Well, friends, it's been nearly two years since I've written in the blog. Occasionally someone will send a note and say, "I've enjoyed your blog" and that brings with it a pang of guilt. Here's what I started to write in August 2019 during my last trip to Guatemala:
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After an only partially successful weekend in Zacualpa, I set out for Nebaj. The bus rides were uneventful and I arrived in the early afternoon. I went directly to the offices of the alcaldía indígena (inidgenous mayoralty) -- the traditional authorities -- which were located on the central square of the town (parque central). On one side stands the central cathedral -- although Evangelical Christianity has made substantial inroads throughout the entire country, including in rural areas, most of the town centers date from an era when the Catholic Church was the only ecclesiastical authority in town, and so the main Catholic church is always at the center of the town. Two sides of the square are filled with storefronts -- including one shiny new "centro commercial" (shopping center) that definitely hadn't been there when I visited Nebaj briefly in 2016. The center of the town was much more built up than I recalled; a colleague who has worked in the area for several years says that one of the nicknames is Nebaj-York. It's certainly the largest and most "developed" (a loaded word) of the three Ixil municipalities; both Cotzal and Chajul are much smaller and less "urbanized". Nebaj now seems to be at the center of a small but lively tourist industry -- there are a few hotels with signage in English.************************
And that was all she wrote. It's hard now to reconstruct the trip. I don't know that I took especially good notes, head notes or written notes, or where they might be. I visited several rural communities always in the company of someone from the alcaldía indígena. We reached most of these places on foot, starting out early and walking up into the mountains. Lots of time for talking and reflecting. One of my companions had been in the guerrilla; he'd left home when he was in his late teens and spent many years away from his family and home. I visited people who had been displaced by the war, who had lived in exile for many years, and then returned and tried to rebuild their lives.
In one community, a mural that commemorated the armed conflict had recently been painted over, but we looked at the school wall where it had been.
But right now I'm just going to post this rather than try to reconstruct a trip from two years ago.
