Lynch Mob of Rio Pajaritos: Part Two

The day after the villagers detained, searched and threatened me, I got up early. Chico agreed to let me work with him for at least a few hours weeding the onion field as a way of giving thanks for their hospitality.  It had rained in the night and mud globbed thick on our boots and the onion beds were dark and loamy.  The air was fresh and still and there was no sign in our surroundings of the turbulent unwelcome I had received from the community members the day before.  But Chico told me that the community was not happy and that it would be best if I left around midday.  "Sorry," he said, "but as we say, the one pays for the multitude."  As we swiftly plucked the weeds he told me some of his story:

"I am an orphan, my parents were killed in the civil war.  You know there was a terrible war here that lasted more than a decade and ended in the early 90s.  The peasants were living in misery and rose up against the government who did nothing for them and then were crushed by the army that got guns and money from the United States.  When the soldiers first came I was young, maybe eight or ten years old.  They marched into town and chopped the branches off all of the fruit trees like that one by the house.  We were doing nothing; neither fighting nor complaining.  But if we had so much as even looked at the soldiers while they were destroying our year´s food supply, they would call us over and shoot us dead right then and there."

The mud was collecting thicker on my hands and feet, making it harder for me to shuffle along and reach for new weeds.

"So I was raised by my grandmother, and worked a tiny patch of land left for me by my father.  We worked that land as hard as we could to get every last grain of corn and move upward out of bare poverty.  When I got older I found how to make money as a coyote.  I find people here that want to go to the United States and bring them to the county seat where someone else takes them onward.  I get paid for every head I bring.  Look where I have come; see our house, see the other rooms up the hill in which you stayed.  See how my children now go to school.  My son is 18, and is at the age when many are long married with a kid but I say it is better for him to continue studying and find his wife later.  A man should work hard for what he owns."

The weeds were very thick in the soil, taking advantage of the nutrients in this rich land, spreading with a riotous and aggressive growth. As I stood plucking them, the mud was sucking my boots into the ground.  Luckily it was not my own boots that I would have to continue walking in, but a pair of rubber boots they had lent me.

"And I know what the hard life is, so I say give people, like you, the benefit of the doubt.  I was on the committee of leaders for the town once for a spell and we fined people if they didn´t fix breaks in their part of the water line.  I would go and warn them to fix the problem first before fining them.  If after a warning they do nothing then that is their problem.  But we must have mercy and first give people a chance before extracting a fine that may result in them going hungry."

His phone rang.  He wiped his muddy hand on his pants and answered it.  I tried to clean my hands and feet up but ended up more mired in mud.  Chico hung up. He addressed me with terse urgency.  "They are coming for you again. There is no time to lose.  You must leave in secret out of the back entrance of our town.  Thank you for your help, now GO."

I struggled out of the muddy boots and sprinted up the slippery path to the place where my stuff was, past the elementary school where rusty swing screeched and clanked and the kids screamed "Gringo, Gringo" like a crazed flock of carrion birds.  In the room with my backpack were Juan´s younger brothers, with whom I had played soccer the night before.  They saw my haste, and one went outside to keep lookout and the other helped me haphazardly shove my things into my backpack.

"Hurry, Hurry, here they come!"

I jammed in my sleeping bag, threw in my shoes.  I picked up the bilingual Carlos Fuentes book I had been reading the night before and Juan had been coveting.  I was ten pages from the end, right on a cliff hanger.  I had been hoping to finish it so I could leave it with Juan, who wanted to study English so badly.  I made a split-second decision. I shoved ten dollars between the pages.

"Give this to your brother.  Tell him to buy a dictionary with the money.  Tell him he can learn English if he keeps at it.  Will you remember?"

He nodded. The lookout dashed in. "They are almost here!  If you leave now you might make it!"

I swung on my pack and took off sprinting down the road, my knees jarring heavily with every step from the weight on my back, sweat pouring down my body.  I did not dare look back.  I passed an old man who stared at me.  I smiled at him and tried to look nonchalant, a difficult feat for a gringo at full sprint with a giant backpack in the middle of nowhere Guatemala.  I sprinted for a half mile and then got to an uphill and slowed my pace.  There was no one behind me.  But for a few scattered houses, I was out of the village.  I considered breaking off into the woods and hiding or taking a long and trail-less route over the mountains to another town.  But since I saw no signs of any pursuit, I again slowed to a very swift walk and kept my way.

