Assignment Central America
The decade of the 1980's in Central America was soaked in blood. Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua were aflame. I read about it every day and when not on assignment for Australian Broadcasting I volunteered in the news room at a radical free-form radio station WBAI, Pacifica Radio in New York City.
WBAI's FM signal reached sixty miles. It was incredible that I could contribute and actually get on air to broadcast - to compile news reports from reporters in foreign lands, take them over crackling phone lines from faraway places, switches and plugs and reels turning, press the record button and the wire service clacking and sheets of it rolling across the floor as the news poured in.
After a stint in news as a reporter riding a bike across town to the United Nations, attending public events and recording speeches, cutting tape and compiling stories, finding a typewriter that worked - red crayon scribbles on the copy, cut-and-paste from the wire-services, reels of stories labeled and ready, threaded and cued. We were a beacon of radical thought and alternative news in CentAm - the wars in Central America were high on our agenda.
One afternoon, our radio correspondent in CentAm, Gene Polombo called and I picked up. San Salvaldoran Archbishop Oscar Romero had been assassinated.
Romero was fatally shot while celebrating Mass at
a small chapel located in a hospital called "La Divina Providencia".
It happened just one day after his sermon calling on Salvadoran soldiers to "cease government's repression". He finished the sermon and a shot rang out and the Archbishop collapsed in front of the alter. I made a pilgrimage to the chapel nearly a decade later and a nun opened the door to the Archbishop's room. A narrow bed and table with books and a bible and reading lamp. A crucifix on the chipped, white stucco wall. And the date of his death on an open page on his calender - 24th, March, 1980.
Central America became my self-proclaimed beat. As a journalist I'd investigated and made in depth radio documentaries about the atomic bomb and Hiroshima and I'd done a program called The Unheeded Message of the Holocaust, an extended interview with Polish underground courier, Jan Kaski who'd been an eye witness to the early manifestations of the Jewish Holocaust. I was born in the shadow of the Jewish Holocaust and Hiroshima. And I felt it deep in my bones, that sad connection. And perhaps that was why, years later, I grappled with those events. Bio & Radiography. Radio doco Hiroshima Countdown on Democracy Now.
And now south of the border was another horror, another kind of holocaust happening in our name, with our tax dollars - death squads and Maryknoll nuns murdered, drugs, and international arms deals, Iran-Contra affair. Refugees were scrambling across U.S. borders and a sanctuary movement sprang up sparking the imagination of liberal U.S. churches - a new theology of liberation. I felt compelled to visit and report at the source. Here's some notes and observations.
The Hotel Pan American, Guatemala City, 1988
They
walked down a flight of musty stairs at the Hotel Colonial in
Guatemala City. The stairs creaked and the carpet was threadbare. In
the hotel lobby the sun streamed through the frosted glass windows
and filled the canary-yellow foyer laid out in diamond
shapes with yellow and brown tiles. The walls were
varnished and had a warm dark patina. The switch board buzzed and a
typewriter snapped behind the desk below a ticking black and silver
clock. A glass cabinet was on the reception desk with five small dolls
dressed in Mayan ethnic costume. And behind the desk a magazine rack
displayed the latest headlines: Time Magazine: “Central America:
Deeper into Danger”.
There was the sound of water falling from a
nearby fountain and the waiters were wearing traditional costumes –
they swished past, eyes lowered, carrying trays of food to
the dining room. The tables were set for four with yellow cotton table
clothes and burgundy napkins. Framed huipils and weavings
hang on the wall. At the entrance, a dark-skinned man
stood with a tasseled wooden billy club and a pistol on his belt. His
name was Garcia and he watched the traffic passing on the street
outside.
At ten o’clock at night, the heavy wooden doors are
bolted shut. The streets quiet and empty. Inside the Hotel Pan American
the ticking black and silver clock beside the glass cabinet with the
five dolls locked inside and the magazine rack exclaiming: “Central
America: Deeper into Danger”, the water falling musically. A
drab-green army jeep with canvas hood eases past the stucco walls and
bolted doors through the cobbled streets and soldiers leaning back with
their legs hanging down, cradle their M16’s .
Nearby, a
yellow-lit bar and pizza joint. Its called Los Ceollinas, The Snail, and serves simple food; tortillas, avocado, rice and beans and beer and Coca Cola. The waitress is moving slowly because her shift is almost done . Soon she'll head home through the darkened city -
walking quickly - head down watching the pavement, heart bumping in her
chest - until she opens and locks the door behind her.
Leaning
in the doorway, a broad shouldered young man, his face is Indian and
his hair thick black and shorn high above his ears. Probably a soldier. He wears a satin bomber jacket and sips beer from a
bottle. He is locked in the frame in the doorway and his sunshine
soaked neck is thick and strong and pushes with crushing force
into his shoulders. His arms hangs loose. Outside I can hear the
sound of rock n’roll – Elvis Presley echoes through the street.
I visited the poet and journalist Ann Maria Rodas in her home on the outskirts of Guatemala City. She gave me this poem:
I adore you.
You are
my people.
But there is a gun in your hand
and in your eyes, dark police.
There is no communication between my love
and your
violence.
Antigua,
Guatemala
The bus to Antigua from Guatemala City is not crowded. The seats are comfortable. The windows open and fragrant warm air flows across my face. We climb a steep mountain on a wide, smooth road leaving the city behind shrouded in a mist of yellow smog.
The sun is bright and the landscape dry with green swathes of vegetation. Then riding steeply down to Antigua, the old colonial capital of Guatemala, a cathedral dome in the distance and the town spread out and shimmering.
The trip takes less than an hour. We alight at a bustling bus terminal stinking with diesel
I
sink into the beaten up old taxi’s backseat and the springs are so weak I
wonder if my ass might scrape the road. The driver grinds the gears and with a
blast of noise because the exhaust system no longer works, we lurch forward. He
touches two wires - “Baaarp. Bararp” - the horn sounds and pedestrians scatter.
We
find the mission on the edge of town behind a tall white stucco wall. Eucalyptus trees grow behind it and a purple carpet of jacaranda petals spills
onto the street in front. Sparse dry hills rise up at the back of the white
walled mission house and its red tiled roof traces a crisp outline against the
blue sky. Wooden bars protect the shaded windows and brilliant bougainvillea
and exquisite blood red roses surround the entrance. Inside it’s cool as we
walk across the clay-tiled floor. A
deferential man called Juan shows us our room. And night falls.
Next
day begins Semena Santa, Holy Week, the holiest time of year for Catholics, the
time to mourn and celebrate the crucifixion and resurrection of the Christ and
I feel the weight of a mighty metaphor. The streets are crowded with people and
the smell of incense and frangipani petals fills the fresh new morning.
