Rîo Negro: Being there

 

The boat ride down the river, which is also called Río Negro, was almost like a journey to the land before time, or to a land before human habitation. I realize that this is a highly culturally and historically specific observation. I can't remember whether it was in the work of Carolyn Merchant or another scholar of environmental history who argued that what the English settlers viewed as "wilderness" when they landed in New England, was actually the result of thousands of years of Native habitation and, in many instances, deliberate cultivation. And so, with my critical thinking brain activated, I realize that the landscapes on both sides of the river, as wild, rugged, and uninhabited as they mostly seemed, undoubtedly bore the signs of thousands of years of settlement by Maya Achi people. And the course of the river itself had changed significantly since the construction of the Chixoy Dam, which had produced the displacement of most of the inhabitants of Río Negro, the massacres of over 400 people. 

The river was surrounded by mountains and cliffs, thickly covered with trees and other vegetation. It was easy to see that the river was well below its normal level -- that is, what has passed for normal in the four decades since the dam was constructed. There were occasionally flat areas close to water level, temporary pastures, including a few where I saw animals (a horse in one location, a lone cow in another and in an alcove off to one side where there was a more extensive pasture area, several cows). Sorry, I have no photos of the animals; you'll have to take my word.

There were a very small number of homesteads visible from the river (maybe 3, over the course of 13 kilometers -- that's what Don Julián told me was the distance). We saw a few boats moored along the river, and perhaps 4 other boats with people in them. It reminded me of a long-ago kayak trip in the Dordogne region of France,  where the famous Lascaux and Les Eyzies caves are located. Although the topography was not very similar, the sense of passing through a landscape that looked, to the untutored eye, like it had changed little in the last few millennia, was similar. 

Don Julián, the boatman, had lived much of his life in this river valley (he told me a lot of his personal biography later) and clearly knew the river intimately. After we had moved far enough from the landing area so that the water was deep enough to turn on the motor, it provided a constant, or almost constant, hum. I sat looking ahead; Don Julián was behind me in the sterm, but we could converse as the boat was small. From time to time Don Julián cut the motor and pulled it up  when we came to an area where the water was too shallow, or there were too many grasses and reeds that would catch in the motor. and there were islands of grasses and reeds that we needed to navigate around. Without a word when I heard him pull out his paddle I grabbed mine and helped steer the boat around the danger zones.

We were on the river for about an hour and a half, perhaps a little more. I left the charging cable for my GPS watch in Zacualpa and while my phone certainly serves as a timepiece, I have to make an effort to pull it out an look at it, as opposed to just glancing down at my wrist. 

One disappointing but not entirely surprised observation was the quantity of garbage in the river - specifically, the quantity of bottles.  Soft drink, bottled water, Gatorade, and undoubtedly other beverages.  These were mostly, but not all, plastic single serving bottle, although some glass beer bottles here and there. There were entire floating islands, almost barriers, composed of bottles that had drifted together. Obviously, there is no municipal garbage collection along the river -- this sparsely populated area is poorly served by governmental institutions of all sorts. And I have no way of knowing whether most of the bottles wound up in the river because people simply tossed them from the sides of boats as they traveled up and down the river (not inconceivable -- many times on buses I've seen people open the windows and toss all kinds of trash out onto the shoulders or roadway. 

I toyed with the idea of taking a photo of the garbage but decided against it, in part to avoid creating or reproducing stereotypes of rural people in places like Guatemala, that they are somehow uniquely careless about their trash. There are larger social, economic, and political forces that are responsible for our culture of disposability, for the export to places like Guatemala of soft drinks, junk food, fast food, and other consumer items (and the culture of disposability), and for the desire to consume modernity (hence the global popularity of McDonald's -- it's not only because of how the stuff tastes, but because it represents rubbing elbows with the world of global capitalism). 