And then the pickup truck rumbled up behind me.

It was packed full of men and did a U turn in front of me.  The men got off the back and fanned out over the road, facing me.  The mayor of the village was in the center leaning uneasily on his staff of authority.  Mean Eyes was at his right hand, giving me a cold stare of hate.

"Get in the truck."

For an instant I weighed the risk of dropping my pack and running.  I figured I could probably outrun them since I had some thirty meters head start, but I was loathe to leave everything I owned and at this point trusted more in the ability of my tongue than my legs.   So I climbed into the truck.  We rolled grimly back toward Rio Pajaritos.  Up ahead in a rise in the road were gathered all the men of the town, and some of the women too.  They were milling and moving and looking at the approaching truck with hard, unreadable looks. I got down from the truck and stood all alone in front of the crowd on the hill.  What was I to them?  A mixture of horrid memories of a brutal U.S. backed war? Older memories of the European conquest of their land? More recent memories of servitude on sweltering U.S. owned sugarcane farms and banana plantations?  Would the one pay for the multitude?

The crowd hesitated at my arrival. I decided to take verbal control immediately while I had the chance. "Buenos dias," I greeted them, "como estan?" looking each one in the eye.  "I'm sorry for taking your time. I can answer any of your questions."

My knees felt week.  Where was Chico?  I saw not one friendly face in the crowd.  The alcalde stood with shifty eyes in front of me.  "We are  well organized around here.  An unknown person can't just come into our community..."

Mean Eyes interrupted him, yelling.  "We told him to leave and he didn't.  He already had his warning..." and launched into Kiche.  The men began an animated discussion in raised voices.  I did not know what they were saying and had no way to defend myself.  I had to be part of the conversation.

"I will tell you my story from the beginning," I said, and I again had the floor.  I told them about my studies, and my work preserving land against things like mining.  I told them stories from my travels in Mexico, and in Guatemala.  I threw in all kinds of detail.  People began to get bored.  Good, better bored than excited.  Maybe they would bring this to a quick and harmless close.  Where was Chico?  I was now surrounded completely by people and they pressed in closer.  I began to take things out of my backpack again and explain them.  To take away the fear of the unknown.  To demythologize my possessions.

I came to my notebook and remembered a song I had written there, taught to me by the children at Dona Gilberta's.  I began to sing, "Soy puro Gualtemateco, me gusta bailar el son.  Con las notas de la marimba, tambien baila mi corazon."  I caught them by surprise and most of them laughed.  A guy my age near me tried out some English: "What's up man?"

But Mean Eyes was not happy.  The heated discussion broke out again and thank God, there was Chico, speaking up and lawyering on my behalf.  There was talk up shutting me up for the day until the evening meeting.  Chico was harshly reprimanded for giving me the heads up that the rest were coming.  The conversation again escalated and people began to get impatient and lose their tempers.  No one could decide what to do.

"How about this," I yelled.  "You have already wasted a lot of time on me.  Your time is valuable.  You now see that I carry nothing harmful nor have robbed anything from the town.  I will pay for all the time you lost and you can go on with your work."

After my antics with the song, the mob was now with me.  They discussed a bit and then agreed.  "This is not a fine," the alcalde told me,  "but give us what your conscience tells you to give."

He posed me a tough challenge. Chico had asked me as we were working in the field, "Why is it so poor here?"  I took out my wad of 100 Quetzal notes and began to count them out.  Eyes widened.  People gasped as I tried to hand over $80 dollars, the equivalent of months of income for some of them.

"That is too much," they said, unanimously.

"Listen.  I had the fortune to be born in a place with access to more money than you have access to here.  So this is what I can give to you because I earn more there.  I know many of you want to go to the United States, maybe some of you have.  I know also that it is very hard and sometimes impossible to cross.  So I bring you some of the good fortune I've had."

In the end they took half.  I tried to apologize for my insensitivity in staying the night instead of realizing I was clearly not wanted there.  "We don't want to hear it," they said.  "Get out of here."

Rain started coming down as I walked up the narrow path.  The wet ground quickly turned to mud which caked heavy on my shoes.  I tried to shake the mud off my feet as I left the town, but it stuck to me with the tenacity of a campasino toiling in the field for his existence.