Pandemic-era Guatemala: planning and arriving

 Well, time for true confessions. I didn't do the best job in the world of planning for this trip. Although I'd had it in my mind for a few months, and had more or less figured out the time frame (early July to early August, timing it so I could get back in time for a friend's wedding), I hadn't done anything concrete like make research contacts, or flight arrangements, and figure out what to do with my cats (don't worry, I won't bore you with those details).

Thus, in mid-June I began to sketch out plans. I hadn't kept track of who were the recent arrivals during my weekly stints at Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores (CCT), so I had to start asking around. Luckily, one of the people I'd remembered was someone who had jumped right in to volunteer nearly as soon as he had arrived. Ken, as I will call him, was in some ways not the typical Maya K'iche' immigrant to New Bedford as he had achieved a higher degree of education than most and had been trained as a bilingual (K'iche' and Spanish) educator. He came to CCT in the summer of 2021 and, together with two other immigrants who had been in New Bedford somewhat longer, started teaching K'iche' classes for the children of Maya immigrants. Ken had also received some training in photography and videography, and began to help with documentation of many of CCT's activities starting in the summer of 2021 -- material aid distribution, vaccine education and promotion, vaccine clinics. 

Another recent arrival who had become a steadfast volunteer was a young woman whom I'll call Mary. She was a constant presence during the weekly educational talks, and always came to help out for aid distribution and vaccine-related events. I knew Mary was from San Andrés Sajcabajá because she often came to events wearing the style of güipil that is specific to San Andrés, but since very few Maya men in Guatemala wear traditional garments (and basically none in the immigrant community) I didn't know where Ken was from without asking.

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A sidebar here: during the 15 years that I've been observing the immigrant community in New Bedford, in the last few years more women and girls are wearing traditional garments. Indumentaria is the preferred word in Spanish- it's a generic term for clothing or attire and Mayan activists argue for its use instead of traje típico -- "typical" clothing, or "folk costume", which smacks of folklorization. I don't really know how else to refer to this clothing in English without a long-winded explanation. We can argue about the term "traditional", but suffice it to say that there are styles of clothing that are specific to Mayan communities in Guatemala. In most parts of the country, Maya women and girls wrap long lengths of patterned cloth (mostly woven on foot-powered looms or machine looms these days) around their waists (this is called a corte), fastened with a woven or embroidered belt called a faja (fah-hah), and a woven and/or embroidered tunic called a huipil (wee-peel) -- in Guatemala it's usually spelled güipil. In some areas (San Andrés is one) these are not handwoven but instead sewn from pieces of store-bought fabric and decorated with ribbons and/or lace and sometimes other adornments. Of course these garments all have names in the various Maya languages but these are the most common Spanish names. 

When I first started to work with and in the immigrant community, women rarely wore indumentaria except on very special occasions. Because the journey to the U.S. takes a long time, migrants carry very little with them, and the indumentaria is relatively expensive compared to, say, jeans and a t-shirt purchased from a used-clothing store or Paca. So migrants wouldn't want to carry that much bulk or weight (the cortes are usually several yards long and handwoven güipils can be pretty heavy), or to run the risk of losing costly and valuable items. But as people became more established in the U.S., they asked relatives in Guatemala to send them, and (this is my hypothesis) they began to feel more secure in making visible their indigenous identity and their presence in the town. In other words, claiming space in the variegated ethnoscape of New Bedford.  Okay, end of sidebar.

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However, I was able to get in touch with him and learned that he was from Chinique, the town where I had lived during my Fulbright year, and more specifically from an aldea (village) called La Puerta, which I had visited in 2012 on my first return visit to Guatemala after my Fulbright ended when I had been recruited as an observer for the community consultation about mining (consulta de buena fe or consulta comunitaria). He told me that his father was a member of the COCODE (Consejo Comunitario de Desarrollo -- Community Development Council) and would be able to speak to me. As we talked, I learned that we knew some people in common in Guatemala. As Ken had been a teacher, he knew my friend Catarino, who was also a teacher. Chinique is a small municipality in terms of population. The 2018 census counted 11,382 inhabitants in the municipality, and over 9000 were counted as Maya. This makes it the third smallest in the department of El Quiché, ahead of Pachalúm, which is on the eastern end of El Quiché, and Patzité. One of the alcaldes indígenas -- indigenous mayors -- told me it was the second smallest, and that there were 13,000 inhabitants, so maybe he has access to more recent figures than the census from 4 years ago. Nonetheless, it's not much of an exaggeration to say that everyone knows everyone. 

Ken gave me his father's phone number, and also that of his girlfriend, (I'll call her Jenny), who had migrated to the U.S. together with him. Jenny is also from Chinique, and she gave me the phone number for her sister "Carmen" (I usually use real names when permitted but I haven't had a chance to ask everyone). The other contact I had for Chinique was a man named "Andy", who had come to the U.S. with his son, leaving his wife and two daughters behind, and he gave me the phone number of his wife, who lived in a different village in Chinique. 

And then Ken told me about a man named Al also from Chinique, whose mother had recently come to New Bedford with Al's young son. Al gave me the number of his aunt, Flora. Ken gave me the name and number of one of his cousins, also from La Puerta, but I didn't have time to contact him before I left. I figured naively that I would be able to contact his family through Ken's father but I ended up not trying.

Turning to San Andrés, I had two contacts of pandemic-era migrants: Mary, who is still in her teens, needed to consult with her parents before providing me with a name and phone number of a relative, but eventually she gave it to me. And there was one other person who had been a consistent volunteer at CCT, Zee. Zee gave me contact information for a cousin in San Andres.

There was another recent migrant whom I met by coincidence when he came into the CCT office about a week before my departure, and I explained my project to him. He gave me his phone number but never responded to my messages so I had to leave that aside.

Ken had given me a few other names, thinking they were from Zacualpa (which is the next town over from Chinique heading east), but they were from more distant municipalities. One was from Joyabaj, which is the next municipality to the east of Zacualpa, but he told me that his family lived in a distant village three hour from the town of Joyabaj, and I doubted that I would be able to travel there. The other was from Pachalúm, which is even farther away. Since these were not municipalities that had sent a lot of migrants to New Bedford, I wasn't sure it would be worth the time and effort to get there. 

Then I set about trying to reach people in Guatemala. I had asked all the recent migrants to whom I'd spoken to call their relatives first and explain who I was and tell them I would be contacting them. People in Guatemala are often hesitant to answer calls from unknown numbers. This has been the case for many years because extortion, scams, and fraud are widespread, and people fear that an unknown caller might be trying to extort, scam, or defraud them. So this was an important precaution because otherwise, friends and relatives of migrants would probably not have accepted my messages or calls. 

Many people in Guatemala -- at least, the relatives of migrants -- have smartphones and use WhatsApp (a lot of the local phone companies will throw in some free access Facebook or WhatsApp when you purchase some airtime -- most people use prepaid phones, not monthly plans -- and so it's often more economical to make calls via WhatsApp than just dialing), so I was able to chat with most of the people I wanted to see in Guatemala before I left.