At a certain point Don Julián told me that we were getting close, and pointed out a building on the right hand side of the river, up on a hillside. That was the school, he told me. A little while later, we came upon a floating wooden dock, in front of a steep cliff, and Don Julián hopped out of the boat, admonishing me to stay and wait. First he fastened the boat, and then he stepped over a pretty wide gap between the dock and the shore and tightened the rope that tethered the dock to the shore. It was still bobbing around, but I put my bags on the dock, got off the boat, and then handed the larger bag to Don Julián and strapped myself into the backpack and the shoulder bag. I was so glad that I hadn't brought the suitcase, because no one had told me that in order to get to the Centro, one had to walk nearly half a mile up a very narrow rock, gravel, and dirt path, full of switchbacks. I was grateful that Don Julián volunteered to carry my heavier bag (and at the same time immensely guilty because I had learned that he was two years older than me). You can see the beginning of the path in the photo to your left. 

It was slow going, as the gravel and rocks were loose in places. I paused several times to give my lungs and quads a break. So I didn't feel bad about not having gone for a run in the morning.

When I got to the top (finally!) I was grateful that I wouldn't have to traverse it again with that much baggage until the day I left (which was either going to be the next day, or the day after). 

At the top, we were greeted by Cupertino, the man who was in charge of the locale and the reception of visitors. Don Julián had served in that position for a few years, and then Cupertino had assumed that role (I later learned that there was an election process, but I didn't know it at the time).

I don't have a photograph of the center -- the entrance is pretty close to the edge of the cliff. Not dangerously close, but close enough that one could not step back far enough to get a shot of the whole building. It was a two-story wooden frame building with a wraparound porch on two sides of the building. I never went up to the second floor so I don't know what is up there, but I think probably space that could be used for sleeping or meetings. There was a standard 6-foot long white folding table of the kind you would see at Lowe's or Ikea, and a couple of rubber armchairs. 

Cupertino was also a survivor of the massacre, as is his wife, Ventura, whom I met a bit later on when she brought lunch for us. A bit later on we had a long chat and he told me his life story. But first he showed me the facilities -- first room was a relatively spacious kitchen, with a gas stove and a fridge. Apologetically, he told me that the power was off -- it was a nationwide blackout, some problem with the grid, which of course I hadn't known about since I had been in transit for over three hours. I worried, of course, about charging my phone and laptop, but the power did come back on later, and I never used the fridge as I had not brought any perishable food with me.

There was a bathroom off to one side. He proudly told me that it had hot water -- but of course that was connected to the electrical grid as nearly every shower that I have seen in Guatemala has a shower head that is attached to a small apparatus that heats the water. By the time I needed a shower, it was working. Straight ahead was a library/office. One shelf full of books, some other items on tables and tucked into corners. A small hallway led to the main, large room, with several large windows, curtained with the fabric used to for cortes (the long pieces of cloth that women wrap around their midsections and fasten with a woven belt). There was a large stack of thin mattresses covered with striped ticking along the back wall, a couple of stacks of those ubiquitous plastic chairs, and a shelf with a lot of sports trophies. Cupertino explained that some of the local kids had won or placed in various tournaments. There was another folding table along one of the walls, with a chair, that I could use as a writing surface, and perpendicular to the opposite wall, a single mattress on the floor, with a pillow, sheets, blanket and towel neatly stacked at the foot. 

I arranged my bags on the table, put my food items on the kitchen counter, excused myself to use the bathroom, and then we sat down to talk, and plan out the next day and a half. Don Julián was still there, and we discussed the two major items: visiting the site of the dam, which would require Don Julián's services as boatman, and walking along the path of the massacres, up to the top of the mountain, where there was a memorial. They asked if I wanted to rest (people always seem to think that gringas need a lot of rest after traveling or any kind of exertion -- people are continually bidding me "Que descanses") but I said that I wanted to go to the dam that afternoon after lunch if it were possible, and then we could do the walk up the mountain the next day, leaving very early to beat the heat. 

That settled Don Julián went off down the path to return to him own home, about 10 or 15 minutes away by boat, for lunch, and Doña Ventura, Cupertino's wife, came bearing some pots and containers which she set down in the kitchen and then prepared our plates. It felt a little awkward to eat with Cupertino (he kept me company for lunch and dinner, which were the meals that Doña Ventura prepared for me -- I made my own breakfasts) while Doña Ventura did not join us, but I generally don't question people on their own turf about such things. I won't bore readers with details about the food other than to say that her tortillas were excellent and much to my liking -- made of yellow corn (not as common as white), relatively thick and large (there is a wide range of sizes and thicknesses of tortillas) and quite fresh and hot (another key criteria in my book). I had to stop myself from gobbling down a whole stack of them; I try to limit myself to three or at most four, depending upon the size.