The
Agua Volcano dominates the landscape. It’s more than twelve thousand feet high
and a wisp of white smoke and clouds hangs around its summit. Steep volcanic
slopes and raw green hills surround Antigua. The streets are narrow and laid
with cobble stones that have carried oxen and the turning wheels of wooden
carts, bare brown feet of children and automobiles, army jeeps and black
Suburban’s with black tinted windows that cocoon
the soldiers of the death squads.
In
the shadows of the cathedral ruin, men in purple satin robes are gathering.
They wear purple pointed caps and they look as if they’ve time traveled from
the days of the Inquisition. Boys and young men of military age and old men,
bent and shuffling, carry crude wooden crosses draped with white cloth. A somber bass drum beats in the distance as
they prepare for the parade.
Mayan
men and women kneel and bend pouring flowers on the road and slowly intricate
fragrant patterns materialize. It’s like a Disney cartoon except the flowers
and perfume are real and they stretch as far as the eye can see in a giant
palette of color. Hundreds
of catholic penitents are gathering for Holy Week and the celebration continues
for days. Somber music and biblical costumes, streets pungent with bellowing
copal incense and pools of rose petals, frangipani and hibiscus and colored
sawdust laid on the wetted cobbles which shine in the sunshine.
On
each side of the narrow streets, thick adobe walls peeling Technicolor paint,
balconies and porticos and leafy patios, deep shadows. The Plaza de Armas, the
former government buildings surrounding it, is crowded now and the wide plaza
dazzles in the sunlight. Thick trunked trees lend broad pockets of shade and
ice cream vendors ring small brass bells, bunches of them that hang from the
carts tinkle like shells washing in the waves on a beach.
In
the shadows of the cathedral ruins, the walls all cracked and fading yellow,
green and peach and pink; across the crumpled courtyard past the tall arched
doorway inside the hallowed dimness, I see Christ clad in crisp white cotton
standing in a tall glass case. His forehead is torn and bleeding from the
thorns and at his bound feet in a tall vase curling white lilies - and in the
distance I hear the slow beating of the drum.
In
the shadows of the cathedral ruins an old man reaches for his flute and blows a
sad note that echoes through the cavernous church. It is the Cathedral de San
José, the oldest and largest Roman Catholic Church in Antigua, battered by
earthquakes since it was built around 1541. The bones of the conquistador Pedro
de Alvarado are interred here.
And the ghosts of other conquistadors – Vaso Nunez de Balboa, Francisco Pizarro, Hernando Cortes and Christopher Columbus – their legacy infused in the bricks and mortar of this cathedral and every other built throughout the Americas in the name of Christ’s blood.
And the ghosts of other conquistadors – Vaso Nunez de Balboa, Francisco Pizarro, Hernando Cortes and Christopher Columbus – their legacy infused in the bricks and mortar of this cathedral and every other built throughout the Americas in the name of Christ’s blood.
Legend
has it that in 1524 when Pedro de Alvarado conquered the nation of Guatemala
for Spain, he murdered the Mayan chief Tecun Uman, plunging his lance deep into
the chief’s chest. As he did, the
legendary and sacred quetzal bird, the totem spiritual protector of the Mayans,
plummeted to earth and covered the dying leader with long, soft green plumes.
The
quetzal bird kept a deathwatch through the night and at dawn was transformed,
no longer the pure green of jade but was soaked in blood from the dead warrior
king, was crimson. The bird rose from the dead king red with Mayan blood as it
is to this day. And what began with a trickle soon became a torrent roaring
through the centuries into an endless silent sea of suffering and death for the
Indians of Meso-America.
Guatemala’s
Nobel Prize winning writer, Miguel Angel Asturias described the Quetzal’s
bird’s resurrection as embracing humankind and nature. Asturias was born in
Guatemala in 1899. Studying in Paris at the Sorbonne, he explored the myths and
religion of the Maya and he described the quetzal bird’s resurrection this way:
Don’t you see
breast
red as blood,
arms
green as the blood of plants,
blood
of the trees,
blood
of the animals.
He
is a bird
and
he is a tree.
Don’t
you see the long plume of his tail.
Bird
of green blood
Tree
of red blood.
Quetzal
bird.
And
now inside the church, leaving behind the hubbub, heat and excitement of the
street, past the worn wooden table and a brass collection plate with a few
coins, people kneel on the cool stone floor in the chapel in front of a diorama
of Christ’s last supper. Lace curtains hang bathed in light filtered through
the ornate windows.
As
the parade passes outside, huge floats that weigh more than a car, sway
rhythmically from side to side like ships swaying on the waves – eighty men
sweat and strain beneath its weight, and they pay for the privilege taking
turns to carry the load. Only the
middle-class and wealthy can afford to act out such penance, sweating away a
year of sin beneath the iconic figure of the tortured Christ.
Holy
week is a tragedy – a way to see the pulverized identity of the Mayan Indian –
the step by step ascent to Golgotha – turning Christ’s death and burial into a
charade, an annihilation of the story but for the Indians there is no
resurrection at the end of Holy Week.
And
at dusk, the sun weaves its colors in the clouds, threads of pink and gold and
sometimes a crimson swath slowly fades as night falls. And the stars burn with fierce whiteness. And
the drum is beating still, and another, and another.
And
at night the streets seem more crowded as the festival continues. Shadows huddle around burning braziers and
the charcoal glows and smoke fills the air – smoke from fires and copal incense
and tortillas burning on the grills - and the fragrant flowers, so delicately designed
on the streets during the day, now are crushed beneath the penitent feet of the
faithful. The intoxicating flowers, flickering fires to scare away the devil,
men dressed like Roman soldiers and purpled robed Pharisees sit in groups and
mingle through the crowd as people party deep into the mystical night.
The Maya conjoin baroque Catholicism with their own animistic beliefs synthesizing meaning to make their own. The resurrection of the Christ, the resurrection of the sacred Quetzal bird, a belief system and faith that provides relief from the deadening weight of colonialism and an endless brutal war that scars this nation. I am deeply moved by Holy Week in Antigua. I feel as if I’ve traveled back in time and partaken in some kind of holy communion; as if the terrible sins of colonialism are washed clean for a moment.
But soon I am sitting with Doctor Valle Monge who lives in Antigua where the Anglos come to enjoy the best of what the country offers and he speaks of war. It’s a gracious old city with its five hundred year old cathedral and the faded panorama of most of Central America. But bitter memories infuse its history and the beating drum I’d heard during the processions was a beating heart.
Uruguay writer, Edwardo Galliano in his book “Memories of Fire” wrote that in Guatemala:
“…things
are more easily seen and felt than elsewhere.
This is a regime that violently imposes the law of survival of the strongest;
this is a society that condemns most people to live as if in concentration camps;
this is an occupied country where the imperium shows and uses its claws and teeth.
Dreams inevitably fade into nightmares
and one can no longer love without hating,
fight for life without killing,
say yes without implying no.”
