Dispatch Number 86 -Two Years: Guatemala

This is a continuation of a series recapping the past two years of travels through Latin America by car, each Dispatch is a single country summary from Mexico, through Central America's Guatemala-Honduras-Nicaragua-Costa Rica-Panama and through South America's Columbia-Ecuador and Peru. The loose plan is to continue driving to the bottom of the world, Ushuaia, Argentina. These are stories of characters, experiences and hardships.

Guatemala
April 2009

Lowlands
I usually began looking for travel partners a couple days before I left a place. During my stay in Mexico I was surrounded by friends, in Guatemala I decided to go alone, seeking a different experience aimed at being closer to local culture and people. My Mexican friends were terrified of Guatemala and openly feared for my life, to them, Guatemala was the Wild West, never-mind they themselves were in the midst of a large scale drug war along the border with the United States with bodies piling up daily.

Rather than soft-peddling the point, I did discover, or rather observed, Guatemala was a dangerous country. Countless examples showed me the Letter of the Law meant little, while criminal and political killings were the norm.

I was nervous crossing the border alone, for first time all decisions were mine, No backup, as an American would put it. At the crossing I discovered, it was nothing as the border guard came out of his shack, stamped my passport and raised the red and white striped bamboo pole.

What about car papers? I asked.
Don't worry about it. replied the gun-less guard.
From the frontier it was all quiet back-roads to Tikal, the heart of Maya country. Oddly, during the drive, Strawberry Pop Tarts came to mind and would haunt me for months to come.

Guatemala was armed to the teeth, banks had firearm lockers with guards that made those with weapons surrender them. I never saw so much civilian armaments in the open before. It was like the Wild West. The smallest shops in Santa Elena were guarded by shotgun armed men at the ready; the brake parts shop I was in, had a private guard with shotgun and sidearm. We talked. As an American I am expected to like, even love guns. He had pride in his weapons, declaring the shotgun belonged to the shop, but the big pistol was his, as he closely watched a car turn the corner behind the shop.

It was the same thing at pharmacies, agricultural supply stores, banks and the Toyota dealership. Only barber shops weren't guarded, at 50-cents a cut there was little to take from the barber. With all the guns and guards tittering on a shootout, I began to wonder if I would witness one in the dusty crumbly streets of Santa Elena. Each time I used the ATM, I thought I was going to get robbed of my fistful of Quetzals, I'd scurry to the truck, lock the doors and get moving. Foreigners were told to stay out of that side of town and stick to the tame side, Isla Flores, the safe sanctuary of the tourist zone. Travel is about launching oneself into the unknown, I went to Santa Elena regularly.

I was never at ease after the brush-off over car papers. At a regional airport I asked a Guatemalan immigration official the low-down. The airport looked so much more formal than the tin shack with the striped red and white pole.

Don't worry! This is Guatemala, you don't have to worry about this stuff. Relax, said the voice in the snappy blue uniform with bars on the shoulders.
I made him tell me five or six times, until satisfied.

Three months later, at the Guatemala-Honduras border, while requesting exit stamps, the Guatemalan border official demanded car papers I didn't have. With the help of two friends from Australia and Mexico we sneaked the car through to Honduras and promptly applied for car documents. Already, Jeff and Alejandro, 'Alex' were proving their worth as travel partners, the hard part was ahead.

In the steamy lowlands, I spent considerable time exploring and camping at Maya ruins in the region. At El Zoltz, using nannying gestures the archaeological workers directed me to set foot inside a newly excavated tomb, in the El Diablo complex that had been sealed for 1,500 years -I breathed its rarefied air and stared at pristine red and white plaster walls before crawling back out through the tunnel.

Not until later, did I learn it was a royal tomb believed to contain the remains of King Chak who ruled in the late 4^th century AD. He was interred with the remains of six sacrificed children, aged between 1 and 5 years old. Who is afforded that status these days? They dragged President Reagan, the Republicans lock-stock idol, all over Southern California, but at the end of that laborious procession he was buried alone.