Then just at the moment expected we heard the motor of Don Julián's boat, and I went down the zig-zag trails to the landing so we could set off to the Chixoy Dam (next installment). 

Río Negro, Rabinal: Getting to El Centro Histórico y Educativo (part 1)

 The sun beat down on us as Luis, the young man who had driven me from the town of Rabinal to the banks of the Río Negro, and I followed Don Julián, the boatman, along a marshy, muddy path to the water's edge. Don Julián, who turned out to be two years older than me, moved rapidly and surely. Luis and I reached the river bank but Don Julián was moving quickly along another path. I wasn't sure whether we were supposed to follow him, but I realized that he had moored his boat a little farther down the shore and was going to bring it back to us by water, so we waited. Luis had carried the heavier of my bags, while I carried my laptop bag and small backpack. Don Julián was taking me to the Centro Histórico y Educativo Riij Ib'ooy -- the Río Negro Historical and Educational Center, which was established by survivors of the massacre (with some help from a German organization).

Río Negro is the name of a river that snakes its way through several departments in Guatemala, and it is also the name of a Maya Achi' village belonging to the municipality of Rabinal, in the department of Baja Verapaz, where there were four massacres over a short period of time in 1982. I'd known about the Río Negro massacres as they are well-documented; there are still many survivors (the boatman, Don Julián, is one; Luis is the son of another). But I hadn't known about the Centro Histórico until fairly recently. When I first visited Rabinal in 2019, I had come to the town of Rabinal to visit a community museum that was devoted to documenting the armed conflict in the region. I also visited the cemetery, where there were some small memorials -- paintings on grave stones, and also small monuments. On the external walls of the cemetery, there were vinyl "posters" - I don't really know what else to call them. They had blue lettering and designs on a white background. There were, I think, four panels -- I'd have to go back and look for my photos from 2019 to be sure. Each panel documented one of the massacres, with the date, location, and the names of the victims. Altogether, between the four massacres, there were over 400 people killed -- in one instance, exclusively women and children (about 200 in that one massacre). The total of the 4 massacres represented nearly half the population of Rio Negro.

When I visited Rabinal in 2019, the posters had been ripped so that only part of their text and images were visible. When I visited Rabinal again last year -- this time very briefly, as part of a human rights delegation -- the posters were in even worse shape. It seemed clear that there were forces in the town who did not want the history to be recorded and made public. This year, when I met someone from Rabinal at the Guatemala Scholars Network conference, he told me that the mayor had removed the panels completely, and that is what I saw -- the cemetery's exterior walls had been freshly painted yellow, there was a newly-paved road along one side of the cemetery (not the side facing the main road but the side street), and no posters about the massacres. I did not go inside the cemetery, however, to check on the state of the paintings and monuments.

I knew about the Río Negro massacres, and last summer when I was with the human rights delegation, we'd had a long conversation with Jesús Tecú Osorio, a survivor of the massacre. Jesús had watched his younger brother get brutally killed by the soldiers, and then he was kidnapped by one of them and taken virtually as a slave for the next two years until one of his older sisters, who had also survived the massacre, was able to locate him and free him from his captors. He wrote a memoir of his story and I read it in pretty much a single sitting. 

The same person who told me about the removal of the posters on the cemetery walls in Rabinal also told me that there were groups that arranged visits to the Río Negro Site. He spoke about one of the Canadian anti-mining and solidarity organizations bringing groups to visit Río Negro. I asked if it was all organized by the foreigners or whether the folks who lived there had any role to play. He said that he thought it was community-based, but he didn't give a lot of details. He promised to send me information, but never did (I also didn't follow up to remind him). However, I was able to search online and found the information about the Centro Histórico y Educativo. It's one thing to read about a massacre, or talk with a survivor, or look at an exhibit in a museum, but another entirely to visit the site, so I decided to do that. It's one thing to hear a story or read a book about a massacre, and another to visit the actual site where it occurred. I was also interested in how this community-based historical memory tourism worked.

