Guatemala Photos

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Guatemala: Final Post

My sister Janet arrived a week ago Thursday, ferried by the school directly from the airport to my house, and after breakfast with the Houstons, we picked up our rental car and made our way to Panajachel, on the shores of Lake Atitlan. Surrounded by volcanoes, it is said to be one of the most beautiful sites in the world. Our two and half hour drive was lengthened by a short boat ride to our hotel, situated by the small village of Jaibalito. The lancha dropped us off at the hotel’s dock, where hotel staff helped us carry our luggage up the hundred and fifty or so steps to the hotel desk. Our hotel, named La Casa Del Mundo, is literally built into the side of the hill. Owned by an American man married to a Guatemalan woman who met, somewhat improbably, in Alaska, they bought the property about fifteen years ago, spent five years building it, and have been opened for business ever since. Though perhaps not the most luxurious, it is certainly the most beautiful hotel I have ever stayed at, a cascade of stone stairways, patios overlooking the water, flowering gardens and hanging plants, complete with hummingbirds and a hot-tub. Our arrival was damped somewhat by an overhang of clouds, but even in the mist you could appreciate the grandeur of the lake. (The hotel, by the way, was only about $45 for the night). Before dinner, which was served family-style in a candle-lit room overlooking the lake, we took a short hike into Jaibalito. As is so often the case here, wealth and poverty are cheek-by-jowl, the beautiful lake-side villas just steps away from aluminum-roofed huts with dirt floors and open-fire stoves. The same is true on their very person: among the Maya, even the poor wear handwoven clothing with bright colors and intricate designs. Both the beauty and the struggle of life here is palpable.

The next morning we awoke to a sparkling clear day, and after hanging out on the patio for a bit before breakfast, where Janet did a water color, we made our way to the largest of the lakeside villages, Santiago Atitlan (we’re pretty sure we paid way too much to cross the lake, but even that, by American standards, was cheap). In Santiago, we opted for a guide to take us around in his little three-wheeled taxi, a decision that turned out to be better than we imagined. Janet and I had both read a book by Henri Nouwen about an American priest, Stan Rother, who was killed in 1981 by a military death squad during Guatemala’s brutal civil war. Rother had been assigned by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma to Santiago, one of the epicenters of the war, where hundreds of people had been killed or “disappeared” by the military. Without asking, our guide took us to the “Peace Park” built across the street from the former military headquarters where, in 1990, thirteen people where shot dead during a peaceful protest following the attempted kidnapping of one of the townspeople. (The military fort closed the next year). He also took us to a nearby village where Hurricane Stan sent a mudslide that killed nearly 800 people, and to see “Maximón,” a sort of Mayan icon to whom local people pay homage by supplying him with cigars and liquor, to ward off evil spirits.

At the church there were several memorials to Rother and others who had been killed during the civil war. Rother was not an activist, and had not been implicated in any guerilla activities, but had simply participated in the apparently subversive activity of helping the local people, and providing sanctuary in the church building for people who were afraid for their lives. (His devotion including translating the New Testament into the local Indian dialect, something no one before him had ever attempted.) Rother was killed in a small room in the church rectory, now turned into a chapel, the blood spattered wall preserved under plexiglass. His body was returned to Oklahoma for burial, but not before removing his heart, which is buried on the church grounds.

We drove that afternoon to Quetzaltenango, (a horrendous four hour drive through a half-dozen road construction sites, during which I apparently burned out the clutch of our little car trying to make my way around tractor trailers in the hilly terrain) where we had dinner with David and Jeannene Wiseman, Presbyterian Mission Co-workers who help establish partnerships between local Presbyterian churches and U.S. congregations. The Presbyterian Church is the oldest Protestant Church in Guatemala, but it remains small, and is divided—much like our own PCUSA—between more conservative churches who think the church should stay out of politics, and more progressive churches (many of whom were under threat during the war) who urge the church to enter the struggle to improve social and economic conditions, especially among the poor.

The next day we drove to San Felipe, where there is a Presbyterian seminary, stopping along the way at a natural hot-springs that Janet remembered visiting thirty years earlier. It hadn’t changed much, and is still a sort of working-class resort, with pools heated from volcanic action, a small restaurant and changing area the only amenities. Nearby there are several small cabins that you can rent, with outdoor grills for picnics. Curiously, we met several American National Guard officers there, who had been stationed in Guatemala for the past nine months, helping with several water purification projects in the rural areas.