The workers probably told me about King Chak and I probably nodded in affirmation with my elementary Spanish. It is clear, as I look back at this and other events: I am the accidental tourist who comes across remarkable things, but does not comprehend the significance of them until later. That's right, no pictures. I often walk without my camera.

In a nearby village I looked for a cheap place to sleep. If I would take my meals at the restaurant I could sleep in my tent for free behind the house with the chickens. A lot of chickens. The old man raised cocks and sold them to surrounding settlements. I didn't know if he raised them for fucking or fighting, cock fighting is normal in these parts. They would wail at all hours, the most shocking session was when they began crowing after I had been asleep for those precious first two hours. I jumped awake. I thought they were in the tent with me. Minutes later, I lay smiling as other chickens in the village exchanged crows in a long relay one after the other across the settlement. It was 2am.

A week earlier we pitched the tent at a Maya site not open to the public, set far from the villages where they harvest chicle, natural gum. The site was in its original state with stones turned up by deeply rooted trees. Gardeners kept the jungle cut back, it was modern man's only touch. My guide, Ephraim smoked pot, he claimed it dulled his pain over a dead girlfriend, he was twenty. It took us hours to find the site and almost gave up the search in the heat of the lowlands.

I took a hit too, then lost touch with the rationalism needed to drive that led to a flat tire, I carelessly sheared off the air-stem after clipping a fallen tree. The tire emptied in seconds. Stoned and sweating, while Ephraim watched me change the tire, eventually he hopped back into the truck to avoid the bacon cooking sun.

In Latin America it seems, most everyone believes in god, jesus-christ and other trees of mystery, and so the question came, Do you believe in god?, as we stood atop the main temple. The disappointment in Ephraim's face registered clear. Before dark we made camp in the main plaza amidst sacrifice stones that rested in their original positions at the foot of each pyramid-shaped temple, these giant moss covered aspirin were used to chop and stab other humans to fulfill perceived obligations to the gods.

I learned from my stay in the region that the Maya built most of the great sites in Mexico and Guatemala, the Incas came later. Their great achievements: built massive scale architecture, were one of four civilizations to invent writing, and were masters of astrology.

Even though I held only thirty-percent of the conversation with my basic and approximate Spanish, the twelve year old kid made conversation with ease while he peddled jewelry.
The hostel owner, who preferred to spend his time watching soccer matches, said of the kid who made his own jewelry, He's a petty thief, stay alert. Emphasizing it with a local saying that implied the boy was clever too, Only the eyes of God can see what he does.

I still gave the kid a ride to Tikal where he spent the day selling a bucket of Mangoes for his mother. Remembering the warning, I kept my eyes on him. Real close 'cause I wasn't convinced god was nearby.


Tourists don't know where they've been. Travelers don't know where they're going.

-Paul Theroux

On the subject of the Maya, I met many travelers with their noses in Armageddon-themed books based on the Western idea that the Maya calendar will end on December 21, 2012, and in turn, bring about total global collapse by way of super-volcanoes and asteroid strikes. It is a crude high-jacking of a highly regarded culture.

I didn't know it at the time, but I was beginning to stumble on the spiritual tourist who would trapeze Latin America in search of something he hoped to find in books and Shamans. An easily stereotyped traveler, one could quickly see they seldom looked at themselves for answers. I could not find one Mayan who believed in a 2012 doomsday, those I met were more concerned with the next rain.

While crossing the country on remote back-roads I met and made fast friends with an American Peace Corps worker and ended up living with him for a couple weeks. Tall lanky Ted lived in a rustic isolated settlement with 300 people, he worked on an Eco-tourism project and spoke K'iche', the local language. I learned a great deal about the customs and governing practices of small communities through Ted. He taught the local kids a new game, baseball, and they'd knock on his door daily, begging to play a game. We played. With bare hands, a tennis ball and wood clubs.

While living with Ted, I met and promptly fell in love with a Guatemalan biologist who did not fall in love with me. Unconsummated love. I was hopelessly enamored with Andrea, she looked more like a sexy librarian than a biologist. Nothing seemed to happen in the small settlement, especially when Andrea wouldn't agree to see me. Ted and I would drink beer and eat eggs for dinner.

