Sidewalks Under Volcanoes

Digging Up the Past with Pedro Morales

2007-05-11T11:57:00.000-07:00

Pedro stands in front of his great-grandfather's kiln.
Note the giant crack left behind by the earthquake of '76.

My name is Pedro Morales, and I am twenty-six years old. I started when I was sixteen or seventeen years old, but even when I was little, I would play in the mud and clay, making little toys, or little tiny tejas*. It was a way for me to learn the skill that was already in my blood. Every person has their art form, va? For me, making bricks and tejas is an art, and it takes a long time to learn how to do it well.

*Teja is the Spanish name for the curved clay shingles used in traditional colonial architecture. A tejar is the yard where these shingles are formed and fired. Thus the name of the town is El Tejar.

My grandfather's father built the brick kiln we use today. It has been in use for more than one hundred years, which makes it the oldest kiln in El Tejar. It was built in an older style, with arches at the base and a brick platform to support the wet clay during firing. The design of our oven is the same as the design brought by the Spaniards when they arrived in El Tejar. We call it an arch kiln, to distinguish it from the new style that we all call American kilns. In an American kiln the chamber where the wood is burned is constructed out of the unfired bricks. We have seen that our kiln is more fuel-efficient, it fires more quickly, and its design allows us a longer working season. When most other brickyards can't make bricks due to the rain, we can still make other products and we don't need bricks to run our kiln.

A photo of the oldest kiln in El Tejar. It has been built into the ground
in order to buttress the arches that support the weight of the wet bricks.

One day my grandfather's father died, while working. My grandfather was only five years old when this happened, and my great-grandmother was the only person in the family who could work. In those days, women worked just like men. My great grandmother ran the kiln, and she could make everything out of clay--bricks, floor tiles, tejas, all of it. She would carry her work all of the way to Antigua, in the days when when everyone travelled in wagons, with oxen. My great-grandmother's name was Francisca. In her time, Antigua was already filled with churches and ruins, but they were also beginning to build a lot more houses for the growing population. The demand for materials was high enough that people from El Tejar kept going back with more bricks and tejas to sell.

When I was little, my grandmother told me about the trip her father and mother took to get to Antigua. They would leave El Tejar at two o'clock in the morning, travelling by wagon to San Miguel Morazán, then San Lorenzo, then Jocotenango and finally arriving in Antigua. It took a lot to make it through the journey, because in those days there were more divisions between different villages. The people who lived in San Lorenzo were a different race, and so there was no friendship between the two villages. When tejareños would pass by San Lorenzo, they carried clubs and machetes to protect themselves from those who would try to rob their products or the money they were carrying home. It was a long journey. Of course,in even older times the tejareños had to drive all the way to Ciudad Vieja, where the Spanish built their first capital. More or less, you could say that people here in El Tejar have been helping to build the houses of those who live in Antigua for more than three centuries.

We are still working this way, still making tejas and selling them in Antigua. Lots of people here are ashamed of this art form, but I am proud to be making tejas in the kiln my great-grandfather built. Tejas have a long history, and there are still many things we don't know. For me this craft is beautiful, and it is unique in all of Guatemala. There are other places where they work with clay, but it isn't the same as our work here. Sometimes people from elsewhere come here and say "That looks easy. I could make tejas." I always say, "Go ahead!" They realize that this work is a lot harder than it looks. I can do it, because I am from El Tejar , and ever since I was little I have been taught how to make a teja.

Two sizes of tejas, after firing.

Making a teja is similar to making bread, because you need to be able to see the point when everything is just right. You need to use a really sticky clay, the kind that feels almost like chocolate. Making bricks is really easy, because you can throw the clay in a mold and then let it lie out. So long as there is no rain the brick will dry perfectly. Tejas are different, because of their shape. You work at a tablero, putting the clay into a mold we call la gradilla. From there we move the clay to a piece of wood called el galapago, which is carved into the curved form of the teja. As we work, we press grooves into the wet clay to keep its curve from collapsing. With your own hands, you must build the teja so it stand up on the earth. Your hand knows where it must pass to preserve the final form, and how to make the clay shine.

Cuadradas drying in the yard before firing.

The tejas we make are everything from two centimeters up to forty-eight centimeters, and we have even made some as long as sixty centimeters. We usually sell our materials in very large quantities, at 1.25 Q apiece or 1,250 Q (165 USD)per thousand. The price is usually higher for those in Antigua, because the contractors add their own commission and transport costs to what we charge. We pay a five percent tax to SAT (Servicio de Administración Tributaria), and we pay an annual fee to the city to have a license for our oven. Every brickyard in town has its own price, and its own set of clients in Antigua. Here, we have also worked with some other builders in the capital, on the road to El Salvador, where there are other colonial-style neighborhoods.

Pedro took me into the mountains to see the pila where his grand-
mother bathed as a child. It is still used in the rainy season, more
than two hundred years after it was built.

Regarding History

I've heard some stories about the history of El Tejar, and sometimes it's hard for me to believe all of the things that have happened right here, in this little place. I always imagine that my grandparents and great-grandparents would have known more of these stories. In their time they were almost living close to the years when the Spanish were here. Still, in El Tejar we can remember some of the history.

It might sound crazy, but I think that this whole region was once covered by a lake. All around here you see mountains, and I believe they held the water. But something happened, and the lake flooded out to one side or the other. The land underneath El Tejar has more clay that anywhere else in Guatemala. I think the clay we have here was left behind when the lake flooded, just like the mud you see in the bottom of a well that's gone dry. Well, it might have been formed by the lake, or it might have been formed by God, in the Creation. The clay begins at the base of the mountains north of town, and it goes all the way to the edge of the canyon near Chuito. If you walk up towards Durazno you can find places where the clay is fifteen meters thick. To the south, past Parramos, the land turns to stones and pumice, because it is the base of a volcano called Acatenango.

The Mayas in this area knew how to work with clay long before the Spanish arrived. They were making pottery and figurines, and they knew how to fire the clay. I know, because sometimes when we are digging we will find places in the earth where there are lots of pieces of pottery and small figurines. There are lots of people who still make similar things out of clay. I know some kids who make all kinds of little animals, and sometimes when I have free time I like to make dinosaurs out of clay. Craftsmen come from Antigua to get our clay, and they make pots and butterflies and things to sell to tourists. The clay is just something you carry in your blood.

Some of the items Pedro has found in the clay, including figurines,
a stone ball, and a small pottery flute that still plays perfectly.

There are places in the woods where you find old things, and other places where there is nothing. I think that people would go into the woods and bury all of their possessions in a place where they hoped no one would ever find them. If we uncover one piece of pottery, we usually uncover a lot of other stuff at the same time. Near my aunt's house, I know people who have found coffins with little children inside, buried really deep. Once, on my uncle's property, we found a stack of six dishes with painted images on them, all buried beneath a layer of clay that is seven meters thick. Everything is in layers, and sometimes there will be a space of five meters between places where we find things. I have found objects that are buried even deeper than the clay, in a layer of sand. When we find things that deep, they must be from a race that existed before the people who buried things in the clay.

Once when we were digging for clay, we found a pot with a lid. When we looked inside we saw a knife made of stone. There was a handle, and it had a perfect shape, but when my brother touched the knife everything but the blade fell apart, like dust. It must have been so old! How many centuries had it survived? The owner of the land was from Chimaltenango, and he liked to sell the old things people found in his clay. When he saw us with the dish he took it, but we managed to hide the knife from him. When I look at it, I think the knife must have been a special weapon for the people who buried it. No one else in El Tejar has ever found anything like it at all. They haven't even found anything made from the same kind of stone. I believe this knife was used to kill someone who the Mayas believed was invincible. For them, it was a powerful weapon, like a bomb, so they stored it very carefully.

Above, the sacred knife in question.

I imagine there are a lot more things buried in the ground. Little by little they are discovered as we take away the clay. I think the Mayas lived in the mountains as well as on the plain where we live now. There might have been classes of Mayas, just like how in these days there are rich people, middle class people, and poor people. I think the wealthy Mayas lived up on the tops of the mountains, and the other people were living down below, on farms. I think there are tombs in the mountains, but a lot of them will stay buried, because now people are selling off their land so others have somewhere to build their houses. Many things will remain buried forever, but from what I have seen, there might be even kings buried around here.

