Precarious living, Guatemala City (July 20)

It's been over a week that I've been in Guatemala and I haven't yet had the time or mental concentration to return to my blog. Every time I start this again, I look at the long list of half-finished entries from previous trips and wonder if I should try and finish them, and if so, whether I try to put myself back in 2017 or 2015, or write from the standpoint of the present, or whether I should eliminate them, or -- and this is what I most often choose -- just leave them there as reminders and signposts. 

This trip started with my joining a human rights delegation that visited communities where human rights defenders had been assassinated and threatened, and I will try to write about those experiences. 

But now I am back in the capital, where we returned on Sunday night, and I decided to stay here for a few days after the delegation's work ended. Most days when I am in the capital I run about 4 or 5 miles along the Sexta Avenida - first heading towards 18th Street, which takes me past the Palacio Nacional, the Plaza de la Constitución and along the pedestrian mall, and then turning around and running until the avenue ends at the Hipódromo, a sports stadium in Zona 2, and then back to wherever I started (usually somewhere in the middle). Since I've been doing this for the last several days consecutively (either running or walking) at more or less the same time (starting out somewhere between 6 and 6:40), I have gotten to recognize some of the people who seem to be out around this time. 

As the street progresses towards Zona 2, the sidewalks become broader and there are trees and plants on either side. A few blocks into Zona 2, the street curves around a small oval park called Parque Jocotenango, and also sometimes Parque Morazán (there's a statue to General Morazán at one end of the park). Then there's one of the most heavily trafficked intersections in this area, with a cement pedestrian bridge so that people can cross safely. On one side, coming from the east, you have Calle Martí, a bustling, congested four or six-lane roadway that, if you follow it eastward, turns into the major highway that leads up through Jalapa, Chiquimula, and up to Puerto Barrios. On the other side, coming from the west, is the terminus of the Anilo Periférico (Ring Road), which bisects the country's main highway, the Interamericana (by the time it hits the city, it's called the Calzada Roosevelt) running north and south. So these are two major roads that basically end at Parque Jocotenango. Many drivers jump from one to the other, while others turn off and head into Zona 1. Once on a weekend I decided to try and cross the road without using the pedestrian bridge. I made it across in one piece but I won't do that again.

Once over the bridge, the road broadens and is now called Avenida Simeón Cañas. There is almost no traffic along the road, which is four broad lanes wide. On either side is a brick pedestrian path lined with trees and stone benches, stretching about 2/3 of a mile until it hits a park where there is a ball field, and a large relief map of the city (voted first place among the "Marvels of Guatemala" a few year ago). The road narrows and then circles around the park counterclockwise (i.e. one-way traffic). Think of the bulb of a thermometer. Going around the "bulb" you pass a children's sports field, and then an amusement park, and the entrance to another park -- Parque Minerva -- and then you come back to Avenida Simeón Cañas. There are usually very few people along this stretch of the road -- invariably some city employees sweeping the sidewalks, runners and walkers, people heading to work. Just at the point where the wide part of the roadway ends, there is an area where a lot of buses park, and there is a woman who sets up a mobile kitchen in the back of a pickup truck. There are a few stools and she has improvised a kind of counter on the side of the truck, and in the mornings I always see a handful of men eating from styrofoam plates -- usually beans, fried eggs, perhaps some sausage and tortillas.  

For two days now, I have seen one of the employees at Café Cervantes -- a café, restaurant, gallery and meeting space with a gift shop specializing in fair trade/artisanal products (from puffed amaranth to natural cosmetics to güipiles) and a book store; the space is often used for book launches, readings, panel discussions, and press conferences (our delegation held its press conference there on Tuesday). It's a place where people come to hang out, meet with friends, and use the wifi (that's why I was there yesterday -- the wifi at my guesthouse is pretty sluggish). I've seen him walking in the direction of Zona 1 while I am headed in the other direction.  

But the reason that I started to write this blog entry was because of one person I've seen every day that I've traveled this path, either running or walking. When you step off the pedestrian overpass, the pasarela that crosses over the point at which Calle Martí spits out cars and trucks, you land on a narrow sidewalk made of large stone slabs and the surface is a little irregular. There are numbered parking spaces on either side of the sidewalk here, and a few men who take charge of this parking area, guiding cars in (the spaces are perpendicular to the roadway, not parallel) and collecting a fee from drivers.  But right at the base of the pedestrian footbridge,  stands a man wearing a sandwich board, accompanied by his infant daughter. This is clearly his job -- he stands at this intersection, facing the onslaught of cars that are coming into the city and being discharged violently from Calle Martí, advertising one of the newspapers, Diario Popular. He wears the sandwich board, and there is also a banner that he has attached to the base of the stairway on the pedestrian overpass.  This morning, his daughter was standing holding onto the stone bench - he seems to take care to place her as far from the roadway as possible, and there was a sippy cup, a juice box and some snacks.  She was just standing, looking around, not crying or fussing, just  slapping her hands down on the surface the way that babies do, and sometimes holding onto the bench to steady herself. It was hard to tell her age -- somewhere between one and two years old, probably. Nearby was a backpack and a stroller and some other items. Clearly, this young father needs the work and he apparently doesn't have anyone to watch his daughter, and probably he took this particular job because it would allow him to keep his daughter with him. That would not be possible if he worked in a factory, or as a porter, or some job that required him to travel around the city, or work in an inside space where the girl would be a disturbance. When I passed him a second time this morning, on my way back, the girl was taking a nap in her stroller. The father had pulled the top down and unfurled a net curtain to provide some shade and also protection from the dust and dirt in the air.

I have no grand conclusion to this small vignette. I didn't speak to him -- most of the times I've passed him he's been facing the roadway, trying to be as visible as he can to the cars without getting hit - -in other words, doing his job.  But this caused me to reflect upon the precarious nature of so much employment in this country; many people are outside the formal waged and salaried economy, running small shops out of a sliver of a storefront, shining shoes, selling goods on the street. I wrote last year about a series of attacks against ambulatory vendors -- a campaign by the municipal government to crack down on vendors that had led to some violent clashes. I haven't followed up on this over the last year so I don't know if there have been continued clashes. I have noticed that the Garifuna women who used to set up and braid hair on the Sexta Avenida in front of the McDonald's, on one side of the Parque Concordia, are no longer there, or at least they haven't been visible at the times I have passed by. He is one of the tens of thousands of Guatemalans who have to take what work is available, even if it requires being out on the street at 6 in the morning with a small child in tow, standing alongside a busy roadway full of exhaust fumes (there is a lot of diesel fuel in use in Guatemala) for hours, day after day. I don't know his backstory -- is he a recent arrival to the city or a lifelong resident? One morning, several days ago, I saw a woman with him and the baby, but their relationship wasn't clear. The other days I've just seen him and the girl. So maybe the mother has a job where she cannot bring their child and their arrangement is that he cares for the baby during the day. I don't really know.