This is a regime that violently imposes the law of survival of the strongest;
this is a society that condemns most people to live as if in concentration camps;
this is an occupied country where the imperium shows and uses its claws and teeth.
Dreams inevitably fade into nightmares
and one can no longer love without hating,
fight for life without killing,
say yes without implying no.”
Conquest
Dr.
Valle is a small man, dark and handsome and he invites us to sit with him in
his cool, dim study lined with books and artifacts. The shutters are closed to
keep out the heat of the day and I can hear his children playing in the
courtyard. A maid brings ice-cold lemonade as we sit to talk about war, peace
and poetry.
He told me that a close friend of his had gone to the mountains. The man's wife had visited more than once asking after her husband who'd vanished. Eventually the doctor told her that his friend had gone to the mountains to fight. He told me and his voice shook. And he looked down at his desk in his study with many books and the wooden shades were drawn against the harsh sunlight. "It is the struggle", he said still looking down, "between the writer and the fighter. That is his way and mine is different. Who am I to judge?"
The
doctor is a poet and there is sadness and resignation about him; a veil of tragedy. His voice
is soft and weary and I lean forward in the baroque upholstered leather chair
to hear his words. He begins by explaining the Spanish Inquisition and
I feel its legendary awfulness envelop me like a heavy dark cloak.
By 1492 the Dark Ages were receding and a fresh new light was growing in the world. The Renaissance blows great gusts of change. It is a world adrift. The lines lashing it to the old age of blind authority are loosening. For eight centuries the Iberian Peninsula had been homeland to a rich diversity – Christian, Arab and Jew and the cultural ferment was unmatched in the history of Europe.
The
Renaissance encourages scholars and common people to speak and write in their
own voice and break the bondage of Latin. And now the world has the printing
press to spread the news to those who can read
Constantinople
has fallen, overrun by the Turks. To the east, the Mediterranean is closed to
traders and the price of silk, spices and other luxury goods demanded by the
aristocracy has risen ten times.
A
second inquisition has begun in Europe and Ferdinand and Isabelle in Spain
support it. For Spain, it is a lynchpin
in their history as the country unifies and the Catholic faith provides the
impetus for unity – stern and compelling - especially due to the devout
Isabelle. The Church must be purified and alien elements purged, especially Muslims and Jews.
For
eight centuries before, the Iberian Peninsula was homeland to a rich mix of Arab
Muslims, Christians and Jews. Their coexistence in this insular Mediterranean
region created cultural foment unmatched in the history of Europe.
It
is into this changing world that Christopher Columbus is born. It is said he was born
near Genoa and named after Saint Christopher the ferryman who carried Christ on
his shoulders – the Christ bearer. Christopher Columbus’ father was a poor
weaver and Christopher worked with him until his early twenties.
The
seaport of Genoa bustled with activity. Great shipyards, map makers and the
docks swarmed with traders, navigators and sailors from the known world. Some
said there were new lands to the west. The old trade routes from the east were
now closed by the Turks and seamen sought new directions to explore and find
wealth.
Prince
Henry the Navigator of Portugal had already sent ships south searching for a
sea route to India around the Cape of Good Hope and each voyage ventured
further. In
1471, a little more than a decade after Henry the Navigator’s death, Portuguese ships reached the equator to find the sea did not boil there.
A
few years later, in 1475, Christopher Columbus began serving on various ships
plying the Mediterranean Sea. Heading through the Straights of Gibraltar he
was attacked by pirates and thrown into the sea off the Portuguese coast. He
made it to shore and found his way to Lisbon.
In
Lisbon he learned Castilian, the lispy language of upper class Portuguese, and
Latin necessary to study the ancient navigational texts. He poured over the
charts of the great navigators and learned about new ships designed by the
Portuguese –the caravel with its revolutionary reshaped hull and recut sails
that made ships faster – two-hundred miles on a good day. It was in this
atmosphere that Columbus’ idea was born to sail west to Asia.
The
new printing presses of Europe produced streams of books and pamphlets. Bibles
and books of marvels, astronomy and astrology – stories of travel, real or
imagined were popular. Columbus
poured over Marco Polo’s report on China. And Pierre d’Ailly’s discourse that
helped demystify the nightmare fantasy worlds of the Middle Ages called “The
Image of the World. He scribbled notes in its margins.
Columbus
approached John the Second of Portugal who inherited his great-uncle, Henry the
Navigator’s zeal for discovery, but was rejected. John was looking southward for
a sea route around Africa to India.
Columbus
moved back to Spain to Castile and cultivated powerful allies in the Spanish
court. Queen Isabelle received him and
referred his proposal to committee. She liked the idea but didn’t have the
money for the venture. She was already hard-pressed financing the conquest of
the Muslims in Grenada. In the meantime
Columbus took a mistress who bore him a son he named Fernando who was to become
Columbus’ biographer.
In
1488, Columbus returned to Lisbon and witnessed the triumph of Bartholomew Dias
who returned from Africa with the assurance that the eastern route to India was
feasible.
In
Portugal Columbus renewed his pleas to John the Second and was refused a second
time. He sent his younger brother,
Bartholomew to Henry the Seventh in England – he asked the king of France,
Charles the Eighth but Columbus could find no support for his dream to sail
west. But he was persistent.
In
1490 Isabelle’s committee termed Columbus’ plans impractical and denounced them
as inconsistent with the teachings of St. Augustine. One year later Columbus
tried again and yet another committee rejected him. Back
in France he appealed to Charles the Eighth again.
And then Grenada fell. It was January second, 1492. Christian prisoners were released from Muslim dungeons and eight centuries of Muslim occupation ended. Isabella sent a message to Columbus and invited him back to Spain. She accepted his plan and proclaimed him Admiral and Viceroy and Governor of lands he might find. She granted him one-tenth of all profits to his heirs and successors forever. And to Columbus Isabella entrusted royal letters to the Grand Kahn and to all kings of India.
And then Grenada fell. It was January second, 1492. Christian prisoners were released from Muslim dungeons and eight centuries of Muslim occupation ended. Isabella sent a message to Columbus and invited him back to Spain. She accepted his plan and proclaimed him Admiral and Viceroy and Governor of lands he might find. She granted him one-tenth of all profits to his heirs and successors forever. And to Columbus Isabella entrusted royal letters to the Grand Kahn and to all kings of India.
Before
sunrise on August third, 1492 Columbus embarked from the Atlantic port of
Palos, Cadiz. The Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria with ninety men and boys, sailed
west into the Atlantic. The fortress and naval base and Spain’s main Atlantic
port would have been a more logical choice but it was too busy shipping
thousands of exiled Jews.
Columbus:
A radio feature commemorating the 500th anniversary of
Columbus' arrival in the Americas.
Commission for Australian Broadcasting.
