guru

two months later i´m back in tapachula, mexico, a biggish city about 30 minutes from the pacific coast. last time i was here to renew my guatemalan visa (obligatorily exiting the country); this time it´s to get away, briefly, from my sleepy little life building benches and bookshelves up in the hills of motozintla. the heat here in tapachula is nicaraguan, but luckily the beers are not. the main draw is the movie theatre, where i´ll head in a couple hours.

being here reminds me of a conversation i had with a honduran fellow when i crossed the border back into guatemala two months ago. i had showed him where the immigration office was, and then a few minutes later he fell in step with me as we crossed the long bridge into guatemala. he was about 45 years old, weathered and crumpled, maybe a little drunk. he asked me where i was from and then told me that he himself was just returning from the united states. how long did you live there? 14 years. in what part? tennessee.

i commented that he probably spoke good english after so much time, to which he replied in barely recognizable english that yes, he spoke some. i can´t remember exactly, but i think he had been working in roofing, which to me is the more punishing possible job. and to make matters worth, every time he climbed down that ladder and set foot on the ground, he was touching down on tennessee soil.

so the fellow´s second or third question was if i have a girlfriend, and when i said nope, i don´t, he asks why not. ya know, i´ve been traveling a lot in the last few months, i tell him. he explains to me that i am afraid of women. huh! instant diagnosis in the thick border heat. in a paternal tone, he explained that talking to latina women is easy, it´s really no different than talking to gringas: you just say "hey, beautiful, hey gorgeous." i think "mamacita" was another good option. and the real problem with american women, said my border companion, is that they are crazy. he twisted his face and mock-whined, "child support, police, child support, police!" a moment later we reached the guatemalan immigration booth and parted ways.

post kicking around from november

the day after the american election i had a brief converation for the kids i work with in the afternoon about barack obama and what it meant for a black person to become president in the USA. i asked them what they new about slavery, about segregation and limited rights. they didn´t know much. i had been warned beforehand that nery, the sweetest and gentlest of the six children, was racist against black people, of which there are almost none in our part of nicaragua. i didn´t solicit his opinion while i talked about obama´s election. at one point nery clapped his hands together, maybe out of boredom. i took this as a cue for a round of applause for barack obama, and everybody joined in graciously, even nery.

we gave out final exams today at los angeles de morales, my favorite of my four schools. we graded the tests and handed them back, either with congratulations or gentle chiding for the slackers, we said our goodbyes to the students and headed past the cow, down the hill and across the street. my favorite student from the class, a soft-spoken and enthusiastic kid named hector, followed us to the bus stop (a tree) and told us that today is his birthday. mairead and i wished him a happy birthday and asked if he was celebrating it...he said that no, nobody was, and that his mother wouldn´t remember it because she was away working for two more weeks. mairead dug into her backback and found him a green pen, which he was very excited about. i found a little flashlight that beth gave me for christmas (and which i have used a lot, thanks beth) and hector was thrilled. it was difficult to explain to hector that we wouldn´t be back for the next semester, that we had to go to mexico or the states or wherever. more than ever before my own plans felt very thin and very arbitrary.

lucky you

today we continued our move of the community radio organization from la esperanza up to san matteo - just five minutes up the hill and around the bend from xela, a lovely spot up in the hills from which you look down and say "holy shit this is lovely" while smoke curls up from houses throughout the valley below. it`s a four or five-truckload job, transporting all the studio gear, computers, countless bunkbeds donated by the european union, dishes, chairs...but the reigning mentality is "despacio" - "slow," there is time. i got in a good amount of soccerball juggling during breaks. luis, a younger friend of the organization who was helping out, tried to talk pro soccer with me and was incredulous when i said i didn`t know any of the teams. but he found it funny as hell that my full name is the same as that of a famous american goalkeeper. he repeated my name so many times during the day that i started avoiding him, so as not to punch him.

kevin, a former compañero of tino from their time in "the mountain" - around 13 years - drove us in the fully-loaded pickup truck. walter standing on the outside, hanging on. as we pulled out, kevin rolled down his window and says, "walter, you need anything, just scream."

