Wind Rises in North America 1625

Chapter 612 The Dawn of Peace (Part 4)
October 2, 1644, River Fort (now Compton, Los Angeles County).

Although it was late autumn, the sun overhead still shone fiercely, relentlessly scorching the wide riverbed of the Jishui River (now the Los Angeles River).

The air was filled with the sour, rotten smell of dust, sweat, and river mud.

Hundreds of ragged Spanish prisoners, like ants, were scattered along the winding riverbank, mechanically and numbly toiling under the watchful eyes of the Xinhua overseers who held rattan whips.

The dull thud of pickaxes striking the dry, hard earth, the scraping sound of shovels scooping up sand and gravel, and the occasional shouts from the overseers—most of which they couldn't understand but whose meaning they knew perfectly well—formed the daily symphony of hard labor on this land.

Antonio Morales used all his strength to lift a large, sharp-edged boulder and stuff it into the framework of the river embankment that was being raised.

His palms were already rough and calloused, covered with old and new bloodstains and thick calluses. Sweat dripped down his forehead and into his eyes, causing a stinging pain.

He straightened his back, which felt like it was about to break, and took a short breath, looking at the river in front of him, which the new Chinese called "Ji Shui".

At this time, the Jishui River was at the end of the dry season and appeared extremely docile.

The river is narrow and the current is weak, exposing large areas of riverbed covered with cracks. It is impossible to imagine the terrifying destructive power it could unleash during the rainy season.

This is a fickle, seasonal river, just like the temperament of this land, fiery in drought and monstrous in flood.

However, it is this capricious river that, with its thick alluvial deposits brought about by thousands of years of floods, has nourished the incredibly fertile land on both banks.

As far as the eye can see, the original shrubs and wasteland on both sides of the river have been leveled and neat rows of fields have been cleared out, with withered corn stalks swaying in the breeze.

Further away, there are vast fields of soybeans and a few cotton fields.

These are all human imprints forcibly carved by the new Chinese in this river basin called "Jishui".

Hejin Fort was built on the high ground behind them. On the fortress, which was built of logs and rammed earth, the red flag with gold stars fluttered lazily in the dry wind.

Inside and outside the village walls are the low-lying houses of hundreds of new immigrants and wisps of smoke rising from their chimneys.

Everything here exudes a raw, unrefined, and tenacious spirit.

"Antonio, stop daydreaming! Get your hands moving, or you'll get whipped!" a man also dressed in tattered prison clothes, but with a red band around his arm, whispered a warning.

He was Álvaro Mendoza, a junior clerk in the former governor's office. Because he was literate and knew how to measure, he was selected to assist the supervisors with some recording and calculation work during the later stages of the Dingyuan Island (Coronado Island) fortress project. He was one of the few prisoners who received some "preferential treatment".

After arriving at Hejinbao, this "skill" exempted him from the heaviest physical labor, and he was instead responsible for supervising the earthwork measurement of his small team of prisoners and assisting the water conservancy technicians of the new Chinese in the planning and design of the river embankment.

Antonio nodded silently and bowed again.

Since he mustered up the courage to reveal his identity as a blacksmith's apprentice on Dingyuan Island a year and a half ago, his situation has indeed improved slightly.

Although he was not completely free from hard labor, he would be temporarily called upon to help when tools wore out and needed simple repairs, and occasionally he would receive an extra half a tortilla or a few pieces of salted fish.

It was precisely because of this relationship that he and Alvaro were transferred together from Dingyuan Island to this inland river basin that was being frantically reclaimed.

"Hmph, Alvaro, how does it feel to use your pen, the one of the governor's clerks, to record work points for us laborers?" a sarcastic voice rang out.

Juan Castro, a former colonial army lieutenant, stumbled past them, pushing a wheelbarrow full of dirt.

He had injured one leg in a previous battle, which made him walk with a limp. The arrogance in his eyes had long been replaced by deep weariness and resentment, but his meanness had never changed.

