Day 1 May 23
An invitation and a challenge
| Guatemala for us began with an invitation from Roberto.
It sounded more like a dare than an invitation, and he did not mention any
life insurance covering guerillas or the military. Four months later, after haphazard preparations and the requisite visa hassles,
we found ourselves in the remote Guatemalan countryside. The mist had not yet cleared from the mountains
when we were ready for our first photo shoot. Meet some of the travellers (from left to right): Madjid, myself, and Roberto. Alvaro, Roberto's brother, was on the wrong side of the camera.
We arrived at the capital, Guatemala City, by a flight from Chicago via Miami. Our first night was very comfortably spent at the Molina residence, thanks to Roberto and Alvaro's folks. But we lost no time in getting out of the capital. We headed north for Sacapulas in the state of El Quiché, a small highland town inhabited mostly by indígenas (in this case, Quiché-speaking Maya). Branching off the Pan-American highway, we entered a nerve-rattling "rocky road" that made me seriously question my decision to take this trip in the first place. |
| Our relatively new Subaru hatchback was as helpless as the antique minibus in front of us. A huge log had fallen on the single-lane dirtroad and traffic (which at that busy hour consisted of three vehicles) was at a standstill. Every able-bodied male in the bus stepped out to help clear the road.
Some women also got out, but perhaps just to enjoy the view.
Being irredeemable adherents of big-city culture, we shamelessly volunteered no help. Anyway, we were already too busy marvelling at this impressive display of Maya community spirit. Everyone seemed to have a lot of time. There was probably more conversation than work done, but it was refreshing to watch the leisurely manner in which they cleared the way. After two hours at this unscheduled rest stop, we were off again. Santa Cruz del Quiché, the state capital, sits on one of the country's largest dust reserves. Populated mostly by ladinos, it is the local beacon of Western civilization in a vast surrounding wilderness of "Indian barbarism". For this reason, there is nothing of touristic interest in the town itself, although one need not travel far into the woods to find something strange and exciting. (For example, the badly-preserved ruins of Utatlán, the ancient Quiché capital, lie nearby.) Santa Cruz at its best resembles Guatemala City's shabbier suburbs. Nonetheless, the truck stop we toured near the town's outskirts was vibrantly alive. Local color included chickens, turkeys and pigs jammed with their owners into dilapidated, toxic fume-belching buses. Every other kid seemed to be desperately hawking something-- junk food, soft drinks, cigarettes, fruit, trinkets, to name just a few items. For us, the main attraction was the windowless restroom. Set along a wall, its single urinal was a low trough untainted by a drop of running water. The only other fixture was a large hole in the floor whose purpose can hardly be imagined. Properly sealed, the room could serve as an ideal suffocation chamber for use by the many sadistic death squads roaming the countryside. But in the end we had been fairly served, and were thankful for the convenience. Leaving the town, we quickly forgot its existence. |