Commission for Australian Broadcasting.
Part 1. Columbus: Europe is in ferment. The Dark Ages are over and the Renaissance is beginning.
The Moors and Jews are forced out of Spain. The Inquisition is unfolding to
protect the weak and ignorant from evil doctrines. The printing press has
arrived and soon Cervantes will write Don Quixote and El Greco will emerge.
Martin Luther nails his thesis on a church door and Machiavelli is writing “The
Prince”. Columbus has been plunged into the sea off Lisbon. He learns Latin and
Castilian and reads ancient books of navigation from the pioneering work of
Henry the Navigator and he dreams of sailing west to Asia. In 1492 he sails to
the Americas.
Part 2. Tucan Uman: Meanwhile in the Mayan lands, a great civilization is in decline. It is
written in the Mayan religious texts of the Popol Vuh (the Mayan bible or
Bhagavad Gita) translated from what remains of the codex – the written history
of the Mayans which was burned by the Catholic priests. By the fourth century BC, the
Mayans had achieved their mathematical and calindrical skills and by 900AD, had
constructed massive stone cities deep in the jungle, cities that traced their
inner vision in the external world. It
is said there are hundreds of years of digging to do before we know how vast
this is.
Tucan Uman meets the Spanish conquistador, Pedro de
Alvarado who arrives filled with Spanish glory and new hope. The legend tells
of the great Mayan priest killed by the conquistador and that the quetzal bird,
the national bird of Guatemala and the name of the currency, floats down from
the sky to cover the chief and keeps a death watch through the night. At dawn it
rises with its chest scarlet with the Mayan’s blood.
Part 3. Conquistador:
For five-hundred years they have have lived on Mayan land. The quetzal bird
which can only survive in the rain forest, has almost disappeared, replaced by
the black vulture, a bird that lives on carrion. Religion has merged into
a hybrid where Indian dance music is overlaid with Christian and Spanish
legends that includes the history of both cultures. The music of Castile and
Andalusia is modified by rhythms of negro and Indian origin – the marimba from
Africa has become the instrument of modern Central America. Spanish America has
been created our of the the blood and bone and muscle of Spain's explosion in
its golden years that began with Columbus, imprinting its language religion,
politics and culture. Today there is the influence of the U.S. and growing
militarism and sophisticated methods of control by force that begin to replace control of the church and tradition.
"Columbus" Treatment and Script.
"Columbus" Treatment and Script.
 |
| Refesqueria, Flores, April 1999. |
Tikal and the Jaguar Inn
The sky was changing quickly now and a red dawn was rising behind the city. Soon it would be time to leave. We stood in the frame of the doorway naked, with the smell of sleep and sex still infused on our creamy bodies over looking the Hotel Colonial’s ornate courtyard waiting for the new morning to begin.
I was silent, preparing my mind for the jolt back to New York. The air felt good, gentle and cool and I reached for Victoria and held her close for a moment and then turned and went inside to dress.
The flight to New York would leave later that morning. Our bags were packed. Three green canvas sacks filled with Guatemalan weavings and soiled clothes and scraps of papers, receipts hand written on soft, porous paper, the kind one finds in places like Guatemala where they still stamp official papers with an authoritative thud talking care not to smudge the fresh ink where the penmanship reveals a curvaceous, flowing script. Everything was set for our departure.
The night before we’d stood together under the full moon in Tikal. Bright and cold, I remembered how it shone on the Temple of the Giant Jaguar and the view, The jungle canopy stretching to the horizon. The moon how it shone on the massive pyramids and temples and the shadows and pools of moonlight across the stone paths that wound
through the jungle past the ancient stone structures.
The path disappeared soaked in darkness. I found a small flashlight in my equipment bag. It cut a narrow arc and made it even blacker. I switched it off and waited for my pupils to dilate. Gradually the shape of the undergrowth emerged and I detected the jungle path. The moon cut through the forest canopy and the curtain of the night, its icy light pierced through the thick canopy to the jungle floor illuminating the white limestone path.
Eventually I found my way to the main path that lead back to the Jaguar Inn. I could hear the thump of the generator and see the dim blue lights of the bungalows through the jungle. But for a few moments I’d felt completely alone out there with the mysterious Mayans - images of sacrifice; severed heads, high priests and daggers, strange symbols and rivers of blood running across the stones.
I was silent, preparing my mind for the jolt back to New York. The air felt good, gentle and cool and I reached for Victoria and held her close for a moment and then turned and went inside to dress.
The flight to New York would leave later that morning. Our bags were packed. Three green canvas sacks filled with Guatemalan weavings and soiled clothes and scraps of papers, receipts hand written on soft, porous paper, the kind one finds in places like Guatemala where they still stamp official papers with an authoritative thud talking care not to smudge the fresh ink where the penmanship reveals a curvaceous, flowing script. Everything was set for our departure.
The night before we’d stood together under the full moon in Tikal. Bright and cold, I remembered how it shone on the Temple of the Giant Jaguar and the view, The jungle canopy stretching to the horizon. The moon how it shone on the massive pyramids and temples and the shadows and pools of moonlight across the stone paths that wound
through the jungle past the ancient stone structures.
The path disappeared soaked in darkness. I found a small flashlight in my equipment bag. It cut a narrow arc and made it even blacker. I switched it off and waited for my pupils to dilate. Gradually the shape of the undergrowth emerged and I detected the jungle path. The moon cut through the forest canopy and the curtain of the night, its icy light pierced through the thick canopy to the jungle floor illuminating the white limestone path.
Eventually I found my way to the main path that lead back to the Jaguar Inn. I could hear the thump of the generator and see the dim blue lights of the bungalows through the jungle. But for a few moments I’d felt completely alone out there with the mysterious Mayans - images of sacrifice; severed heads, high priests and daggers, strange symbols and rivers of blood running across the stones.
It was well into the night when finally we stopped to refuel and find food from the dozens of vendors squatting cooking food. They ran at the bus as it maneuvered into the rural bus station. Finally I could sit and Victoria and I shared plantains served on a banana leaf and sipped Pepsi Cola.As dawn broke, twelve hours after leaving the city, we neared the outskirts of Flores, the tiny island township in Lake Petén Itza and our destination. We passed the gray concrete walls of a military compound and soldiers peered out from the guard boxes mounted on the top of the walls. The driver explained that behind the wall were the Kaibiles, Special Forces soldiers from the Guatemalan army.
Kaibiles trainees were required to spend a month alone the jungles of the Petén fending for themselves. If they survived they became fully-fledged Kaibiles. To celebrate they’d be welcomed back to the barracks where they’d eat a dog cooked over an open flame. They are infamous for their reputed practice of forcing recruits to bite the heads off live chickens and drink river water from a recently fired artillery shell, with the burnt residue still inside.