In San Felipe we stayed at a coffee plantation run by a French-born American man married to a Guatemalan woman. The farm had been in her family for three generations. Six years ago, after her father died, they moved back to the farm to help her mother run the operations. Mark and Ana Maria met in Paris in the 1960’s where they were both studying Marxist-oriented Third-World development. Mark’s father had been president of Chicago Theological Seminary (related to the United Church of Christ and just down the street from my alma mater, McCormick), and involved in national and international church affairs. He was born in the town of Les Chambon, where—recounted in the book Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, which I read during my seminary days—the local Reformed community had sheltered Jewish children from the Nazis. (They moved there after World War II because Mark’s father, who had been a conscientious objector during the war, wanted to learn first-hand what made such people tick). After college (but before Paris) Mark himself had lived for several years in the Congo, with the Frontier Internship Program, run by the irrepressible Margaret Flory, who twenty-five years later rented her apartment in New York City to me and Cheryl. He was astounded that I knew who she was. We had a lot in common in the small-world department, and needless to say, they were wonderful company.

That Mark and Anna Maria are now running a farm that employs more than 80 families is a never-ending source of irony. After a life-time working for church-related and secular international development agencies, now he is the one responsible for making sure the farm turns a profit, employees are treated fairly, not to mentioned establishing patterns of efficiency, discipline, and hard-work. They have even (I imagine his pacifist father rolling over in his grave) hired an armed guard to patrol the grounds at night to keep out unwanted intruders. To make a go of things in the turbulent coffee market, they grow everything that will take root, including bananas, plantains, coconuts, mangoes, pineapples and bamboo. The varied crops help provide a steadier stream of income (coffee is harvested only once a year), provide more local employment, and help with reforestation. He showed us the entire coffee harvesting process, which is very labor intensive, and has not changed much in the past one hundred years. One point was regularly driven home. Of the $4 they charge you for a cup of latte at Starbucks, less than four cents represents the farm workers’ labor.

On Sunday we met up with another Presbyterian Mission Co-Worker, Ellen Dozier, who lives at the seminary, and works with Presbyterian women. She took us to the local Presbyterian Church in San Felipe for morning Bible Study (Sunday is market day, so church services are in the afternoon). The church was more of a store front, but the assembled group was welcoming and enthusiastic. The pastor (who pastored another church as well) led us in a Bible study of the 2nd chapter of James (“faith without works is dead!”), and talked about the importance of Christians being involved with the upcoming presidential elections. (This was not chosen because we were there; the pastor didn’t know we were coming. Ellen said this was a typical conversation in this small but active congregation). After lunch we made a brief visit to the seminary. The beautiful grounds no longer house many students. The current president, for reasons that Ellen supports in theory and yet laments in practice, has pushed out most of the foreign faculty. The faculty that remain are all Guatemalan born, but they lack both the theological training and devotion to the seminary to make for a thriving seminary community. It is not clear what sort of future the seminary will have.

The next day was certainly the most emotional of our six-day journey. In the morning we drove to Retalhuleu, where Janet had been an exchange student thirty years earlier. We tracked down the house where she had lived (but did not stop in; the family had not been all that hospitable to her), and then went to the store owned by the aunt of her old boy-friend, Enrique (the reason for her excellent Spanish and why she returned to Guatemala several times over the next three years, including a year in university in Guatemala City, much to my parents’ chagrin). She assumed that Enrique, who had been studying medicine when she left, still lived in Guatemala City, and was not intending to make contact with him. But she hoped to see Enrique’s other aunt, who had been the high school principal, and had sort of taken Janet under her wing (and, of course, also introduced her to Enrique). Well, as it turned out, not only was the store owner in, the other aunt was in town as well, and Enrique lived nearby with his own medical practice, and she was sure they would all want to see her. An hour later they were all there in the flesh, the first time Janet and Enrique had spoken or laid eyes on each other since they broke up twenty-eight years ago. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), Enrique had clients and could not stay for lunch. The aunts were free, however, and we spent the next two hours with them catching up and reminiscing. All in all, it was a very satisfying day for Janet, and made the entire trip more than worthwhile.

We drove that day back to Antigua to drop off our rental car and do some more shopping, and then took a shuttle the next day to Guatemala City. There is not much to tell you about the city except to report that what the guide books all say is true: the city is large, ugly, and overrun with noxious bus fumes. We had a wonderful visit to two museums, with a taxi driver who sang Guatemalan folk tunes to us, but all in all it is not a place I am anxious to return to.

Speaking of being anxious to return, I am ready to come home. Coming back to language school after the trip has been somewhat anticlimactic. On top of it all, the travel has made my stomach a little queasy, which makes me miss my own bed and more familiar food. Though I wish I had had more time to master a greater depth of Spanish, and everyone here has been wonderfully hospitable, I am ready to board the plan home on Tuesday. This has been an excellent adventure.

Guatemala: Week Two (and a half)

It has been another incredible week. I am now more than half-way through my stay here. My sister Janet comes tomorrow for a week in which we will travel to Lake Atitlan, Quetzaltenango, San Filipe and Guatemala City. This will be her first visit to Guatemala since she lived here for two years in the late seventies. I am really looking forward to our time together.

My studies continue to progress well, and I feel as if I am making great strides—and wish I had more time! Alas, I only have four more days of classes before I leave on May 15. But the real adventures have been outside class time.