When the Spanish came they took power over every one who lived here. They made the Mayas into slaves. They realized the region was a good place for working with clay, because they could see the pottery and art being made by the people who lived here. They taught the arts of brick making, and began the first brick-making operation up in the mountains north of town. Sometimes when we are digging we find Spanish nails left behind by their carts. You know they are old because they are a very strange, triangular shape.

Here many of us are still making money with the craft that was taught to us by the Spaniards. Neither tejas or the style of houses in Antigua existed before the Spanish came. They used people as slaves, but they taught them all how to produce tejas, and when the Spanish left the traditional craft remained.

Above, dry clay is mixed with water before being pressed into a mold.

Regarding Industry

Right now we are taking clay from a piece of land owned by another Chimalteco. Even though Chimaltenango is very close, our cultures are very different. They are farmers, and they have more weaving, and they raise cattle. They don't work like we do, in the art of clay. So, this Chimalteco realized he had clay on his land, and some of his neighbors told him he could sell it to brick-makers in El Tejar. He's sold off about six cuerdas* of his clay, and there are still another four cuerdas to take away. People here pay for clay by the truck-load, usually around 75 Q per trip. Some brick makers get clay from their own land, so they don't have to pay. Our family has a place like this in the woods below town, and there is some really good clay there. We don't take clay there, though, because we are planning for a time when people no longer want to sell the clay on their land.

*One cuerda is approximately equivalent to thirty square meters.

I've heard people in town say there isn't any clay left in El Tejar, but in truth there is so much clay here that it will be here long after all of the people are gone from this place. The reality is just that there are many landlords who aren't interested in selling the clay they have on their property. They plant vegetables on their land, or else they rent the land for someone else to use. Someday soon we will still see clay all around town, but the landlords won't sell or else they will charge really high prices.

I know a man named Daniel Carillo who owns some land north of town, with a really thick layer of good clay. He doesn't want to sell it off in truckloads; instead he wants to sell the entire piece of land in one unit. For people here, the price of the whole unit is a lot of money. He's talking about millions of quetzales. We might be able to buy a piece of his land, at we could never buy all of it at once.

We have talked about forming a cooperative here, to acquire lands and to sell our materials. Unfortunately, some people didn't support it, because they weren't thinking about the future, or the benefits a cooperative could bring to all of us. There are always great ideas, and if people don't agree with the ideas they can destroy them. Ten years ago, we were all working together to form a cooperative. We were planning a warehouse where we could sell all of our materials from a single source. We were also working out how we could start moving our products to places that are farther away. It was going to be really great, because then our art could have gone far away to places where people wanted it. In the end, the people who have power in El Tejar decided they weren't interested in the cooperative. They are wealthy, and they have lots of properties, and they didn't see how much the cooperative is needed by the smaller brickyards.

We're still working on distributing our products further abroad than Antigua. There is a demand for our products in other countries, because we have made a name for ourselves, here. If you go to Antigua, you'll notice that a house with a teja roof is cool, and it feels wonderful to be inside, even when the sun is at its highest, va? At night, the house doesn't feel cold, either. If you build a terrace house with a flat concrete roof, it will feel cold in the morning, and at night it will be so hot you don't want to stay inside. As a result, tejas are becoming more popular again, especially down closer to the coast where heat is more of a concern. And even with terrace houses, the builders use tejas for decoration.

Now, there are all kinds of new materials to be made out of our clay. We don't just make the bricks and tejas, we can make anything an architect from Antigua asks us to make. We make something called a Quetzal's Breast, to be used for windowsills and eaves on new houses. If someone comes with a new design, we test the mold and if it works in the oven we will go into production.

My grandfather spent twenty-five years making tiles for the salt ponds down in Sipacete, on the coast. There were businesses there making enormous shallow pools out of clay tiles from El Tejar. They would fill the pools with sea water, and the clay tiles would help absorb the water, along with the sun. When pool was dry, workers would sweep up all of the salt with palm-frond brooms. They needed clay from El Tejar for this, because it holds up against the salt. The problem was that it was really expensive to transport the tiles all the way from El Tejar, around the side of Acatenango, and down to the coast. They tried to lower costs by using clay from near Sipacete, but the bricks they made had so much salt in them they would erode really quickly in the salt ponds. They even tried bringing some Tejareños down to the coast, giving them a house and whatever they needed, but even with our craftsmen they couldn't get their clay to work as well as the stuff we have here. The bricks came out of the kiln looking the same, but after a little while they looked like they had been made out of sugar.

Now they are using nylon, which is more expensive, but it is shaped so it gather the salt as the water evaporates. Even so, they say that the old tile ponds produce three times as much salt as the new ones. If it weren't for the cost of transport, they would still be using our tiles in Sipacete.

There are new factories near here, like IMACO, where they are producing designs that are similar to the products we make here in El Tejar. But architects from Antigua say the mass-produced tejas aren't the same as ours. In factories everything is made with presses, and no one uses their hands. Our products are the original, and there is a demand in Antigua for the craft that was left to us by the Spanish. People want our tejas so their houses will be better made, and more beautiful.

One of the many areas outside of town where brick-makers come to
collect clay.

According to law, all houses in Antigua must be constructed in a colonial style. A while back people tried to remove this law, and if they had succeeded it really would have been too much of a change in our business. We could have continued, because we could sell our tejas in Xela, San Marcos, the capital, and to people building houses down by the coast. Still, Antigua is where we see the most demand for our products. If they changed the law, houses there would begin to look really different. The age of the houses, and the heritage they enjoy there would all be completely lost. Antigua would no longer be Antigua. It seems really stupid to want to change the law, because so many people benefit from the way Antigua is built. Tourists come to spend their money in places like that, and their money eventually comes to help all of us. People here often think only of their own benefit, rather than the benefit of their entire community. There were many supporting the change, and many against it, and in the end initiative failed and the law remained in place. Even if the house is new, it needs to be built in an old style. And now Antigua is a World Heritage Site, so it is illegal to destroy an existing structure. You can only make restorations.

Imagine, if I were to destroy my great-granfather's kiln, I could never build it the same way again. Everything about it is unique, as if it were an important ruin. The adobe and bricks, and the earth around it, all have found their form. If I decided to rebuild it I would be throwing away too many years, and too much history. This kiln is the source of all of our work, and our income. It is like the pot where our family cooks all of our food. Puchica, it's a grand history our kiln has.

Since I was born I have looked at these stones, here. My granfather told me they were put there by his mother, Francisca, before he was born. Now, my grandfather lived to ninety-four years old, so when I think about how long those stones have been here, I begin to admire them.

Bricks and tejas in front of a kiln.

Pedro Relates to the Vastness of History and Earth

Some people here aren't very concerned with our history. If they dig someting up, they just throw it aside. Once my uncle found a huge jar buried in the dirt, and he just tossed it so it broke into a thousand pieces. Sometimes people here follow religions that don't allow them to value the older beliefs of the Maya. I believe in God and all that, but I also believe in the past and the people who lived before me. Imagine, if we were all drowned in a flood, and someone many years later were to find all of our belongings, for them it would be a wonderful thing, va? For me, it is the same when I see things buried in the clay.

When I find something in the mud I look at it and wonder, "What hand made this?" Usually I clean it off and keep it, because every piece is wonderful to me. So many people don't value these things. It's such a loss, and I think we are losing so much history this way. For example, the coffins they've found over near my aunt's house, I bet you could really learn a lot from studying those bones. People aren't really interested in them and they toss such things aside. Sometimes I think about going to dig, and I've even made up some plans to show where I think things lie, more or less. But most of the land is owned by landlords, so it isn't like I can just go up into the hills and start digging wherever I want.

There have been many different races in El Tejar. First, there were the Mayas. When the Spanish came, the two races mixed together and produced a new race. Many Spanish families remained here, and in town there are families named Diaz, Torres, Morales, Carillo. My grandfather told me that in his time there were only about one hundred and forty people living in El Tejar. Before that, I imagine the whole place must have been one big plantation, with Mayas living all around it. Now we have Catholics, Evangelicals, Mormons, and other religions. I imagine when there were Mayas here, they also had many different beliefs. I also believe the Mayas from Tecpan* were a different race from those who lived here.