Kaibiles are known for doing field medical work on themselves. When Kaibiles are injured by a gunshot they pull their knife out, cut an X on the wound, and pull the bullet out. The name "Kaibiles" is derived from an indigenous leader who evaded capture by the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado. The concrete wall went on forever. The driver turned to tell us that the base would soon be expanded.
Oil had been discovered in Petén. It’s a vast sparsely populated jungle that stretches northwards towards Belize and Mexico’s Yucatan. There's little farmland except near the Caribbean coast where banana plantations stretch for miles. Somewhere out there in that sea of green, guerillas are fighting the government in a brutal civil war. The Department of Petén is the largest in Guatemala and it's a carpet of green as far as the horizon and beyond.
Tikal is sometimes called the cradle of the Mayas. It extends for more than two-hundred square miles and it reveals an exceptional civilization highly advanced in architecture, astronomy and sculpture. Nobody knows why it collapsed. It is about 2,500 year old and was constructed over a period of more than a thousand years and the remains are evident everywhere.
There are no park rangers at Tikal National Park. No khaki and green uniforms with boy scout hats and state-of-the art hiking boots. There are no rustic railed wooden fenced walking paths and carefully placed directional signs and map boards beside the trashcans. You are alone except for all of nature and the night. At dusk a man with an old rifle slug over his shoulder, wandered down the path and asked if anybody was still over at temple number four. I shrugged and he disappeared into the jungle leaving me alone.
Sitting high above the jungle on the Temple of the Giant Jaguar more than one hundred feet up, the jungle canopy stretches to the horizon. I am looking down on green parrots rushing in pairs, across the forest clearing and I watch the sun set. The stone blocks are warm and comfortable. The scale of the structure, its mass and time, the carvings chiseled into the surface, guide me to mortality. I wonder if I might ever return to the bungalow hut and hammock. I think about flight - not the flying birds who dip and dart in such startling variety, that shriek and caw as the sky rapidly changes color and the sun’s golden eye grows brighter in a final burst before it dives behind the distant horizon - but the flight of my own body and soul.
I saw myself arching over the treetops, my arms spread wide and the warm air rushing past. This was not Orville Wright’s dream of flight in some complicated contraption, but pure abandonment – naked flight - like a bird or dream. The urge to launch myself off this Mayan tower is almost overwhelming. I saw myself leaping into the sun, arms flailing but rather than plummeting downward and crashing against the stones, my head cracked open and bleeding feeding the sacrificial edicts of Mayan kings and conquistadors – but rising gently like a cloud gliding through the twilight, catching the dying rays of golden sunlight that glinted like a sword’s blade cutting through the air. The dream was too real to be imagined. It was a dream of murder and death that comes in some altered state. It seemed only possible in this giant stone temple, dark and somber. And then the sun is gone. The Maya have gone. The dream dead.
The morning we’d arrived at the Jaguar Inn at Tikal was uneventful. The driver of the Japanese mini-bus drove for an hour on a well-paved road from Flores to Tikal with practiced efficiency and when we arrived it was quiet. Some girls were carrying bundles and earthen bowls on their shining black heads and some boys were playing soccer with some kind of rolled-up vine to make an irregular soccer ball. An older man leading a mule loaded with carefully stacked fire wood walked past. It was after six in the morning and the temperature was already warm.
We could stay in the rustic Jaguar Inn or in cheaper, more basic accommodations in tents set aside on the edge of the surrounding jungle. We chose to stay under canvas.
We spent three days exploring the ruins of Tikal. And each night returned for dinner at the Jaguar Inn. The archeologists and anthropologists from various universities were sitting at the large table in a back corner of the restaurant where they always sat.
As well as choosing the same table, the researchers always sat in the same places. An older man with white hair and a scruffy beard was always absorbed in his book and he bent over it squinting inches from the pages in the dim light. As more of the scientists arrived for dinner, one by one they opened the door of an industrial size refrigerator to take beers and mineral water, popping the tops as they walked back to the table.
It was more a hut than a restaurant for the windows were framed with unfinished timbers and mosquito wire was stretched across them. The floor was concrete, which had been unevenly laid so the tables were never level and wobbled when you sat to eat.
After dinner we walked across the grass airstrip through the soft tropic night the moon throwing deep shadows across our path. The hotel generator thumped quietly in the distance and a few lights shone dimly through the trees around the bungalows. The sweet sound of marimbas floated nearby and Victoria pushed her hand inside the back of my pants and underneath my leather belt and I swung my arm across her shoulders and we walked like that toward the sound of the marimba.
We found a café, a simple affair with the shutters thrown open and a kerosene lantern burning on a table where locals sat sipping beers and listening to the music. We stopped in the shadows and watched.
The musicians were bent over their marimbas engrossed, heads bobbing, arms flashing as they beat out the tune together. A waitress walked onto the set and swept past the musicians and cleaned the dishes off the red and white checked tablecloth, re-laid the table, turned, and headed back to the kitchen.
A little boy in torn baggy trousers and no shirt, no shoes, began dancing. He moved closer to the fire that burned in a cut-off fifty-five gallon drum where the food was being cooked on a grill. He turned and swayed and the red coals bathed his smooth honey-colored bare back with warmth and his skin shone. He danced and swirled and the marimba sounded even more sweet as he turned and swayed and his dance was so pure - like the star filled night or a swallow flashing in the rain. And then he disappeared around a corner into the darkened kitchen. That child would never know what joy he shared that night, the gift he gave in an image like a dream.
The sweet marimba played on late into the night, the players remembering tune after tune and even when the generator died and darkness descended and the night seemed to move suddenly closer and the air was alive with the cacophony of insects sounds and the occasional screech of a howler monkey, the marimba kept on. And it played into our dreams as we lay in the tent with the smell of the extinguished candle and all those insects and animals singing their symphony into the night.
Nebej, Guatemalan Highlands
We are in this small hotel - if you can call it a hotel. It’s a wooden, adobe shack with a tin roof and no running water or electricity. There are two thick candles in ornate brass holders on the bedside table. Prints hang on the walls - tourista promotional prints - the Quetzal bird in a series of panels. It’s the national bird of Guatemala. It is legendary and the name of the Guatemalan currency.
Before we’d left Guatemala City I’d dropped by the Australian consulate - told them we were traveling to Nebaj - and obtained a letter acknowledging my credentials as journalist. In the city things seemed relatively quiet. There were less killings these days, less bodies found early in the morning - hands bound behind the back and indications of bludgeoning and slashing from machetes. Decapitations.
But beyond the reach of newspapers - in Nebaj a place few journalists ever ventured, how could one know what was really happening? There’s talk about the Mayans - how perhaps 200,000 have been killed in the past twenty years of civil war. Half the country is Mayan Indian and things hadn’t changed much for them since the Europeans arrived five hundred years ago.
