The Quebrada of Mozote

As I went southward I seemed to enter a dark jungle of stories about the my country and how it had been involved in the lives of Central Americans.  On the bus down to El Salvador I sat next to a fat and pasty bald man that leaned away from me in his seat and shot sidelong glances at me from time to time.  But when I began to ask him questions he became animated and began to talk.

He was catholic priest who had worked alongside Oscar Romero, a Salvadorean martyr who had stood up on behalf of the poor against the oppressive military dictatorship funded by the States and was shot down while serving communion.  "I was with him the day before he died," the priest told me.  "We went out into the campo to give communion.  Monsignor Romero was the most important bishop of the Catholic Church in the country but he would not forget the poor suffering in the countryside.  His theology was grounded, based on the actual lives of the people he served, based on liberating them from injustice." As we moved on through the hot lands skirting the Salvadorean volcanoes he told me stories of brothers killing brothers, of his brothers who had died or fled to The States, of heroic priests and violated nuns.  "I am glad to be telling you this," he told me.  "Most Americans have no idea."

Three million Salvadoreans live in the US, out of a population of 10 million total, and when I got off the bus in San Salvador the effects were evident everywhere. The city's arteries are clogged with American fast food chains and shopping malls, the infrastructure of the city was much more developed due to the capital sent home from America, and every person has a story about their journey north, or their father or mother or brother or sister's journey north.  The air was thick in the city and clung to my skin and made me sweat.  No matter what I did I couldn't rid myself of the sticky filthy feeling on my body.  I began to dream of clear cool rivers, of diving into pools below clear cascades.
I left the city and hitched up to the highlands of Morozan, a complex and rolling country just below the dark rim of the Honduras pine lands.  As the pickup groaned up the grade, the air began to cool, but the thin film of humid sweat lingered on my skin. At the top of the road was Periquin, the bastion of the rebels in the civil war, impoverished peasants who started fighting with picks and hoes for the right to farm their own land.  I set in the plaza, suddenly very weary.  The land fell away on all sides; even the town was built on a steep slope.  People did not greet me.  They did not talk much at all.  I began to walk a bit and on the hill above town I saw craters five feet deep and fifteen across from 500 ton bombs.  On the mangled iron shrapnel next to the crater I could make out the words MADE IN USA.


I began to feel ill that night, a strange aching in my shoulder joints and neck as if a heavy iron bar were pulling down on them.  I was alone in the hostel that night and laid awake long hours sweating and aching on top of the sheets.  In the morning I felt somewhat better so I began walking. All below me in the cloudless day were the thickly populated lowlands, burnt brown by in the dry season but were I was the foliage was still green and tangled.  I was nearing the village of Mozote.  The only noise was the crickets that screamed from the trees, and I was once again aching and nauseous under the noonday sun.  Suddenly a truck rattled up behind me with blaring loudspeakers, making my heart jump into my throat.  "GAAAS! Get your gas! GAAAS!"  No one came out.  The streets were almost empty, many buildings abandoned. Twenty years ago soldiers from the Salvadorean government had rounded up a the thousand plus villagers in this town– men, women, and children– and had killed them all with the exception of one.  In the center of the town was a memorial.

I shuffled out of the town, wondering if I would make it back on the parched roads to Periqiun.  I felt dizzy, the world spun slightly.  "GAAAS!" I waved frantically at the truck to give me a ride but it barreled past me, leaving only the dust that settled silently on the leaves beside the road.  I walked on for miles.  Finally got I ride clinging on the back bumper of an already packed pickup, the billowing dust caking in my eyes. 

When I got back, I walked down the path to the quebrada, a series of small cascades of spring water that fall into a deep cleft in the rocks.  The water is clear but the cleft so deep that it looks black.  The sun was lowering, and one side was in deep shadow and the other in light.  I slowly peeled the clothes off my aching body.  I paused a long time at the edge, spent in the silent afternoon.  Then I toppled into the icy water.