kevin`s wife, adela, is a small indigenous women who carries her baby boy on her back, wrapped in a brightly-colored traditional textile. she helped us move mattresses and furniture all day, hoisting it up on her head, her son leaning as far out of the way as possible, never complaining.

a week ago i headed to xela`s parque central, waiting for a friend to go watch the coen bros`"burn after reading." marching slowly down the main street was an army of catholics - priests and students priests in black and funny felt hats flanking an enormous float carried by younger boys in purple, putting one foot in front of the other as if heading to the electric chair. which, actually, is appropriate, since the float had an enormous jesus bearing a cross made of two full trees. a marching band followed, playing funereal songs that made up with creepiness what they lacked in beauty.

i`m going to go make guacamole and beans with tortillas. you can get four hand-made tortillas for a quetzal here and you`d be a fool not to. they`re sold from the homes with the sign on the door that says "tortillas sold at all three times." these three times are different for each tortilleria, which means you can set out looking for tortillas whenever you like and you`ll find them.

talk about the passion

have you been listening to early REM? so many years later, it´s still among my favorite music...cryptic, shimmery, non-sequiter; the byrds twenty years later, rid of their 60s idealism, railing gayishly against reagan. and a lot of the live videos on youtube are as good as the recordings. i´ve listened to "talk about the passion" a thousand times, and only lately did it occur to me that michael might be referring to the passion of christ - hence the line "not everyone can carry the weight of the world."


one thing i´ve learned since being in guatemala is that we americans know nothing about this country´s recent history. care to guess what role the USA played in guatemala´s civil war, one which resulted in the massacre of hundreds of mayan villages? a hint: it´s very similar to the american influence in other latin american countries in this time period. in this particular case, agitation for equal rights by indigenous people was misperceived by the states as communism, and crushed brutally. reagan, in a speech during this era, referred blithely to the need to preserve "peace and stability" in the region. reagan´s strength as a leader was his ability to cast a struggle in black and white and thereby unify national will, specifically against the reds, but during this period a lot of very legitimate struggles were wrongly polarized and vilified. the US stood on the wrong side of many of these stories and continued speaking from a position of moral authority. it´s sort of a national tradition, and i wouldn´t be surprised if obama finds himself in this position too. because, let´s face it, a truly honest president wouldn´t last a day. americans fear truth, and in general would opt for ignorance, ease, and low gas prices over the human rights of people they will never see.

the american reach into latin america during the 80s was broad, thanks in part to the USAID program, and i am only familiar with a small part of the history. what i find hard to believe, however, is that i was never taught a word of it all through high school, not even in my AP history class. i just wonder what similar moral failures are currently going unreported by the american media and educational system (such as sudan, which in fact did happen on bush´s watch). my hope is that the internet will make it more difficult for superpowers to interfere on behalf of economic allies. the fellows i work with here in town talk to me often about israel´s war on the gaza strip, and i know they feel a strong solidarity with the palestinians. looking at the full page of photos of palestinian children charred in the fighting, it´s not hard to draw the comparison: a powerful, well-funded military engaging a badly out-matched opponent who has long lacked fundamental social resources.

i talk about this and know that i lack all the information necessary to examine the complete truth. but at the same time, it is this same feeling of being underqualified that keeps people silent and permissive. the silence starts at a personal level and creeps outward, through relationships and families, communities and societies. the timidity that kept my former guatemalan host family from asking me personal questions is related to the pure vacuum of honest information in the media and the schools, in the united states and abroad. and the world is now full of blogs just like this, trying vainly to promote open communication. my assumption is that there is little to no value in this, because our natural tendency to choose comfort and silence is the ocean and each pissed-off blog is a little sand moat.

but at least americans have the right to attempt conversations! i´ve come to value this and enjoy the openness, the willingness to engage that i find in fellow travelers. and maybe i´m wrong, maybe the cloak of silence and complicity is a generational thing...maybe folks like me, who grew up seeing self-indulgent pricks express their every feeling on MTV´s Real World, are part of a sea change, a period of more honest and probing conversation.

who fucking knows!

listen to a song, already. really, listen to it! it´s lovely. and then tell me that yes, you think it is the best thing you´ve ever heard.