Out here credentials for foreigners were important. I’d heard there were roadblocks and vehicular inspections - reports of beatings and abductions of tourists. We were not looking for trouble but we wanted to see a controlled village, get a feel for the landscape. And I wanted the local officer in charge to know western officials back in the city knew we were here.
The soldier has shinning black hair all he way down to her khaki militia belt buckled tightly around her waist. There is a blue plastic barrette pined to keep her hair away from her almond shaped eyes and her skin is like well oiled wood worn and darkened deep mahogany by the Mayan sun. She strides ahead. Her camouflage pants are tucked into her boots and she reaches for a small brown covered note book and opens it.
"Come in from the sun" - the officer says; his beautiful teeth so even and white, his uniform pressed, shoes shining, mustache - "My family is in San Francisco. They ask me to come join them in the States. But I prefer to work here for my country. I am very patriotic." He is from Guatemala City with another brother in the army.
He didn’t smile again. He was brusque and asked for passports which he scrutinizes with close attention. I pass him the letter from the Australian consulate. He looked up and examined us – looked us up and down - and then told us he could not guarantee our safety since there had been reports of guerrillas in the area and he could not predict what they might do if they found a couple of gringos so far from home. He reached for a stamp and brought it down with an authoritative thud.
The military guard position on the other side of the square beside the church. A young soldier leans across the rocks and sandbags and planks his Uzi machine gun slung over one shoulder. The stock and wooden handle is worn with remnants of camouflage and he slumps in the shade of the corrugated iron roofed bunker which has large stones and cinder blocks on top to keep the tin secure.
Two boys stand beside the ice cream cart. It's unsteady worn rubber wheels and the cones stacked one into the other behind the class encasement.
And the women and girls in red crossing back and forth across the square. Red swathes of cloth wrapped around their waist with woven belts of color carrying food and children, flowers and firewood strapped around them. Their hair shines purple and velvet black in the silver sunshine.
The Mayan Goddess Ixchel invented weaving and weavers make a sacrifice to her before beginning a new piece. These days they pray with a catholic priest. The garment is a cortes. Weaving existed 4,000 years ago. Tools have been found showing the same design of the black-strap loom used today. The weavers are more interested in the beauty of the garment than the fit. It takes about ninety days to complete a weaving. Cochineal is a red dye made from the dried bodies of a female insect like lice found on several species of cactus.
A drab-green army jeep passes throwing clouds of white, talcum-like dust into the still air. Automatic weapons with worn wooden grips, the hardened hands of sons have held them through the years, slings all chapped and worn and the magazines snapped in meticulously.
He sits resting underneath a tree over there by the fence - just sitting and taking in the scenery. The day's nice and clear. The air smells good. Women wander past in red cortes (the traditional, woolen woven wraps of colored cloth), talking softly. He's probably a Popol Vuh day keeper. Or a spy from the military. Maybe both. A rooster crows.
He materializes - glides in and out of the picture on his rubber rippled soled shoes and you can barely hear him - he watches and listens and speaks Ixil, a kind of clicking, popping sound spoken by the Mayans in Nebaj, here in the Guatemalan highlands. For fifteen Quetzals or about one U.S. dollar, Don Jacoento agrees to drive us to Saquil Grande, a controlled village further into the mountains. He says we’ll be back in Nebaj before sundown.
A day keeper keeps track of days according to the Mayan Calendar. He is a shaman or a priest. The task is extremely important in Mayan life. There is no Mayan calendar in the sense we are used to. We use a Gregorian calendar ordained by the Catholic Church. Priests have maintained and the Catholic Church has defined our sense of time. But prior to the printing press, most of our ancestors had no such reference and used the movement of the heavens.
The Mayans are renowned for their advanced skills in the fields of mathematics and astronomy. It's the day keeper’s task to keep count of days according to this sacred calendar and perform divination rituals based on dates of the calendar.
The 260-day calendar is the oldest calendar cycle known in Mesoamerica - dating back to at least 600 BC. The day on which you were born defines your soul, character and destiny. In this regard, it is the closest correlate to the western notion of astrological signs.
On a ridge overlooking a valley in the Guatemalan highlands he was alone and there seemed nothing special about him only that he seemed very old. He wore no special garments and when I approached he hardly seemed to notice. His clothing was old and tattered and he was mumbling as he pulled candles and beads and dried herbs from a huipil and began assembling an altar. He was divining the auspiciousness of the day a local woman wanted to travel to Guatemala City.
He pulls out a box of matches and scratches but it's wet and I proffer my own and he lit a small smoky fire and copal incense. A fleet of military helicopters flew down the valley, the thudding slap of their rotors echoing off the sides of the mountains as the small fire burned and the incense wafted filling the air with its sweet, woody fragrance.
An altar consists of a set of six colored candles arranged to represent the four directions and above and below. Flowers, copal incense, chocolate, and other items arranged in a cross, connecting all the candles. The altar is then lit and tended as the Day Keeper prays walking around it pouring alcohol at it's four corners quietly chanting prayers directed to the 260-days, each named.
There are said to be 260 shrines throughout the Guatemalan highlands, one for each day of the calendar. Most are in Guatemala, but a few are in Honduras and Chiapas, which used to be Guatemala but is now the most southern state of Mexico. Another handful are located in Guatemala's Petén rain forest at Tikal. In all cases, they are in a special place - a mountaintop, a river valley, a cave.
We drive about thirty minutes leaving Nabaj on a well maintained dusty road. We are in the Guatemalan Central Highlands traveling further north into muscular mountains, flexed and steep and there are few trees. Gray smoke drifts across the olive green landscape and the sky is a mighty blue. Dust in your teeth. Haunches jammed up against the steel side in the back of the Toyota truck; legs draped over two cases of over-ripe tomatoes.
The two old Ixil men in the back with us wear worn straw sombreros pulled down low against the wind, gripping one side of the brim, their skin shines like polished wood - with a few sparse gray whiskers - and they grip the back window bars of the truck cab, standing and swaying with the motion, gnarled hands gripping. Almond eyes watch the landscape. They see the Jaguar smile and the silent sweep of vulture's wings stretching and flying north over trails of dust and smoke left by the military convoys to the north.
There are soldiers in town - look over there - two men in a bunker, lounging back with guns that hang from their shoulders so naturally. When the local girls in red woven brilliant red skirts pass, there is no eye contact. A jeep with an old sergeant. He looks like he should be retired all ready. The jeep pulls up outside a store and the soldiers hoist themselves out of the seats and saunter into the deep shadowed entrance. Fine swirls of white dust settle on my skin and I can taste it around the rim of the Pepsi bottle.