Alvaro didn't look at him, but simply wrote down numbers in his notebook, calmly replying, "At least my pen can let me know how much soil we dug today, how many dikes we built, and how many steps we've taken away from death. Unlike some people who only know how to complain but can't see the road ahead."

“The road beneath our feet?... Ha, where is the road?!” Juan stopped the car agitatedly, his voice hoarse. “The road beneath our feet only leads to the grave!”

“Look around! Batch after batch of prisoners are being brought in, from the Banderas Valley, from Guadalajara, from Acapulco, from Taxco… and even from Panama, from Porto Bello, and from faraway Peru!”

"Heaven knows how many of our towns these Xinhua devils have conquered and how many of God's people they have taken captive. They are like a plague, spreading throughout the entire American continent!"

His words resonated with several prisoners nearby, who stopped what they were doing, their eyes empty and filled with despair.

Yes, this prisoner-of-war camp was a microcosm of the Spanish Empire's suffering in the New World.

Compatriots from all directions were bound together by the same rope and forced to perform seemingly endless hard labor on this land occupied by Xinhua.

The food was coarse and hard to swallow, merely the bare minimum to sustain life—boiled potatoes, coarse corn porridge, almost no oil or fish, and the occasional salted dried fish was considered a great blessing.

Exhaustion, illness, accidents... almost every month, several places in the workers' shed become empty, and once familiar faces disappear forever.

Many people have become numb, even giving up their daily prayers, as if God has truly turned his gaze away from this land occupied by pagans.

Antonio listened in silence, thinking of the young nobleman who died of illness on Dingyuan Island, and of many other companions whose names he could not even recall but who had died quietly.

He himself had countless times, lying on his straw mat late at night, wondering if he would ever see Veracruz's wife and children again.

He was all too familiar with that kind of despair that seeped into his bones, so familiar that it almost numbed him.

As the evening bell rang to signal the end of the workday, the prisoners, in loose lines, dragged their bodies, which seemed not to belong to them, toward the low, damp work sheds below the riverbank.

Dinner consisted of corn porridge so thick you could see your reflection in it and two small boiled potatoes. Only a few of the supervisors who assisted the new Chinese in managing the work were given some meat and drinks.

Antonio, Álvaro, and several other familiar prisoners, including Juan, who was stubborn but powerless to resist, and Diego de la Cruz, the old plantation owner with whom they had worked on Dingyuan Island, sat together.

Just as everyone was silently swallowing their food, a thin prisoner named Felipe, a former miner from the Taxco silver mine, scurried over like a mouse, his face filled with barely suppressed excitement.

"I have good news for you! ...Mexico City is preparing to send people to...negotiations with the new Chinese!" He lowered his voice, revealing a strange excitement.

Everyone froze, their eyes fixed on him.

"What did you say? Felipe, explain yourself!" Alvaro was the first to react, his voice serious.

Felipe licked his chapped lips and said excitedly, "I heard it from... from that old Xinhua immigrant who was in charge of delivering our tools... Oh, he seemed to be in a good mood and said a few more words... I heard him mention 'Mexico' and 'negotiations'..."

"Then, this afternoon, while I was moving stones, I overheard two foremen chatting. Although I couldn't understand what they were saying, they mentioned the word 'Spain,' and their tone... wasn't as fierce as before!"

“Peace talks? My God, is this for real?” A young prisoner next to him suddenly had a gleam in his eyes. He came from the port of Panama and had been sent here less than a year ago.

“I knew it! The kingdom wouldn’t abandon us! The governor would definitely find a way to save us!” Another prisoner from Peru was so excited he almost cried.

Hope, like a piece of driftwood that a drowning person grabs, ignited in everyone's hearts in an instant.

"Calm down!" Alvaro, having once been a minor official, was more cautious. "The source of the information is uncertain. It may be a misrepresentation, or it may be a trick by Xinhua to make us work more honestly."

“No, it doesn’t seem like it!” Felipe argued. “The old immigrant didn’t seem to be lying. And… haven’t you noticed? The foreman’s whip seems to be lashing less these past few days?”