The glossy veneer of the over-enthusiastic traveler who says, Everything is great! was stripped away when an American priest was killed in a roadside robbery just 2 km down the road from Ted's place. We watched them drive by moments before the attack and was the same road we ourselves had driven hours before. We all die, it's more a question of how we live.

Highlands
We stayed at a Refugio. In an isolated settlement without roads, set atop a cold mountain with flocks of sheep and goat. We hiked for two days across this barren environment of high plains and small settlements. I was with Ted, of Peace Corps and one of his buddies, Gunther cut in the figure of a lumberjack. Gunther was infected by Ted's experience and was soon off to Africa for his own Peace Corps engagement as a water engineer.
It was in this rocky landscape, I thought, Only in these extreme environments, those most stingy with life that the goat can thrive. From the hottest desert to coldest mountain range the goat can make it. No other animal can do it.

At the Refugio, we made friends with a group of Guatemalan kids and played futbol, soccer on a lopsided field with representative goal posts and an undersized, under-inflated unresponsive ball. My American technique of play contrasted with the finesse of the Guatemala-style, one based on soft touch and good passing, of which I possess none.

I passed and shot hard trying to catch the goalie off guard with booming shots and that's when my boot flew off with the ball towards goal. I was hopping around on one foot trying to keep out of the black mud. Playing at 10,000 feet was exhausting, as we chased the ball around in our mountaineering jackets and heavy boots with kids that wore sweatshirts and flimsy sneakers.

It made me think of the Westerners spirit of necessity, I can't climb that mountain without a Northface jacket. Ha!

Near the end of my stay in Guatemala I began to develop a better understanding of NGOs and GOs (non-government and government organizations) that operate in third-world countries like Guatemala, in the name of helping the helpless. In the case of Peace Corps, a US government organization, they use a field model where a worker is placed in the community alone.

To realize the project he must rely on others within the community. The Peace Corps model encourages him, by way of necessity, to get local buy-in for project development, and whose role is intended to be that of an adviser, rather than a know-it-all. Communities tend to become invested, and this provides the crucial chance for a project to be successful after Peace Corps pulls out. A worker invests dearly, spending two years on-site, often in primitive conditions. For those back home ready for a change or stuck in a crappy job, Peace Corps has no age limit.

On the other side are the many NGOs and GOs operating on a we-know-what's-best-for-you philosophy, using a push down model telling the locals what to do and how to do it, often without their input. It is humiliating to the community and fosters a hand-out mentality of, Just give it to us. These projects are the ones frequently abandoned by the locals after an NGO leaves.

Sadly, there are far more push-down NGOs than those that integrate into communities. After talking with many NGO workers and volunteer tourists I began to sense that their work was a form of psychotherapy. Many had difficulty answering the most basic questions about how their NGO integrated and delivered projects in the communities they served. But, they were proud to lead with, I'm volunteering... or …I'm doing NGO work...

During my stay in Coban, Guatemala, I met a Belgium woman who was a member a six person team (all Belgium) that worked in an insulated office in Guatemala City, providing social services to gay men, teaching them life/work-skills, so they could take 'regular' jobs and get out of the violent world of the sex-trade. In their office, they decided what to do, then took the program to the people. Sure, in one sense it was a worthwhile project and fair to assume it did have a positive social impact.

After seeing with my own eyes and interviews with organization workers, while traveling through some of the poorest parts of the country, it became abundantly clear Guatemala's priorities: clean water, waste water systems, nutrition and housing. Distantly followed by: health services and electricity. Extreme poverty. Most live on dirt floors in adobe-brick houses. It is about priorities. And when I made this point, she grew agitated and defensive.

It seemed to me that many visitors, not the simple tourist, deceived themselves as to their own motives and emotions. They use Third-world counties like Guatemala as a kind of psychotherapy, not to achieve self-knowledge, but rather these counties are for them a Disneyland of horrors, where the attraction is not delight, but moral outrage. I suspect they are dissatisfied with their lives at home. With marriage, crime, or the meaninglessness that material comfort brings, all unsolvable. But in the Third-world it is possible to be on the side of the angels.