I'd never traveled directly from Guatemala City to Rabinal. Both times, I'd reached Rabinal from Cobán, a larger city in the neighboring department of Alta Verapaz. I assumed that there were direct buses from the capital, but wasn't sure where they left from. One of the idiosyncrasies of public transportation in Guatemala is that there is no central bus terminal -- no equivalent to Port Authority. If you want a bus to Xela, you have to go to a certain location. If you want a bus to Santa Cruz del Quiché you have to go to a different location. If you want a tourist bus to Antigua, you have to go somewhere else. So I needed to find out where to get a bus to Rabinal. I tried looking online, and there was no really straightforward answer. So I contacted a friend whom I knew had done fieldwork in Rabinal (and had a longstanding relationship with an NGO he had helped found there). He told me to get a bus from Centra Norte - I had a vague idea where that was. I tried to get information about schedules from couple of bus companies that seemed to have buses going to Rabinal but there wasn't much available, and I tried calling, but with little success. Michael told me that he thought that the Pullman buses (the Guatemalan term for a "good" bus -- something other than a converted school bus) left in the afternoon and that I should get there sometime around noon or 12:30 to check things out. 

I got a driver to take me there -- one of the essentials of travel in Guatemala, especially if you are a woman traveling alone, is to know a few reliable drivers. This is not simply for foreign researchers and travelers, but all of my professional women friends in Guatemala -- the ones who do not know own cars themselves -- rely upon known and trusted drivers (or Uber for getting around in Guatemala City if a trusted driver is not available). I learned this back in 2014 or 2015, when I first began to travel to visit the political prisoners at the preventive detention center (which is actually close to Centra Norte) -- I met my friends Momis, Jovita, and Simón at a designated location in Zona 1 and we loaded into the car of a driver they all knew). Before I arrived in Guatemala this time, Momis had given me the name of her trusted driver, Hugo, and so Hugo came to pick me up and take me to Centra Norte. It turned out to be a huge somewhat upscale shopping mall with some bus loading areas on the outside, and a range of stores ranging from Pierre Cardin to more local brands, on the inside. 

And a Barbie photo station, of course.

I arrived in Rabinal in the late afternoon and spent a while trying to find lodging -- the hotel that Jesús had recommended to me was full. That hotel recommended another hotel and that second hotel was also full, so I went with a place that the tuc-tuc driver recommended, which turned out to be the place I had stayed the previous summer with the human rights delegation. 

Jesús had told me that he had to be in Guatemala City and therefore couldn't accompany me to Río Negro but that his son would drive me to the place where a boat would pick me up. I had to arrange for the hotel to make me an early breakfast because although the sign on the wall of the dining room said they started serving at 7, when I had asked at dinner, they told me 9. I explained that I had an early departure and that I wouldn't really have anywhere else to get a meal (not entirely true, but I figured they would prefer to have the business as breakfast was not included and so I would be paying for the meal). They agreed I took a quick stroll in the morning down towards the cemetery and where I remembered there was a semi-protected pedestrian and bike path near a field, and then returned to eat and got ready to leave.

Jesús' son Luis was an amiable young man, probably in his early 20s (I didn't ask). I did ask if he was working, studying, or both, and he said both. He was studying agronomy, but in a course that met on the weekends, and worked during the week. I was familiar with the weekend-only college courses -- it's the way that many people I knew took or were taking their degrees. Very people can afford a college education, and the satellite campuses of the main universities which are located in smaller towns like Rabinal generally only offer a limited number of degree programs -- usually a teaching certification, social work, and agronomy. If you want a more specialized degree such as law, engineering, or architecture, you would have to travel to a main campus of one of the universities in a larger city.

After stopping for gas (for which I paid -- that was part of the arrangement) in the next town, Cubulco, we continued on for a bit on paved roads, and then took a turn off onto dirt. After a short while, we came to a point where there was a narrow road forking off down a slope while the main dirt road continued. There was a pickup stopped on the side of the road and Luis got out and spoke to the men to ask directions. The conversation was in Achi so I couldn't understand most of it, but there was a lot of gesticulating and it seemed that they were discussing two possible routes, one to San José and one to somewhere else. It sounded like they were saying that the car we were in wouldn't be able to manage the kind of sketchy-looking harrow road, but after about 5 minutes of conversation, Luis got back in the vehicle and we headed off down that narrow lane.

