San Pedro la Laguna is finishing it's last day of feria--a two week period of carnival rides, video game and food booths, and constant activities, parades, etc. The men in the photo at the right dance all day and evening for six days straight! (The photo to the left is similar costumes in a parade in Antigua from 2 years ago.) It seems impossible; I asked a local friend if different people wear the same costume at different times of the day, and he said no, it's the same person. I asked "How can that be?" and he said, "It's like a sport." But of course it's also a time-honored custom in Guatemala--a depiction of the conquistadores, from several centuries ago.

There are three sets of masks, usually lots of young white faces (they also wear white stockings) depicting regular soldiers, two or more who look like the officals or high-ranking "officers," and then the bulls, who often play a comedic role. One of the bulls, this time, looked to be about 5 years old, but my camera batteries quit before I could get a shot of him.

Other parades were of the princesses of each school, and then the princess of San Pedro.

Culture and History

May 20, 2007: the election campaigning has started already – headed for September. At 10:15 am a cavalcade rolls through tiny Santa Ana. About twenty cars, each identified by something orange (balloons, signs, tshirts) and many signs on its sides. The usual loudspeakers, music, a few bombas set off…..drivers jumping out, setting up the launcher, setting the charge, running a short distance away, boom….and then in the sky, a second boom…..repeating the process once or twice. Then putting the launcher back in the truck to drive on, chasing the calvalcade. This one was for General Molina, a candidate for the party identified by a drawing of a raised fist and the word URGE. He was standing in the back of a new pickup with orange balloons all over it, with his wife. He actually looked rather handsome, competent, and nice. And as far as I could see, no secret service. Definitely no policia. 

5/30/07 And finally, after nearly nine months here……!!....Something may happen. I spoke to the director at San Cristobal el Bajo about consulting with them and she wants me to see this mother tomorrow morning. She also agreed they could use help in the prepa (preschool) classroom. I had to wait 40 minutes, standing outside her office, looking at the view, wondering about their water system, before she spoke to me. Evidently I didn’t make myself clear and she thought I was waiting for the other teachers. So there’s a hint, for the start of my project: be sure I’m clear about things and being clear. And of course more than half the time I’m just faking it in Spanish. I wish I were comfortable admitting I understand so little. And I’m starting to work in the special ed classroom at San Pedro, thanks to my Spanish teacher’s friend, and taking some motivational stuff there this morning. And I have permission from Fred to do all this, because we now have four teachers and I'm really not needed in those classrooms. And there’s something of an opening at San Juan because that director wants to start a program, and this would demonstrate need. I think I could convince her to do a parenting training (maybe group but I’m not ready for that) and maybe an infant stimulation group. Then borrow the materials from Felipe (I thought I was just in there for fun.) I’ve spoken to Sandra about hooking this up with F. E. but she thinks better not (not sure why; she’s going to speak to someone.) And through Francisco maybe I could get an AA person up to San Juan for the group she wants. Or perhaps someone from the F.E. AA group. So all this would fit my individualist/ do things now personality, and yet I tried to make it more structured and connected to F.E., if only to require people I see to sign up there first. I know I’m gong to end up spending money, adopting people, etc. I hope not.

Sometimes – watching HBO at my house, walking on the street with motorcycles going by, sitting in the internet shop, buying groceries at the gringo food store, sitting in my writers’ group, or having lunch at a nice café – it’s easy to forget that I’m in Guatemala……although the movies have Spanish subtitles, the motorcyclists don’t wear helmets, the rest of the folks in my internet shop are young Guatemalan boys playing videogames, and my lunch today was with the four young Guatemalan teachers I work with. But it hits home that I’m in a “third-world” country when we go to San Juan, today, to visit a family, walk down a rutted, trash-strewn alley to a wooden gate in a wire fence which opens to show a rain-washed cement patio leading to a dark cement house, much of it open to the air, and the roof – like so many – just corrugated tin, with openings everywhere under the roof. A young boy asks what we want, his clean school uniform in sharp contrast to his surroundings. Two other children wave and rush up to talk to us. They are a young girl who is in my kids’ group - she is a little shy with me – and a young boy in the older group whom I always watch because his face is so appealing; beautiful, with high Mayan cheekbones, dark-lashed eyes……….something about his manner is so slightly-tough or restrained on the surface, and sweetly shy underneath. I am so moved by all these kids and their difficult lives. I am so touched when they recognize me. 

