Dispatch Number 57 -Cemetery

Guatemalan cemeteries are pell-mell and without much order when compared with the solemn neatness of North American cemeteries. Here they are filled with colorful tombstones and crypts and a surprising amount of trash. Many crypts are painted in ornate patterns of bright greens, whites and blues. Death is colorful. Murals adorn many. Some are political or artful, while others are wholly incomprehensible such as several crypts painted boldly with American flags with "U.S.A" placed where the stars usually go.

Guatemalan cities with populations over 10,000 are noisy, dirty places with an unappealing new generation of concrete buildings. Economical concrete is ugly and ramshackle with high walls laced in razor wire that make walking about town a penitentiary architectural experience. Will the architecture of this uninspired period charm 300 hundred years from now the way old colonial cities charm the intrepid visitor today?

When the excitement of the busy, noisy and exhaust thick city wears off I seek tranquility in cemeteries and churches. A traveller develops weird habits he would never have back home. Rural public parks are hard to find, the kind with trees and grass, so it is at the cemetery one can hear the birds sing, appreciate the trees and the smell of damp grass amidst a sea of colorful tombstones. Cemeteries are parks of historical significance full of dates and names where local history is told. Here in Nebaj it also represents a dark chapter in Guatemalan history where fifteen crypts set in a row all have the same date.

Guatemala´s Civil War raged on in the late 1970s and 1980s with mass killings committed by both the military and pro-government para military forces. In Nebaj I met a team of young Guatemalans taking lunch. Their pickup was jammed full of gear and covered with a tarp. They were excavators preparing to dig up mass graves in the area; they exhume bodies for possible identification and return to the families. Sometimes their work results in fifteen graves in a row like those in the local cemetery. Their commitment and choice of work was touching. They ate lunch with gusto.

In the cemetery two boys do their homework atop one of the single level crypts, acting as the perfect desk with papers spread over its broad top. I will have to admit that as one who appreciates a good writing surface that the boys had made a great choice. Higher up the hilly array of tombstones two women talk in gentle tones while sitting side by side on a pair of low slung concrete cross.

Atop the hill a group of young girls play on the tombs like they were part of a swing set. They holler ¡Hola!, ¡Hola! over and over, I answer every time, for in Guatemala it is in bad manners to not reply. They keep it up for a while until I pretended to be out of earshot. It is their playground. Their lightheartedness stands in contrast to the backdrop of the cemetery. They were curious girls who were happy, playful and shy like children everywhere.

Even though I am not a believer in caskets, worms and rot I do respect these grounds and found myself shaking my head in mild disapproval when a man rode his motorcycle through the cemetery with a woman on back; they laughed with new lover joy as the bike sputtered to and fro and finally exited under a wisp of giggles.

David
Valledupar, Colombia