The Road to the American Dream Runs Both Ways

I met Geovani in Matagalpa, a pulsing Nicaraguan town with streets full of big women frying plantains and cheese on griddles in the street and the back-beat of reggaetón thumping in every corner.  I was looking for a soccer game to jump in on, and was directed to a big roofed basketball court where they play footsal, or indoor soccer.  As I went in, the ref was standing on the line that divides the two halves of the court and blowing his whistle to end the match.  I went over to ask him if I could jump in and since he was between games we got to talking.

He was in his early twenties, with close cropped hair and precise energy coiled behind each of his movements.  His refs uniform was complete and professional.  He spoke slowly and articulately, each word formed with immaculate enunciation, and stood up when he was saying something especially important.  He asked me what part of the States I was from.

Me: Colorado. Have you been to the States then?

G: Yes I have.  I was in North Carolina.  I have a sister and her husband who live there.

Me: And do you have family here?

G: Yes I have a wife and two kids.

Me: So did you to the States to work?

G: Yes.  I worked in a company called Fire Alarm (BIT) that installed systems of security.  Then after two years I was caught by immigration and deported.

Me: And how did you arrive in the U.S. originally?

G:  Well we were wetbacks, we went illegally.  We went by bus to Guatemala and then from there sometimes by train, sometimes by bus, sometimes on foot.

Me: What was the train like?

G: Well, they are cargo trains that go through Mexico, but if you have ever seen them you know they are full of immigrants.  People pile onto the trains, onto flatcars, the roofs of boxcars, clinging from poles... People died while we were on the train.  A father and his child were sitting on the edge of a car when the father began to fall asleep since it had been days since he slept.  He slumped forward which made it so they both started to fall off.  Our guide was able to catch the child before he fell off but did not have time to save the father.  The train ran him over and cut him in half.

Me: And when you got to the frontier, how did you cross?

G: We crossed from Tamulipus into Texas.  There it is not desert but more scrub-land.

Me: And was your guide trustworthy when you got there?

G: Yes, in our case.  We tried to cross once but our coyote realized that there were too many U.S. immigration officer on the other wide.  We went back.  But when we went back, we were caught by Mexican kidnappers.

Me:  Who are these kidnappers?

G:  They belong to the Zetas cartel.  It's like this.  We all come with the phone numbers of our U.S. contacts memorized, not written down on paper.  If the Zetas get you, they torture you until you give them your contact number, and then they call that person and force them to pay around 10,000 dollars to let you go.  If your contact pays the money, then the Zetas deliver you to wherever you want to go in the U.S.  They say that if George Bush himself was kidnapped trying to cross and had his 10,000 paid, they could deliver him right inside the White House.  That's how high up their contacts are.

Me:  And if no one will pay your 10,000?

G: They kill you.  Some arrive adventuring without money, or seeking a better life.  They have no money.  These are killed and remain anonymous.  Sometimes they are put alive into barrels of diesel and burned until there is no evidence of their remains.  These kidnappers are mostly ex- military men.  The ones that caught us traveled in a black, unmarked suburban.  They each carried around 4 weapons– an assault rifle (the kind the U.S. Army uses), an AK 47, and two short arms.  I caught a glimpse of a .357 Mag.  You can do nothing against them, to fight would be illogical.

Me:  So what did you guys do?

G: Well, we were imprisoned for three days while the kidnappers checked to see if our guide was working for them.  Fortunately he belonged to a group of guides who pays the Zetas to have a right to pass through.  So we went on.

Me: And once you are on the U.S. side, what are the dangers?

G: On the U.S. side it's much better.  Then all you have to worry about is immigration patrols.  Well, that's not exactly true.  Some civilians living near the border invest a lot of their own money in reinforcing the border.  They build fences, buy guns, and lay bear traps.  I saw many people mutilated that stepped into traps as they walked during the night. Apart from that the only real danger is that you will work a week or month of hard labor and when payday comes they give you nothing and say, "Get out of here or we will call Immigration and have you deported."  And you can do nothing.

Me: Did that happen to you?