I have seen the ruins at Tecpan, and I have been to the museum, but they don't have anything similar to the pieces I have at home, and like others in El Tejar have found. I imagine Tecpan was like a base, with soldiers living there. They had a leader there, and they protected their leader, because he was like the president of everyone nearby. People there were more dedicated to protecting their leader, and people here were more interested in developing their art. Some of the designs and figures we find are really incredible!

*Tecpan is a modern city sixty kilometers east of El Tejar. Pedro mentions it because it is near the ruins of Iximche, which was the sacred capital of the Kaqchikel Maya.

Pottery fragments and bottle caps lie in the dirt outside of El Tejar.

Don Jorge Makes His Own Marimbas

2007-04-27T10:03:00.001-07:00

My name is Don Jorge Avila Morales, and I was born on the 19th of April in 1927. A few weeks ago I became eighty years old.

My experience, well, I believe God himself grabbed me when I was a child, and he made me realize that I loved the art of the marimba. At six years old I set up a row of wooden planks and pretended it was my marimba. I would have liked to have a little toy marimba, but my mother and father were very poor and they couldn't buy me anything. At my age I couldn't work, or make any money, so instead I set up my little row of planks. I even made a little stand to put them on. I looked at a big marimba, and I tried to make mine the same. With my little planks I was happy, and I would stand by them, sing and dance. That was how I made my first marimba, when I was six years old.

Around this time I got some of my cousins together. I said "Come with me, amigos, we'll get together like the groups that come to town to play concerts."

"Okay," they said.

We put together all of our imaginary marimbas, and we would play together almost every day. We didn't really know what we were doing, but in time we actually started to learn how to play songs. The years passed, but this same group of guys stayed together. By the time we were all about ten, we could play a little better. We played famous songs, like "Ferrocarril de Los Altos" and "Lagrima de Telma". By the time I was thirteen, I had made my first full size marimba. It didn't have a very good sound, but I loved playing it, va? As a group, we would perform little concerts. I made a violón out of an old bucket and a wooden pole, and we managed to get a sound out of it. We all liked playing, and we would get together every Sunday to play at some one's house. I loved it. By the time I was fifteen I had formed my first real group, with a lot of the same kids, except we were beginning to grow up. In those years I formalized my group, and when I turned twenty I got married. At my wedding I celebrated by playing my marimba. All of my friends came, and they made music as a gift to me. They didn't charge me anything for their time. It was beautiful.

I continued in the work that made me so happy, and I continued making marimbas, until I was finally making proper, concert-size marimbas to sell in Guatemala. I have even sent some of my marimbas abroad: eight marimbas to the United States, one to Canada, a few to Honduras and El Salvador. In this way I have passed through my eighty years, little by little, living a life of the marimba. I go to concerts, and I play wherever they take me to play. I have played at festivals where there are seven, eight, or even ten marimbas all playing at once. Once, they held a big competition in Tecpan. They brought us to play, and when we came home we had the first prize. My grandchildren also play the marimba, and they've been playing concerts in Antigua. This weekend I am going with some of my children and grandchildren to play marimba in the capital. for the Guatemalan Journalists' Association.

Don Jorge's son hold a photo of his father's band, taken some time in
the mid 1970's. Jorge is second from the right, behind the big marimba.

I keep making marimbas. I am a very poor man, but my beautiful God has given me the wealth of knowing how to do something special. For me, it isn't a bad job, but it certainly has taken a lot out of me over the years.

When I started to make marimbas, I just followed my own curiosity. Once, my parents held a cofraria*, and they hired a marimba to play for their guests. I went close to the marimba to hear how it made sound, and to see how the keys were registered. I got so close that the musician smacked me with his mallets. He thought I was trying to mess up his instrument.

*A cofraria is, in essence, a party held in honor of local patron saints. The responsibility for hosting the party is rotational, and each year a new group of families is both honored with the chance to host the party and burdened with the cost of the celebrations.

"Señor," I said, "I am simply looking at your marimba to see how it makes sound. I am building my own marimba. Why did you hit me?"

"No lies!" He said. "What do you really want, kid?"

I looked up and said, "Even though you are very big and I am still small, I would like to play marimba some day."

I took him to see the marimba I was making in my home, and when he saw it he begged my pardon for hitting me. That was my start. My father was a carpenter, and he gave me some advice about how I could work with wood, as well. So, that was how I began this art of the marimba. I'm very poor, but everything is how god wanted it, va?

We buy the wood in big pieces, we cut it, and then we go about making the keys in a range from contra tiple to el tiple, el centro, and el bajo. Beneath the keys you must make the sound chambers, bigger and bigger. You must look for wood that is beautiful, so that it will give a good sound. These days a lot of the best wood comes from very far away, and you need a lot of money because it is so expensive. There was a time when we harvested the wood here in Guatemala, but now it's mostly gone. There are five kinds of wood: el hormigo, rosul, granadillo, ebony, and rosewood. El hormigo is the most expensive, and you can only find it near the coast, close to the border with Mexico. All of the different woods have a beautiful sound. What matters most is the ability of the one making the marimba. If god is not helping me, then the wood will have a poor sound. If I do it right, and God is willing, then the wood will sing.

Marimba pieces in Jorge's workshop.

Click the button to hear Don Jorge play a song he
wrote about the town he lives in.

Public Office, Natural Disasters

Now, on the subject of serving my pueblo, I am proud to say I began my time in the military when I was eighteen years old. I am a veteran. I spent time living in the barracks. For most of my service I was with the air force, in Chimaltenango. I never earned anything in my time as a soldier, I was there by the force of my will alone. Later, I held several positions in the municipality, as regidor and syndico, because that was where the other politicians wanted me to be. When I entered my fiftieth year, I was elected mayor. In those days we weren't really paid for this work, either. As the leader of El Tejar, I was paid fifty quetzales per month.

In my life, I have made some sacrifices. I know how to plant beans and corn, and some other plants, so my family can eat when there isn't enough money.

When I was mayor there were no resources to work with. We had a hard time. Even so, we left a memory of ourselves in the municipality. We did a few things, we installed a mechanical well, we built a park. Today, it is a happy thing to serve as mayor, because you are paid well, and the city receives its 12% from the federal government in order to complete bigger projects.

One evening we were holding a meeting in a new high school. My secretary, my treasurer, and some other people were there with me. We were working into the night because the school was due to open in eight days. We had no idea what was coming. It was late, and so we said "Let's all go to bed, and get back to this tomorrow." We all left, and by the time I was lying down it must have been about two in the morning. Suddenly I felt a huge earthquake. "My god," I said, "Why are you punishing me?"

The walls of my house, and the roof, they fell down onto my sons and my babies. The beds were all destroyed, everything was destroyed. We were frightened, because we couldn't find one of my daughters. A friend of mine was helping me look for my girl; we were searching through the rubble and dust. Finally we found her, under some pieces of the roof. A rafter had fallen on her, and when we managed to lift it we could see her face was swollen and bleeding. We pulled her out from under the rubble, and took her to the hospital. Thanks to god she survived, and now she is thirty years old.

Don Jorge plays a song with his grandson, who he is teaching to play
the marimba. This child's mother is the daughter who was rescued
from beneath a rafter in the story above.

As the mayor, I was responsible for taking away the twenty six people who died in the earthquake. They were buried under walls, in their sleeping clothes. There were so many of them. The judge declared that we needed to go and take all of them away, so I went out with my secretary and we found others who could help. We had to clear away adobe, walls, furniture, to get to those who were still underneath. Little by little, we pulled them all out. I also gathered all of the injured people together, and we went to the hospital in a group. It was all very sad. They said I was in charge, but what could I do to help the entire town at one time? Or when a disaster had fallen on the entire republic?

