Arriving in Guatemala is like coming home, in a way. It is a place that is very familiar, and while there are always changes that I can notice -- a store that has closed or opened, a street that has been paved or relandscaped, much remains the same. The same young woman at the counter of my favorite coffee shop in Antigua, Fernando's Kaffee, for example, who served me my latte this afternoon. There are always loose ends from the last trip and new beginnings.
The day started out in the capital, where I arrived last night. My first flight left late, leaving me with not much time in Mexico City's airport between flights, but the second flight, even though it left a few minutes late, arrived early. This morning I was waiting for a friend to bring me my car -- I had discouraged him from trying to come last night to meet my flight at 11:00, but decided to try and run some errands. LIke reactivating my phone and exchanging money. It is now hard to change money in Guatemala City, because of money laundering associated with narco-trafficking. The last time I went from bank to bank to bank without luck - -they all said that they only changed money for accountholders -- until I finally found one that would exchange my money.
First breakfast at Café Leon, a beautifully furnished café on 8va Avenida (8th Avenue). It is filled with men in designer suits -- a combination of businessmen and politicians (some women among the business group at a neighboring table) and it has a the feel of a place where there are many many regulars. The business group at the nearby table were giving speeches and taking photos. The breakfast was fine -- I prefer tortillas to the bread they serve at Leon, but I like the coffee and the wood paneling.
Then off to deal with phones and money. Life in Guatemala is not really possible without a functioning cell phone. So I got a new chip and a new number, and then off to get money. I went to Banrural, the rural development bank, which has changed money for me in the past, except they would only change $200, and since they couldn't find me in their computer even though I have changed money there before (not at that branch but other Banrurales), they were going to make me wait on another line to get authorization. I had already waited on one line, but luckily a friend was with me, and he has a Banrural account, and so they changed $200 for him (I had intended to change most of my money so I wouldn't have to bother with it again).
I left a message at the hotel for the friend who was bringing the car, in case he arrived while I was out, but decided to try and reach him to see where he was so I knew if I could do some more errands. No answer after several tries, so I called his daughter and found that he had changed phones, and finally reached him on the new number. The car was still in the shop, probably ready that afternoon, and he would come to bring it to me later.
I don't spend much time in Guatemala City but I like the Centro Histórico -- a Guatemalan version of Jane Jacob's sidewalk ballet. Musicians serenading passers-by on Sexta Avenida (6th Avenue), the pedestrian street, shoe-shine boys and men in Parque Central, the man who brings a small flock of goats and sells fresh goat milk straight from the animals, women in traje típico selling lottery tickets or food from large baskets or basins covered with cloth, well-dressed and coiffed professionals rushing off or dawdling over their coffees, ordinary workers standing at the corner waiting for the light, the slump of resignation already evident in their shoulders by 8 a.m.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Monday, July 8, 2013
Authority and power
As I've prepared for a trip to Guatemala, I've gotten disturbing but not entirely surprising news regarding the "indigenous mayoralty" of Chichicastenango, about which I have written several times in this blog. I realize that I may have given the impression that this group was at some elevated level of respect and recognition -- that they were "the" traditional authorities. That is certainly how they present themselves, but it has become clear that things are more complicated. To explain the current scandal -- they have publicly supported a proposed cement plant, owned by one of the richest families in the country, and opposed for 8 years by the local residents of the community where the plant is to be built -- I need a little background.
From a pretty early moment in my acquaintance with them, I realized that they were "connected" -- with people in authority, both inside and outside of Guatemala -- and that they were interested in establishing more or working the connections they had. Not that there is inherently anything completely evil in wanting to make strategic alliances. When I spent the day of the fiesta patronal with them in 2011, the room was full of dignitaries, including some representatives of the Guatemalan government and the Ambassador of Norway, plus his family. I was included with these special guests and we were treated with great deference, plied with food and drink, and then sat as witnesses while the members of the cofraternities (cofradías) arrived and made their ritual salutations, and some just plain ordinary folks came to kneel and ask for a blessing from the alcaldes. It was clear that there was an inner, privileged circle and then everyone else. It was clear to me, also, that I was included in the inner circle not only because of any personal qualities I might possess, but because I was a foreigner, and my initial introduction to the alcaldes came through a friend who was at that time on staff of a major international NGO that the alcaldía was interested in cultivating. This is not to say that the alcaldes did not, or do not, do good work on the ground. I ran into one of the alcaldes at the court house in Santa Cruz del Quiché one day, accompanying a woman who was involved in some kind of legal dispute. They were involved in a very long battle with the government over a building in Chichicatenango that had housed the national telecommunications company, Telgua, claiming that it was part of the territory that was controlled by the indigenous municipality -- the parallel power structure that exists in Chichicastenango, or a parallel municipality, a city within a city. They have been litigating this case for some years, and every so often when I was in Chichi, I would run into the principal general, Sr. Tomás Calvo, who holds the highest position in the alcaldía.or one of the other principales (the principales are pretty much lifetime appointees;the alcaldes per se are selected for a year or two) on the street sometime, and he would tell me that he had been to Guatemala City regarding the Telgua case. Another friend of mine is an attorney who has been working on that case, so I had kept vaguely abreast of it.
Last fall, I was surprised one day when I was online, doing I don't remember what, and came across a notice that the alcaldes indígenas of Chichicastenango would be speaking in New York. I dug around and found the information on their "tour" in New York, They were addressing the U.N. and then speaking at a couple of churches and other locations, and so I decided to attend one of the public events. It was a large church on the Upper West Side, and there were only about six of the alcaldes there. There were two people "presenting" the event -- one was a pastor at the church and the other was from a New England based non-profit that was clearly the organizing force. The man who spoke was very earnest and seemingly sincere, but he had that glow of the gringo who has found his or her third world cause. He spoke about the alcaldes in tones of reverence that were a little nauseating, and particularly grating was his reference to Don Tomás as "the Maya pope", which he repeated several times. I had to hold myself back from interrupting him and making a correction. One of the beauties of many religions or spiritual practices that are outside the Judeo/Christian mainstream is their decentered pluralistic character. There is no "supreme authority" -- at least, not on the earth. No central body that determines what is correct doctrine, doxology or practice. The alcaldes of Chichicastenango are mostly "Maya priests" and have a spiritual as well as a juridical and political function, but their authority is within Chichicatenango, not across the entire nation. There are thousands of initiated Maya priests throughout the country and no single body that governs them all.
After the event, I happened to exchange a few chat messages with a young friend who works for the alcaldía indígena in Chichi and playfully complained that he hadn't given me any advance notice that the alcaldes were coming to New York. He told me that there had been some controversy about the trip, that not everyone in the alcaldía had known about it and that he himself hadn't known about it until the group was leaving.