These words startled everyone slightly.

Upon reflection, it seems that this is indeed the case. Although the work is still heavy, the unprovoked, mocking beatings seem to have decreased.

“Perhaps…perhaps the war is really coming to an end.” Old Cruz spoke slowly, his voice hoarse but carrying a kind of insightful wisdom after experiencing vicissitudes. “Although the Chinese are powerful and their offensive is fierce, they have opened up so many fronts at the same time, occupied such a vast area of ​​land, and also have to manage us prisoners and immigrants of tens of thousands of people…their strength is not infinite.”

"War is a huge drain on both sides!"

"Just think about it. Along the Jishui River that we built, the new Chinese established five or six colonial outposts in less than two years, including Yifeng (now Maywood), Yongchang (now Vernon), and Zhangde (now Los Angeles). They must have built many fortified towns and villages in other places as well. Under such circumstances, it is simply unimaginable that they would continue to wage war!"

"It is clear that the Chinese in New China are determined to settle down here. Therefore, the war cannot go on forever. They need to free up their energy to build up the country and to integrate the land they have occupied. ... Peace talks are the most beneficial option for both sides."

Alvaro nodded thoughtfully: "Mr. Cruz is right. The speed at which the new Chinese are building here is astonishing. They need stability and time to develop and build the land they have already occupied."

“A protracted war will distract them too much and deplete their limited resources. So, it’s not impossible for them to reach some kind of compromise with us in Spain and end this damned war.” “So… it’s really possible for us to go home?” Antonio’s voice trembled without him even realizing it.

Veracruz's wife's gentle smile in the sunlight and the innocent figures of his children had never appeared so clearly in his mind.

He has endured more than two years of hard labor, sustained by this faint thought.

“Going home…” Juan Castro murmured the word, the resentment in his eyes seemingly diluted by a more complex emotion—a deep longing for his homeland.

"If I could go back... I swear, I will never set foot on this cursed land again..."

Over the next few days, a subtle, indescribable change occurred in the atmosphere of the entire prisoner-of-war camp.

That lifeless sense of despair was replaced by an anxious, hopeful wait.

When the prisoners were working, their eyes were no longer completely empty. They would unconsciously look towards the dirt road leading to Hejin Fort, as if a messenger on horseback might come at any moment, bringing the news that would decide their fate.

The conversation shifted from complaints and curses to reminiscing about their hometown and looking forward to postwar life.

Some people even secretly began to make the sign of the cross on their chests again and whispered long-lost prayers.

Antonio did the same; he worked even harder and paid more attention to repairing tools.

He even began to pay attention to how the new Chinese built dams, how they used levels to measure the terrain, and how they used that magical "cement" to reinforce key sections of the river.

He thought that if peace really came and he could return to Mexico alive, these insights might... be of some use.
That afternoon, gray-white clouds piled up in the sky, and the dry wind carried a rare hint of dampness.

Alvaro was called upon to assist the hydraulic engineers in conducting final dike inspections in preparation for the upcoming rainy season.

When he returned, his expression was somewhat grave.

“The situation is not good,” he told Antonio and the others in his small circle. “Based on last year’s data and this year’s rainfall forecast, Xinhua’s engineers believe that the Ji River will enter its flood season by next month at the latest.”

"The foundation of the river embankment we are currently building is not solid enough, especially the water-facing side at the bend. If the water level rises sharply, it is very likely to collapse."

"Collapse?" Juan frowned. "So, what will happen?"

Alvaro pointed to the harvested wheat fields on the opposite bank of the river, and further away, to a few newly established immigrant villages with smoke rising from their chimneys.

"Do you see that? The flood will destroy everything. Farmland, houses... even Hejin Fort itself, if the water level is high enough."

Everyone was silent.

They hate the new Chinese and wish them to suffer losses.

But at this moment, a more real fear gripped their hearts: if the riverbank collapsed, they, who worked on it, would be the first to be affected.