Guatemala reveals itself slowly. I have been somewhat disturbed by reading The Long Night of White Chickens…..which paints such a dark and negative picture of Guatemala, of course during the long time of violence, here. But he paints, also, a negative feeling about Guatemalans, themselves; almost as though something in their nature could have brought about this time of silence, betrayal, and viciousness. My Guatemalan writer friend comes by my house to talk about his emerging book and says, without my mentioning this book or my thoughts about it, that he wants to get out of Guatemala again; away from this place where there has been such ugliness. He tells me friends of his were tortured and murdered during that period. This story from him makes the history I know even more personal and apparently more wide-spread, since he and his friends lived in the Capital. Somehow I had thought the massacres and torture and uprootings that existed in the highlands – evidently unknown to Antigua-dwellers, according to my Spanish teacher and my expatriate friend, (although she said, “We didn’t know; we didn’t WANT to know”) – was the only period or place of horror since the conquest. In the long history of Guatemala there were of course earlier times of terror……..the conquest, certainly, the herding of indigenous people into small aldeas like the one I live in now, the civil war in the 60s - started by soldiers angered at the placement of troops here by the US, to train to fight in Cuba, as I understand it from him, and then the massacres in the 80s. And there were natural disasters, notably in the early colonial period…..devastating earthquakes, Volcan Agua’s deluge….and later earthquakes, and the hurricane that destroyed lives in October of 2005, just before my first visit here. Layers and layers. Perhaps some of the joy I sense here in people is just the joy of being alive in a time in which these things are NOT going on. I think of the way the earth recovers after a natural disaster, and even a war. Sometimes it takes years but the spirit of life recovers, plants grow up from the overturned soil, flowers blossom, and seeds drop to sprout again.

Guatemalan culture past and present

This pueblo continues to surprise me. I moved here in part because I wanted to be more part of a community; I didn’t realize how community-oriented this plazuela would be. Not only are there games of futbol at all hours of the day and evening, and some odd type of basketball that allows you to run, holding the ball, but next door to our “compound” there is a center at which young girls hold their Quinciñeras (essentially “coming out” parties, at age 15) and people of all ages have their birthday parties – complete with loud music, one night rattling our windows. Fortunately it tends to be types of dance music that I enjoy. Then there is the reggaeton music, which I also love, broadcasted to accompany the more up-scale futbol games. And, more quietly, every night men use the street light very close to my house to play cards, sitting on the plazuelas low concrete bleachers, but of course this is also accompanied by music on the radio and occasional hoots and howls. Recently they have initiated bingo games in the center of the futbol court, accompanied by a loud announcer. As relatively quiet person, when I’m not dancing - and accustomed to near-absolute silence at my home in California - I could let this annoy me, especially when it all goes on really late, but consciously allow myself to be “part of a community,” to just let the sound come in and out of me without resistance. But this morning, at 5:15 am on a Sunday is a first: I am wakened by loud singing. Going to the window that looks out on the plazuela I see a group of men standing under the street light in the middle of the plazuela 100 feet away. Putting my glasses on, I see two are playing the large guitars (guitarones?) I sometimes see here. They are singing loudly, seeming a little drunk – but maybe that’s just my perception of the hour. The singing and playing are both good, somewhat like mariachi music. As I watch, they part and the musicians – one of them with an accordion – walk past me. I notice there are a lot of people on the street at this hour….that is, groups of 2 or 3 pass my house every 3-5 minutes, all walking down my street in the same direction. It seems obvious that some sort of celebration is taking place on one of the streets behind my house. I notice my manager’s family is up and walking around; I am tempted to ask them what’s going on and imagine being swept up into yet another odd and interesting local activity, or not. I elect to stay in my robe. Then there is a loud honking, and I see two chickenbusses parked in the road in front of the gancha (court.) I can’t imagine how they reached here through these narrow streets. I see several children with packs pile into one, which is evidently already filled; it takes off down my street, with what appears to be a huge paint bucket and a babystroller on top. Another parked bus is filling up with adults carrying packs and bags. The whole town is having an excursion somewhere? Finally it takes off, too, and at 6:30 am everything is quiet again. 

