Hermann Bellinghausen: Parade of Generals

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the lineage tends like A long snake over the wrinkled lines of maps from centuries past. The old surprises, when the time comes. What's taken for granted breaks the tedium by rescuing episodes and exhuming secrets. That's how I found myself one day as I reviewed the annals of my reactionary, though patriotic and heroic, lineage. My generals.

Some in the Rhineland, others in Zacatecas, generation after generation, a host of military personnel, engineers, architects, and military doctors, leaped into the military arena. My father, a captain all my life, became a major upon his retirement. A maternal great-great-grandfather was the commander of the Porfirian troops, and another ancestor commanded the German Air Force before the Nazis made the Lüftwaffe synonymous with evil and death. One day it occurred to me to mention it in front of my very red-faced Italian friends who sang " Bella ciao," just to earn some well-deserved barbs and scolding.

The subject goes way back. Don't laugh, but it begins with Barbarossa during his Italian campaigns to pressure the Pope and is confirmed after the Battle of Iconium against Saladin's troops. Sadly, the Holy Roman Emperor drowned while swimming in an Anatolian river. Barbarossa knighted his legendary first ancestor for his ferocity, under the title of Bellicosa (the joke translates itself). His descendants would participate in the construction of Cologne Cathedral, a record of which is preserved in the cathedral itself.

Among the little I know from then on, there were a couple of violent family splits over Luther, which even led to name changes (Bellingrath and Bellingross). By the 19th century, my Rhinelander and Zacatecas ancestors shared the honor of fighting the French on both sides of the Atlantic; here during the imperialist interventions and there in the Franco-Prussian War. My young great-great-grandfather, Manuel González Cosío, was taken prisoner by the invaders to Paris, where he improved his French.

By way of interlude: Fabian von Bellingshausen, a vice-admiral in the service of the German-born Tsar Alexander I, was kind enough to be the first to cross the Antarctic Circle in 1820 and to name the Bellingshausen Sea (the “s” being a courtesy of Russification). He would distinguish himself in the Russo-Ottoman War of 1828 and become governor of Kronstadt. He left behind a pair of books: his memoirs of his voyage around the world (1831) and another entitled The Mode of Aiming at Sea .

The March of Zacatecas , a symbol of the Armed Forces, is the work of Genaro Codina, the maternal uncle of my great-great-grandmother Luz Acosta. My other great-great-grandfather, Mariano López, married Francisca Sánchez Román in Tlaltenango. She was the daughter of a family that fought against the Second Empire, including brothers Joaquín, Ramón, Jesús, and Colonel José María, after whom some fine cigars were named.

The martial glories of great-grandchildren and others died out during the first quarter of the 20th century. After the Mexican Revolution and the First World War, the winds of history swept them away, along with Don Porfirio, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Marshal von Hindenburg. There were still soldiers there, I presume, but no generals, until there was no one left with insignia, medals, or epaulettes, far from the roar of cannons and the exalted fanfares.

I'm relieved to lose track of the Germans before the Third Reich. Of the Mexicans, after the Revolution, I can say that there were peaceful and constructive soldiers, engineers, and doctors. I did my military service reluctantly and after my expiration date, earning the "refusal" stamp on my discharged service card. Since I "marched" among workers pampered by the regime (or at least by the captain in charge), I didn't even have to cut my hair, and I passed the roll call at Military Camp Number 1, playing soccer, running track, or simply being a fool.

I grew up three blocks from Ejército Nacional Avenue, where I crashed twice, and I deduced a certain curse. I saw the tanks roll down there on October 2, 1968. I avoid driving on that date; I just cross it. My maternal grandparents lived there, in Anzures, and over time, the Mexican Red Cross hospital, founded around 1910 by my great-grandmother Luz, daughter of a great general, was established in Polanco. Its mission was to care for the National Army.

I found an echo of this unusual symbiosis in Chiapas in 1994, when, following the Zapatista armed uprising, the Mexican Red Cross operated as an appendage of the federal Army. The only guarantee of neutrality depended on the institution's International Committee. As my director Carlos Payán warned, in the plural, during those years we were a "target" of military intelligence. In the jungle barracks, they forced me to get out of the vehicle and chat with the general in charge to either get under my skin or simply unnerve me.

When I was about 6 years old, I was also in charge. My father brought me along as his "pet." I accompanied him to his conscripts' drills next to the Military Hospital and to a nearby shooting range. He put me in uniform and appointed me his "Chief of Staff," the highest rank in my military career. I still have the credential my boss drew up, uniform and all. He affectionately called me that for the rest of his life.