When I returned to Guatemala in December 2012-January 2013, I again spent part of the 21st of December, "el mero día" (the very day) of the patron saint feast, with the alcaldes, having lunch. Except that because this was a special year given the coincidence of the fiesta patronal with the Oxlajuj Baqtun (the "end of the calendar", 12-12-2012), there were many more people and guests were taken to an open-air restaurant that had been set up on an upper floor of a not-quite-finished shopping center. I was with some friends from Olintepeque. This time it was even more apparent that the alcaldes were cultivating foreign, NGO and governmental guests. The friend who had originally introduced me to the alcaldes said, in an aside, that he thought that they were becoming much more "political". This was a few days beforehand, when I was trying to decide precisely where I was going to spend the 21st of December. This friend had told me that there was something going on in Chichicastenango, at sacred stie that had been newly refurbished for the occasion, with a ring of stone carvings representing the nahuales. But, he said, everything in Chichi is kind of a show now, and the alcaldes have become very political.
So, with this background, it wasn't much of a surprise when I read the statements and denunciations from other indigenous organizations. The alcaldía of Chichicastenango had apparently offered to perform a ceremony to bless the inauguration of, or the groundbreaking for, the cement factory. And so a few days ago when I logged onto Facebook I saw a storm of angry commentaries accusing the alcaldia of Chichicastenango of being sell-outs, sleeping with the enemy. Some commentators apparently thought that they had one this so that they could get some support for their case around the Telgua building -- a case of "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine." It hasn't hit the national press yet, as far as I can see, but it's going around the internet and social media (Guatemala, and the indigenous movement, have taken to social media with a vengeance).
Power, obviously, is very seductive. Power and money. Sometimes power gets confused with authority. The alcaldia has some degree of power, and they are certainly eager for more, it seems. But do they retain authority?
From a pretty early moment in my acquaintance with them, I realized that they were "connected" -- with people in authority, both inside and outside of Guatemala -- and that they were interested in establishing more or working the connections they had. Not that there is inherently anything completely evil in wanting to make strategic alliances. When I spent the day of the fiesta patronal with them in 2011, the room was full of dignitaries, including some representatives of the Guatemalan government and the Ambassador of Norway, plus his family. I was included with these special guests and we were treated with great deference, plied with food and drink, and then sat as witnesses while the members of the cofraternities (cofradías) arrived and made their ritual salutations, and some just plain ordinary folks came to kneel and ask for a blessing from the alcaldes. It was clear that there was an inner, privileged circle and then everyone else. It was clear to me, also, that I was included in the inner circle not only because of any personal qualities I might possess, but because I was a foreigner, and my initial introduction to the alcaldes came through a friend who was at that time on staff of a major international NGO that the alcaldía was interested in cultivating. This is not to say that the alcaldes did not, or do not, do good work on the ground. I ran into one of the alcaldes at the court house in Santa Cruz del Quiché one day, accompanying a woman who was involved in some kind of legal dispute. They were involved in a very long battle with the government over a building in Chichicatenango that had housed the national telecommunications company, Telgua, claiming that it was part of the territory that was controlled by the indigenous municipality -- the parallel power structure that exists in Chichicastenango, or a parallel municipality, a city within a city. They have been litigating this case for some years, and every so often when I was in Chichi, I would run into the principal general, Sr. Tomás Calvo, who holds the highest position in the alcaldía.or one of the other principales (the principales are pretty much lifetime appointees;the alcaldes per se are selected for a year or two) on the street sometime, and he would tell me that he had been to Guatemala City regarding the Telgua case. Another friend of mine is an attorney who has been working on that case, so I had kept vaguely abreast of it.
Last fall, I was surprised one day when I was online, doing I don't remember what, and came across a notice that the alcaldes indígenas of Chichicastenango would be speaking in New York. I dug around and found the information on their "tour" in New York, They were addressing the U.N. and then speaking at a couple of churches and other locations, and so I decided to attend one of the public events. It was a large church on the Upper West Side, and there were only about six of the alcaldes there. There were two people "presenting" the event -- one was a pastor at the church and the other was from a New England based non-profit that was clearly the organizing force. The man who spoke was very earnest and seemingly sincere, but he had that glow of the gringo who has found his or her third world cause. He spoke about the alcaldes in tones of reverence that were a little nauseating, and particularly grating was his reference to Don Tomás as "the Maya pope", which he repeated several times. I had to hold myself back from interrupting him and making a correction. One of the beauties of many religions or spiritual practices that are outside the Judeo/Christian mainstream is their decentered pluralistic character. There is no "supreme authority" -- at least, not on the earth. No central body that determines what is correct doctrine, doxology or practice. The alcaldes of Chichicastenango are mostly "Maya priests" and have a spiritual as well as a juridical and political function, but their authority is within Chichicatenango, not across the entire nation. There are thousands of initiated Maya priests throughout the country and no single body that governs them all.
After the event, I happened to exchange a few chat messages with a young friend who works for the alcaldía indígena in Chichi and playfully complained that he hadn't given me any advance notice that the alcaldes were coming to New York. He told me that there had been some controversy about the trip, that not everyone in the alcaldía had known about it and that he himself hadn't known about it until the group was leaving.
When I returned to Guatemala in December 2012-January 2013, I again spent part of the 21st of December, "el mero día" (the very day) of the patron saint feast, with the alcaldes, having lunch. Except that because this was a special year given the coincidence of the fiesta patronal with the Oxlajuj Baqtun (the "end of the calendar", 12-12-2012), there were many more people and guests were taken to an open-air restaurant that had been set up on an upper floor of a not-quite-finished shopping center. I was with some friends from Olintepeque. This time it was even more apparent that the alcaldes were cultivating foreign, NGO and governmental guests. The friend who had originally introduced me to the alcaldes said, in an aside, that he thought that they were becoming much more "political". This was a few days beforehand, when I was trying to decide precisely where I was going to spend the 21st of December. This friend had told me that there was something going on in Chichicastenango, at sacred stie that had been newly refurbished for the occasion, with a ring of stone carvings representing the nahuales. But, he said, everything in Chichi is kind of a show now, and the alcaldes have become very political.
So, with this background, it wasn't much of a surprise when I read the statements and denunciations from other indigenous organizations. The alcaldía of Chichicastenango had apparently offered to perform a ceremony to bless the inauguration of, or the groundbreaking for, the cement factory. And so a few days ago when I logged onto Facebook I saw a storm of angry commentaries accusing the alcaldia of Chichicastenango of being sell-outs, sleeping with the enemy. Some commentators apparently thought that they had one this so that they could get some support for their case around the Telgua building -- a case of "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine." It hasn't hit the national press yet, as far as I can see, but it's going around the internet and social media (Guatemala, and the indigenous movement, have taken to social media with a vengeance).
Power, obviously, is very seductive. Power and money. Sometimes power gets confused with authority. The alcaldia has some degree of power, and they are certainly eager for more, it seems. But do they retain authority?