Other countries tried to help, but really all of the aid went to the government. We had some assistance in our little town, but it wasn't much. We had a little milk, a little rice, beans--not much. We received no money. It seemed there were so many nations coming to help, but it didn't seem like the help really had that much of an effect. Some organizations came to help us build affordable houses. The walls were made of plaster and wood, the roofs were made of tin. This helped, but still we had to pay something in order to have one of these houses. Later, the Red Cross came and gave away some other houses made of boards and corrugated tin. To have one of these houses, you needed to work with them for fifteen days. This program helped. To tell the truth, there were so many groups coming and going, trying to accomplish different things that it got to be a little hard for me to keep all of them straight in my mind.

We began to build shelters out of nylon, and for a while we were all living in these champas on the municipal football field. Other cities and countries donated the materials we used for our shelters. A few times we had helicopters come and land in a field near town. They brought us blankets and sheets, and food for those of us who really had nothing at all. These gifts helped us very much.

For my part, I wouldn't ever like to have another earthquake here in El Tejar. It was as though absolutely everything came down in one blow. Here, and in Chimaltenango, Parramos, Itzapa, Comalapa, and in Patzicia. I believe it was worse here than in other parts of the republic.

Frankly, life has been pretty difficult. Some of us are living a hard life, and others among us are living even harder lives. Those who died in the earthquake are the saddest of all. Among the dead were some of those friends who would play marimba with me when we were children. Their walls fell down on top of them.

We must go on, until God says "This is where all the music and art must end." His law says that our bodies must die. That is how I will live my life.

An Infinity of Things: Don Jose Participates in the Global Marketplace

2007-04-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

Four years ago my family was living in Escuintla, where I was working for the Ministry of Culture and Sports. First I was transferred to Tecpan, and I decided to bring my family with me. In Guatemala the level of violence in the streets is really tremendous, and we thought it would be best to move from the bigger city to a smaller place like Tecpan. But when my contract with the Ministry came up for renewal, they decided to let me go. We hadn't been in Tecpan very long, so we decided to move to El Tejar, where the cost of living was lower. We rented a house, and started to talk about ways to earn some money. At first we were thinking of opening a tortilleria, but there were already several in town. I had a pick-up, so for a while I thought about starting a little delivery business here in town.

A person can work in any profession, even if it isn't exactly what they see as their career. The only requirement, for me, is that I can enjoy my work, and I like the people I work with. One result of globalization is that different kinds of people come to direct a business in Guatemala. Koreans, for example, can be real tyrants when it comes to management. I've heard about women being grabbed by their hair and beaten for not completing their work in the maquilas. There are people who put up with this out of necessity, but my character is different. I'm a friendly person, but if someone mistreats me I respond to them in the same manner. Knowing this about myself, I decided that I wouldn't be able to work in one of the factories that are here in El Tejar.

One day my wife and I were walking in Chimaltenango, and we saw someone with a lot of toys for sale. My wife thought it was a good idea. We already knew where to go to buy toys in quantity, and so we started doing some research to see what the costs were and how much we could sell the toys for in El Tejar. When we had all of the numbers, it looked like it could be a pretty decent business.

In the capital there are importers who sell clothes and toys by weight, in sealed boxes called pacas. The boxes come by container ship from the US, in really huge quantities. Some pacas weigh thirty of forty pounds, others come in really enormous weights. We buy seventy pound containers, because they are easiest to get back to El Tejar. Buying toys in paca is kind of a gamble. The products are sealed shut, and you don't really know what you are getting. You might get really good products, and make a lot of money. With other pacas you might break even, or lose money. The shipments come from different places like Houston or Los Angeles. The very best toys come from New York, and they cost more per pound than toys from anywhere else in the United States.

Above, an empty paca, humble vessel of the transnational economy.

Before Christmas we bought thrity-five pacas. We had electronic toys, machines, dolls, action figures, cars. It all comes in a big jumble. You don't get a whole case of Batman figures, you get big toys, small toys, broken toys, everything. The most popular toys are always those that represent famous characters: Men in Black, He-Man, Superman, Spider Man. Also, toy cars and trucks always sell out really quickly.

The warehouses selling these toys in the capital tell me they enter the country under a classification similar to the toys that are given to Latin America as dontations. If we said these toys were donations, we would be speaking in error, because that would mean that these toys were gifts for very poor children. Donated toys are brand new, and these toys are those that have been used as display models in stores and exhibitions. I imagine there are buyers in the United States who work with large toy suppliers to package up all of these used toys, and send them to Guatemala.

Once, inside of a paca, I found a business card with the address of the place that sends the pacas from New York. These companies probably also send the pacas of clothing, but we decided there were already too many used clothing stores in El Tejar.

We decided to open a shop selling toys and stuffed animals. We started to look for a location, and we bought some shelves we could use to display our products. Unfortunately, after investing in some toys, we didn't have enough money left to pay rent in any of the places that were available. Where we are now, in this shop, there was an elderly lady who sold chickens. She gave us permission to set our shelves up on the sidewalk in front of her shop, but only on the weekends. For four months we brought toys in from the capital and sold them on the sidewalk, here. Then one day she decided she was going to stop selling chickens, and she let us move into her old shop. With what we had already earned, we could pay rent, and buy some more display cases for inside, and set up the shop as it is now.

It took us a little while to learn the about the business. At first we sold our toys without knowing the real price of the toys. There are different qualities and some brands are better than others. Little Tykes, Fisher Price, Tomi, and many other brands are made in China, but they are built according to American quality standards. If you try to buy these brands new they are really expensive. In El Tejar we can't sell anything at really high prices, but at first we were selling at prices that were too low. We've gotten some practice, and we know more about the value of different kinds of toys and stuffed animals.

In time, we have managed to formalize our business. In the beginning we were informal, especially when we were out in the street. After we moved into the shop we continued informally, at first. We always paid twelve percent IVA (VAT) tax on the value of a paca. Then we began to pay five percent on our earnings to SAT (Servicio de Administración Tributaria), and we became a fully legal business. We pay bills in our name, we pay our taxes, and we pay to rent our building. In truth, it's a really easy business. We don't have any loans, and our products are the opposite of perishable, so we don't have to worry very much about our investments. Sometimes we lose money, but in the long term we make it all back.

There are a lot of toystores like ours in Chimaltenango, and here in El Tejar there is one other store. On the weekends a man comes in to sell toys out of the back of his truck at the market. In the capital, and all over Guatemala, there are an enormous number of stores like this, selling toys and clothes from paca. Even so, I don't think that those of use selling from paca could ever successfully organize, because the relationships between individuals would take an awful lot of work to maintain. Everyone in Guatemala is egoistic, looking out for their own interests. It's not like other places, like the US, where people have associations. People here don't understand how organization can make things better and bring benefits to everyone. Here, when we are walking we look out for a way to trip up the people walking next to us. This is the case with Latinos, or at least those of us here in Guatemala. Sadly, few of us see beyond this situation.

The power of labelling: that which leaves the US as "similar to a
donation" is eventually resold in El Tejar as "imported" clothing.

The difference between working in a maquila and working here in my store is that in maquilas you have a steady wage. In a month you never make more or less than 1200 Q. Me, sometimes I make more, sometimes less. Sometimes my business comes in a flood, and sometimes it is a trickle, nothing more. I prefer to work like this, because it gives me time to do other things I want to do, and I have more time for my fammily. I have rheumatic arthritis, and when it's bad i can't work. If I were at the maquilas, I wouldn't be able to miss work when I was sick. For a lot of reasons I prefer to work by my own account instead of in a big factory.

My daughter is twelve, and my son is three. The two of them get all of the broken toys from the pacas, and it's amazing how happy they are with them. My son collects all of the broken cars and puts them all in a line, and he'll pretend it is the highway. He'll have thirty or forty cars, all broken and smashed, but he likes it that way. Sometimes he pretends to be fixing them. My daughter keeps even the most rotten-looking Barbies, every single one. The kids get pretty excited when we open a new paca.

Obsolescent Quality, Effervescent Cheapness, and Pirateria

In all, we've been getting by here since we've moved from Escuintla. The climate is different here, the people are different, and the way of doing business is different as well. IN warm places there is always more business, and people are more active. Here the people are really passive, and they always expect a discount. I think it's part of the culture, here, that tejareños are very cautious when it comes to business. It's hard to get them to realize that if they want a quality product, they must pay for it.