Santiaguito

I was sitting in Quetzaltenango´s parque central two days ago, sharing an absurdly large creme donut with a friend, and large flakes of dust started falling. Anywhere else you would immediately think "snow," but here in Xela it´s volcanic ash. There´s a small active volcano called Santiaguito just an hour´s walk from town, at the foot of the towering Santa Maria volcano, and it erupts every forty minutes or so. These eruptions are modest, just big enough to keep gringos off the mountain. Naturally, some gringos are psychotic - an Australian explained to me his plan to run up to the crater in the forty minute window between eruptions. "I figure I only have a one in a hundred chance of dying," he explained.

For two weeks I took language classes in the courtyard of the Proyecto Lingguistico Santa Maria. Some days Santiaguito and his accompanying winds were strong, covering our table and notebooks with a fine layer of volcanic dust.

(Today´s soundtrack)

who are all this people?

my spanish teacher spent about a half hour today telling me ghost stories from her life. what could be better? i would like to start off this post by excoriating every friend or family member who hasn`t yet shared their ghost stories with me. please, folks, we`re not kicking around this planet for nothing. put down your inhaler and write me.

anyway, about mildred...she was telling me about the four most famous legends of guatemala, their own versions of the pied piper, the headless horseman, the republican with a heart. they were allegedly terrifying, though not really at all since they´re just about as believable as the hobbit.

for example, you have the woman who visits cheating men, but only when they`re drunk, and she leads them to a remote location where she, naturally, kills them. but they die only when they look directly at her, because this woman has the head of a horse. it`s a fairly credible legend - i've seen women like that, and it's true that they only really take home guys who are very plastered.

then mildred told me about the sombrerón, the little fella (yea-high-abouts) dressed all in black who wears an enormous sombrero and plays a guitar, or some instrument. he sits in a window and attracts women, women with very bad taste, and then - get this - he braids their hair. for nothing! the problem is that he braids it so tightly that it can't be undone. and that's the end of the popular retelling of the sombrerón.

BUT - then mildred tells me about how her grandmother, her abuelita, saw the sombrerón when she was nine years old. the entire story sounds lifted out of a garcia marquez novel, much like this country: her abuelita lived in an enormous house with several different wings, and one day she entered a room and saw a gold figurine on a windowsill. she picked it up and turned to leave the room when she saw the sombrerón, who told her, "it's yours, but don`t tell anyone about it."

naturally, abuelita understood his words to mean the exact opposite, and she immediately told her mother, who wrapped the figurine in a cloth and shoved it in a drawer. when her father showed up later that evening, they opened the drawer and found that the figurine had turned into a piece of charcoal. abuelita's mom asked her to tell the story about the sombrerón, and they found that the little girl could no longer talk.

and so the abuelita spent the rest of her life mute, communicating through sign language. she apparently continued to see the sombrerón up until her death at 92, only when whoever was taking care of her left the room or fell asleep.

personally, my reaction as mildred told me this story was to rifle through my little catalog of mental disorders and diagnose granny before she even lost her voice. which, of course, is not the reaction mildred was waiting for, so instead i gave myself over to the mystery of the story and said "wow" a lot.

mildred went on to tell me several stories of visitations and disturbances she has experienced in her own room over the years - the creepiest possibly being the night that both her television and one of her many mechanized dolls turned on in the middle of the night at the same time. but the loveliest of all the stories was probably the day whe she and her family were having some sort of dinner/holiday. mildred's mother struggled to open the dish cabinet, which had belonged to mildred´s grandfather and had never stuck closed before. at the same time a little girl, not part of the family, pulled aside a relative of mildred's and showed him an old family photo on the wall. "i just saw him here," she said, pointing at mildred`s deceased grandfather. and presto, the cabinet opened.

the ending of that story is kind of lacking...so then they all sat down to eat, and everyone was served rice tamales, for which mildred`s mother was famous. and guess what? they tasted like shit!

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