Monday, July 1, 2013
Migration slows but doesn't stop
In the last few weeks I have met several people, some of them very young men, teenagers, really, who have arrived in the U.S. in the last two or three years. I've met them because they are -- no big surprise here -- working for employers (or temporary agencies) who do not pay them overtime, or pay them late or not at all, and they come to the Centro Comunitario looking for some assistance and justice. The other day we were talking with a young man who was just 17, and had been here for two years. That means he made the hard journey across the border himself at age 15. s
Other recent arrivals include the daughter of someone I know in Guatemala, who left a small child with her parents. She already has several relatives here and so it was relatively easy, so I heard, for her to settle in and find work. Her family is not desperately poor; as migration scholars know, the poorest of the poor are not the ones who migrate as they lack the resources to pay for the journey or secure a loan. I am not certain about what prompted her decision to leave; she has some education and training, but am not sure that she was able to find a job commensurate with her training.
And so the community in New Bedford is continually changing, or gradually changing. In my weekly English class, there is a young couple who have only been here a few years. This is in a town where there was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid six years ago, the repercussions of which are still felt in the community. We recently helped organize an event around the unresolved cases of the former Michael Bianco employees, many of whom are still traumatized by the memory of their encounters with the detention system -- some of the guards and officials were rude, humiliating and racist -- and who still have to report in weekly; a few have to wear electronic surveillance bracelets at all times. So they still live in uncertainty.
The conditions in Guatemala have worsened for many; people still lack enough land, in many cases, to support their families and there are few jobs in the rural communities other than going to work on coastal plantations. Yes, Virginia, there are still feudal-like conditions throughout Guatemala, where people who are too poor to own a piece of land are "allowed" to squat on land held by wealthy landlords, and keep the produce of their labor, in exchange for virtually unpaid work on those same landlords' coastal plantations.
So, this gives me a somewhat different angle on the current immigration debate raging in our congress. The Senate bill is bad -- the 10 year path to citizenship is too long, and truly cruel -- and whatever the House is going to come up with will undoubtedly be worse. But other than making the lives of struggling people like the ones I've worked with even more unpleasant, and making it more dangerous and risky and costly for them to get here, I don't think it will stop people from making the effort. The amount of money that will be spend on expanding the fence and paying all those extra Border Patrol agents could probably support some development projects-- repairing some of the damage caused by NAFTA and earlier policies that produced the economic equivalent of "scorched earth" -- that would give people a reason to stay in Mexico or Guatemala.
Other recent arrivals include the daughter of someone I know in Guatemala, who left a small child with her parents. She already has several relatives here and so it was relatively easy, so I heard, for her to settle in and find work. Her family is not desperately poor; as migration scholars know, the poorest of the poor are not the ones who migrate as they lack the resources to pay for the journey or secure a loan. I am not certain about what prompted her decision to leave; she has some education and training, but am not sure that she was able to find a job commensurate with her training.
And so the community in New Bedford is continually changing, or gradually changing. In my weekly English class, there is a young couple who have only been here a few years. This is in a town where there was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid six years ago, the repercussions of which are still felt in the community. We recently helped organize an event around the unresolved cases of the former Michael Bianco employees, many of whom are still traumatized by the memory of their encounters with the detention system -- some of the guards and officials were rude, humiliating and racist -- and who still have to report in weekly; a few have to wear electronic surveillance bracelets at all times. So they still live in uncertainty.
The conditions in Guatemala have worsened for many; people still lack enough land, in many cases, to support their families and there are few jobs in the rural communities other than going to work on coastal plantations. Yes, Virginia, there are still feudal-like conditions throughout Guatemala, where people who are too poor to own a piece of land are "allowed" to squat on land held by wealthy landlords, and keep the produce of their labor, in exchange for virtually unpaid work on those same landlords' coastal plantations.
So, this gives me a somewhat different angle on the current immigration debate raging in our congress. The Senate bill is bad -- the 10 year path to citizenship is too long, and truly cruel -- and whatever the House is going to come up with will undoubtedly be worse. But other than making the lives of struggling people like the ones I've worked with even more unpleasant, and making it more dangerous and risky and costly for them to get here, I don't think it will stop people from making the effort. The amount of money that will be spend on expanding the fence and paying all those extra Border Patrol agents could probably support some development projects-- repairing some of the damage caused by NAFTA and earlier policies that produced the economic equivalent of "scorched earth" -- that would give people a reason to stay in Mexico or Guatemala.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Daniel Pedro Mateo, presente!
In January, while I was in Santa Eulalia, I decided to look into the history of the radio station there, Snuq Jolom Konob. Lorenzo, my friend who is currently the director, and who graciously housed me during my visit, had not been one of the founders. He was in the U.S., where he had spent several years working, when the radio station was founded, and joined it after his return. I am now trying to remember exactly how I first heard about Daniel Pedro, who was one of the founders. Perhaps the first mention came from Basilio, a young man who works at the radio station several times a week. We had met several times outside of Santa Eulalia -- once when the UN Human Rights Commissioner, Navi Pillay, was in Guatemala and many radio stations came to Totonicapán to cover it, and then again at a meeting convened by the Consejo de los Pueblos del Occidente (CPO). I hung out at the radio station several times with Basilio and it may have been he who told me that there was a man, a teacher, who lived in town who had been one of the founders of the radio station. And then B., one of my ex-guerrilla friends, who is in the national leadership of the indigenous political party, Winaq, told me that I should talk to someone named Daniel Pedro, who was a teacher and had been a founder of the radio station. B. told me he had spent a lot of time in Santa Eulalia, and that Daniel was a good friend, and I should mention that I knew B. I asked Lorenzo and he said that Daniel lived not far from him and that we could go over and see if he were at home. So we walked up the main highway that leads into the center of town, about 1/4 mile or less from Lorenzo's home and then he stopped at the door of a modest two-story house. There was a spare little shop on the ground floor, with a little counter -- it is not uncommon for people to have small stores in their homes -- and we walked inside. A young girl came to tend to us and Lorenzo spoke to her briefly in Q'anjobal, and then she walked out and a moment later a man entered. He had a gentle, intelligent face and bright, perceptive eyes, and a quiet smile spread across his face. This was Daniel. Lorenzo introduced me, saying that I wanted to talk about the history of the radio station, and we chatted together for a few minutes. Daniel invited us into the room behind the shop, where he was working tracing a design on a roll of white paper. He explained that one of the ways he earned a living was by making patterns for women to use in weaving and embroidery. He would make small drawings, often based on Maya spiritual and mythical traditions, and then draw them out again at the size that would be needed for a güipil. He asked us to sit down and continued to work while I explained what I wanted. He sent his daughter to get us some tea and we chatted and sipped tea and then eventually Lorenzo left because he had things to tend to at home or at the radio and I remained with Daniel. I won't recount the entire interview, but he talked about his early life, learning about injustice from personal experience, his decision to join the guerrilla, and then the founding of the radio station after the war. He worked through much of the conversation, sparks of passion glinting through his eyes and animating his features, although his speech was quiet, measured, thoughtful. He invited me upstairs where we sat around the stove with his wife and another daughter, and continued to talk. He was wrapped in a wool poncho -- the traditional men's garment in Santa Eulalia -- and I wrapped my clothing around me as it was chilly and damp and we warmed our hands over the stove as we talked.