On a Sunday morning, I was eating apple pie made by Don, a chain-smoking Pepsi drinking American who ran a hostel in Nebaj, when a CNN news flash hit the screen: Honduran President Zelaya, the legal standing President, was flown out under gunpoint and dumped on a runway in Costa Rica. This would effect my plans, while I waited to assess the mood in Honduras there was apple pie and other savory American foods to eat. It was Latin America's first political intrigue in almost twenty years and I was itching to see it. The Australian and Mexican, who helped me sneak the car through at the border were the ones I was entering coup-rife Honduras with.

For Past Dispatches on Guatemala hit these select links and look for a Honduras summary in next Dispatch Number 87-

2012ers: Armageddon is on the Way!-
http://travelingdave-intheamericas.blogspot.com/2011/03/dispatch-number-84-2012-survivalists.html
Matt the Super Swimmer-
http://travelingdave-intheamericas.blogspot.com/2009/04/swim.html
Hippies the Great Traveling Artists-
http://travelingdave-intheamericas.blogspot.com/2009/07/dispatch-number-23-hippies.html
Cemetery or Playground?-
http://travelingdave-intheamericas.blogspot.com/2010/02/dispatch-number-57-cemetery.html
The American Priest, shot dead-
http://travelingdave-intheamericas.blogspot.com/2011/02/dispatch-number-83-dead-things.html

David
Tarma, Peru

Dispatch Number 85 -Two Years: Mexico

This is a series covering the past two years of car travels through Latin America that began in the fall of 2008. Beginning with Mexico and on through Central America's Guatemala-Honduras-Nicaragua-Costa Rica-Panama and South America's Columbia-Ecuador and Peru. The loose plan is to continue driving to the bottom of the world, Ushuaia, Argentina. These are stories of characters, experiences and hardships.

San Diego, California. I slept in the parking lot of Bob's Big Boy. That night sleep came with dread and reluctance as plans to drive into Mexico with a friend fell apart, I was about to go alone. Today, I write this Dispatch from South America in Peru, two and a half years and 20,000 miles later. I began travels as a tourist, then became a traveler and eventually found myself on an odyssey.

My intention to travel by land and sea have gone well, using only paper maps and asking locals for directions at nearly every intersection, since road signs are unusual. Dusty bumpy back-road travel done in an old, 1986 Toyota Land Cruiser, without a GPS gizmo, cellular phone or a computer. Locals often ride with me to the next town, sharing area attractions and what local crops are grown. The regions I stay in tend to be agrarian communities made up of subsistence agriculture, where majority of the day is spent securing life's essentials. A world without vacations and manual labor to the end.

I take occasional Spanish classes while living with host families absorbing local customs and culture. If categories matter, I am a rural tourist or in more extreme cases the anti-tourist. The intent when I left the US, was to see how another part of the world lived, and to see it off the Pan American Highway system, beginning in Mexico and running to the bottom of the world in Ushuaia, Argentina.

Here is the briefest recap of the journey to date, country by country, starting in October 2008 when I entered Mexico with a sinking feeling in my belly.

Mexico
October 2008

My cellphone rang, it was Stephanie. I wasn't at Bob's Big Boy anymore.
Can you wait another day for me to get there? I want to go with you into Mexico.

I was so relieved. Not alone. My dream of driving the Western Hemisphere was launched when we crossed the border into Mexico through Tijuana. I had trouble remembering how to drive through Tijuana like I once knew as a youth, when friends and I would go there for day-long beer drunks on the beach. I'd awake after passing out over the backgammon board sun-burned and head blazing in pain.

A green traveler excited by it all, I exclaimed just about everything and everyone I came in contact with as, Great!

I suspected my enthusiasm irritated people. When I entered Mexico I spoke no Spanish, learning essentials along the way from gas station attendants and restaurant owners.
You don't say 'Gasolina Maximo', it's 'Lleno por favor' for fill 'er up, said one Pemex attendant.
It was seat-of-the-pants learning that suited me well. Stephanie traveled with me for two months, taking back roads everywhere we went, making remote desert camps across Baja California.

