I was going through some old notebooks from college this weekend and came across this journal entry that I wrote after a trip that a group of friends and I took to Guatemala during the spring of my sophomore year. It's another unpolished piece and a few of the cliche descriptions make me want to cringe, but I was taken by the underlying sentiment of indignant idealism that could only come from the pen of 19-year-old. For more than two hundred years, the walled city of Antigua served as the military seat of the Spanish colony of Guatemala, which encompassed most of present-day Central America. Situated in a narrow valley at the base of the volcano Agua, the original city was destroyed twice before someone realized that walls or no walls, a capital city at the base of a volcano is, strategically speaking, never a good idea. In 1773 it was moved to what is now Guatemala City, but the missions and many of the Spanish style buildings still stand. For Agua, more than 250 years have passed in silence, and the volcano is believed to be dormant, but constant rumblings and daily bursts of steam from the menacing cone-shaped mountain seem to threaten otherwise.
But for now, the only strategy in Antigua is tourism. The streets are crowded with accents. Well-to-do Europeans, red like cooked lobsters, mix in with dread-locked college students in their natural fibers and Birkenstocks. And of course, Americans, heaving their weight around the bins of the marketplace, knocking over piles of coffee grounds with their nylon fanny packs. On my second day there, my friend Toby and I try to use a public phone to call home, only to realize that we've forgotten the US country code.
"Quick," I joke. "Find a fanny pack!" Spotting one around the corner I wave to the woman and ask, "Are you American? Do you know the country code?"
Turns out that it's "one."
"Well I wonder who decided
that," snickers Toby.
__________
I'm in the town center and I'm alone today. The rest of the group left around five in the morning for a day trip to Panahatchetel, a village on Lake Atitlan, an impossibly beautiful body of water occupying the crater of an extinct volcano. Being one of the only students fluent in Spanish, I volunteered to stay behind to serve as a translator for the two students whose stomach's didn't agree with the Guatemalan food and who were now spending the day retching in an Antiguan clinic.
Around noon I walked them back to their hotel rooms and left them with water and strict instructions to take the Cipro I'd acquired from a nearby pharmacy where, interestingly enough, a smile seemed to serve just as effectively as an actual doctor's prescription. I wander in the direction of the town center, where the locals gather daily to pawn their wares on the tourists that fill the streets. The city also serves as the market center for the surrounding villages and so each morning families ride in on bright green and red buses, packed to the nines with piles of textiles, coffee, and crates full of live chickens.
Male and female, hovering around five feet, the natives quickly run amongst the clusters of foreigners proffering their goods.
"Senor, senor! Solo Cien Quetzales!" The men carry bundles of hand-woven blankets strapped onto their backs. The women balance large baskets of coffee beans on their heads. Even the children, no older than ten, walk around with plastic bags filled with sliced mangoes, popcorn or coconut candy tied to sticks carried on their shoulders. It's the "15 cents a day" kids from the commercials. The ones that look at you while flies buzz around their faces and John Lennon imagines in the background.
A little boy gazes up at me with his giant eyes and even though I know he's been pulled out of school and sent here precisely to make me feel this way, I hand him a coin and take a bag of mango slices. There's history in these round almond eyes, the
cafe con leche skin, the silver-capped teeth that reflect the sun--smiles that literally beam, I note.
I continue to wander around the market, touching blankets and smelling bags of coffee. I come across a display of large wooden salad bowls complete with eight small salad plates and serving utensils. I think about how back home the set would probably only come with four plates and wonder if that really means anything.
A woman walks over to me and smiles. She's missing a tooth in front and long black hair is wrapped in a woven scarf. "They are all carved by hand," she tells me in Spanish. I smile back at her and tell her that I think they're beautiful. Her smile widens when she realizes that I speak her language. She comes closer and asks me where I'm from. I tell her that I'm Puerto Rican but that I was born and live in the US. She nods her head and says, "I thought so, you are too pretty to be from Guatemala. The best-looking Latinas are from the Caribbean." When she says this, she touches her own face and I'm not quite sure what to say. Instead I look down at the bowl and ask her how much for the set.
"300
Quetzales," about 30 dollars. "But for you, since you are Latina, only 250." I know that I can get it down to 200, but I don't try. I tell her that I'll take it and she starts wrapping it in newspaper.
While she wraps she asks me questions about what I do and where I live. I tell her that I'm a student and that I live in Washington, DC. She asks me if I've ever been to the White House and gets excited when I tell her that yes, I have. She raises one of the sheets she's using to wrap the bowls. We declared war on Iraq yesterday and President Bush's face is on the page. "Have you met him?"
"I shook his hand once."
She looks down at the page and sighs, "I think he looks like a good man."
This catches me by surprise. Most of my friends hate the President and many are angry about the war. "Why do you say this?"
"His eyes. He has the eyes of a good person. Here the politicians don't look like that..."
From the little I've read about the country's political history I think I know what she means, but I know that I don't really understand--and I'm thankful for that. As I take my bag and turn to leave I remember what she'd said earlier. "You know," I start. "The Guatemaltecos have the most beautiful eyes that I have ever seen." I bend down to give her a kiss good-bye and she says, "Es el dolor de la gente."
It's the pain of the people.I feel like I'm bridging something, or maybe it's more like a scale and I'm somewhere in between the cooked lobsters and the
cafe con leche. I feel it every time I talk to someone. This morning, the man at the bakery asked me where I'm from and I told him. Just like the woman in the market he told me that Puerto Ricans are more beautiful than the Guatemalans. I protested and told him that I'd seen many beautiful women during my time in the country. "Muy India,"
too native, he said, wrinkling his own Mayan nose. Again, I don't know how to respond.
__________
A few days pass and we're back in Guatemala City. The group is together and we're in the van heading for the airport. On the main highway we pass a billboard advertising a local newscast. The team of anchors smile broadly in coordinated suits. They look strangely American. Their fair skin and Anglo features contrast starkly with the faces I saw in the marketplace. I point this out to the friend sitting next to me.
"What does '
La Voz' mean?" He asks, referring to the slogan printed in bright yellow letters across the billboard.
"The Voice," I say. It says, 'The Voice of Guatemala."
He looks at it and rolls his eyes. "Doesn't really look like it..."