Part of my business in Escuintla was selling bicycle parts. We would have liked to start this business here, but we saw that people here are more concerned with price than they are with quality. They only want to buy parts that come from China or India. Even those that come from Taiwan are too expensive for them. They would never pay the price for products from the US, or England, or Germany. They want poor quality, cheap goods, and in a small town this would never be profitable. To make money with Chinese products you need a really high volume of sales, and you have to be able to do so someting about all the products that fail after people buy them.

Back in the years before 1980, you could buy really good products here. For the most part, we all bought and sold American products, as well as some French and English products. We had clothing, machinery, and different parts for sale. The thing was, that all of this arrived late. I mean, if something was in syle in the US, it would take three or four years to arrive in Guatemala.

Way before computers, before cellphones, even before television, there was a moment here that was something like an industrial revolution. For the first time, goods began to come into our country that were of a really poor quality, but also a really low price. First, lots of things started to arrive from Japan, and we could tell that these products were of really good quality: Toyotas, Datsuns, Nissans, and some really good tools. But the price of Japanese goods was similar to the price of American goods.

Then products from Taiwan started to appear, and this changed everything. We had clothes, machine parts, tools, toys, music. Ay! We had an infinity of things! Also, since there was an increasing presence of Asian people in Guatemala, they began to open up a new kind of business. In the past, we'd never had these places called commercial centers. We had supermarkets, where people bought groceries. But there weren't places like Pradera, where you can buy groceries and shoes and clothes and everything. We call these places moles, like in English. They started to appear in Guatemala in the nineties.

Shoppers navigate the courtyard at the Pradera shopping center,
which is known locally as "el mol".

Before all of this, I think there was a kind of burgeoning globalization within our country. Gradually, newer and newer things were beginning to arrive. When I was a child, I never watched television. When I was ten or eleven, I saw TV for the first time, at someone else's house. Then, when I was fifteen, I bought my first television. The only shows you could watch, on every channel, were Mexican films. That was it, just Mexican men smoking and drinking at the cantina while their wives waited for them at home. When cable was introduced, in the late eigties, it was like the people were awakening to a whole new world of things. We watched American movies with big satellite dishes, so big they nearly pulled our house down. It used to be pretty rare to know someone who had an album of music from the US, and these records would be five years out of date. After a while, the records were only one year out of date, and then in maybe 1995 everything changed. At last, completely Chinese appeared in our markets.

The Chimaltenango Maxibodega, next door to Pradera, is part of the
vast Paiz/CARHCO retail conglomerate, which operates as Wal-Mart's
Central American subsidiary.

The first time I saw pirata was in the eighties, in Tapachula. You'd see some guys selling jeans, and ask "How much are those jeans? What brands do you have?" They'd say "Well, what brand do you want us to put on them?" They could fake the labels for Sergio Valente, Levis, Lee, Hang Ten, and everything. When you came back to Guatemala you could say you'd bought some chafa in Mexico. Before, you barely ever saw pirata. We had genuine things, original things. I guess thay hadn't figured out how to do this kind of work yet. Gradually we saw casettes, videos, all spreadng from the capital of Guatemala out ino the rest of the country. Then, when CDs were introduced, I can only imagine how many people made themselves into millionaires. A disc that would have originally cost 125 Q might have cost 40 Q on the street. Since then, competition has driven the price lower and lower, until now the same disc might cost five quetzales.

A selection of pirated media can be found at a small stand that sets
up every day in front of El Tejar's town library.

More or less, this is how globalization enveloped our country. New businesses, new services, and new producs have arrived, including many things we had never seen before. I see the impact of this change everywhere, not just in products but in our culture as well. Before, we were a much more communicative culture. You knew who lived on either side of you house, and you spoke with them. Now, no one really knows one another.* Everyone is accustomed to staying inside their house, watching televison. This is a North American custom that has been carried over into our culture, and I believe as a result we are losing some of our older social customs.

*It is curious that Jose feels this way. Our conversation took place on the steps in front of his store, and as you will notice when listening to the auio file, he exchanged warm greetings with many of the pedestrians passing by his store.

In all, I believe globalization is a good change for our culture. We are capable of attracting more international investors to compete with our national companies. Before, everything was monopolized: electricity; water; natural gas; telephones; even soda pop. If you wanted to have a phone installed in your house, you might spend ten years filling out applications and waiting for them to come install a phone. When other companies came to compete with TELGUA, everyone realized that the way to make money is not by restricting access to telephones, but by making them more and more available. Now, you can have a phone installed in your house the same day you ask for one. This is the way things should be, according to the laws of supply and demand.

So, globalization has broken the monopoly of many companies who once had complete control over Guatemala. With free enterpise we have a wider selection of things to buy, and they are cheaper than ever before. Before, a television was something onlñy wealthy people could have. I've seen Chinese televisions for sale for 800 Q, and even if they don't last all that long you'll still get a little use before they break down.

Bad things always come along with the good. One disadvantage of globalization has been the number of small producers who fail when they can no longer compete with big transnational companies. There doesn't seem to be much regulation in our country, and it's too bad that we can't protect small producers. Someone who cultivates a few manzanas of corn will have to sell their product for a high price, in order to cover the cost of labor, transport, harvesting, and all that goes into getting the corn to market. If they charge $1.25 for a pound of corn, and corn from the US or Brazil costs twenty-five cents, who do you think will get all of the business?

Inscrutable Messages Arrive from the Center

Once, in a paca, I found a really expensive piece of jewelry. It was a peacock made entirely outof perals and gold. There was writing on it that said it had been made in Austria. Someone threw it into the paca, either on accident or on purpose. Who knows? Sometimes when I open a paca I'll find toys that don't make any sense to me. Once I found this square thing, with bars sticking out of the sides, and reflectors stuck all over it. It would turn around and around, but you couldn't tell what it was really supposed to do. There was no sound, or music, or and light effects. The toys I sell just arrive, without any packaging or any explanation.

Talking Local Politics with Don Manolo Mendez

2007-04-21T09:43:00.000-07:00

My father, Virgilio Mendez, was once the mayor of El Tejar. He held office during the civil war, so there weren't really many resources. The city received 10% of federal taxes, as guaranteed by the constitution, but to complete his projects he also needed to go out in search of additional resources. You could say his style of governing was as a social promoter, but his work was pretty severely restricted by la violencia. In the years after my father was mayor, I began to become involved in politics. I felt it was something I was inheriting from my father. By profession I am a teacher, and this has taught me to become involved in places where there is a necessity. I am concerned with the problems we have that are the result of deeper problems in our society. I also like sports, and for a while now I've been working as an organizer to support the local indoor soccer associations.

Seven years ago I was part of the planning committee in the elections, and when we won I was given a position on the advisory council. At twenty-nine, I was the youngest person involved in local politics. During this term, we worked to pave the roads in some of the outlying communities in El Tejar, we built two bridges, and we made some pretty big improvements to the schools in the area. Also, we worked on improving the teaching contracts in the area, because the federal government doesn't give much support to teachers.

In El Tejar it is customary for local political parties to paint their
logos directly onto the houses in their constituency, and these pain-
tings remain for many years after the election. Above is one of
Manolo's murals from his 2004 campaign. Throughout the following
text I have included other examples of campaign murals.

In 2004 I ran for mayor at the head of a civic committee, with my father as my political advisor. The civic committee was a good way for us to develop our own strength, and to have room to think the way we wanted to. We ran without the assistance of any official parties, and we funded the campaign ourselves. We made local development the main focus of our campaign. We only lost the election by 87 votes. This time around, I didn't really want to run, but a group of people here asked me to participate. So far, we have no economic support from anyone, but I can surely say we have a unique vision about the work that needs to be done in our town. It's an adventure. No one is thinking for us.

In the US you have the Democrats and the Republicans. In Guatemala we have the left, the right, the center, the center-left and the center-right. More or less, our two countries are the same: politics is about ideologies and party-politics. Our civic committee aims for a more social program. We have all different sorts of people working together on our campaign, and we are talking a lot about what it means to seek the common good, rather than individual wealth. Our idea is to have a government that operates from below and addresses all sectors of the population. We are trying to make the reality of the people in El Tejar the foundation for our political work.

