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