We met Richard, an outlaw living in Bahia de Los Angeles, who escaped from the US before the feds caught him for large-scale pot growing in California, some mysterious friend in the US smuggled money to him periodically. A born storyteller, he dazzled us daily with tales of his past. His eccentric side was kept hidden until we went to town: he wore down-feather house boots and Bermudas to the bar in 90+ degree heat. Taking a Coke, he looked far-out with his unkempt silver hair and those booties. He taught me how to make lemonade and ceviche from the fish we caught together.

While in the desert I found a recent plane crash, one that overshot the runway a few days earlier during an emergency landing. I opened the aircraft door and went inside the twin engine air ambulance. In the medical kit I took blue surgical gloves as a memento. I felt criminal, however being at the site of a crash and able enter the plane unimpeded was too tempting. Where were the investigators and yellow tape, like on the news?

Months later in Taxco near Mexico City, I attended my first of many Spanish schools in Latin America. At the midpoint of the language program, I invited a class-mate to go with me to a village to visit an old man I gave a ride to weeks earlier. Looking for Mr. Rodriquez. A seventy-something compact man with a wrinkled face, who grew medicinal plants and had extended an invite when I dropped him off.

My classmate and I rolled into the small village and asked a group of Sunday beer drinkers, one that included a boisterous bull rider, If they knew where we could find Mr. Rodriquez?
No, we don't know who that is, came the group reply after a minute or so of discussion between eight of them.
I brought out two bottles of beer and joined with my friend Katka, who looked displeased to see me drink at this hour. Thirty minutes and six one-liter bottles of beers later. Suddenly, the oldest and fattest in the group blurts out, That's my uncle! Rodriquez, is my uncle! He hasn't lived here in two years.

Southern Mexico

Don't go there. Zapatista country is dangerous with kidnappings, robberies and murders, they said. They are usually the ones who never go, but rely on repeated stories of mayhem that may have been accurate ten years back. When it comes to human adaptation people hopelessly cling to the past. I think animals in Darwin's world adapt faster than humans do. The warnings filled me with resolve.

Zapatista (EZLN: Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, Zapatista Army of National Liberation) is a political-social movement for the under-represented indigenous class in Mexico and is based in San Cristobal de la Casis, a place that draws intellectual revolutionaries the world over. While hardly revolutionary, the colonial city with its low skyline felt entertaining and heavily touristed. As a commercial revolutionary from the north, I bought an EZLN coffee mug.

Only while traveling with Matt, an excellent surfer from Australia, in the heart of Chiapas along the border with Guatemala, did things begin to feel revolutionary. A region where communities rejected national government, preferring self-rule based on Zapatismo Ideology. These communities posted black and red hand painted signs outlining the manifesto. Anti-Federal graffiti was everywhere, often in the form of murals on school walls. This region felt tough, but not unsafe to the outsider.

It was in this region, we found small Maya communities set in the jungle, some said they had undiluted Maya blood -they did look different, a lot different. Matt and I camped at one spot on a swim hole playing backgammon and swimming with locals. For a couple days we puzzled over the relationship between the caretaker/owner and his young helper. Matt, finally broke the silence that summed up our confusion, She's the plumpy wife-daughter.

Mexican culture is vibrant, lively and proud like few others countries in Latin America. They had blood in their veins. Mexico possesses an incredible treasure of Spanish-era Catholic churches, unrivaled by any other I have visited in the Americas. Its food among the best in the hemisphere, Peruvian fare comes a distant second. I had set the tone in Mexico, living a third-class life, staying in dumpy hotels and eating comida tipica, local dishes to make the money last, and it has been that way ever since. I don't want to come home!

Alienation was my natural condition, I was a stranger everywhere I went. With everything familiar stripped away, I felt childlike, defenseless and dim, and having to acquire a language. Mexico helped me understand what I wanted: to immerse in local culture and not patronize the locals.