Well of all the celebrations we’ve had here (and these folks love ‘em!) this one most has me both gnashing my teeth and dying of laughter. It’s El Dia de Madre - their Mother’s Day a few days before ours. It starts at 3:05 a.m. with a loud amplified voice and marimba music for ½ hour; which suddenly seems to grow very loud, pass on the small street right next to my house and disappear. 4:35 a.m. again a loud voice announcing the wonder of mothers and this day set aside for them, and lots more music, but this one is stationary and on-going. I have cotton in my ears and a pillow over my head (though I like the music well enough) but the sound is coming through the cobblestone streets into my bones. Eventually I give it up and get up about 5:45, deciding this is a great day to wash my sheets (by hand on my own little pila outside on my back patio.) I notice my gringa neighbor peeking out the door of our gate so I look too. From the music you would expect at least dancing couples with full skirts lifted up. But we see a lone man sitting at a table with huge amplifiers, talking into a microphone, and not too far from him (all this in our plazuela in front of our – now beautifully lit – church) a row of about six women sitting silently in chairs side by side. And of course every so often tons of firecrackers or the larger bombas. Just what every mother wants at 6 a.m. I sort of like displaying our mothers NOT making tortillas for the family at this hour, although in this “day and age” there are women around town who specialize in fresh tortillas (no salt) and you either go to their house or tienda, or get them when they walk around with large plastic baskets, the warm tortillas covered with brightly-colored cloths. Suddenly there is competing music coming from the other size of the plazuela and I see 4 cars with a loudspeaker. I say "competing music" but it’s exactly the same music played independently. Some people in orange jackets get out, set off a few bombas (while the other music plays on,) and a disembodied voice talks about how wonderful “madrecitas” are. I notice on the back of one of these cars what appears to be a political poster. Since campaigning for the September presidential election has already begun, I suspect that somebody’s sentiments are “for sale.” I suspect these folks are the ones who started the day off at 3 a.m. Now the music has switched to a slight rap or hip hop flavor…but no, we’re back to more soulful men singing about the saintliness of their mothers. And of course more firecrackers. 

Yesterday was sweet…..we went to our schools to work but found most of the classes were preparing little gifts and cards for Mother’s Day and getting ready for some sort of presentation at a special Mass in the local (beautiful, old) church. And all around town yesterday were children walking holding carefully-made little gifts and mothers with large baskets of goodies. These folks do revere their mothers. The mothers in front of the church have dispersed, now, and the music has stopped at 7 a.m. Looks like people are getting ready for Mass in this church. I’m sure there are more things planned all day. Think I will finish washing my sheets. 

 And yes…..more things are planned. I walk out into the plazuela (aware of being the only gringa, though there are a dozen of us volunteers living here and there in this town, I hear) and stand to watch several acts put on by different classrooms (children reciting, dancing, acting in some skit) and two women who do the meringue with the school director (who is pretty good) and one of the practicantes (student teachers.) 

I had heard the story of the woman who declared herself empress, here, after her husband’s death and was then killed by the deluge from Volcan Agua, but here is the official story (“A Short History of Guatemala,” Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr.): “Unwelcome in Peru, Pedro de Alvarado (who had, with his brother Jorge, established a town very close to Antigua as the capital of the Guatemalan region-which stretched to Panama) returned to Spain where his wife, Francisco de la Cueva had died in 1528.” (Seven years before....in those years distances were real.) “Alvarado now married her sister, Dona Beatriz de Alva de la Cueva. Accompanied by his new bride, he returned to Guatemala in 1539, but rumors of golden cities in Cibola lured him north to Mexico. There he fought with his characteristic courage and recklessness in the Mizston War against the rebellious Chichimecas until he died in Guadalajara on 4 July `1541 after a horse fell on him. Word of his death did not reach Santiago de Guatemala (the capital) until 29 August, when a letter…ordered Lt. Governor Francisco de la Cueva, a cousin of Alvarado’s widow to continue as governor in Guatemala. In her grief over the loss of her husband, Dona Beatriz reportedly wailed excessively and called herself “la sin ventura” (the unfortunate or hapless one [and I heard elsewhere she had the building housing the present salsa bar Sin Ventura painted black and she and all the servants dressed in black for a year.] "Her tears were matched by unusually heavy rains that drenched Guatemala in early September 1541. On 9 September the City Council and other notables including Alvarado’s widow, met to install [her cousin] as governor of the kingdom [sic] but the strong-willed and ambitious Beatriz, supported by the powerful Bishop of Guatemala, Francisco Marroquin [whose name I know only as one of the schools we visit] managed to…make her interim governor. ….[she] would rule but a pair of days, however. The rains continued throughout Saturday, 10 September 1541, and on that night tremors from the nearby and active Fuego Volcano [which still sends up plumes of smoke every day and produced a tremor that shook my bed last week] caused the crater at the top of the Agua volcano to rupture. A torrent of water and mud gushed down the volcano’s side carrying away part of [Ciudad Vieja] and killing many people, including Dona Beatriz.” The cousin, Francisco De la Cueva and Marroquin then established Antigua “on the other side of the valley” [not far.] De la Cueva then married a daughter of Alvarado and Tlaxcalan Princess Dona Luisa de Xicotencatl [who must be Mayan], who had survived the destruction of the capital along with several ladies that Dona Beatriz had brought with her from Spain. These survivors were important in Guatemalan history as mothers of many of the principal families of the colonial era. Alvarado had no children by his De la Cueva wives. His legacy in Guatemala continued only through the descendants of his union with Dona Luisa., [the Mayan.]" This is of course fascinating to me primarily to consider the drama of the lives involved. I would like to know more about these families.