It was only an afternoon, and I never saw him again after that, but he made a deep impression on me. Sometimes you can just feel that you are in the presence of someone who has lived through something important or who has been a leader. I didn't actually know that much about what he was doing currently, but I could tell from the way people spoke about him that there was something special about Daniel.
So, in April, I was shocked to learn, from a note on Facebook, that Daniel had been kidnapped. I learned that he was a leader in the resistance to the mining exploration conducted by Hidro-Santa Cruz, the company whose operations had roiled up people in nearby Barillas the year before, leading to the murder of a community leader, the imposition of martial law, and the arrests of over a dozen other community leaders. I hadn't known that Daniel was one of the leaders of that movement, but it didn't surprise me. I tried to find out more information; some friends in Winaq told me that they were negotiating for his release, but that they didn't know exactly where he was. I didn't get a lot of information from them, and they asked me to keep it quiet -- although I told them that there was definitely information out in public as I had learned about this from Facebook.
I wrote to Lorenzo and Basilio - they were concerned, obviously. There were articles in the paper announcing his disappearance, and I wrote to some human rights groups and the Guatemala Scholars' Network list serve. Then a few days later, I got the news from someone in Guatemala that Daniel's body had been found. Later, we learned that his body showed unmistakeable signs of torture. During these days I was in touch with folks in Guatemala a lot -- both friends in Santa Eulalia and people in the indigenous rights movement and Winaq more generally. Daniel was the first person I had known personally who had been assassinated, and for days I just kept seeing his face and remembering our conversation and wishing the calendar could be rolled back a few weeks and wishing that he were still alive. I realize that this is sadly not unique, and that I am only mildly touched by this violence, when all around me, people have lost their entire families, lived with the fear of helicopters overhead, watched massacres. People who have been involved with Guatemala much longer than me have seen their entire networks of friends and colleagues decimated by the war.
This took place right around the time of the Boston Marathon bombings and so my attention was divided between New England and Guatemala -- but this affected me more deeply, in a way, although I had students who were present at the Marathon finish line when the bombs exploded, and some who knew the surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who had been a student at my university. But there was something different about an act of violence that was not targeted at a particular individual, and a political assassination -- between someone or ones wanting to do harm in a general way, and people (undoubtedly, in this case, tied to the transnational corporation Hidro Santa Cruz or the government or both) who specifically wanted Daniel out of the way.
It was only an afternoon, and I never saw him again after that, but he made a deep impression on me. Sometimes you can just feel that you are in the presence of someone who has lived through something important or who has been a leader. I didn't actually know that much about what he was doing currently, but I could tell from the way people spoke about him that there was something special about Daniel.
So, in April, I was shocked to learn, from a note on Facebook, that Daniel had been kidnapped. I learned that he was a leader in the resistance to the mining exploration conducted by Hidro-Santa Cruz, the company whose operations had roiled up people in nearby Barillas the year before, leading to the murder of a community leader, the imposition of martial law, and the arrests of over a dozen other community leaders. I hadn't known that Daniel was one of the leaders of that movement, but it didn't surprise me. I tried to find out more information; some friends in Winaq told me that they were negotiating for his release, but that they didn't know exactly where he was. I didn't get a lot of information from them, and they asked me to keep it quiet -- although I told them that there was definitely information out in public as I had learned about this from Facebook.
I wrote to Lorenzo and Basilio - they were concerned, obviously. There were articles in the paper announcing his disappearance, and I wrote to some human rights groups and the Guatemala Scholars' Network list serve. Then a few days later, I got the news from someone in Guatemala that Daniel's body had been found. Later, we learned that his body showed unmistakeable signs of torture. During these days I was in touch with folks in Guatemala a lot -- both friends in Santa Eulalia and people in the indigenous rights movement and Winaq more generally. Daniel was the first person I had known personally who had been assassinated, and for days I just kept seeing his face and remembering our conversation and wishing the calendar could be rolled back a few weeks and wishing that he were still alive. I realize that this is sadly not unique, and that I am only mildly touched by this violence, when all around me, people have lost their entire families, lived with the fear of helicopters overhead, watched massacres. People who have been involved with Guatemala much longer than me have seen their entire networks of friends and colleagues decimated by the war.
This took place right around the time of the Boston Marathon bombings and so my attention was divided between New England and Guatemala -- but this affected me more deeply, in a way, although I had students who were present at the Marathon finish line when the bombs exploded, and some who knew the surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who had been a student at my university. But there was something different about an act of violence that was not targeted at a particular individual, and a political assassination -- between someone or ones wanting to do harm in a general way, and people (undoubtedly, in this case, tied to the transnational corporation Hidro Santa Cruz or the government or both) who specifically wanted Daniel out of the way.
Prosaic stock-taking
File this under "win some, lose some". Invariably, when I am in Guatemala, some things get lost. I guess that is passive voice, obscuring agency. So, to rephrase, I lose some things each time. This time for example, I lost a perraje -- a shawl, woven using the shiny, brightly-colored threads that identify that item as being from Santa Cruz del Quiché. The perrajes are woven in alternating strips of solid colors that give off a sheen (I think those are mercerized cotton), and then strips that have geometric designs, using black, white and sometimes metallic threads as well. I had it with me when I was in the Boca Costa from December 23 through the morning of the 25th, and then I couldn't find it the next time I wanted it, some days later. I know I washed it out and placed it on the fence of the home of Don Cristóbal and his family to dry... but it is gone somewhere. I hope whoever now has it is putting it to good use. Maybe I left it in a public place -- a bus, a café, or someone's home. I also had a pair of black yoga pants that I liked especially because there was no brand or tag visible and so they were just very comfortable black stretch pants. I thought I had left them in the house of my friends outside Chinique, along with my furniture and some toiletries and appliances -- basically most of the household stuff that I hadn't sold or given to them. I thought it made sense to keep a bit of clothing in Guatemala, just in case of emergencies, although as my research and involvements have shifted, Quiché is no longer at the heart of my research-- well, no longer at the heart of the research on radio and the indigenous movement. But when I asked my friends, they couldn't find them. I can't fault my friends -- I didn't do a great job of packing up my stuff, and they also have had some problems with the house and had to move things around. So, some of my belongings are kept in a very specific place (one side of the wardrobe that I gave them) but others are just floating around... Ah well, these are only small, inconsequential items. Too trivial, almost, to be worth a blog entry, but I'm on a roll to clean out my backlog, and so, out into the world you go.