The first, and most incredible, was an excursion last Saturday to the volcano Pacaya, one of the three active volcanoes in Guatemala. One of my housemates, a pediatrician named Terry from North Carolina, and I traveled by shuttle to the volcano, about an hour away, which is in a national park. We were met by a guide who accompanied us to the base of the lava flow. At the entry gate there were several men and boys with horses offering to take us up. After our young guide, a woman of perhaps twenty who looked like she was out for an afternoon stroll, took off like a shot up the trail, Terry, who is in her late fifties, opted for the horse. I started off on foot, along with the others in our group, who all looked to be in their early twenties. I must have looked like an easy mark, because one of the boys followed me with his horse, and every time I stopped to take a breath, he would ask (in English), “Want a taxi?” After about twenty minutes of huffing and puffing in the high altitude, I finally asked “OK, how much?” For the price of 50 quetzales (about six bucks), I figured I would enjoy the ride. (My little guide, Luis, told me along the way that he was thirteen years old. He looked no older than nine. Malnutrition is a big problem in Guatemala, and many of the children are small.)

The “taxi” took us to the end of the trail, about another thirty minutes, where we began to climb up the hardened lava to the crater on foot. Our guide said it would be about twenty minutes more, something Terry and I concluded later would be true only if you were twenty years old. The terrain was treacherous, to say the least. It was a steep incline, with lots of small stones and shifting ground under your feet, and the hardened lava is sharp and jagged, so if you fall or brace yourself you will cut your hand. Fortunately, we had also bought walking sticks from the children hawking them at the gate (for about fifty cents).

Pacaya had only first erupted just last year, so the entire lava flow we traversed was new—and growing. After about ten minutes or so, the rocks became noticeably hot. It was the weirdest sensation to feel the cool breeze on your face, and sauna-like heat rising at your feet. It was almost like you were walking on the surface of the moon, or like the winter ice formations I remember from the shores of Lake Michigan—except everything was black. Then we climbed over another small peak—we were about three hundred yards from the top—and there was the lava flow, coming slowly down the side of the volcano! I have never seen anything like it. Truly, an amazing experience.

On Sunday I ventured out by myself to attend one of the local Protestant churches, called simply “Iglesia Evangelica Centroamericana.” This is the oldest Protestant church in Antigua, and on the day I visited they were celebrating their 96th anniversary. I arrived as the prelude was concluding, and the sanctuary was only about half full (Pilgrims would have felt right at home!). By the end of the second hymn, the place was packed, with lots of children and young people. The service was quite different from the Roman Catholic service I had attended in the Cathedral the week before. Lots more singing, with several hymns to tunes I recognized and a few with more indigenous rhythms. They had a saxophone player in for the special occasion, and a couple of more contemporary songs were led by a trio of young people on guitar, drums and piano. The service had the feel of the Black church in the U. S., except with a Latin American rhythm. It was very participatory. Many different people offered prayers or shared in the readings. There were several spontaneous prayers offered as expressions of gratitude for different members of the congregation—the oldest member, who offered one of the prayers; the young people who led the singing; the deacons who collected the offering; the little children who were present. I even understood the sermon, or at least most of it! The only problem was that I arrived just after breakfast and two cups of coffee, and the service lasted two and half hours. Next time I will plan accordingly.

Yesterday was Labor Day, a national holiday, so the school was closed. Terry and I went over to the hospital I had visited earlier with the Houstons. We met the director, a Franciscan named Brother Jose, who gave us a detailed tour. Named after Hermano Pedro, who as I mentioned in my last blog, is sort of the “Mother Teresa” of Guatemala, almost all of the patients are indigent. The hospital does not provide acute care, but only chronic care. There are many disabled children and older adults, most abandoned by their families. The surgical center on the second floor is organized most of the year by volunteers from the Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church in Houston, through their “Faith in Practice” program. People come from the entire region to receive care. They also run a drug and alcohol rehab center in another facility.

Last night I went with the family to see the circus. It was, actually, a little sad. Let’s just say “Cirque de Solei” it was not. The opening act was a little girl, who looked like she was five or six years old, doing acrobatics. Terry left after that. She said she didn’t feel well, but I suspect as a pediatrician she found the act a little hard to watch. In between acts some of the same children hawked food and trinkets. It kind of reminded me of the motorcycle-riding-bear act at the Catskill Game Farm in upstate New York—and I left with the same ambivalent feeling, wondering if this was the sort of entertainment I should be supporting. But there were lots of clowns with silly slapstick, and the kids all enjoyed it. Another little slice of Guatemalan life.

My final picture is of my favorite little oasis, a courtyard of a nearby hotel where I often sit to read or do my homework after class (and enjoy one of the local beverages). Like many of the buildings here, the beautiful part is on the inside. You have to enter in order to find out, and more often than not secreted inside a bleak gray exterior is a beautiful garden. This one is my favorite. Not a bad place to spend an hour or two.