The "Love Seat"

I decided to couch surf in Guatemala city, and the moment I saw Jhonatán Cejas's couch I realized that no human being, barring some of the most diminutive members of remote bush tribes in Africa, would be able to sleep on the thing without coming away with severe and permanent scoliosis.   The furniture in question was what see-the-silver-lining types would call a love seat, but I saw it for what it was: a sophisticated instrument of nocturnal torture.  I can see it in my mind's eye, its sardonic cream color that seems so inviting until you see the sadistic armrests waiting to wrack the skeletons of weary travelers.  I was busy contemplating which Parisian cathedral I would spend my hunched over future in after sleeping on the thing, when I was given a second thing to think about.  Jhonatán wouldn't mind, in fact he would prefer, well really he insisted eagerly that I share his bed with him. 

Jhonatán, a slender and affectionate 24-year-old, had come to pick me up when I arrived on a bus from Joyobaj.  I had been on couchsurfing.com in Joyobaj, which has a feature that lets you see other travelers in the area who are also on the site.  I was looking for someone who would host me in Guatemala City when a message from Jhonatán popped into my couchsurfing inbox.  "Hey I see you're in the area; if you need anything just give me a call."  With characteristic cynicism I thought, "Why is he so friendly... what does he want from me? " I snooped around on his profile, which said he preferred hosting males.  Then I looked at his reviews from other surfers, all of which were positive and one of which was from an American named John who said, "At first Jhonatán kinda freaked me out but later I realized that was just my problem, he is really just a genuinely helpful and hospitable guy."  Usually it is a bit complicated to find a host, and with John's comment in mind, I decided to go for it.

The chamber that housed the couch in question was a ramshackle cube of sheet metal build on the concrete roof of Jhonatán's parent's house.  The house happened to be a hundred meters from the touchdown end of the runway of the international airport, so every so often a 747 jet would thunder over the room, narrowly missing the roof peak, and setting all the walls a-flapping and a clanging like a one man band whose equipment had got away from him.  For all its apparent dilapidation, inside it was immaculate. The "love seat" smugly occupying the central space along the left wall and Jhonatán's bed, more than a single but definitely no queen, along the back wall.  A plush colorful rug was laid down on the floor and my towel was folded with a bar of soap across the "love seat."  

But from all the darker corners of the room, googly eyes gaped down at me.  Stuffed Elmos stared from the tops of cupboards and foam visors with the gooney cartoon faces pasted on them hung from the bedposts and lined the desk.  A jet flew over and all the faces wobbled grotesquely.  "I used to do a kids show," Jhonatán explained.

I managed to hide my reaction on seeing the "love seat," and Jhonatán welcomed me in to his abode.  "You must be really tired from all your walking," Jhonatán said. "Here. Have a rest on my bed."  He propped up some pillows, put my feet up, and handed me the TV remote.  "Now don't you go anywhere.  I'll be right back."  Thirty minutes later he came up the stairs with a steaming plate of food in his hands and wouldn't let me move a finger to help him with it or the cold beer he opened and gave to me.  "No you just rest.  We got a busy day tomorrow all planned out and you've got to rest up that foot."  I had told him about a foot pain I had developed over my walk.  In handing me a plate of food, Jhonatán had found my weak spot, and I put all worries aside and tucked into the fare.

Dinner was done and the hour was late so I got up and approached the "love seat" as a convicted criminal might approach the execution block.  "Oh no." Jhonatán said.  "You don't have to sleep there. Look, there's plenty of space in my bed."

"Look... errr... Jhonatán, thanks but that's OK, I'll just sleep here on the couch..." I lay down on it.  My head stuck out one side and my legs from thigh down off the other.  I could feel a ninety degree angle already ossifying in my neck.

"C'mon," said Jhonatán, "No one deserves to sleep in that thing. There is plenty of space here."

And so I found myself wide awake at 2 AM, teetering the extreme edge of the bed,  tense as a hunted animal, alert for any sign of movement from Jhonatán's side so that I could flee the room if need be.  A huge jet roared over the roof.  The wind buffeted a loose corner of the tin roof.  The "love seat" sat in mocking repose an arms length away.  The Elmos leered down at me.

The next morning, as promised, Jhonatán had a slate of things to show me around the city, one of which was a new cafe that his friend was opening downtown.  "He's gay though and it's supposed to be sort of a gay hang out, so I hope that doesn't freak you out."

I seized the opportunity.  "And are you gay?"

He looked surprised. "Yes I am, but I don't really tell people unless they ask. How did you know?"

"I have a keen sense of observation," I told him.  The sarcasm was lost on him.