What you can learn from a guide
This is like digging through the trash bin: My blog is full of unfinished posts as I never have enough time, it seems, to write what needs to be written. I return from a trip to Guatemala and have, usually, at least 4 or 5 unfinished posts -- some just notes, others with only a title as a memory-marker, and some that are at least partially written. And then, back into the swing, the grind, I put the blog aside, mentally, and then one day I decide to look through and see what I have. So, a word to the wise and the not-so-wise, like myself -- be more vigilant. More than half of whatever I wanted to write here has been lost, as I didn't take notes on the conversation with the guide who took us up the volcano; I was presuming that I would write it up in the blog, and then didn't.
As we walked up San Pedro, going obviously much slower than the guide was capable of walking, I had the chance to talk to him a lot about life in the communities around the lake, specifically San Pedro. Our guide was a man in his early 50s, with a slight physique and a sun-creased face. It was hard to tell his age until he told me; he could have been anywhere from his early 40s to early 60s, for all I could tell, as people who work outdoors have weathered faces, and people whose lives are spent doing hard physical work tend to be thin and wiry. He was illiterate, he told me, not in a shameful manner, but matter of fact, although somewhat regretful. This was after he had asked me what I did, and when I told him I was a college professor and that I was in Guatemala doing research, he told me that he had had no schooling. He said that many parents didn't want their children to go to school; that when the teachers came around, parents would tell them that there were no children there and that the teachers wouldn't usually press the point. It wasn't that parents wanted their children to remain ignorant, but that the families were poor and they needed all hands to be put to some productive use. He had started to work very young and helped his parents out, and had continued working his entire life. He was a coffee farmer, but he was very proud that some of his children had been able to get schooling - he had determined that he wanted to give them some of the education he had been denied. As we walked he told me about the coffee industry, about the price fluctuations, about the formation of the cooperative that ran the ecological park where we were hiking. I regret heartily that I left this blog entry -- it is now June, and our hike was in January -- as I have now forgotten much of our conversation. But it was an interesting opportunity to learn about the inside, or the underside, of this lovely little town of San Pedro, how it is situated in the local and world economy (as most of the coffee produced in Guatemala is for export). So what you can learn from a guide is not so much about the mountain and the plants and hiking and the scenery -- although I did get to learn about that as well. I heard about local landowners and petty and not-so-petty disputes over land and its use. About what happens to local economies when the price shifts in a commodity like coffee. About the use of the mountain for ceremonies. A little bit about the war and its aftermath. There are two lessons: first, nearly everyone in Guatemala has a story that illuminates something about the country's history and present, if one can be patient and attentive. And second, write it down right away.
As we walked up San Pedro, going obviously much slower than the guide was capable of walking, I had the chance to talk to him a lot about life in the communities around the lake, specifically San Pedro. Our guide was a man in his early 50s, with a slight physique and a sun-creased face. It was hard to tell his age until he told me; he could have been anywhere from his early 40s to early 60s, for all I could tell, as people who work outdoors have weathered faces, and people whose lives are spent doing hard physical work tend to be thin and wiry. He was illiterate, he told me, not in a shameful manner, but matter of fact, although somewhat regretful. This was after he had asked me what I did, and when I told him I was a college professor and that I was in Guatemala doing research, he told me that he had had no schooling. He said that many parents didn't want their children to go to school; that when the teachers came around, parents would tell them that there were no children there and that the teachers wouldn't usually press the point. It wasn't that parents wanted their children to remain ignorant, but that the families were poor and they needed all hands to be put to some productive use. He had started to work very young and helped his parents out, and had continued working his entire life. He was a coffee farmer, but he was very proud that some of his children had been able to get schooling - he had determined that he wanted to give them some of the education he had been denied. As we walked he told me about the coffee industry, about the price fluctuations, about the formation of the cooperative that ran the ecological park where we were hiking. I regret heartily that I left this blog entry -- it is now June, and our hike was in January -- as I have now forgotten much of our conversation. But it was an interesting opportunity to learn about the inside, or the underside, of this lovely little town of San Pedro, how it is situated in the local and world economy (as most of the coffee produced in Guatemala is for export). So what you can learn from a guide is not so much about the mountain and the plants and hiking and the scenery -- although I did get to learn about that as well. I heard about local landowners and petty and not-so-petty disputes over land and its use. About what happens to local economies when the price shifts in a commodity like coffee. About the use of the mountain for ceremonies. A little bit about the war and its aftermath. There are two lessons: first, nearly everyone in Guatemala has a story that illuminates something about the country's history and present, if one can be patient and attentive. And second, write it down right away.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Climbing a volcano, at least
I haven't been very focused on doing vacation-ey, tourist-y things in Guatemala like going to the beach or visiting archaeological sites. But I have wanted to climb a volcano. Last year, a friend was supposed to take me to climb Volcán de Agua outside Antigua but he disappeared from sight, so to speak, and so we never did it (I was warned to not do it alone as there have been assaults on tourists). It hasn't been a top priority but I have wanted to do this, so when two friends from the states told me in late November or early December that they were going to be in Guatemala in January on a volunteer project, we decided to coordinate schedules (they would arrive early, I would stay a few extra days) and try to do some hiking, including, we hoped, climbing a volcano.
They are more serious hikers than I am so we set our ambitions high. I suggested Tajumulco, the highest peak in Central America -- and also the volcano where the clandestine radio of the guerrilla forces, La Voz Popular, had hidden its broadcast apparatus. It wasn't possible for us to climb Tajumulco on the two full days that we would have together -- it's not recommended to go without a guide, and the only guided tours we could find started on my last day in Guatemala. By this time, I had plans for the day prior to my departure -- the community radio movement has put together a small book, or perhaps booklet is the better term, about the struggle of the radio movement, and the book launch is set for tomorrow (January 16), the day prior to my departure, in Guatemala City. Also, they are coming from New York -- one from the city, which is at or below sea level (as Superstorm Sandy so vividly demonstrated, and one from upstate, but the elevation there isn't that high either. So they would have needed at least a day or two to adapt to the altitude before attempting to reach a peak that is about 14,000 feet above sea level. I wasn't as worried about the altitude for myself; I'm not as much of a hiker or climber as they, but I've been living for nearly a month in places where the altitude is at least 4,000 feet above sea level and often quite higher than that (I think Chinique is about 6 or 7,000 feet above sea level).
So, I found some alternate hikes for the days we would be together. One was to climb San Pedro, by the shores of Lake Atitlán. This would have the double benefit of allowing me to visit, at least briefly, my friend Brenda who is the coordinator of the community radio station here in San Pedro, Radio Sembrador, and allowing us to start more gradually, or so I thought, as the top of the volcano is only about 10,000 feet.
I found us a hotel, with Brenda's advice, and then I asked the hotel if they could find us a guide. According to what we'd read, the path starts out winding its way through some coffee farms on the lower slopes of the volcano and it can be somewhat confusing to figure out where to go in places. Also, for safety -- although there have not been a lot of assaults on tourists here, San Pedro is a tourist town (of the blond-dreadlocked backpacker variety; there are about eight Spanish schools also, which is another attraction for rowdy young college-aged people) and so there is always the danger of someone wanting a camera or money.