G: Where I work they started out paying me five dollars an hour.  They said, "You are illegal.  This is what we will pay you." I said O.K. because I was happy to be earning money.  After one week they saw that I worked very hard and said, "we can't only pay you 5 an hour" so they gave me a raise to $8.  Later they were paying me $10.

Me: So you won their respect...

G: So much so that they are helping me request citizenship from the Government.  The U.S. makes you wait 5 years of punishment after being deported and then you can request a letter of pardon.  Luckily I paid all my taxes and have proof of it.  I can prove I would be a productive citizen.  Meanwhile the company is sending me to work on projects they are doing outside of the States.  I recently got back from Trindad and Tobegeo for instance, where they were installing systems.  Soon they might have a project for me in Barbados.  I don't have fixed work right now because I have to be ready to go at any moment.

Me: And what was is like when Immigration caught you?  What happened?

G:  Immigration was there in two minutes after we were discovered even though we were far from the border.  For six days they put us in a room where we had to sleep on a bare concrete floor.  We had no blankets nor cushioning.  The air conditioning, as it always is in the U.S., was turned on full blast.  Me and five other Nicaraguans all huddled together for warmth.  The lights were always on so we never knew if it was day or night.

Me:  What were you given to eat?

G:  They gave us water and a cold slice of ham between two pieces of bread.  This was offered six times in 24 hours.  We were told that these six days were punishment for being in the States illegally.

Me: And did the guards ever physically mistreat you?

G: No.  In fact when they arrested me they put on the handcuffs very tight.  I let them know and they took them off and put them on looser.  They kept their distance.  We were told that the only crime we committed was being in the country illegally, and that crime did not merit corporal punishment.  If the guards mistreated us, we had a chance of getting our residency as compensation.  So they kept their distance.


The soccer players had begun to congregate on the court.  "Would there be a chance for me to jump in and play?" I asked.  Well no, all the teams had been organized since a long time ago.  They pay dues to the futball organization of Nicaragua.  Sounded like I'd have to stick around for a while and pay my dues to get in on the game.  But before I left Giovanni to ref, I had one last question for him.

"So what is your opinion about the U.S. border policy?  Should we have an open border?"

"Though it is hard for me to say, I understand why the U.S. must have security on its borders.  One of the things I valued about the States is the security and safety I had there.  I paid my taxes because I wanted to contribute to that security and peace.  If there was an open border the States would be the same chaos that Central America is, where each government has little control over its people.  There are Hispanics that come and cause trouble.  But there are many who come to help.  Many contribute to the productivity of the nation.  I would love it if the border were open, but I understand why it is not.  But there must be a way to let those that come to work through and especially those who come out of the necessity of poverty."

Geovani stepped away from the bleachers to officiate the match.  I thought of the long road through the pines of Chihuahua, the blue agave of Jalisco, the cacti of Oaxaca, the stark highlands of Guatemala, the steaming volcanoes of El Salvador, the dry Nicaragua scrub that separated me from where I started from.  I had passed through gangs of soldiers, jolted in the metal beds of pickups, been taken in and fed by warm hands, worried about where my next meal would come from and had arrived at this point on the dusty concrete that echoed with the sound of shuffling shoes and the referee whistle.  And I thought of Geovani heading the other way with hundreds, thousands, millions of others that had passed me like a hot wind welling from the south, a great multitude with their faces fixed on the Rio Bravo del Norte, heavy with fear and hope.

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.

In Hell They Wear Necapals

In Guatemala I was accosted by many an evangelist waving pamphlets, many a prophet preaching precautions against the fires of hell.  On one winding road in the gathering gloom of a mountain storm I was nearly held by force by a preacher standing in the road with slicked back hair and a golden watch, telling me that the time was near and the path was straight but that the light had come into the world.  But though I was given many a glimpse of the lurid flames of the inferno, nothing put the fear of God in me like the time I wore a necapal.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

After my near miss in Rio Pajaritos, the weather cleared and the scent of pine wavered heavy in the hot air along with the sound of a thousand crickets shrilling their occult songs.  I hiked down and down and with every step I took the air became hotter and the land drier and the scream of the crickets louder.  I arrived at the outskirts of Sacapulus where a sweet green river rolls by parched banks and a family invited me to sit in the shade and drink water.