It seemed impossibly narrow at times, with barely enough space for one vehicle. The road (I guess I have to call it that, although it really looked and felt more like a lane) was overgrown, winding through trees, skirting at the very edge of rock walls, under small cliffs, and occasionally opening out onto a vista with a drop on the left-hand side. There were steep climbs and equaly steep declines. I was glad that I was not the one driving. There were very few dwellings -- we might have passed one or two in nearly half an hour of driving. Maybe it was longer. But eventually we came to an area where the road widened a little and there was a small clearing; there was a house and some outbuildings on the left hand side and Luis pulled the car into the clearing and got out and shouted, and after a few minutes, a few people emerged from one of the buildings and one man walked towards us. Dressed in jeans, boots, and a straw hat -- of the kind that we would call a "cowboy hat" -- and with a weather-beaten face, this was the lanchero or boatman. He said good-bye to the people in the house, obviously known to him, and got into the vehicle with us. We drove a bit more, crossed over a shallow part of the river, and then Luis parked the car, and we got out and walked. 

I had three bags - my carry-on bag, which is a small soft-sided suitcase with a shoulder strapped, my purse/laptop bag, and a small backpack holding my food items. Yes, I'm a bit of an obsessive when it comes to making sure that when I travel, I can at least have a breakfast to my own liking. I have a small travel coffee maker (Aeropress brand) so all I need is a source of hot water to have good strong coffee. I buy good coffee when I get a chance. usually in one of the major cities or a tourist town like Antigua -- I had stocked up on some coffee from Fernando's Kaffee, one of my favorite places -- because it's not usually possible to get dark roast coffee in most parts of the country. I buy powdered whole milk, which is available everywhere in Guatemala -- I don't know why it's so hard to get in the U.S. I've only ever seen it in South Asian groceries, never in a regular grocery store, or online. And then I have my oatmeal - avena integral is the closest thing to old-fashioned oats. Most Guatemalans use something called avena mosh, which is quick-cooking oats, and they make it like a beverage, basically hot milk with a little bit of oatmeal, some cinnamon, and of course sugar. Avena integral is also not always available outside of the big cities or Antigua. And I usually buy a jar of ground flax seed to mix with my oatmeal. On top of that, I had some packets of roasted almonds (emergency rations) and some roasted peanuts that someone on my panel at the conference had given me as they came from the community where she had done her research. 

One of the men carried my larger bag and I took the two smaller ones. We had to walk on a rocky path and then through some marshy ground to get to the river, so I was glad for the help, although I felt a bit guilty about having so much (first world problem). My big suitcase was in the car -- Luis was going to drop it off at the office where Jesús worked, because I was only going to Río Negro for two days and didn't need everything I'd brought for 4-1/2 weeks.

When we finally got to the edge of the water, Julián, who had been ahead of us the entire time, walking very surely and swiftly, turned off and walked across the marsh, leaving Luis and I on the muddy bank, and then returned with the boat. It was a good thing I hadn't brought a large suitcase, because the lancha turned out to be a small wooden rowboat with a couple of wooden slats for seats and an aging motor on the back. I had been misled by the word lancha into expecting something bigger -- in Cuba, a lancha is a ferry-boat.  I realize that I don't have any full photos of Julián's boat, nor of Julián in the boat. But this is the closest I have -- the tip of the boat as we headed down the river.

We loaded my bags and me into the boat, and I said goodbye to Luis as he headed back to the vehicle. Julián told me to sit on the wooden slat in the middle of the boat and he took an oar and started to paddle, explaining that he couldn't use the motor until we had gotten into deeper water. There was a second oar, and although I am not an expert boatwoman, I do know how to row a boat and paddle a canoe. Although the boat was shaped like a rowboat, there were no oarlocks, and so we used the oars like canoe paddles, dipping them in and trying to get the boat into the middle of the river. As you can see from the photos, the water was very low, and the river was very muddy. I'll leave this here, and continue the journey in the next blog.