poco a poco

I almost got ripped off at the Guatemala – El Salvador border. After seeing 197 divided by 8 equal 12 on a moneychanger’s calculator, I handed over my Quetzales. But a Mayan mother figure standing nearby knew what was going on, scolded the men who had surrounded me as soon as I exited my bus, and then after getting my proper exchange she took my arm and gently scolded me to be more aware of my surroundings.

I felt sick to my stomach, physical pangs of anxiety for my own gullibility, in my next bus across the border, even though it was only 10 dollars I would have lost. Deep breaths, don’t let the accountants in my head scold or laugh at me too much, and move on to San Salvador. With risk necessarily comes loss, but also great possibility. Though I am not about to just hand over what I have at least partially earned, I must accept loss, even lies, theft, or violence, as a worthy tax for my grand privilege.

I want to tell you about the wars in Guatemala and El Salvador, and the rest of the South. I want to tell you about the atrocities that were committed by both the army and the gorillas, and about how much worse was the rape, torcher, and murder of the regular armies, and of U.S. culpability in supporting dictatorships in Latin America with arms and monies, or through direct CIA overthrow of democratically elected presidents, what Reagan called “limiting external aggression in Guatemala,”…of how ages of colonial legacy and “free market” policies (keep-things-as-they-are-policies) has produced a vastly stratified society of ladino and indigenous, lowland and highland, rich and poor, landowner and land worker, and how nicely these stratifications have benefited U.S. wealth.

But I am bitter towards many of you for not wanting to know, and the others don’t need to know any more. The facts I could supply are useless you wish not to know, or have a strong “American always has goodness in her motivations” information filter. Please forgive me for my negativity. I beg you to do your own research on the history of the United State’s relationship with Latin America, what the Monroe Doctrine first patronizingly suggested was “our backyard.” We affect them explicitly while they affect us only implicitly, being faceless and nameless to us, except to bear some of the pyramid at which we are near the top. For evidence of this pyramid, consider the price you pay for bananas vs. the labor that went into their collection, or consider the names of the countries in small letters on your relatively free T-shirts.

Reagan, however, was at least half right in his implications when he said that “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

I last posted here about a month ago. I went up into the hills of Guatemala to study Spanish, away from other tourists and English speakers. I lived in a village named “Todos Santos,” which in English means “All Saints.” The people here all wear the same clothing: red and white stripped pants and a straw hat for the men, and woven blue and purple blouses for the women. I think they like identifying themselves as Todos Santoas in order to distinguish themselves from the more modernized mixed-race Ladinos, and even from other Mayan villages.

And they have wonderful markets every Wednesday and Saturday…truly free markets, not what you were taught is a free market from the Chicago school of economics.

I am studying Spanish. It is much harder, but I am learning much faster then when I was in high school. I had a personal tutor in Todos Santos for three weeks, and I lived with a woman named “Rosa” and her three children. I lived across the road from her in her sister’s vacant house and I was awakened each morning by roosters. Rosa’s daughter “Grisalda” let the turkeys and chickens out each day, and when I eft my house in the morning the chicks all scattered around my feet. I joined Rosa’s family in a small house with walls and floor made out of mud for meals three times a day. We ate a lot of corn tortillas as well as eggs, beans, rice, and sometimes some strange Guatemalan vegetables that I had never heard of before. She spoke to me in Spanish quite a bit. I only understood about half of what she said, but I understood none of what she says to her children because they speak to one another in their indigenous language, which is called, “Mam.”

Rosa is missing her two front teeth, which makes her look 10 years older than her 37 years. Her two former husbands both left her for the same persuasive woman named “America.” The machismo of highland culture says that its not their responsibility to raise their children, but I had the privilege of learning in my three weeks with them that their former fathers are jilting themselves of their beautiful children.

America beckoned them, and they went, leaving all else behind. Even if they never cross the border, All Todos Santoans have been visited by her. Many send money back: Todos Santos has been transformed by American remissions. The houses are larger than they were 20 years ago, and general health and wellbeing has also likely been raised, if not only for the lack of war. Rosa’s family recently received a television as a gift, she put up an antennae, and they now watch the Simpsons in Spanish broadcast from down the valley in Mexico while they eat their meals. I warned Rosa’s oldest son Eric as best I could in Spanish before I left that while television can teach and entertain, it can also steal. The Coyotes of Todos Santos are well known; they have the best vehicles, because they make loads of money, because they know the routes and the contacts to the states, because there are always people who want to go. Most people here believe it is their right to try to cross into the states illegally if they so desire, because borders are only for the rich and powerful.

I am in San Salvador, El Salvador now, at the sister parish of St. Thomas Moore. I’ve been making house calls with Padre Luis in this barrio of San Salvador, a former garbage-dump turned neighborhood. Paintings of Oscar Romera, a liberation theologist and Catholic bishop who was assassinated in 1980, are everywhere.

I'm having a grand time, though home is often on my mind:

Thanks for reading!