"Would you like to stay the night here?" they asked me.

"Well, I don't know... it might be better to keep going a bit.  I want to get to...."

Just then I caught a glimpse of three beautiful young women coming up the path from the river, in multicolored skirts and crisp white shirts with bundles balanced on their heads.  They swayed and undulated with grace as they balanced the loads they carried.  They passed on a different path and went into one of the rooms in the cluster of buildings belonging to the family that had given me water.

"Um, like I was saying... I'd love to stay here for a while.  I help out with whatever you guys need."

And so it was that I found myself walking the three miles up the path back toward Rio Pajaritos with Uncle Herman to carry fire wood down so that the women could cook.  We split wood (which I finally got the knack of.  Or maybe I just thought I was doing well because there was no 80 year old indigenous woman around to show me up).  It came time to carry down the wood, and Uncle Herman produced the necapals.

The Russian Gulag itself could not have produced a better instrument of torture.  The necapal consists of a thin strip of fiberglass that serves as a headband (yes, fiberglass, that same material that leaves thousands of inexctractable shards of glass in your skin when you handle it and is so nefarious that it doesn't return back to its natural state in millions of years.  Radioactive material decays hundreds of times faster than this hideous fabric).  This headband bears the full weight of the load. From both ends of the fiberglass strip extends a rope, not a nice slick silky cord, but a rope gnarled by weather and use and rough as burlap.  These ropes pass under the armpits, in the most tender spot for maximum abrasion, and wraps up and around the bundle of wood to tie it off.  Imagine yourself to be a giraffe with a car dangling from a cable tied around your head you get a sense for how this thing feels.

I had seen workers all over Guatemala with the necapal,  hauling 100 pound sacks of coffee, bundles of wood, great sacks of grain.  Even the school boys carry their books in a sack on their backs with a strap around their head.  Workers wearing necapals would often stop and chat with me in the road, sustaining the weight like it was a straw sombrero on their head, and then move on.

"If they can do it there is no reason I can't do the same," I thought, eying my pile, half the size of Uncle Herman's and ready to be tied off.  "I'll carry the same as you're carrying, Uncle Herman." I had visions of myself sauntering triumphantly into camp, bearing my load as if it were a bundle of feathers, while two of the young women wiped the light sweat off my brow and the other took the wood I had brought to make me a savory meal.

Uncle Herman look at at me skeptically and put a few more slivers of kindling on my pile.

Pain exploded across my neck as I hoisted up the load and the weight of the wood settled onto the necapal harness.  I took a wavering step and as I set my foot gently down the jarring in my neck felt like I had landed from ten feet up instead of ten inches.  Every fiber in my neck popped and twinged in pain as we set off down the trail.  After about five minutes I was doubled over, my nose bumping my knees, so that the weight of the wood would rest on my back rather than my neck.  We were about a twentieth of the way down.

Uncle Herman was strolling behind me whistling a mindless tune.  "Hey it's easier if you stand up straight," he offered by way of encouragement.

I straightened up and my neck snapped back as far as it would go so that I was gaping open-mouthed at the hot sun overhead, leaving my feet to blindly navigate the rocky path. I tried lifting the load with my hands to take the pressure off my neck but my arms quickly wore out.  My vision wavered as the hazy heat and veil of pain became one and the conviction engulfed me that in hell there are no torturing flames, there is no endless darkness, there are only necapals laden with thousands of pounds that can never be taken off.  I saw a vision of wretches bent double after centuries of wearing the necapal, croaking for water.  If there was only a one and a million chance that hell was like that I did not want to risk going there, and so I prepared myself to fall to my knees and confess my sins to Jesus. Oh Lord spare me thy wrath and the necapal!  But before I got the chance to kneel on my own accord I fell to my knees because I tripped over a rock.

I collapsed to rest and Uncle Herman, not the savviest salmon in the sea, finally realized I was struggling and offered to come back for my load.  But due to some streak of perversity in my nature (maybe something to do with me being a distance runner), I refused.  I was sweating copiously.  The ligaments in my knees were slackening and threatening to buckle sideways.  The burnt-grass wasteland began to spin around me and the river seemed so far away.  I was breathing in short gasps as I stumbled into camp and fell down into the dust.