A mural for Partido Patriota, a hard-right candidate both locally
and in the coming national elections.

Right now we are in contact with three of the national political parties. Since we came so close to winning the last election, we have attracted their attention. In the next few days we will be discussing whether we should convert our committee into one of these legally established parties. We'll have to see which party most pertains to our form of thinking. We aren't just looking for help with publicity from a major party. We need to be sure they won't become an obstacle to our project once we arrive in office. People in town are tired of how corrupt some of these campaigns have become. The candidates from the major parties can throw a million quetzales into their campaign, and that is really a lot of money to people here.

Personally, I believe that the world moves according to the will of a supreme being. If it is His will, I will be mayor. Even the president operates in this way. What is the difference between the powerful and the weak, if we all have the same faith?

Concerning Life in the Space Between Factory Walls

Guatemala is known as a place of many distinct ethnic identities. However, our community roots are not purely indigenous, nor indigenista, but also are the result of mestizo culture and the mix between ladino and native cultures. El Tejar is a zona franca, a free trade zone, which means there are a number of factories here. The ethnicity in the area is kaqchikel. Before El Tejar was declared a zona franca, farmers here were growing corn, beans, squash, huisquil, and other vegetables. Artisans here were producing bricks and pottery, as well as small clay sculptures of different animals. Lots of people here also dedicated themselves to weaving textiles. There was a lot of work here in producing traje , the traditional clothing worn by women from other regions in Guatemala, like Escuintla and Sacatepequez. Women usually worked in the home, and helped produce various crafts. Children here have always attended schools, and we have a relatively high rate of literacy here in El Tejar, when compared to other parts of the country. A certain percentage of the town attended colleges and found work in town as teachers, secretaries, lawyers, and accountants.

We have somewhere around ten different factories here: Bimbo, Zeta Gas, Lamale, Nylontex, Dong Bang, Alianza Fashion, and Maseca. We also have Inapsa, where they grow broccoli, and for a long time there were industrial rose-growing operations outside of town. The maquilas and other industries began arriving about fifteen years ago. One result of these industries' arrival in town has been a change in the community so that very few people here identify themselves as Kaqchikel. When people started to work in the factories, they started to wear pants, jeans, and t-shirts. Women who wore huipiles and cortes are wearing modern clothes. They used to wear their hair in traditional braids, and now they have fancy new hairstyles, or they dye their hair. Some of this change is from the television, but really it has to do with where they work. You can't really expect to work for fifteen hours a day in an overheated factory wearing traditional clothing.

Liria, a tejareña who works at the market, is wearing
the heavily embroidered traje that was once the tradi-
tional outfit for all women in the community.

Roca and his family visit the market together before
Wendy goes to work at the University in Chimaltenango.

Doña Isabel, in front of the beauty shop she owns
beside the Panamericana.

People here would rather make bread at Bimbo, or flour at Maseca, rather than going to work in the fields. The problem, though, is that the factories are often directed by people from other parts of Guatemala, and when they are filling important positions in the company they hire people they know from their homes, rather than hiring people from El Tejar. This means that we have a lot of migration in town, from Retalhuleu, Suchatepequez, Coban, and Quiche. El Tejar is really becoming a mix of different cultures and identities.

There are some advantages to being a zona franca, but we have lost a lot as well in terms of our own culture and what we are capable of producing by ourselves. The weavers have all gone to work making jackets and pants, and the farmers all want to learn how to use a sewing machine. They've got the right idea, which is to look for a way to get a better position in the world. But when these jobs go away, or end up going to people from other towns, then the locals end up unemployed, and they're stuck. I'd say that this is somewhere the local authority could direct its efforts, to ensure that the majority of the jobs in the factories here are going to tejareños.

From my perspective it's a good thing for them to be bringing jobs to the community. That's where we begin our negotiation. But if the people don't have work, then what is the use in having the industries here? Instead of coming to help, they might be taking away part of our culture, and our heritage. We are in a zona franca, which means they don't contribute anything to our community. They don't pay taxes. If we ask them to participate in a project financially, we don't get any help. It's a challenge for us to find a way to negotiate with these businesses so they are making a contribution to our town.

We provide services to the factories. They use the same water as anyone else in El Tejar, and they pay exactly the same rates for their usage. We have eight pumps in town, and the water in my house comes from the same source as the water they use. They also have their own well, of course, but they use our water. They are using our drainage systems, our sewer lines. Perhaps all we need is someone who will devote themselves to working with these companies, who will ask them to make some changes. I say all of this depends on the local authorities.

The road past Inapsa and Maseca, behind Dong Bang, is an example of a place where we've had some problems. There is a new community back in that area, the Colonia Patricia Arzú. We had a project ready to pave the road, but when we started we were told by the management at Maseca that they weren't going to halt production while the road went in, and they would charge the city for all product lost as a result of the road closure. So, for the simple reason that they were up and running, we couldn't go ahead with our paving project. I believe there must be an alternative to this way of working. It's a question of conscience. We could hold some meetings, try to reach a consensus, and avoid a lot of these problems.

Above, the road past Inapsa and Maseca, behind Dong Bang.

In Patricia Arzú there are a lot of children who are suffering from intestinal problems, as well as throat and lung infections. They all live right behind these big industrial plants, where they use all sort of contaminants. For example, they are using ammonia gas as a fertilizer in their fields at Inapsa, and it is causing contamination. Maseca's waste water contains all of the material left from washing their grain, and their waste from making flour. They have settling ponds on the back of their property, and the water soaks down directly into the town's water table. If you go to Patricia Arzú around ten in the morning, the smell coming from the waste ponds is overpowering.

The other problem is that we don't really have too much control over the sort of people who come to work here. Sometimes they are coming here from places with a real violence problem, and they bring these problems with them. We have people working in the factories who have just come from prisons. A while back we had a problem with a group of men who were robbing gold, jewelry, and cellphones from people's lockers at the factories. For a while they had even started some extortion here, threatening people's lives. They weren't really from a gang, they were sort of a mix of different delinquents. We managed to get that situation under control, and the town's been fairly peaceful lately.

The people running these companies might be really big investors with a lot of money, but they need to make some allowances to the people here in town. They might threaten to leave, but I believe even so we should conduct some studies of the environment. There are some pretty serious problems, sometimes with crime, and sometimes with the allergies we are seeing in our children. We might also expect more from our central government. I believe it is right to provide the factories with certain guarantees to make sure they do not leave our country for somewhere else. I also think it is important for the government to ensure the safety of foreign investments. Our work, locally, is to find a way to live with the industries, work with them, and share with them so that we can all continue to do our jobs peacefully.

A mural supporting CASA, a conservative party led by the dean of
a local university.

Bootstraps and Handshakes: El Tejar's Future According to Manolo
Here in El Tejar we have a good location, geographically. We are three kilometers from Chimaltenango, which is the departmental capital. We are eighteen kilometers from Antigua, and only fifty-one kilometers from the national capital. With such a good location, it should be easy for us to find ways to bring more economy into our town. We should learn how to attract tourism, so instead of seeing them pass by in their vans, they are stopping here as well. I would like to see someone try to rescue the craft industry in town. The artisans in town make their products and take them to other markets, where the sell them for very low prices. The ones making the money are the wholesalers and middlemen, and I'd like to see some of that money come back here to El Tejar.

I've heard that in the US the schools are very focused on preparing their students for vocations, rather than solely focusing on their academic development. Also, they prepare their students psychologically, so they will later be more productive in the workplace. I would like to see some programs for carpentry, plumbing, and mechanics in our local schools. For the women, we could have baking classes, sewing classes, and develop other domestic skills. Here the students are well-prepared for an intellectual career, but if they can't find work in the right field it would be helpful for them to have more practical skills.