The drive here was hair-raising. My friends had been given advice by several people they knew who lived in Guatemala that they should never under any circumstances travel anywhere at night in any kind of vehicle with anyone whatsoever. In general that might not be bad advice, and I try to be somewhat careful of my own personal safety, but I do travel at night. I don't travel at night in public transportation -- and I don't take Guatemalan buses if I can help it, unless my car is in the shop and I need urgently to get somewhere, and I am going along a route I know well. But I have driven from Santa Cruz, for example, to Chinique (a distance of about 15 kilometers), sometimes quite late at night -- for example when I have been at a ceremony at Doña Matilde's mother's house. And I have driven the road from Chichicastenango to Chinique several times at around 7 or 8 - not late, but the roads are dark. There are not assaults along those stretches of road, as far as I have heard over the last few years, and I drive a car that does not look like it belongs to a wealthy person or a tourist -- a Mazda pick-up with a bunch of dents and a couple of smashed tail-lights. Except for the brand (Mazda instead of Toyota) it looks like the typical car that a slightly prosperous local would drive.
I said I would pick them up or figure out how they could get somewhere we could meet -- their flight was to arrive at 2:30, and Xela is about 4 hours away and the lake also about 4, so they would have to travel after dark. I assured them that I thought it would be fine if we were together and they were willing. There were no convenient shuttles, so I decided to arrange my schedule so that I could pick them up (it meant driving to the airport, which is about 4 hours or more from most of the places in the highlands, but it seemed to be the only way that we could meet up on Sunday and get a full day's hiking in on Monday - unless we met in Antigua. But even to get to Antigua they would have had to pay for a private shuttle as there are no scheduled shuttles after 2:30 in the afternoon.
Saturday afternoon I visited a radio station near Los Encuentros - about 1-1/2 hours from Chinique and right along the Panamerican Highway -- and then traveled to spend the night in the Xela area (actually in Olintepeque on the outskirts of Xela) so I could get up before dawn and visit a radio station in Concepción Chiquirichapa, a radio station founded by ex-combatants of the URNG, and one that is run entirely by volunteers (some of the stations offer small "incentives" to those who volunteer). The car was acting up -- the steering had been incredibly stiff (i.e. I could barely move the wheel without tremendous effort) and I had supposedly had that fixed about two weeks ago. I did have it fixed -- it was working just fine and I was able to steer easily for the first time in over a year, but then as I was looking for a parking spot at around 6 a.m. in Concepción Chiquirichapa -- a small town about 15 km. north and west of Xela -- the steering just "went" and became stiff as a board, and it took me about 10 minutes to grind the car into a parking spot, with a full crowd of local onlookers undoubtedly making comments in Mam about how this güera colocha (curly-headed white girl) couldn't drive or park. The car also hasn't been handling that well in first gear; it seems to sputter and threaten to stall out, so parking in front of a small crowd is not fun, although I have a pretty iron-clad ego.
After my visit to the radio station I went looking for transmission fluid, which sometimes helps the steering, but it didn't do anything in this case. It took a while to find a shop that was open -- a shop that sold auto supplies, that is. I went to an auto repair shop that looked open but the mechanic wasn't there. A young man who was cleaning his motorcycle directed me to a place around the corner but they were not open so I returned to the main road. Some men who called out to me in English offered another suggestion but the place they suggested was also not open. I asked where there was a gas station and they told me 15 minutes walk away. However, as luck would have it, a stationery supply store that I passed, oddly enough, had some automotive supplies gathering dust on their shelves alongside rolls of tape and pens, and among them, two plastic bottles of transmission fluid. And it was about half the price that I've paid at gas stations. So I took a bottle, went back to my car after saying my goodbyes at the station, and then poured some in. It didn't seem to have any effect, so I had the unpleasant task of turning my car around in the middle of the main street on market day at 10-something in the morning, again in front of spectators, and then headed off to Guatemala, hoping that the car would hold up.
There was, of course, an impediment to my smooth egress from Xela -- a bicycle event which had blocked off the main exit road. I followed the instructions of the police to go on a dirt road around the aerodrome (I have never seen a plane there; mostly it seems to be used for sporting events and people doing exercise and playing soccer) and eventually made it to the highway (I had to stop and ask some local residents because it wasn't clear where the road led to) and got back to the highway and headed off south and east. Even with a stop for pupusas at a new roadside stand between Tecpan and Chimaltenango I got to the airport early, only to find that their flight was delayed until 3:30. This meant that we would definitely be driving after dark, since the turn off to San Pedro is at least 2-1/2 hours from Guatemala City, and we would need to stop for gas and coffee and bathroom, and the road from the highway down to the lake is very steep and windy and pocked, and parts of it are dirt, and as I recalled it, we would have to pass through a couple of towns along the way and the exit to continue on was not always well marked.
The car stalled out a number of times, which was alarming, but as we were mostly going downhill I just coasted in neutral (thankfully the brakes were in good order) and we made it to San Pedro in a bit under 4 hours, and the folks from the hotel came out to find us as their instructions (just take the main street down to the embankment) weren't all that useful -- everyone here knows what "the calle principal" is, but it's not quite so evident to an outsider.
I decided that we would not drive up to the trailhead but asked the hotel to arrange a tuc-tuc along with the guide, and both were waiting for us at 6.
It took a while to get sorted out and finally start out, and when we got to the ecological park, which is staffed by 22 families, it turned out that the guide who had come to the hotel to get us was not the one who was going to take us up the mountain as they went by turns -- and there was another guide ahead of him. We saw him later on, up at the top of the mountain, with the next person who had come after us -- a young Guatemalan man from La Mesilla at the Mexican border, and were relieved that he had gotten some work.
I won't bother writing about the entire trail as there are many blogs about climbing San Pedro. My friends are more experienced hikers than I am, but they had trouble with the altitude, more than they had expected, and it was slow going. I walked ahead with the guide, Juan, a local man who confided that he was illiterate since his father hadn't put much importance on education but had wanted him to work at an early age, but had made sure that his children had more education than he did. I will devote a separate entry to Juan, as we had a lot of time to talk as we spent 4 hours walking up the mountain (I went ahead alone on the descent and he brought up the rear, to make sure we were all okay, so I didn't get to talk to him much then). We passed through coffee plantations, and learned a lot about coffee and the coffee market, as Juan is a coffee farmer as well as a guide. We stopped frequently -- I got really hungry about an hour after we set out and so we broke into our supplies of nuts and dried fruits, and then snacked again a few times. Juan walked easily; he said this was slow for him and he didn't take a drink of water until we had passed the halfway point. When we got to what he said was the halfway point we waited for my friends, and we were all a bit dismayed to learn that we had been hiking for two hours and were still only halfway up. They had both been reading up about the hike and apparently according to the books we were supposed to start feeling the altitude at the halfway point, but they had been feeling it earlier. I didn't feel much in terms of the altitude, although the hike was hard work. I walk a lot and bike, but I don't do much hiking, although I'd tried while I was here to find places where I could at least walk uphill a bit while taking an early morning walk.