There was a clamor in the compound as the kids ran to and fro.  They were getting ready to go down to the river for a swim!  Someone offered me a cool liquid and I revived enough to sit up straight. "Come on!'  they yelled to me. "We're going swimming!"

We went down the path and dove off a rock into the cool current.  I let my body relax as the water bore me slowly swirling down the stream and lapped at my dusty face and abraded sides.  The kids laughed and wriggled like fish in the water.  The three young women came down and waded in to their waists and waved like willow saplings.  The bottom was soft sand and the river sound soothing.

"Hey!  Time to get out!  They're releasing waste from the gravel pit!"

The current was suddenly brown and gritty and we all splashed up on shore, dried and dressed.  As we walked up to the house, Isabela, one of three young women told me her story.

"We just came here six months ago from the city.  Our mother was murdered, we don't know who did it but we think it might have been jealousy over her business.  The six of us were left alone... my two brothers, these two sisters, and the baby of the family, Silvia.  So we came where our mom's brother lives and are trying to make ends meet... my brother commutes to the city and works construction and we sell tamales."

I later found out that their father was alive and around but was a drunkard and wouldn't talk to them.  That night the six insisted on giving up one of their three beds and I slept soundly in their sheet metal shack with a sloping dirt floor, crawling with ants searching for crumbs.

The next day I found out most of the family was going back up the mountain to where we had cut wood.  "I will not wear a necapal, never again!"  I let them know.

"Don't worry.  We are just going to carry down a few sticks to fix the roof," Isabela told me.

And so we went up through the burnt grass wasteland again and into the pines where Uncle Herman was already at work lopping off branches for us.  As we sat and waited Isabel and I fell into a conversation about religion.  Isabel and her sisters belonged to the evangelical church in town and went every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night.  She asked about me.

"Well I grew up in a Christian home but now I'm not so sure... what kind of God is supposedly loving and then there is hell and all kinds of pain... how does that work out?"

"You can't think of it that way.  God is good.  We owe him our existence."

"And what about people whose existence sucks?  I mean you've seen it.  I just think that it's messed up that God could actually do something about it and doesn't.  Better to not believe in that kind of cruelty."

"You can't speak of God that way.  If we obey him he will welcome us into heaven. "

The conversation was heating up and we weren't listening to each other any more so I went off to help Uncle Herman.  But I didn't get very far because I stepped into a hidden ditch and fell flat on my face.  Everyone laughed at me. "God is smiting me!" I yelled.  I found the "sticks" that Uncle Herman had cut for me and found them to actually be two small tree trunks.  As I hoisted them crosswise onto my shoulder the rope wounds in my side split open again and I was again doubled over under my burden.  I wobbled down the hill, my arms draped over the crosspiece and my shoulders already burning.  The logs pressed onto my neck and the pain of yesterday came flooding back.

About a mile down the hill I gave up carrying my tree and began hurling the logs, one by one, down the hill.  They would crash and thunk through the brush and come to a stop and then I would come up and either drag them a ways or hurl them again.  As I was lugging unsuccessfully on one of the logs to extract it from a bush, the sisters caught up to me.  They each had a log balanced on their heads, touching it occasionally with a staying hand.  They stepped gracefully around me, never missing a step, and continued on their way as I muttered and tugged on the log.

By the time I got back and rested night had come and the cactus stood out, spiny and succulent, against the fading western light.  The sisters came back from church, elusive shadows under the stars that sometimes streaked from their places and burned into ruin.  We all went into the shack and prepared to sleep.

We couldn't sleep because Uncle Herman, who'd decided to huff glue since it was Friday, kept banging in and out of the door and slurring indeciferable phrases.  We blockaded him out and went to sleep but in the middle of the night we were awoken by a sobbing outside the door, and a begging to be let in out of the cold and to be allowed to speak to the youngest, Silvia.  It was their drunken father.  The simpering went on and I could feel the shame of the daughters well up as deep as the source of the springs that feed the river.  The oldest got up and silently let him in and gave him a blanket.  He lay on the dirt floor and all around his dark shape red ants moved across the ground carrying their heavy loads.

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.