"Do the new Chinese know the danger?" old Cruz asked.

“I know. That’s why they’re asking us to increase our workload and reinforce that fragile riverbank as quickly as possible.” Alvaro sighed. “This may be the most difficult hurdle we’ve encountered before peace arrives.”

As if to confirm his words, the prisoners were awakened by a more urgent bell at dawn the next day.

The overseers' faces were more serious than ever before, and their shouts were even more urgent.

Everyone was driven to that dangerous section of the riverbank, with only one mission: to raise and reinforce the embankment at all costs before the flood season arrived.

The intensity of labor suddenly increased to the limit, with huge stones and bricks being continuously transported, mixed with cement, and filled into the foundation of the embankment.

The prisoners chanted slogans as they used wooden tampers to compact the soil layer by layer.

Smoke filled the area where cement was being mixed, and the grayish-white slurry was being rapidly transported onto the dam. A tense and heavy atmosphere permeated the air.

Antonio felt like he was about to collapse, and every time he raised his arm it felt like his last.

He saw someone faint beside him, who was roughly dragged aside to rest for a short while before being forced to continue working.

The glimmer of hope seemed to be obscured by this sudden, existential crisis.

As dusk fell, the sky grew increasingly gloomy.

Just when everyone was exhausted and about to collapse, the sound of rapid hoofbeats came from afar.

A squad of Xinhua cavalry, escorting a man who appeared to be an official, rode directly to the vicinity of the construction site.

All the overseers stopped whipping the workers and turned their gazes toward the official.

The prisoners instinctively stopped what they were doing, their hearts pounding in their throats.

Even the Xinhua supervisor in charge of overseeing this section of the dike quickly went to greet them.

The Xinhua official dismounted, whispered a few words to the supervisor, and handed over a document.

Because of the short distance and the unusual quiet at the construction site, many prisoners, including Antonio, vaguely heard a few words: "Spain," "ceasefire," and "negotiations"...

Then they saw the Xinhua supervisor turn around and face all the breathless prisoners.

His gaze swept over the tense, expectant, and filthy faces. Finally, in broken but understandable Spanish, he announced loudly, word by word: "Your Kingdom of Spain... is about to... begin ceasefire and peace talks with our Xinhua... and all of you... are included in the negotiation terms. Well, you will be released and sent home in the near future."

"Of course, the premise is that your Kingdom of Spain can reach a ceasefire agreement with Xinhua in a pragmatic manner."

"Wow..."

Despite being mentally prepared, all the Spanish prisoners were in an uproar when the news was officially confirmed.

Although the riverbank project supervisor added a warning later, no one paid any attention to it.

Some people wept uncontrollably, some knelt down to thank God, and some hugged each other, unable to believe their ears.

The word "home" has never struck their hearts so vividly.

The Xinhua supervisor glanced at the excited prisoners, pursed his lips, and waited for the commotion to subside slightly before continuing, "Until a formal peace treaty is signed and the prisoner exchange is finalized... all projects... shall proceed as scheduled and shall not be delayed!"

He emphasized his words, his sharp gaze sweeping over the crowd, especially pointing to the unfinished riverbank beneath his feet.

"...All prisoners...must remain under our command, and any act of resistance will be severely punished. ...This section of the riverbank still needs to be completed. Ah, peace...must be witnessed by the living!"

Antonio stood there, his chest heaving violently.

The war is over! It's finally over!

He looked at Alvaro and saw tears glistening in the other's eyes as well.

Juan Castro leaned against a large rock, looking up at the gloomy sky, his shoulders shrugging slightly.

Even old Cruz covered his face with his hands, his shoulders trembling.

Hope is no longer a vague rumor; it has become an official announcement and a tangible future.

However, the unfinished project, the rain clouds gathering in the sky, and the fragile riverbank beneath our feet all indicate that the road to freedom and home may still be a dangerous one.

But the dawn of peace has arrived, and going home is no longer a distant and unattainable dream.
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(End of this chapter)