David
Chiquian, Peru

More on Mexico: select Dispatches-

Joe and Red Light District-http://travelingdave-intheamericas.blogspot.com/2009/02/dispatch-number-8-joe.html

Bull Fighting, I'll Go Again-http://travelingdave-intheamericas.blogspot.com/2009/07/dispatch-number-22-la-coleta.html

Richard the Outlaw-http://travelingdave-intheamericas.blogspot.com/2009/02/dispatch-number-11-richard.html

Lampoon the RV-class-http://travelingdave-intheamericas.blogspot.com/2009/01/dispatch-number-5-rv-park.html

Churches & Weddings-http://travelingdave-intheamericas.blogspot.com/2009/08/dispatch-number-25-weddings_03.html

Dispatch Number 84 -2012 Survivalists: An Attack Piece

Alex

This past August having spent the hottest part of the year in the Amazon basin I felt the urge to get out of that sticky oppressive part of Peru and clear my head in the Andes. Set against the mountainous backdrop were indigenous Peruvian herders grazing flocks of sheep and cattle on communal grasslands. To manage the animals they would hiss and make guttural sounds while tossing rocks and slapping them with branches. It was in this setting, far from the city, I met Alex and his 2012 futurist friends at The Way Inn.

Interesting ones in this group, these New Age spiritualists that use psychotropic drugs with surprising regularity to find higher levels of consciousness and use it to get closer to their New Age ideas, one of them is the presently popular prediction of a 2012 doomsday, based on the ancient Maya calendar and scripts. It is a Western idea that modern Maya do not subscribe to.

Alex is the absentee owner of the Inn who occasionally visits to check up on things. He has a room on the remote property, but is hardly in it. Nomadic spirit is in his blood. A tall strapping Englishman with long brown hair pulled in a neat ponytail and a rich voice I imagine women are attracted to. This time he visits with his New Age friends whose focus these days is the copious consumption of psychotropic drugs like ayahuasca and San Pedro cactus; several in his group claim to be self-taught shamans providing guided drug journeys to spiritual tourists (there's an abundance of them here in Peru trying to find it again). Alex and his self-proclaimed shamans are the latest incarnation of evangelists, New Age spiritualists. People who describe most everything they do as a calling.

Alex ate fast and ate multiple plates of food while standing without seeming to pay attention to what he was doing while we talked. He had made a life in Peru and was an unabashed New Age believer in a 2012 doomsday.
Between plates of food I asked the only question that mattered, What sets your beliefs apart from other superstitions that have predicted the end of the world?
Good question, followed by a deep breath as he went on in unconvincing fashion to tell me it can all be explained away by vast amounts of information available interpreted with modern theory and joined with select remnants of Maya texts and antiquated calendar.

How information has grown exponentially since the 1960's, and thus, with this bounty of data and modern ability to interpret it, one cannot refute the signs of collapse that the Maya were telling us. Glossing over an inconvenient truth, the data he refers to came from the very Western civilization he attacks as being corrupt and unsustainable.

He went on, those who remain 'unconscious' in the trappings of Western ways are doomed and will suffer for their dependence on the system. The implication is the 'unconscious' ones will be left out of the new era expected to emerge after cataclysmic events begin on December 21, 2012. He expressed suspicion towards mainstream Western culture, believes in the idea of spiritual evolution, and the possibility of leading the world into the New Era by individual example and group consciousness. The New Agers set themselves apart (in their minds) by practicing meditation, taking repetitive psychedelic drug journeys, while claiming to live at higher levels of consciousness. The implication is clear: They are better fit for survival.

When Alex heard my story of driving through Latin America for an extended period of time, he linked it to an increase in man's awakening and an increase in global consciousness, hinting that I may survive the coming apocalypse by being in the right place at the right time. For him, I was additional proof that something was afoot, my actions were a contribution to the collective consciousness. In books, people take what we need and not necessarily what the books principle point is, and in Alex's case it is an example of seeing everything around him as a 'sign', an environment where most everything has some sort of meaning or significance. For the 2012ers it is superstition dressed up as fact.

