Here You Go, Charles

I think I clearly set a bad example by having written anything on this blog in the first place.

Last night I walked into a bar called Ojalá, aiming to fulfill my promise to my newly-professored brother to drink a Gallo for him. The place was empty and a guy played meandering, finger-picked songs on electric guitar from the low stage. The first Gallo I was served was pure ice, so the fellow brought me another, which was only half ice. Xela itself is a cold town in the evening and the open doors let a winter breeze in, so you wear your coat indoors.

I chatted with the owner a while, a Guatemalan, and then a lanky American hauled in a tub of purified water on his shoulder. He swore much much more than I ever do even when I`m trying to offend someone, but it had about as much meaning as a Nicaraguan honking his car horn. We had a conversation that quickly swerved from American geography to American rock, facilitated by the perfect intersection of both, Boston. The tall American apparently saw them play in Texas in 1991 or so, over a decade after the break-up, and they played all three of their albums in their entirety. His description of them opening the show with "Foreplay/Longtime" gave me, if not goosebumps, a powerful reminder of them. He himself, tough guy he is, seemed moved by the recollection.

So naturally I`ve been thinking about Boston, the band, today. Who wouldn`t? I listened to a couple songs on Youtube and was overjoyed to come across this info accompanying "Let Me Take You Home Tonight," as written by the little dribble of DNA who uploaded the video: "a very good song and band but rap is starting tot ake over so im gona try to get rock back." You will probably at this point want to hear the song, unless you`re my newly-professored brother.
Lucky for all of you, we didn`t just talk Boston...the conversation touched on Camper Van Beethoven, Jane`s Addiction, the Minutemen, Sinead O`Connor, all the tops of the tops ever since Roy Orbison kicked it. Btw, I hear that his final album is excellent.

A few friends in the states had asked me to ask around about the Sandinistas and the war that roiled Nicaragua in the 80s - a war made possible only by the the US´ funding of a regime that had been voted out in an attempt to prevent another domino falling to Communism. The Clash were big fans of the Sandinistas and dedicated a brilliant stoned and schizo triple-length album to these guerilla warriors. So naturally I just figured that the Nicaraguans I talked to would have nothing but good things to say about the Sandinistas, who returned to power in recent democratic elections and are now led by the Daniel Ortega, considered by some a Chavez or Castro, jr.

The stories I heard about the Sandinistas and their rule in the 80s didn`t sound like the kind of thing you`d really want to have an album dedicated to. A draft was instituted for all boys of 17 or 18, and the army would come around to each house a total of three times to take the sons. A former language partner told me of her boyfriend attempting to escape into Costa Rica across a river and being shot by the Sandinistas. A teacher told me of her best friend`s father being assassinated for his political views. Children were taken from families up into the mountains for a year to learn to read and write, a program which apparently was successful in raising the literacy rate. My host mother described the terrible rationing that happened nationwide, and how businesses were all told how much to charge for each good.

The amazing thing to me is that each of the countries I`ve spent time in (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala) has its own incredible stories of brutal repression and bloody civil wars that lasted into the 90s. I`ve been in Guatemala for about five days, absolutely love it here, and I can`t reconcile the calm of this town with the widespread massacres that happened so recently to indigenous people like those I pass on the street every few seconds.



Ah, I forgot to mention the great pupuseria I ate at in comically lovely Antigua, Guatemala. I was having drinks with David, a French guy, and Pattie, the Salvadoreña owner. She told us about how her stepfather, a lieutenant colonel in the army, had shielded her and her brother from the war so successfully that she didn`t even know what it meant when a friend used the word "guerrilla" with her. And then she saw her stepfather on TV, signing the peace treaty that ended the war. And then the next day he went to the airport to fly to Taiwan and was assassinated.

I`m sure I had something lighter to tell you here...I think I`ll be starting volunteer work on Monday in the afternoon, after my language class. I don`t know what I`ll be doing yet, but the odds are good it will be in a neighboring Mayan village. Some of them, especially the oldest and youngest, don`t speak Spanish, but sometimes I know how they feel.

I feel like blogging is a bunch of nonsense, but really what isn`t. At least I don`t get paid for it.

The Minutemen were our new Bob Dylan, but funnier - they could have given you all this political jibber-jabber so much better...listen to "Corona," won`t you? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQbUEWBmcB4&feature=related