Finally at a bit before 11 I reached the summit and then waited for my friends. There were some people who had gotten there before us who passed us coming down, and a group of about 4 Americans and Europeans at the summit when I got there. I chatted some with the other guide -- the guides all know each other -- whose name was Domingo and who was impressed by the few words of K'iche' that I know. The language of most of the guides is Tzutujil, but because the department of Sololá has three language groups (K'iche', Kaqchikel and Tzutujil), and Kaqchikel and K'iche' are much more widely used on a national level (that is, they are among the largest language groups in terms of native speakers), most Tzutujil speakers know a little K'iche', and there are some borrowed or common or imposed words. That is, "maltyox" (mal-ti-osh), which means thank you in K'iche', also means thank you in Tzutujil.
The view was spectacular -- hard to find words to describe the vista of the lake, ringed by mountains and volcanos. We had a view of Santiago, San Lucas, Pacaya and Volcan de Agua and Fuego in the distance. A small plane flew by at least a thousand feet below us. It was giddy to be on top, amid the clouds or above them, looking down at the vividly blue waters of the lake, picking out the lakeshore towns, breathing in the thin but clean air.
The morning is getting on, and I should get back to figure out the day's activities. The original plan was to climb San Pedro yesterday and then set out for Xela in the evening and leave at 4 to climb Santa Maria. On the way down, as our thighs were all burning, we realized that we were not up to climbing a second, higher volcano, with a longer hike, the next day. We could have staggered our way part way up, but there was no way we would have reached the summit and gotten back in time for my friends to meet up with the people who were going to take them up Tajumulco -- they were supposed to be back in Xela at 5 to get outfitted for the overnight hike to Tajumulco, and since it took us from 7 a.m. to nearly 3 p.m. to get up and down San Pedro -- and we were told that the hike up Santa Maria was much longer, we decided to spend the night instead in San Pedro and decide this morning what we would do here. I also had wanted to make sure I visited my friend from the community radio station here and see her family -- and that would have meant leaving the lake pretty late in the day and driving at night again, to say nothing of arising very early for the hike.
So we took off our shoes and dirty clothes, I called the guide I'd contacted to take us up Santa Maria and told him we'd discovered we were not capable of two volcanoes in two days, and then my friend Brenda came from the radio station to pick us up and we spent the rest of the evening (as much as we had energy for) first visiting the radio and her family, and then leisurely having coffee and then dinner in her company.
They are more serious hikers than I am so we set our ambitions high. I suggested Tajumulco, the highest peak in Central America -- and also the volcano where the clandestine radio of the guerrilla forces, La Voz Popular, had hidden its broadcast apparatus. It wasn't possible for us to climb Tajumulco on the two full days that we would have together -- it's not recommended to go without a guide, and the only guided tours we could find started on my last day in Guatemala. By this time, I had plans for the day prior to my departure -- the community radio movement has put together a small book, or perhaps booklet is the better term, about the struggle of the radio movement, and the book launch is set for tomorrow (January 16), the day prior to my departure, in Guatemala City. Also, they are coming from New York -- one from the city, which is at or below sea level (as Superstorm Sandy so vividly demonstrated, and one from upstate, but the elevation there isn't that high either. So they would have needed at least a day or two to adapt to the altitude before attempting to reach a peak that is about 14,000 feet above sea level. I wasn't as worried about the altitude for myself; I'm not as much of a hiker or climber as they, but I've been living for nearly a month in places where the altitude is at least 4,000 feet above sea level and often quite higher than that (I think Chinique is about 6 or 7,000 feet above sea level).
So, I found some alternate hikes for the days we would be together. One was to climb San Pedro, by the shores of Lake Atitlán. This would have the double benefit of allowing me to visit, at least briefly, my friend Brenda who is the coordinator of the community radio station here in San Pedro, Radio Sembrador, and allowing us to start more gradually, or so I thought, as the top of the volcano is only about 10,000 feet.
I found us a hotel, with Brenda's advice, and then I asked the hotel if they could find us a guide. According to what we'd read, the path starts out winding its way through some coffee farms on the lower slopes of the volcano and it can be somewhat confusing to figure out where to go in places. Also, for safety -- although there have not been a lot of assaults on tourists here, San Pedro is a tourist town (of the blond-dreadlocked backpacker variety; there are about eight Spanish schools also, which is another attraction for rowdy young college-aged people) and so there is always the danger of someone wanting a camera or money.
The drive here was hair-raising. My friends had been given advice by several people they knew who lived in Guatemala that they should never under any circumstances travel anywhere at night in any kind of vehicle with anyone whatsoever. In general that might not be bad advice, and I try to be somewhat careful of my own personal safety, but I do travel at night. I don't travel at night in public transportation -- and I don't take Guatemalan buses if I can help it, unless my car is in the shop and I need urgently to get somewhere, and I am going along a route I know well. But I have driven from Santa Cruz, for example, to Chinique (a distance of about 15 kilometers), sometimes quite late at night -- for example when I have been at a ceremony at Doña Matilde's mother's house. And I have driven the road from Chichicastenango to Chinique several times at around 7 or 8 - not late, but the roads are dark. There are not assaults along those stretches of road, as far as I have heard over the last few years, and I drive a car that does not look like it belongs to a wealthy person or a tourist -- a Mazda pick-up with a bunch of dents and a couple of smashed tail-lights. Except for the brand (Mazda instead of Toyota) it looks like the typical car that a slightly prosperous local would drive.
I said I would pick them up or figure out how they could get somewhere we could meet -- their flight was to arrive at 2:30, and Xela is about 4 hours away and the lake also about 4, so they would have to travel after dark. I assured them that I thought it would be fine if we were together and they were willing. There were no convenient shuttles, so I decided to arrange my schedule so that I could pick them up (it meant driving to the airport, which is about 4 hours or more from most of the places in the highlands, but it seemed to be the only way that we could meet up on Sunday and get a full day's hiking in on Monday - unless we met in Antigua. But even to get to Antigua they would have had to pay for a private shuttle as there are no scheduled shuttles after 2:30 in the afternoon.
Saturday afternoon I visited a radio station near Los Encuentros - about 1-1/2 hours from Chinique and right along the Panamerican Highway -- and then traveled to spend the night in the Xela area (actually in Olintepeque on the outskirts of Xela) so I could get up before dawn and visit a radio station in Concepción Chiquirichapa, a radio station founded by ex-combatants of the URNG, and one that is run entirely by volunteers (some of the stations offer small "incentives" to those who volunteer). The car was acting up -- the steering had been incredibly stiff (i.e. I could barely move the wheel without tremendous effort) and I had supposedly had that fixed about two weeks ago. I did have it fixed -- it was working just fine and I was able to steer easily for the first time in over a year, but then as I was looking for a parking spot at around 6 a.m. in Concepción Chiquirichapa -- a small town about 15 km. north and west of Xela -- the steering just "went" and became stiff as a board, and it took me about 10 minutes to grind the car into a parking spot, with a full crowd of local onlookers undoubtedly making comments in Mam about how this güera colocha (curly-headed white girl) couldn't drive or park. The car also hasn't been handling that well in first gear; it seems to sputter and threaten to stall out, so parking in front of a small crowd is not fun, although I have a pretty iron-clad ego.