He flushed, I love seeing signs like this, man, it's real good, I get excited meeting people like you.
Flattered as I was, I remained unconvinced. Putting the excitement of doom aside one of the aims of the 2012 movement is to foster counter-cultural sympathies and activate spiritual activism. I'd be down with some of their ideas if they would leave the doomsday part out of the picture; in any case, their end-of-time prophecy cheapens this positive aspect and offends those with active minds. No one likes to be manipulated by threats.

What The End Looks Like

The belief, in general, is that there will be cataclysmic or trans-formative events on December 21, 2012 that will come as earthquakes, extreme climate change and super-volcanoes that will kill off more than half the population and in turn lead to the collapse of the capitalist system. Judgment day for capitalism; Western civilization punished for materialism, corrupt mores and extravagant ways. The primitive Christians more or less said the same of the Romans until they acceded the high court of Roman emperors and Rome became a holy Catholic State. Before long those same pious Christians adopted the extravagant ways of the Romans.

Catastrophe and collapse will come in a host of colorful ways, here are some (always told with a straight face): solar maximum or sunspots, (think of a barbecued earth), the earth's magnetism reversing; rogue planets striking earth, super-volcanoes and earthquakes. As if the above were not dramatic enough some of the more extreme predictions include the return of alien caretakers to enlighten or enslave us, to a sudden devolution of humans into non-bodily beings.

A researcher who has studied New Age communities and themes, describes 2012 narratives as the product of a 'disconnected' society: unable to find spiritual answers to life's big questions within ourselves, we turn outward to imagined entities that lie far off in space or time -entities that just might be in possession of superior knowledge. And this is what people around town more or less had to say about Alex, commenting that he was going through some big life changes and seemed adrift in search of answers to the unanswerable.

They excite over the Western idea of complicated data-intensive calculations, astronomical alignments and numerological formulae used to predict the end of the world based on Maya writings and the Maya Long Count calendar. After all, information is power, right? In short, because the calendar ends the world ends -lovely kindergarten logic even a child can appreciate. They believe that after the capitalist system is destroyed a new system will emerge; the new era will be based on a humanistic ethos of simple living based on the concept of 'collective-consciousness'. This basis of group thought is rooted in primitive attitudes of mechanical solidarity or herd behavior, much like the ones I subscribed to when I was a corporate guy -in that environment even though we were all fucking each other over on business deals, we chanted "Win-Win" all the way.

Others interpret it as positive physical or spiritual transformation that may spark the beginning of a new era, however, still as the result of catastrophe and massive population loss. Talking with Alex and his futurist friends about 2012 made me think back to the Y2K bug scare of the late 1990s that suggested our computers would stop working and lead to economic collapse. I knew people who withdrew vast amounts of cash from the bank and stockpiled food anticipating anarchy; at the time I worked in the computer industry and we loved it because we knew nothing was going to happen.
Skeptically I thought, Wow, those PR guys are good.
Survivalists appear in every age on the flimsiest of pretexts; like lonely singles looking for companionship and grab at anything that comes their way; the survivalist waits for a cause.

It's a Western Idea

None of the proposed alignments or formulae has been accepted by mainstream scholarship. Impending doom is not found in any of the existing classic Maya accounts, and the idea that the Long Count calendar "ends" in 2012 misrepresents Maya history. Classical sources on the subject are scarce and contradictory, suggesting there is little, if any universal agreement to what the date might mean. The Maya I met in southern Mexico and northern Guatemala were concerned with the next rain. I could not find a local Mayan that subscribed to the Western idea of a 2012 collapse.

The destruction they crave will pave the way for realignment of world order, a simpler way of life, much like the back-to-the-land movements of the 1960's and 1970's that promoted self sufficiency and humanistic ways, which one could argue contributed to the greed of the 1980s and irrational exuberance of the 1990s. Enthusiasts of 2012 apply a moral standard of simplicity against the perceived extravagance of capitalism. With capitalism the focus of their dark predictions, I wonder if the Chinese and Russians will get a pass on the horrors that await because they made a strident go of communism.

Armageddon, my word, is not used by the New Agers who subscribe to this end of time prophecy and instead use phrases like: "When the shit hits" or "The big change coming", or "A massive realignment". New language and words to describe an old outcome -the Earth's end; an unoriginal story repeated for millenniums.

