The Lynch Mob of Rio Pajaritos: Part One

All the time I was in Guatemala I heard rumors of unfriendly groups of indigenous people, of killings and lynchings and tortures.  Once near the Cuchumatanes Highlands two Japanese tourists had been lynched because the locals thought they were trying to steal their children. This story I knew to be fact.  But I personally had encountered very little suggesting these dangers and thought that most of the warnings were due to an affect well known to me at this point: people always say the ones over the hill are the bad ones.  But when I got to Rio Pajaritos, my perspective changed.

I had come up over the misty green ridges of Nebaj, through birch forests with grass as short and green as a closely tended lawn.  The wind came up near the top and whipped up the drifting mist like a fork beats through the white of an egg.  I was all alone in the shifting shapes and dripping wood.  But as I came over to the other side of the mountains the clouds cleared and I came to an exuberant Kiche indigenous village, the women dressed in fluorescent floral gowns.

A few kids followed me yelling, "Father, Father," confusing me with a white and bearded Catholic priest that sometimes  came to town.  "Bless you, my children." It was not the first time this had happened, and many other times people had commented on my likeness to Jesus in physical appearance.  I think I know the painting they all have of him, in which he looks remarkably like the 16th century conquistadors that ransacked Guatemala and left it in poverty. But I went on through their town and over a small stream to where Rio Pajaritos begins.

The sun was getting low and lighting up the blue green of the onion fields and the clouds heaped up over the range, and true to the name of the town, the little birds were chirping beside the river.  I passed a few workers who naturally stopped and chatted with me about what I was up too.  One eighteen year old, Juan, walked with me, curious about my life and journey, and invited me to come see where he lived.  In front of his house two boys were selling watermelon and I bought a slice and sat down on the step with the succulent fruit.

Two men appeared in front of me, one with mean eyes and the a other sullen fat man in a grubby shirt.

"Under what authority are you under to be here?  Who sent you?"

"Errr... no authority.  I just wanted to pass through here because it's the shortest distance between Nebaj and Sacapulus."

"You are here illegally.  We have a law that no unknown person may enter our community.  What is your mission?"

Great question.  I could try to answer that on so many different levels.  I decided this might not be the right moment to get metaphysical on them and explain that they were asking the exact question I was asking myself and that I had traveled for months and for thousands of miles looking for a simple answer to give, so instead I went with a stuttering "Uh, I-I-I'm just here passing through, getting to know what life is like around here."

"Right.  You wait right here."

I sat down eating my watermelon.  Soon a few more men showed up, one with a carved staff that apparently signified communal authority.

"We are well organized around here. We are going to review everything in your backpack.  What mining company are you from?  We know you are here to steal our gold and who knows what else under this land.   See these wires here?"

I looked up at some power lines heading toward Nebaj.

"They just installed them without our permission.  We have reason to believe that those lines take our water and pipe it to the United States. So we are going to look through your pack and if we find a suspicious apparatus, we will take you to the prison."

"Then we will decide whether to lynch you or not," said the fat man in the grubby shirt.

"We are well organized around here," someone reiterated.

So I went on trial for purposelessness, or at least for having a purpose so undefined that it gave me no real reason in their eyes to be in Rio Pajaritos.  In this town where everyone planted onions and worked them from dawn to dusk, how could they fathom that someone would have time to just go wandering across a country to see what's there, much less that someone would want to waste energy walking when they could go by public transport?

I began to unload things from my pack. "Are you going to rob me?"

"Of course not!" was the emphatic answer.

I gave speeches about every item in my pack, suspecting that part of what was going on here is that they had never met someone like me and were really curious but didn't really know how to express it.  I showed them my books and told them how I love to read and write.  I showed them my map and pointed out where I had been and they ogled over it.  I showed them my passport and my official Guatemalan stamp, which impressed them not one whit.  My first aid kit caused a stir with all its pills.  My compass was suspect as a gold-finding apparatus meant to rob them of their riches.  To demonstrate that my harmonica was benign, I had to play a riff and do a jig. 

"So what's your decision?"

"You may go."

"You won't lynch me."

"No.  But next time you must go through the proper authorities.  In every town in Guatemala it is prohibited to enter if you are not known by its people.  Be warned."

The small crowd dispersed and I began to pack up my stuff.  Juan had shrunk ashamedly into a corner during all of this and finally came out.  "Would you like to stay the night here?"

"Man Juan, I would, but I think that would be a bad idea.  I'm not welcome here."

"Yeah but it will get dark soon and you won't make Sacapulus now.  Plus if you go right away they will think you are fleeing and that won't be good."

I saw a member of the leading committee still around.  I asked him what he thought.  He shrugged and gave me a noncommittal, "Yeah it's probably OK."

It was late and so against my better judgment I accepted Juan's offer.  Juan explained to me what was up:

"The leaders have decreed it: the American will come some day and take our land and live on it, and who knows where we will live."

"Like we´ll just come and take over your land just like that?"

"Yeah."

Sounded like a pretty crazy philosophy they had going on here.  But on second thought, given history, maybe not so unfounded.

Juan continued. "Plus when we go there they don't let us pass. You come here to learn what our lives our like and we want to do the same but cannot.  They must have some resentment against us."

I wanted to vindicate myself, prove to the town that I was no evil corporate outsider, no emissary of manifest destiny.  I laid out my sleeping bag on Juan's floor and in the remaining dusk played soccer with his brothers.  All the kids in the neighborhood paraded by the house, seeing a gringo for the first time and shrieking with fear and delight as I made faces at them or imitated animals.  One kid was scared to the point of tears and ran for his mom, but when he came back he was laughing.  "Colon, Colon," he yelled. 

"What does he mean?" I asked Juan.

"He is trying to say Columbus, like Christopher Columbus who discovered America.  He has a picture book with Columbus, and the drawing looks like you.  His mom told him you are Columbus and now he's not afraid."

We went to bed when it got dark but both stayed awake reading; he was studying and I was reading a Carlos Fuentes novel that had both Spanish and English.  I had shown it to Juan earlier, and now he was watching me read it.  I knew he wanted the book because he had spent hours looking at it and comparing words between the translation.  He dreamed of learning English and traveling to the States. We finally flipped off the lights and the wind howled up under the eaves of the tin roof.  I tossed and turned and finally went to sleep.

I woke up to bright lights and the door banging open in the wind and heavy boots on the floor and I lying prostrate before a dark figure in the doorway.  A truck engine rumbled outside.  Juan sat up and began talking to the figure in Kiche and they were pointing and looking at me.  Finally Juan addressed me in Spanish. "This is my dad, Fransico, who was in Sacapulus today."  Lying half naked in my sleeping bag I reached up to shake his hand.  He smiled.  "Most people call me Chico."

They went on talking and I nervously fingered my sleeping bag.  Something had fallen on it, maybe some plaster fallen from the wind.  Then the something began to wriggle.  By reflex I threw it against the wall where it immediately rushed back toward me.  Suddenly a heavy boot came down right beside my head, and the carcass of a four inch long millipede jerked in its death throes.  "Careful," said Chico.  "Those things are really poisonous." 

"Thanks."

"Look," said Chico.  "I don't judge people before I know them.  And God wants us to help those in need, those who are wandering.  So you may stay here tonight.  I would love if you could stay with us for a week, but the community is not happy with you here.  Sleep here tonight and tomorrow we will talk."

I didn't sleep much under the rattling roof next to the still spasoming carcass.