After my visit to the radio station I went looking for transmission fluid, which sometimes helps the steering, but it didn't do anything in this case. It took a while to find a shop that was open -- a shop that sold auto supplies, that is. I went to an auto repair shop that looked open but the mechanic wasn't there. A young man who was cleaning his motorcycle directed me to a place around the corner but they were not open so I returned to the main road. Some men who called out to me in English offered another suggestion but the place they suggested was also not open. I asked where there was a gas station and they told me 15 minutes walk away. However, as luck would have it, a stationery supply store that I passed, oddly enough, had some automotive supplies gathering dust on their shelves alongside rolls of tape and pens, and among them, two plastic bottles of transmission fluid. And it was about half the price that I've paid at gas stations. So I took a bottle, went back to my car after saying my goodbyes at the station, and then poured some in. It didn't seem to have any effect, so I had the unpleasant task of turning my car around in the middle of the main street on market day at 10-something in the morning, again in front of spectators, and then headed off to Guatemala, hoping that the car would hold up.
There was, of course, an impediment to my smooth egress from Xela -- a bicycle event which had blocked off the main exit road. I followed the instructions of the police to go on a dirt road around the aerodrome (I have never seen a plane there; mostly it seems to be used for sporting events and people doing exercise and playing soccer) and eventually made it to the highway (I had to stop and ask some local residents because it wasn't clear where the road led to) and got back to the highway and headed off south and east. Even with a stop for pupusas at a new roadside stand between Tecpan and Chimaltenango I got to the airport early, only to find that their flight was delayed until 3:30. This meant that we would definitely be driving after dark, since the turn off to San Pedro is at least 2-1/2 hours from Guatemala City, and we would need to stop for gas and coffee and bathroom, and the road from the highway down to the lake is very steep and windy and pocked, and parts of it are dirt, and as I recalled it, we would have to pass through a couple of towns along the way and the exit to continue on was not always well marked.
The car stalled out a number of times, which was alarming, but as we were mostly going downhill I just coasted in neutral (thankfully the brakes were in good order) and we made it to San Pedro in a bit under 4 hours, and the folks from the hotel came out to find us as their instructions (just take the main street down to the embankment) weren't all that useful -- everyone here knows what "the calle principal" is, but it's not quite so evident to an outsider.
I decided that we would not drive up to the trailhead but asked the hotel to arrange a tuc-tuc along with the guide, and both were waiting for us at 6.
It took a while to get sorted out and finally start out, and when we got to the ecological park, which is staffed by 22 families, it turned out that the guide who had come to the hotel to get us was not the one who was going to take us up the mountain as they went by turns -- and there was another guide ahead of him. We saw him later on, up at the top of the mountain, with the next person who had come after us -- a young Guatemalan man from La Mesilla at the Mexican border, and were relieved that he had gotten some work.
I won't bother writing about the entire trail as there are many blogs about climbing San Pedro. My friends are more experienced hikers than I am, but they had trouble with the altitude, more than they had expected, and it was slow going. I walked ahead with the guide, Juan, a local man who confided that he was illiterate since his father hadn't put much importance on education but had wanted him to work at an early age, but had made sure that his children had more education than he did. I will devote a separate entry to Juan, as we had a lot of time to talk as we spent 4 hours walking up the mountain (I went ahead alone on the descent and he brought up the rear, to make sure we were all okay, so I didn't get to talk to him much then). We passed through coffee plantations, and learned a lot about coffee and the coffee market, as Juan is a coffee farmer as well as a guide. We stopped frequently -- I got really hungry about an hour after we set out and so we broke into our supplies of nuts and dried fruits, and then snacked again a few times. Juan walked easily; he said this was slow for him and he didn't take a drink of water until we had passed the halfway point. When we got to what he said was the halfway point we waited for my friends, and we were all a bit dismayed to learn that we had been hiking for two hours and were still only halfway up. They had both been reading up about the hike and apparently according to the books we were supposed to start feeling the altitude at the halfway point, but they had been feeling it earlier. I didn't feel much in terms of the altitude, although the hike was hard work. I walk a lot and bike, but I don't do much hiking, although I'd tried while I was here to find places where I could at least walk uphill a bit while taking an early morning walk.
Finally at a bit before 11 I reached the summit and then waited for my friends. There were some people who had gotten there before us who passed us coming down, and a group of about 4 Americans and Europeans at the summit when I got there. I chatted some with the other guide -- the guides all know each other -- whose name was Domingo and who was impressed by the few words of K'iche' that I know. The language of most of the guides is Tzutujil, but because the department of Sololá has three language groups (K'iche', Kaqchikel and Tzutujil), and Kaqchikel and K'iche' are much more widely used on a national level (that is, they are among the largest language groups in terms of native speakers), most Tzutujil speakers know a little K'iche', and there are some borrowed or common or imposed words. That is, "maltyox" (mal-ti-osh), which means thank you in K'iche', also means thank you in Tzutujil.
The view was spectacular -- hard to find words to describe the vista of the lake, ringed by mountains and volcanos. We had a view of Santiago, San Lucas, Pacaya and Volcan de Agua and Fuego in the distance. A small plane flew by at least a thousand feet below us. It was giddy to be on top, amid the clouds or above them, looking down at the vividly blue waters of the lake, picking out the lakeshore towns, breathing in the thin but clean air.
The morning is getting on, and I should get back to figure out the day's activities. The original plan was to climb San Pedro yesterday and then set out for Xela in the evening and leave at 4 to climb Santa Maria. On the way down, as our thighs were all burning, we realized that we were not up to climbing a second, higher volcano, with a longer hike, the next day. We could have staggered our way part way up, but there was no way we would have reached the summit and gotten back in time for my friends to meet up with the people who were going to take them up Tajumulco -- they were supposed to be back in Xela at 5 to get outfitted for the overnight hike to Tajumulco, and since it took us from 7 a.m. to nearly 3 p.m. to get up and down San Pedro -- and we were told that the hike up Santa Maria was much longer, we decided to spend the night instead in San Pedro and decide this morning what we would do here. I also had wanted to make sure I visited my friend from the community radio station here and see her family -- and that would have meant leaving the lake pretty late in the day and driving at night again, to say nothing of arising very early for the hike.
So we took off our shoes and dirty clothes, I called the guide I'd contacted to take us up Santa Maria and told him we'd discovered we were not capable of two volcanoes in two days, and then my friend Brenda came from the radio station to pick us up and we spent the rest of the evening (as much as we had energy for) first visiting the radio and her family, and then leisurely having coffee and then dinner in her company.
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