The Nine Guardians by Rosario Castellanos — Read

Ernesto folded the envelope so that the letter would fit in his shirt pocket. At every breath of his and at each stride of the horse he felt it move with a hardly perceptible rustle. There, on that piece of paper, César had given vent to his fury, accusing the Indians and urging the Municipal President of Ocosingo to come to his assistance. With calculated crudity he reminded the man of many good turns and suggested that now was a good moment to repay them.

When Ernesto read the letter for the first time (it had been handed to him open, but he had licked the envelope himself and had closed it in front of the whole family. Later in his bedroom, however, curiosity, not so much to know its contents as to discover César's true state of mind, had caused him to open the envelope and substitute it for another, addressed in his own handwriting) he had to admire the vitality of that man whom even such circumstances as these had not crushed. He admired his natural aptitude for command and his way of addressing others as if they were by nature his subordinates or inferiors. Ernesto yielded once more to the fascination that this behaviour exercised over him. He felt that to obey César was the only way to grow more like him, and during all the hours of wakefulness, restless in his bed, until a knock at the door of his room announced that it was time to be going, he was making up his mind to support César's written vehemence with his own spoken testimony. His heart was beating hard, burning with indignation, and he imagined himself arriving in the presence of the Municipal President of Ocosingo still aflame like a torch to light the dark cave of injustice.