In Guatemala there are very few Industrial Technology Schools. People who would like to attend these schools must go all the way to the capital, or to Retalhuleu. I'd like to see an institute like that in El Tejar. Of course, to establish a school like this would require huge amounts of investment, but I think that the local authorities could contribute to the process by looking for outside resources as well as those we receive from the government. One example of this process is over at Dong Bang. The original owner has passed control of the factory over to his children, and they've divided up the facility amongst themselves. They've shut down one of the factory lines, and the workers are all on vacation, or suspension, or else they have actually been laid off. People say "Oh, Dong Bang is finished in El Tejar," but actually they are in a development phase, and they are investing a lot more money here. Where the closed factory is, they are going to build a high-tech school that operates in a Korean style. They are looking for personnel and teachers, so they can start to provide a higher quality education to people here in Guatemala. Of course, it will be a private school, and it will probably be pretty expensive, but even so I think if we negotiate we can bring some benefit to our community.

Sometimes I wonder why we aren't making more shoes in town. Guatemala has this huge shoe industry that is growing annually, and I think we should say "Hey! We have lots of space for another factory! Let's go to work!" We could bring in some people to teach us what we need to know about making shoes, and we could start making components. We probably wouldn't make the whole shoe, but we could start making some pieces. Similarly, I think that we should be setting up workshops so that people here learn how to make more automotive parts. There are a few guys in town who have their own lathes. They are machining parts on demand and making a pretty good living doing it. It would be good if we could get a group of people together to do this work, instead of a just a few individuals.

We also face a wide variety of social problems. In this part of Guatemala we are working to reduce domestic violence. The high death dates for adults means we have a correspondingly high number of orphans who need assistance. We need to improve health education, especially around the issues of maternal health, and post-partum care. We had a study recently in town that showed inadequate health care for pregnant women. Many young mothers, even though they are pregnant, are only eating tortillas, beans, and salt. Sometimes the father of the child is no longer in contact with the mother, or else the family already has many other children, and their incomes are stretched too far to provide more to the mother. The average family has seven children, here, and those numbers are hard to support on a small income.

The local headuarters for GANA, the center-right party led by
Guatemala's president Óscar Berger.
On the municipal level, we don't really have any good figures for the number of tejareños who are in jail, or for what reasons they are in jail. Sometimes they get drunk and get into trouble, or they try to steal something, or they are in jail for murder. We don't have any information about any of this. If someone commits a crime, they need to be punished, but we need to ask whether the father ended up in this situation because he didn't have a job. With a father in prison, it seems likely his children will have a harder time in school, and will end up being more likely to become involved in maras and gangs. I'd like to bring in some social workers to get a better understanding of these issues. I find it hard to believe in the phrase "integral development", because this sort of thing is really hard to accomplish. However, with this goal in mind, I would like to see a team of workers get together here to start to address the deeper social problems that exist in our community.

I have seen some communities in the region make real progress in all of these fields. The mayor of San martin Jilotepeque is an example of someone who has had a lot of success finding support for his work. Primarily, he has managed to find a lot of support from the international aid community, and he has a lot of NGOs working for his community. This means he is sharing the responsibility of working for the environment, in health and education. He has help finding financial support for projects in his region. I think we should try to bring in similar help in order to identify and solve problems in El Tejar. As I see it, NGOs are playing an important role in the development of Guatemala. I don't want to say too much about those groups who have used the NGO model as a way of laundering money. From what I've seen, in San Martin, I don't really care if they are getting rich at the same time, as long as they are bringing support to the community. They have some high-profile organizations there like Caritas, World Vision, and Intervida*. The question I think is important to ask about NGOs, is how to integrate them into municipal funding structures. They are officially private enterprises, so it remains difficult for us to provide funding directly from the municipality. I think we need to better integrate the NGOs we already have working in El Tejar, so they are supported by our city administration.

*It is worth mentioning here that in recent weeks the director of Intervida, a Spanish children's charity, has come under invesitgation for the misappropriation of approximately sixty million dollars in donated funds over the past decade.

Guatemala is a very paternalist society, and as a result it seems we are always waiting to see what we will be given, and we are waiting for someone to arrive and solve our problems. This culture is a product of the earthquake, in '76, and the civil war years. These both really had an enormous impact on our society, and at the same time we learned to depend on the aid that was coming from all over the world. The economic powers in Guatemala became a very small group during these disasters, and they are protective of their wealth. The governments in the past fifteen years, since the peace accords, have been organized around accepting large quantities of international funds, but not really investing those funds. And, of course, when the term of each government is ending, they have usually devoted themselves to plundering the state's financial resources.

When the Inter-American Development Bank comes to loan more money to Guatemala, we all say "Ah!" but we aren't thinking about the fact that the next three generations will be burdened with paying back this debt. Will we use this money to educate our communities and increase our technologies? I think, as usual, this money will not be invested. If you think about it, there is an awful lot of money in Guatemala already, in the hands of a very small number of wealthy people. We need to direct our attention to getting this money into use, and not taking on more loans.

I don't really believe the current government is doing a good job in its role as moderator between the welathy and the poor. When Alfonso Portillo was president, there was a lot of money coming into the country, and we know he was stealing a pretty large amount of that money. But even so, there was also a lot of work to be had, and at least some of the money coming in was being invested in our country. The current president, Berger, is only bringing in opportunities for the rich. For example, they are building a bridge on the edge of the capital, so that commuters can get to the denter without driving through the poor parts on the edge of town. How is this project helping me? The money from this project is going directly to financial institutions and upper-level contracting firms. Why couldn't we invest those hundreds of millions of quetzales in projects that bring more benefit to the community? National construction companies use lots of machines, they come through and leave behind a poor-quality project, and then they disappear. On the local level, we have the capacity to do these projects ourselves, and the money coming into the project would remain in our community.

An advertisement for UNE, the party of Miguel Ruíz who is currently the mayor of El Tejar.

From Aid Economy to Transnational Capitalism: Don Gabriel Fernando Chub Makes the Leap

2007-04-14T08:47:00.001-07:00

I was born in Poptun, on one side of the Petén. My mother worked in a comedor, and she raised me without my ever knowing my true father. My step-father met my mother, and we all lived together in the village of Santa Cruz Ixiti, in Izabal. We were very far away from the nearest town, and I couldn't study in a school. When I learned to read it was my step-father who taught me, giving my sisters and I classes in our home. We had a little piece of chalkboard, and in the evenings he showed us all how to read and write as best he could.

My mother worked a lot at the comedor, and so she neglected me when I was young. When I was six months old I got the measles, and I was really sick with a cough and a fever and spots all over. My mother told me that one of my eyes had spots in it as well, and when the measles were gone my eye turned white, even the part of my eye where the black thing usually is. I was so young, I don't really know what it is like to see with two eyes. Later, when I was twelve years old, one side of my face started to hurt, because the bad eye was beginning to swell. My step-dad took me to a children's hospital in Guatemala City, and they did an operation to remove my eye. This all happened in about 1975.

My father knew some people working in Izabal through the Ministry of Health, and he enrolled me in a training program being given by the Instituto Transformación Agraria (INTA), which is now called MAGA*, I think. There were forty of us in my group, studying to become "local health promoters". They taught us some health outreach strategies, some traditional medicine, and they showed us how to cure a patient using first-aid. While I was studying at INTA I met a woman named Seño Chuz, who was a nurse and an instructor, and later she was one of my supervisors.

*Gabriel is right. MAGA stands for the "Ministerio de Agricultura, Ganaderia y Alimentacion".

This was the life I had before, in Izabal. I was working for my aldea, and some small communities nearby. I lived with my parents, because I wasn't married yet. Every month I would fill out a form describing where I had gone, what sort of situations I had encountered, what sort of help I had given, and how much I had charged for my assistance. Most of the time my work was to go into a small community in the countryside with a partner, and we would administer first aid, then carry the victim in a hammock through the woods until we go to a road, where we could catch a ride to the nearest health clinic. We could only do first-response. After a while, I had learned how to give injections and even how to resuscitate a victim of drowning. We didn't do anything to treat really grave illnesses, or anything that had to do with deciding to give chemical medicines.

Sometimes I would also go to local communities to give talks about health, hygiene, and cooking. Seño Chuz only spoke Spanish, and many of the people we were working with only spoke Q'eqchi'. I worked as her translator. For example, I would say "If you are raising children and they are going to eat lunch, or brush their teeth, please, we beg of you, if they are going to eat they need to wash their hand with water and soap."