We continued exploring the city and Jhonatán called me his little gringito tousled my hair in a way that made my jaw clench. Every so often he insisted that on getting a bystander to take a picture of us and he would give me the good-ole-side hug and tousle my hair again.  We went into the museum of the history of Guatemalan money and a beautiful docent came to demonstrate how they used to mint money by pounding on the mold with a huge metal hammer. 

"Here you can pound it," she said to me and I slammed the hammer on the mold.  I got to keep the coin that resulted.

"Thanks," I told her.  "And if I accidentally lose this one will you still be here so I can come and get a new one?"  That was for Jhonatán's benefit; it wouldn't do for him to get carried away with the wrong impression of me.

We went to the coffee place his friend was opening– a fifties style diner with pink accents and young waiters in bow ties and tight pants.  It was nearly empty and so we headed to his house.

"I love hanging out with foreigners like you!" Jhonatán told me on the way.

"Oh yeah, why's that?"

'Well I just don't have that many friends here... a few, but we don't hang out that much.  It's hard."

"What makes it hard?"

"Well its just that people here really don't accept gays.  I don't really have anyone to talk about it with."

"And your parents?"

"Well I can't talk about it with them.  They think it is a sin."

"That must be tough."

"Yeah, when I was in high school I always went to youth group and church and prayed hard that God would change me.  When I was first realizing I was gay it was awful and for years I didn't accept it.  I had no one to talk to.  But finally I realized I had to accept it."

"Those must have been some rough years just feeling guilty and trapped."

We got back to Jhonatán's room again, to the Elmos, the jets, the thick concrete floor separating Jhonatán from his family below.  I was resting longways on the "love seat," my legs sticking off the end of course, when Jhonatán got an idea.

"I know what we're going to do," he said.

"What?"

"I'm going to give you a foot massage."

My foot was sore, but not that sore.  "Um,  no you're not."

"C'mon.  Why not?"

"No.  You're not giving me a foot massage.  I hate massages."

"No this has nothing to do with the gay thing.  I just like to treat my friends well."

"Right.  No foot massage."

It was a long night again.  In the morning I said goodbye to my Elmo friends who had kept me company during dark nervous hours.  I took my leave of the "love seat," and the rattling rooftop shack.  I thanked Jhonatón for his hospitality, which had been exceptional, wished him the best of luck, and headed to El Salvador.

Self Portraits of a Walker

Photos spanning my walk across Guatemala:

In the house of Gilberta




Above Conception Huista... the soggy eggs weren't sitting well.

On the high Cuchamatanes plateau

Still in the Cuchamatanes

Leaving the town of Salquil Grande

Leaving Nebaj

Fleeing Rio Pajaritos

Leaving the house with the necapal

Wandering

My last day walking

Two Trees

My feet crashed through the dead leaves on a dry pine and oak hillside and the trail I had been following faded and was gone.  I made for a huge somber pine and sat under it and closed my eyes.  I saw myself through the branches of the trees, head bowed toward the ground, pack thrown next to me like a deflated life raft.  As I rose I saw the top of the tree, shaped like the billows of a cumulus cloud to the eye of a high wheeling hawk, and then I saw the other trees around and between them patches of brown earth where people had scratched at the dust for milenia.  I could no longer distinguish the big treetop but now I could see a tangle of roads twisting between cities, grey sprawling smears of concrete,  and to the north a huge mass of dust roiled up from the ground and from the south a bank of leaden clouds pushed forward and the two rushed at me and collided and I could see no more.


I open my eyes and pointed my feet upward, walking straight over the mountain until I came to a desolate plain that stretched to the foot of far away mountains and seemed not to have a single green leaf.  I passed a village and was scalded by suspicious eyes.  I spent the night in a cell of a room in a squalid town and the next day walked through dust and heat so thick that it stifled the songs of the birds and dust poofed out of the dogs' mouths as they tried to bark.


My road once again led me into highlands, a long range crossed by roads so rutted that the toughest trucks groaned and shuddered and gave up.  One of my feet began to throb.  In the silent heat of midday when all was around was brown and grey I came to a tree aflame with red blossoms, like a sudden shout of pain or joy, like a forgotten memory, a desert oracle.  I passed the tree, crested the ridge, and descended into Joyobaj.  My walk was over.