who could draw the scene, and curious citizens. Everything had to be public, documented, undeniable. Don Sebastián stopped 20 paces from Remedios and Refugio. For a long moment, no one spoke. The farmer stared at the two people who had destroyed his life, and his face was a mixture of hatred, desire, and something like sickening love.
“Come back to me,” he finally said. His voice sounded broken, pleading. “I will forget all this, the scandal, the humiliation, everything. Just come back. I need you. Without you, I am nothing.”
Remedios took a step forward.
“We were never yours. We will never be yours. We are people, not collectible objects.”
“I gave you everything, I protected you from the world.”
“You locked us up, you studied us like animals, you stole our freedom and made us feel less than human.”
Don Sebastián shook his head violently.
“You don’t understand. The world would have destroyed you. I saved you. I made you special, important, unique.”
“We were already unique,” intervened Refugio with a firm voice. It was the first time he spoke directly to Don Sebastián since the night of their escape. “We didn’t need you to give us courage. What we needed was for you to let us have it.”
Something broke on Don Sebastián’s face. Tears began to roll down his cheeks.
“I can’t. I can’t let you go. You are all I have left. My farm is in ruins. My reputation is ruined, my friends have abandoned me. You are all I have.”
“This is not love,” said Remedios gently. “It is an obsession, it is a disease, and we are not going to cure your loneliness.”
Don Sebastián fell to his knees in the middle of the square. The crowd watched in silence, witnessing the fall of a man who once was powerful. His gunmen, uncomfortable, did not know what to do. They had not been hired for this.
“Please,” said the promoted man. “Please, don’t leave me alone.”
Remedios felt something similar to compassion, but he did not give in.
“He has to let us go for his own good and for ours. He needs to face what he did and seek help, but that help will not come from us.”
Don Sebastián remained on his knees for several minutes. Then he stood up slowly. His face had changed. There was no more pleading in it, only a terrible and empty acceptance.
“Then I have nothing left,” he murmured. “Nothing binds me to this world.”
Before anyone could react, he pulled out the same French pistol he had shown Remedios months earlier in the south wing. The crowd screamed. Ignacio tried to step forward, but Don Sebastián was faster. The gunshot echoed in the main square like thunder. Don Sebastián Villarreal fell to the ground, a stain of blood spreading under his body. He did not aim at Remedios or Refugio. He shot himself.
Chaos erupted in the heart of the city. People ran and screamed. Some approached the body; Remedios and Refugio remained motionless, staring at the man who had been their torturer, their captor, their obsessed. Remedios did not feel joy at his death, but he did not feel sadness either, only a deep emptiness and the feeling that a terrible chapter was finally closing.
The following months were a time of slow reconstruction. Remedios and Refugio remained in Guadalajara under the protection of Ignacio and his liberal circle. The Don Sebastián scandal became a symbol of the excesses of the old landowning aristocracy. His farm was confiscated by the liberal government and distributed among the workers who cultivated it.
The brothers never hid again. They adopted new names, but they did not hide their true nature. They found work in a hospital where a progressive doctor hired them to help with patients rejected by society: sick prostitutes, homeless people, people with deformities. It was not an easy life. They continued to face prejudices, stares, whispers. But now they did it on their own terms, as free people in control of their own destinies.
One afternoon in December, two years after Don Sebastián’s death, Remedios visited the ruins of the Villarreal farm. The south wing was abandoned, the windows broken, the rooms looted. He walked through the hallways where he had been a prisoner. He touched the walls that had been his prison. In Don Sebastián’s office, he found the notebooks where the farmer had documented his obsession. Pages and pages of notes, drawings, photographs, Remedios read them without emotion. Then, one by one, he threw them into a bonfire he had lit in the central courtyard.
As the paper burned and the smoke rose to the clear sky of Zacatecas, Remedios felt something being released in his chest. It was not forgiveness, because some things could not be forgiven; it was acceptance. Acceptance of what they had suffered, what they had survived, what they had become. The fire consumed the last traces of Don Sebastián Villarreal’s obsession. And with them burned the last invisible shackles that bound Remedios to that dark past.
When he returned to Guadalajara, Refugio was waiting for him at the door of the small house they shared. His brother was smiling, and it was a genuine smile, the first in years.
“All right?” he asked.
“All right,” replied Remedios. “Now everything is all right.”
Mexico would continue to bleed for years. The Reform War would end, but then came the French intervention and the empire of Maximilian. More violence, more bloodshed. But Remedios and Refugio had learned that they could survive any storm because they had survived the worst of all, the one that occurs when a human being decides that another human being is not a person, but a possession.
In the arid lands of Zacatecas, where dust mixes with blood and prayers, two broken souls had finally found redemption, not in revenge, not in forgiveness, but in the simple and powerful decision to keep living, to keep being human, despite a world that insisted on seeing them as something different. And that was perhaps the greatest victory of all.