Shoeshine
Perhaps he is eleven. His voice is clear and pure like a bell and his eye lashes flutter like a butterfly when he looks into my face and asks if he can clean my shoes today. The blackened stained wooden box, the small wooden stool equally worn. He sits and his knees are bent and his head leans down and his hands flash back and forth and a soft brush whisks and he squirts fluid from plastic bottles and uses a toothbrush on the cracks and crevices. He digs his fingers in a tin of shoe polish and rubs the polish thoroughly into my boots. On the church steps in the town square.
He'd earned 45 centauros for ten minutes and my worn boots shone in this hot and dusty square. The young boys reached out to touch my boots. Their shoes had never shone before. Their shoes were worn and broken apart along the sides. One of the boys ran his fingernail through the sheen of dust settling already on the shining leather. Bare feet slap against the hot paving stones as they play. And now they watch the gringo and chat amongst themselves in Ixil - a clicking, sucking sound that slapped around in their mouths. Some had no shoes at all. "Good-bye!" The four boys left me - ran off like a rill, then a runnel sparkling across the dry town square. Then down the rapids, down the steps, across the road until swallowed by the shadows on the other side.
Presidential Palace
The Presidential Palace in Guatemala City is just another elaborate wedding cake colored lime green and fading. There are flowers, a few low shrubs and some neat young soldiers standing here and there - all armed of course. And police in light blue shirts and dark blue trousers and black wooden batons with tasseled blue lanyards. A large concrete square with a few vendors selling vegetables and ice-cream, ringing tiny bells. Corrugated iron stalls around the square and there's the smell of rot and decomposition. The entrance to the palace is open and one guard in a green uniform stands at the top of the steps.
Inside a photo exhibit is hanging on the walls. A portrait of the first civilian president in years, Venicio Cerezo, a handsome man with greenish eyes. A sign close by in the photograph says: "Traditional Values L Respeco!" And there were many photographs of Indian tribes - there are more than twenty - selected by departments or areas but never shown amidst war or in camps, sleeping in the cold and dirt, and dead or bleeding in the Guatemalan sun. Thousands killed now. Nobel Prize winner and Costa Rica's president Costa Arias says probably 100,000 have been murdered. Each large color photograph with "Nikon" printed in yellow in a corner, each image artfully constructed, focus sharp, action stopped. The exhibit was sponsored by corporations - oil and exploration, banking
Weaving Rainbows from Black Sacks of Silence.
Anna Maria Rodas
Anna Maria Rodas
Everything is nothing more than one
interminable black hole at the end
Of which comes another
Black sack of silence. One small
Death
Awaits each day.
The calendar well-disposed on my wall
Marks the time
And my skin, my hair, further afar for the moment
Would mark, if they could,
The smooth movement of the sea where
I would be a perfect corpse.
Of which comes another
Black sack of silence. One small
Death
Awaits each day.
The calendar well-disposed on my wall
Marks the time
And my skin, my hair, further afar for the moment
Would mark, if they could,
The smooth movement of the sea where
I would be a perfect corpse.
Some poems used in my three part feature War, Peace and Poetry.
The series was commissioned by Australian Broadcasting and took me to Guatemala and El Salvador. I'd been to Nicaragua and southern Mexico, Chiapas and composed a radio documentary, Sandino's Children, following a Nicaraguan tour by Abbie Hoffman for sixty fellow travelers and a handful of journalists, after the Sandanista's victory.
War, Peace and Poetry, - a three-part, three hour radio feature program - was to be the culmination of my exploration of Central America. It seemed to me that poets synthesized the essence and by finding actors to present poet's words, with sound gathered on location, I might capture some of the elusive essence of its beauty, horror and history.
The series was commissioned by Australian Broadcasting and took me to Guatemala and El Salvador. I'd been to Nicaragua and southern Mexico, Chiapas and composed a radio documentary, Sandino's Children, following a Nicaraguan tour by Abbie Hoffman for sixty fellow travelers and a handful of journalists, after the Sandanista's victory.
War, Peace and Poetry, - a three-part, three hour radio feature program - was to be the culmination of my exploration of Central America. It seemed to me that poets synthesized the essence and by finding actors to present poet's words, with sound gathered on location, I might capture some of the elusive essence of its beauty, horror and history.
...Revolutionary: tonight
I will not be in your bed.
Do not be surprised at love’s subversion
by that old master.
You are so cocky about how correct you are
and very worried about social problems.
Two-faced you overlook
that in our house
you trace to the t
the role model for the best of tyrants.
I adore you
you are
my people.
But there is a gun in your hand
and in your eyes, dark police.
There is no
communication between my love
and your violence.
Margarita Carrera
That’s where
he stayed:
in a pool of blood
on the pavement.
Alone in his cry
without a god
in the palm
of his hand.
That’s where
he is still,
voice blown out
eyes to the sky
unleashed inside me.
Don’t say later
that I was mute
from fear
that I hid behind
the permissive veil,
miserable with silence.
No, don’t say it
for my scream denounces
the cruel shots
warm blood debased
broken bodies stained.
The scream
in my look
in my words
in my soul.
Scream of horror
comrade to yours,
my brother.
Maria Isabel de los Angeles Ruano
The corpse was there brothers and sisters,
and no one’s eyes wept.
We felt no pain not did we pretend.
We didn’t notice its rags
nor the rigid stillness of its jaws.
We proceeded without seeing it, we disowned it,
We didn’t know its name, we didn’t inquire,
we simply continued without looking.
We were terrorized with so much death,
that blood of our blood now caused no grief.
It remained alone, thrown in the middle of the street,
its open eyes an accusation.
I will not be in your bed.
Do not be surprised at love’s subversion
by that old master.
You are so cocky about how correct you are
and very worried about social problems.
Two-faced you overlook
that in our house
you trace to the t
the role model for the best of tyrants.
I adore you
you are
my people.
But there is a gun in your hand
and in your eyes, dark police.
There is no
communication between my love
and your violence.
Margarita Carrera
That’s where
he stayed:
in a pool of blood
on the pavement.
Alone in his cry
without a god
in the palm
of his hand.
That’s where
he is still,
voice blown out
eyes to the sky
unleashed inside me.
Don’t say later
that I was mute
from fear
that I hid behind
the permissive veil,
miserable with silence.
No, don’t say it
for my scream denounces
the cruel shots
warm blood debased
broken bodies stained.
The scream
in my look
in my words
in my soul.
Scream of horror
comrade to yours,
my brother.
Maria Isabel de los Angeles Ruano
The corpse was there brothers and sisters,
and no one’s eyes wept.
We felt no pain not did we pretend.
We didn’t notice its rags
nor the rigid stillness of its jaws.
We proceeded without seeing it, we disowned it,
We didn’t know its name, we didn’t inquire,
we simply continued without looking.
We were terrorized with so much death,
that blood of our blood now caused no grief.
It remained alone, thrown in the middle of the street,
its open eyes an accusation.
Fernando Gonazles Davison.
