The im ages which identify Tabasco for Ruiz Abreu, and others, are those o f the abundant waters o f the region and o f the equally abundant vegetation. To a lesser degree he also deals with the strength o f the sunlight and the density o f the atmosphere. These natural images are all polyvalent, at once welcoming and threatening: ‘el agua es de doble signo: un espejismo para los beduinos del desierto, [...] una bendicion para las tierras bajas’ (p. 28), a form o f torture or destruction, and a life-giving substance. The rain forest can be seen, one the one hand, as ‘la encarnacion del mi to biblico de un edén no contaminado por la mirada del hombre’ (p. 29). Y et for those who come too close, it can becom e ‘un laberinto en el que el hombre perdia la nocion del tiempo y su mente sucumbia ante la idea del in fiem o’ (p. 29). The whole area has ‘una fisonom ia de misterio, a la v ez seductora y amenazante’ (p. 31), where a simple reflection can instantaneously transform into a vivid hallucination, and the meaning o f any particular image is fluid, unstable.32
Where the water naturally creates reflections and, in the heat, mirages, the flora (and hidden fauna) also have the metaphorical power to return the viewer’s gaze, hence the chronicle’s tide. The Laguna de las Ilusiones, the name of a lagoon which functions as the ‘backbone’ of Villahermosa, seduces the viewer’s gaze in its reflections, provoking a venerational state o f mind: it is the town’s natural substitute for a cathedral (p. 31). In stark comparison, the few unkempt churches in town ‘parecen templos caidos en el silencio del tropico que las
31 Cartones de Madrid, ed. by Jean Velasco (Madrid: Hiperion, 1988), p. 12; Los ojos, p. 11.
32 The instability of imagery in Ruiz Abreu’s chronicle also informs his reading of Tabascan history as fluid, hence the polyvalent interpretations of a figure such as Garrido Canabal (p. 65). Only time can help interpret the uncertain symbols of the present (p. 104).
mira con indiferencia’ (p. 52). Nevertheless, the rain forest is also described as a mirage, and the water has the capacity to look back ( ‘ Oscura y prolifica [la selva] fue un espejismo para los probadores de fortuna del siglo XIX y parte del X X ’ (p. 43); ‘Qué delicia este mar que mira a las palmeras’ (p. 80)). The view er’s gaze is repeatedly described as being devoured, absorbed or beaten by nature: ‘la mirada se rinde frente a esa luz esmeralda de las aguas’ ( p. 37). Or deflected, returned: Tabasco is ‘el mundo que le devuelve su mirada [al viajero]’ (p. 33).
Images of water and vegetation are thus endowed with an inherently speculative nature, and with the fluidity of ‘vases communicants’. The waters surrounding Villaherm osa are described as nets ( ‘redes’ (p. 3 2 )) or as a spider’s w eb ( ‘una telarana’ (p. 38)). Furthermore, these im ages used to describe the network of waterways correspond to, and even rhyme with, those used to describe the tangle o f the vegetation ( ‘las enredaderas’ (p. 47) and ‘una marana’ (p. 84)). Nature offers a speculative journey to the traveller in Tabasco; a ‘recorrido fisico por la imaginacion dulce y precoz de la naturaleza’ (p. 46) which translates into this polyvalent imagery.
The fully speculative capacity o f Tabasco’s landscape is frequently associated with the past: the rain forest used to be dense enough to put up resistance to the traveller; the waters used to be sufficiently unpolluted to offer a reflection. Modernisation has largely destroyed ‘la mitologia de los rios como espejos de agua’ (p. 35), leaving only the sensation that the very existence o f such prolific, precocious nature might have been a mirage: ‘El rio es pura imaginacion’ (p. 34). For the visitor of the 1990s, ‘El agua en Tabasco es una presencia ciega, no es preciso mirarla’ (p. 31): deprived o f its transparency, the water is blind, incapable o f returning the onlooker’s gaze.
High-rise mirrored buildings now reflect the gazes o f the passers-by more clearly than the lagoons. Furthermore, the arrival o f Petroleos M exicanos (Pem ex) in Tabasco has irrevocably altered the nature o f the state and its imagery. Pemex has polluted the waters and destroyed parts o f the rain forest, thus lim iting the speculative qualities o f these images. Y et today it is Pemex which can exert the power o f its ‘gaze’, and transform the network o f images with its tubes and ducts:
Sobre las tierras verdes y las aguas etemas de este territorio se yerguen, mirando al siglo XXI, las torres de perforaciôn que se han modemizado en la ultima década. Hay una geografia nueva que hicieron posible los campos petroleros, las baterias y las compresoras, los sistemas de bombeo y las complejas redes de almacenamiento de gas y crudo. (pp. 93-94)
The new Pemex installations are ‘una ciudad apenas sonada por la ciencia fïccion ’ (p. 96), a speculative fiction in them selves. They might possibly be the ‘espejo lum inoso’ of Tabasco’s future (p. 103), but they are also a deceptive presence, a mirage (p. 100).
Nevertheless, the final chapter o f the book takes up the theme o f nature in a type of coda in order to confirm that it is still the dominant feature o f Tabasco; its qualities as a mirage are a defence mechanism, not proof o f its extinction. Despite the suspicion that ‘el paisaje es
mâs fuerte que la razon’ (p. 112), that it continues to exist in the narrator’s memory alone, Ruiz Abreu describes the Garrido Canabal Park thus:
Villahermosa tiene en este parque un espejo donde mirar su cielo y sus aguas, pues la arquitectura se vuelve también poesia. Espacios y columnas que se abren a una naturaleza que las mira con entusiasmo, las asimila y las devuelve a su sitio convertido en armonia. (p. 114)
A balance has been established. Although the density and unpredictability of these natural features of Tabasco have frequently hindered any sense of real journey, the protagonism which Ruiz Abreu accords them suggests the speculative m ovem ent o f reciprocal observation which was also a feature of Perea’s spiral. Tabasco is characterised as an independent protagonist in Ruiz Abreu’s chronicle: a sensual, desirable wom an, yet a defiant muse.