One is left to guess that when the earth's crust opens Alex's New Age friends will be spared death by the approach of an angel that will catch them just as the earth opens. Further one is left to suppose that when super-volcanoes erupt and fill the air with unbreathable ash they will find themselves atop a remote mountain in a pocket of pure air. Never mind the last time the air turned this toxic from an asteroid strike, it knocked off all the dinosaurs. Yet, listening to the superstitions they promote of 'collective consciousness', it will have them in the right place at the right time to survive. It smacks of mystical superiority and the non-believers, the unconscious who live in the capitalist system, are doomed to the hell that awaits them.

It is an age old tale that falls into a long line of similar predictions made by major religions and cults that have cropped up with each passing moral fad. Religions have always taken contemporary thought, tied it to secret knowledge and applied it to the passive masses claiming sage-like knowledge with command of the facts & data of the day. These New Agers are the new messiahs using an antiquated Maya calendar and ancient writings nobody really understands claiming to know how to interpret what the Maya were telling us.

After conversations with believers in a 2012 collapse, I came away with a wholly different opinion and point of view about them. Their actions, spirit and zealotry made them less 'spiritual' than I had originally thought. They are not New Age spiritualists. They are a new form of an old idea and in-group: they are a cult of Survivalists that fluff up their cause with dreamy spiritualism.

The survivalist movement is based on many events imagined and real, including government policies, threats of nuclear warfare, religious beliefs, and writers warning of social or economic collapse, both apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic books. The Maya 2012 doomsday prediction has mystical and religious underpinnings that activate the Survivalists.

It is superstition presented in its latest form and there are no shortage of writers claiming interpretive knowledge (just buy my book). They use the most effective parts of the propaganda model: fear and hidden knowledge. Alex and his friends are persuaded by these superiors to direct their vows to the reining Western resurrection of Maya deities and to propagate the latest doctrine of collapse. They are the spiritually starved who have sadly been reduced to mythic-magical thinking.

Even though they cite 'facts and data', the 2012 gang are as superstitious as the great religions of the world -Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Zoroastrian and Buddhist. Most all have made end of time predictions, while accusing their contemporaries of being morally corrupt and that if they do not reform they will suffer. Man's propensity is to exalt the past and depreciate the present. As a historical point of fact these predictions have always failed to come.

I marveled at the intelligent ignorance of this new class of spiritualist citing 'data' as the proof, yet unable to explain the smallest part of it. Data is the new power word, people get hit over the head with 'information-age' messages in mass media and the corporate environment; here the word has been co-opted to project something untrue and bolster superstition. The Christians did this all the time taking contemporary issues and fads and incorporated them into current superstitions, which in turn, were used to manipulate and control a docile populace. The New Agers are remarkably similar to those primitive Christians who renounced the extravagant ways of Rome and its privileged class, while they practiced non-participation in civic affairs claiming moral and secret knowledge as authority for their choices and proclamations.

Bruce Chatwin captures the dynamics at work of persons controlling information:

"So important were the dates of the seasonal cycle- for planting, inundating and harvesting- that you found an outburst of astronomical calculation and astrological prediction. So important was it to keep the work force in passive dependence, that this knowledge became the exclusive property of a caste of managerial bureaucrats, the futurologist of the ancient world. These were men morbidly wrapped-up in themselves and responsible to nothing but the system; they dwarfed the people with monumental architecture and threatened the people with implacable sky gods."

Alex's answer was deeply inadequate to the gravity that he subscribed to; it also told me he was the latest incarnation of what organized religion has done to people before him: a docile slave to historic interpretations he does not understand, but easily surrenders to without critical thought. 2012 theorists use the passions of the human heart and contemporary circumstances of mankind, as instruments to execute its purpose.

High in the Andes, The Way Inn seemed like a good place to escape impending doom. It's a rare moment to observe an end of time prophecy playing out before my eyes, usually I only get to read about what never happens. I am sure that in the end, Alex's apprehensions will far exceed his sufferings.

David

Huaraz, Peru