Hotel Colonial, Guatemala City
Fernando meets us at the Hotel Colonial in Guatemala City to talk about a Guatemalan literature of terror. He suggested we find a private place to speak. He doesn't want to be seen talking to a journalist so I invite him to our room which I'd specifically located near the back with a clear interior view out onto the exterior balcony.
We sat on beds opposite one another and he spoke in a quite voice. He had the gentle appearance of a family doctor and an air of tragedy. But I detected suppressed rage when he spoke about the horror he’d seen and written about. He was a writer and poet and taught at Guatemala’s San Carlos University. He also did research for the Swiss Embassy, a relatively safe vocation in a violent city where it's said one phrase outside the law could cost your life. He handed me this poem he'd recently composed.
We sat on beds opposite one another and he spoke in a quite voice. He had the gentle appearance of a family doctor and an air of tragedy. But I detected suppressed rage when he spoke about the horror he’d seen and written about. He was a writer and poet and taught at Guatemala’s San Carlos University. He also did research for the Swiss Embassy, a relatively safe vocation in a violent city where it's said one phrase outside the law could cost your life. He handed me this poem he'd recently composed.
Rafaga (Gust of wind/burst of machine gun/burst of fire)
By Fernando Gonazles Davison. Traslated by Victoria Schultz.
Prelude:
When a smile no longer smiles,
When pleasure is a bruised colored rose and purple
Then don’t inquire further.
When an organ plays only as a stem snaps
Then you too kneel down.
When nobody wants to listen or to speak
Don’t hide your voice.
Prologue:
Onto what land can I build a home
When it is sulfur my feet step upon
And a pavement abyss is all I can see
And omens becomes puffs of smoke in the wind?
Onto what land can I build a house
When the dust burns my anguished fingers
And the wineskin contains a buzzard’s trap?
Onto what land can I build a home
When women burn up in early widowhood
And their smiles only echo the past?
"Why are they treated so?" I asked. Davidson just smiled - looked down at the floor then back across the room.
Mario Solorzano Martinez
Winds of Socialismo
The Mitsubishi was shining iridescent gray and had smokey windows. It was parked across the narrow avenue outside the Colonial Hotel's heavy swinging wooden doors in downtown Guatemala City. With a courteous nod the driver opens the door ushers us inside. The seats are soft and the carpet lush and when the door slides shut it's quiet, cocooned. Outside the glint and flash of chrome and glass and gritty clouds of diesel smoke inky thick. And crackling motor cycles and blue police jeeps and people streaming past the sun drenched fractured walls and shadowed corridors, merchants selling fruit and postcards and music washing past. And there's a truck passing loaded with fresh unfilled coffins simply carved with swirls and varnished shiny brown, stacked in rows - I can see it through the smokey glass.
Traveling south now towards the coast with Mario Solorzano Martinez, secretary of the Guatemalan Social Democratic Party. The winds of socialism rustle through the palms and banana trees. And the swirling dust makes strange shapes and dances in the sunlight on the path. A black cow with its skeleton poking under its scaly skin slumped under the broken branches of a tropic tree, eyes like moons. The sound of socialism and winds of change means nothing to the black cow who labors just as hard in any field.
The boys mouth's and faces are streaked and stained with sugary soda and their shirts are torn and trousers fold across their skinny hips, feet bare shuffling through the fine dust.
The man looks up as the winds of socialism whisk by - straightens his back and leans back - and then leans back more and loosens his grip on the smooth, worn handle of his machete and it drops in the dust. In the square an ancient Ceiba tree with elephantine branches, deeply rooted in the ground, a banner hanging from it says:"Vote Asi Partido Socialista Democratico." And there's not a breath of wind. A silver painted piece of tin nailed and wired to a pole repeats the message with a painted fist that clamps a painted rose.
A man leaning his chin on his elbows looks out the window. And a woman in a floral dress - black hair curling down around her face and bare shoulders, resting in the frame of the door one leg bent, arms folded across her chest.
A man leaning his chin on his elbows looks out the window. And a woman in a floral dress - black hair curling down around her face and bare shoulders, resting in the frame of the door one leg bent, arms folded across her chest.
Three yellow light bulbs flash on the church roof - a holy trinity of lights. And then pale blue fluorescent flicker tracing the outline of the church facade, the heavy doors flung wide open, arching coconut palms silhouette against the pale gray sky.
The black pointed flight of the Zensontle bird pieces the veil. The amplified sound spitting, crackling rhetoric and a few villagers gathering. And young boys playing on their bikes and a woman with a child walking by.
The black pointed flight of the Zensontle bird pieces the veil. The amplified sound spitting, crackling rhetoric and a few villagers gathering. And young boys playing on their bikes and a woman with a child walking by.
The Hotel Santo Tomas, Chichicastenango
In the small Guatemalan town of Chichicastenango in the highland province of Quiche. An old private residence on a rich hacienda now hotel. The walls are whitewashed - crossed swords and thick wood beams and a cleric’s purple vestment in a gilded frame on the wall.In the old stone courtyard draped with greenery, an old Mayan man plays a marimba while other old Mayan men in traditional woven jackets brilliant red and embroided tend tables.
In the shade of the hotel entrance, Mayan women with their children, squat on the cool tiles ringing small brass bells. Some are begging. Some are selling weavings that vibrate with life unfolding before my eyes. I walk down the steps into the dusty street to the market.
In the past twenty years there have been more than 100,000 political killings and many thousands of disappeared. The young Mayan girls singing on the steps of the old white church that overlooks the market, wear huipils dense with color, woven in their village homes and each could tell a story of relatives and friends who have disappeared and died.
In the market place I can still see the women on the church steps listening to a local preacher. Christian fundamentalists have a strong foothold and competes with Catholicism and animism. And in the white sunlight, a small boy stands holding an empty glass and a man scrapes ice shavings of a large block of ice as blue as the sea. He scraps and the wooden table sways and the moisture dampens the brown jute bag wrapped around the ice.
He slides the shavings into the boy’s paper cup and thick crimson syrup seeps through the frost and trickles across the boy’s brown dirty fingers like blood.
Mayan Women Passing
Andrew Leslie Phillips
Mayan women passing.
Women wearing huipils
woven from the dead.
Weaving with their daughters,
unique patterns
woven and embroided
threads of lives unraveling
the tree of life in red -
white lilies
and many sodden graves
and memories unsaid.
Mayan women passing
between the living and the dead.
Mayan women passing
along the selvedged edge
Into an endless, silent sea.
Women wearing huipils
woven from the dead.
Weaving with their daughters,
unique patterns
woven and embroided
threads of lives unraveling
the tree of life in red -
white lilies
and many sodden graves
and memories unsaid.
Mayan women passing
between the living and the dead.
Mayan women passing
along the selvedged edge
Into an endless, silent sea.
No comments:
Post a Comment