They don’t release Miguel that night, or the next morning.

The crowd fades away, but somehow it’s arranged that a few people always wait by the gate, with signs demanding Miguel’s release.

And Jimena Abarca goes on a hunger strike.

—

The hunger strike of Jimena Abarca doesn’t make international news.

Or even national news.

Óscar, though…Óscar makes it a daily, above-the-fold headline, telling his staff, “If we’re not here to cover something like this, we’re not here for anything at all.”

For three days straight he makes it front-page news, running stories under Ana’s and Pablo’s bylines about injustice in the valley, about the suspension of human rights, about the army running roughshod.

Pablo is there when the first phone calls start to come in. At first they’re official—the general in command calls to ask Óscar why he’s taking sides.

“We’re not taking sides,” Óscar says, perhaps a bit disingenuously. “We’re reporting news.”

“You’re not reporting our side.”

“We’d love to,” Óscar says. “What is your side? You can give it to me over the phone or I’ll send Ana right over. You know Ana, yes?”

“We’re not giving interviews at this point.”

“And if that’s your side of the story,” Óscar responds, “I’ll print that.”

A flack from the governor’s office phones to ask basically the same question and to observe that the other papers aren’t making this front-page news.

“I’m not the editor of other papers,” Óscar answers. “I’m the editor of this one, have been for quite some time, and in my experience this is front-page news.”

He hangs up, taps his cane on the side of his desk a few times, and then says, “The publisher will call next. Not until after lunch, though, when he thinks I’m mellowed by a glass of wine and a full stomach.”

The call comes at 2:05, ten minutes after Óscar has returned to the office. El Búho listens to his complaints, sympathizes with the angry calls he’s had to endure from the Defense Department, the governor’s office, and even Los Pinos, and then kindly says he will do nothing different than what he’s doing except to add an angry editorial for tomorrow’s edition.

He puts the phone on speaker so Pablo and Ana can listen.

“News articles are one thing,” the publisher says. “Editorials are quite another.”

“I have built my professional life on that principle,” Óscar says, smiling at Pablo. “I’m glad we agree.”

“So you intend to commit this paper to the position that the army is committing an outrage in Práxedis.”

“In the whole Juárez Valley,” Óscar says.

“I don’t know if the board can accept that.”

“Then the board had better fire me,” Óscar says.

“Now, Oscar, no one said anything about—”

“As long as I’m the editor of this paper,” Óscar says, “I will be the editor, and, by definition, the editor writes the editorials.”

It’s classic Óscar—firm, decisive, authoritative—but Pablo notices that he’s aged. The mischievous glint in the eye has dimmed a little, his blinks are more frequent, his hip seems to hurt him a little more, and Pablo knows that the events in Juárez have played on their boss. On all of us, I guess, Pablo thinks.

Two more days into the hunger strike and Óscar’s scathing editorial, the other calls come in.

The anonymous ones.

The threats.

“Stop what you’re doing if you know what’s good for you.”

“Don’t think bad things can’t happen to you.”

“I’m perfectly aware that bad things can happen to me,” Óscar says. “Dios mío, they put three bullets into me.”

“Then you should have learned.”

“Ah, but sadly, I’m a slow learner,” Óscar says. “My teachers in school despaired of me.”

“Who are they from?” Pablo asks, guiltily conscious of the sobres, the envelopes.

“Narcos?” Óscar asks. “The government?”

“Is there a difference?” Ana asks.

“Until you can prove otherwise, yes,” Óscar answers. He tells them to be careful, to watch their backs, and he increases security around the office. But he keeps running stories about Jimena Abarca.

—

For the first three days, Marisol explains, the body uses energy from stored glucose. It’s painful of course, as anyone who has experienced hunger knows, but not lethal.

But after three days the liver starts to consume body fat, a process known as ketosis, which is dangerous and can cause permanent damage. If the hunger strike goes into a third week, the body starts to “eat” its own muscles and vital organs. There is loss of bone marrow.

This is called starvation mode.

Marisol then gives them the old “4-4-40” rough standard for human survival: four minutes without air, four days without water, forty days without food.

They are in day seven now.

Fortunately Jimena has agreed to drink water, but won’t take vitamins or other supplements. She lies on a cot in a friend’s house in Práxedis, not far from the army post, and grows weaker every day. A thin woman to begin with, she now looks emaciated.

The army shows no sign of releasing Miguel, demanding instead that Jimena be arrested and force-fed, if necessary.

“Are we just going to let her commit slow suicide?” Ana asks. She has taken turns with other women from the “movement” sitting with Jimena. More people sit outside to make certain that if the army tries to arrest Jimena, they won’t do it easily and the seizure will be recorded.

“You’re a doctor,” Ana says to Marisol. “Don’t you have an obligation to intervene? Certainly you can’t assist in a suicide.”

“I won’t force-feed her,” Marisol answers. “It’s torture.”

“As opposed to starvation?” Pablo asks.

Going back and forth between Jimena and Alvarado, Marisol feverishly tries to find a compromise. Will Jimena stop her hunger strike if Alvarado will let her see Miguel? They both refuse. What if the army turns Miguel over to the Chihuahua state police? Jimena agrees, Alvarado refuses. What if the AFI takes custody of him? Alvarado agrees, Jimena refuses.

Then they both dig their heels in.

Jimena won’t quit until Miguel is unconditionally released, and Alvarado won’t release him.

It turns into a grim siege of wills.

And tactics—on the eighth day, a note arrives from Miguel, asking his mother to stop her strike.

“I don’t believe it,” Jimena says.

“It’s his handwriting,” Ana says.

“He was coerced.”

“He doesn’t want his mother to die!”

“Neither does his mother,” Jimena says, smiling as she lays her head back on the small pillow. “Neither does his mother.”

Later that day, they put Miguel on the phone.

“Mama, I’m all right.”

“Have they hurt you?”

“Mama, please eat.”

“Are they forcing you to make this call?”

“No, Mama.”

They take the phone away from him. Jimena’s younger son, Julio, asks her, “Mama, are you satisfied now? Please stop.”

“Not until they release him.”

“Miguel said that they weren’t hurting him.”

“What else was he going to say?” Jimena asks. “If I give in now, they win.”

“It’s not a game,” Ana says.

“No, it’s a war,” Jimena answers. “The same war it’s always been.”

Pablo gets that. It’s the war between the haves and the have-nots, the powerful and the powerless. The one has the power to inflict suffering—the other only to endure it.

Their only weapon is shame, if the powerful can even feel it.

The people in the “movement” do their best—there are daily protests now outside the army post, the governor’s office; a few allies in Mexico City even picket Los Pinos. The people in the small towns shun the soldiers, who can’t buy so much as a candy bar, a beer, a postage stamp in the Juárez Valley.

Pablo hears whispers that some are talking about darker measures. If the army is taking the side of the Sinaloa cartel, why shouldn’t we join with the Juárez people? La Familia Michoacana have attacked army posts, the Zetas have attacked prisons and freed convicts. If the army sees us as devils anyway, let’s give them true hell. The talk turns from passive resistance to revolution, an old Chihuahua tradition.