I'd been working in this job for a year when, in 1986, my supervisors offered me a chance to go to an international health seminar in the United States. They had seen that I did a careful job with my reports, and so they recommended me for a travel grant through the Agencia Internacional para el Desarollo (AID). I flew from Guatemala City to Mexico City, then to Dallas, and then to Washington DC. The main seminars talked about strategies for organizing a community, and how to establish and meet various goals for development. I was very happy to be there, and they gave me several certificates and diplomas to take home. I still have them all. However, I didn't feel like we received very much real training. I would have liked to study more, because I really wanted to put myself into a full career in health. Instead, we spent a lot of our time being taken from one place to another, just to look and not for any other reason. We were like tourists. We went to Massachusetts, and then we travelled in a bus to see the Hopi in Arizona, which is a place that is pretty close to Massachusetts. We visited a celebration the tribe was having, and everything about them was very different--their language, their music, their clothing. I also went to the White House, but we could only look from far away because no one is allowed to go in or get very close to it. We went to the George Washington Monument, and it took us five full minutes to get to the top in the elevator. We saw the Supreme Court, and we went into the capital building, where they have portraits of the presidents and important scientists, from the past. We also went to the museum where they have all of the old machines, and we saw there the first man to ever walk on the moon, but he is dead now. We had some good experiences there.

Asparagus and Lithography in El Tejar, Chimaltenango

After I was married to Margarita, Seño Chuz invited us to come and live in her home in El Tejar. Her children were younger, and she needed adults to care for the house while she was away working in Semox. My wife did the cooking and cleaning, and I took care of maintenance around the house. That was how we came to live in El Tejar, and it was good here, with the kids growing up and all.

Seño Chuz retired, and she came home to live permanently. I decided it was time for me to go out and look for a way to live by my own account, and to have a home of my own. For five years we lived in rented homes, waiting for a chance to establish ourselves in El Tejar. I didn't want to go back to Izabal, because the work there is scarce and doesn't really lead to better things. We arrived in El Tejar in 1987, and all of our children were born here. Now they are studying here.

In the first years of living here, I worked in several different companies. My first job was with Siesa, a company that transports fruits and vegetables to Europe. We handled asparagus, lettuce, green beans, blackberries and raspberries, all shipped frozen to stores in Europe. In Parramos they have a farm for the green beans and berries, but the farm is almost like a giant factory. They have many different rooms for various operations like growing, cleaning, and classifying the produce. When everything was ready for shipment, we would carry it all to the capital in trucks called "Thermo King". I was always the copilot when we drove. If we weren't carrying products from Parramos then we would drive to an aldea called Chilarcito, outside of San Juan Chamelco, in Coban. That was where our company was growing all of its asparagus for export.

We worked all night, first getting the trucks loaded and then transferring everything to an airplane in the capital. My work would usually start at one or two in the morning, and then we would drive to meet the airplane on its way to Europe, usually around three or four in the morning. But I was working too late, and I was having trouble getting any rest during the day. I felt like I was neglecting my family, so after five year working there I offered my notice and started to look for other work.

I found work in a lithography shop in Chimaltenango, preparing portraits and images to send with other documents to a printer in the capital. I was working with lots of naturals, Mayas, who all spoke to each other in Kaqchikel. The company was called Nujitza, which in their language means "wisdom". I worked there for two years, learning how to handle the materials, and how to create different colors. Then they started to talk about moving the shop to the capital in search of more business. I didn't want to work in the capital, like I had with Siesa. I'd been renting a house the whole time I worked for them, but the pay was really low. I had enjoyed learning the trade, but thank God there are other ways to earn a living, and more jobs here in town.

Even though we are blessed by God we must continue to work. The first thing they always ask you in a job interview is what level of schooling you have reached. Many jobs require you to have a diploma for tercero basico, but if you haven't even completed sexta primaria, then you really will have a hard time finding work.* I had very little formal education, apart from the diplomas I'd received studying with the Ministry of Health. When I came to El Tejar, the first thing I did was to evaluate myself to know how I felt about finding work here. In short, I didn't think I knew enough about writing and reading, and I thought that I needed to have at least a diploma for sexta primaria. In my other jobs, occasionally I would need to fill out forms, and it was really difficult for me. I enrolled at an institution called CONALFA, an adult education program, and they helped me get organized and confident about improving my abilities. So, while I worked during the day, I would also study at night to get my diploma. My first daughter was very young, and I was struggling for myself and my family, so in the future I would have a better job to get us by.

*Approximately, the tercero basico is equivalent to a high school diploma, the sexta primaria to a sixth grade education, and tercera primaria to a third grade education.

During this same time, when Don Elvidio Sulecio was mayor, he let us know that the city was going to buy some land outside of San Miguel, to make a new colonia for families in the town who didn't have anywhere to build a home. We needed to make an application for a loan, and for a permit to buy land in the new colonia, which was named after Don Sulecio. Thanks to him, and his family, we have been treated well in town and we have a reason to stay here in El Tejar. When we were approved, the city sold us a lot, without public water, for 2000 quetzales ($260). We made a down payment of 300 Q ($40), and we pay 150 Q every month towards our loan. This payment is really low, considering how little we could put in as a down payment. The mayor did all of this for our family. Without him, there would have been nowhere for us to stay.

On the right, the community store in Colonia Elvidio Sulecio.
Gabriel and his family live a bit further down the road to the left.

By the time I left work at the lithography shop, I had my diploma, and I was feeling better about my chances for finding a good job with one of the factories here in El Tejar. I heard there were two openings for workers at Maseca, the big mill in town, so I went to fill out an application and try for an interview. I brought all of my papers, and diplomas with me, and proof that I'd never been committed of a crime. They gave me a very long questionnaire to fill out, asking how much I hoped to earn and what my past work experiences had been like, as well as some psychological questions. If I hadn't studied in CONALFA I don't think I would have been able to answer all of the questions. Also, I think, my diplomas from my work in health helped get me into an interview. When I was in the office, they asked me to tell them how I felt about my own abilities, because they could see that I only have one eye. I told them about how I lost my eye, but I was afraid they were going to decide not to give me the job, because Maseca is a very famous company and there is plenty of competition for work. I told them I could do the job, and that they shouldn't consider my eye a real physical problem. Thanks to God, they decided to give me the job.

Note: Don Gabriel suggested that I use some of his many photographs
of Maseca as illustrations for my writing about the factory where he
is proud to work. After our interview we went through all of his photos
and decided on several that he thought would be informative, and sev-
eral others he thought had some pretty colors. I re-photographed all of
his selections and have included them in the following portion of this
text.

Maseca employees enjoying the sunshine on one the company's
scheduled "cleaning days", when everyone works together to clean
the factory grounds and make minor improvements, like painting
the curb and cleaning the ditch.

By coincidence, a good friend of mine was hired at the same time that I was. We worked as groundskeepers, looking after the lawn and the flowers in front of the factory. Back then, they didn't have a machine to cut the lawn, so I would do it all by hand, with a machete. After a few years, they bought a tractor so you could drive around and cut grass at the same time. That was my job.

After I'd been working for a while, my managers saw that I was intelligent and had a will to do a good job, so they decided to give me a promotion. My friend stayed in his old job, but they moved me up to the position of technical assistant in the granary, working on the silo where we store our shipments of corn. We get some corn from Guatemala, but we produce so much that me need to have corn shipped to us from the United States. The corn comes to us every few months in a huge boat that can carry thousands of tons of corn. The boat comes to Puerto Quetzal, and the corn is brought to our factory by a trucking company called Awat, after the owner who is named Carlos Awat. He is an Arab, but he's lived in Guatemala for a long time. My job is to supervise the transfer of the corn from the trucks into the three silos we have at the factory. The other part of my job is maintaining the silo where the grain is stored, and cleaning it so that the corn isn't contaminated by plague or pests.

Gabriel chose this set of photos to illustrate the path taken by the
corn on its way to his silo. From top to bottom: the corn arrives at
Puerto Quetzal in a container ship, where it is loaded into Awat's
trucks, brought to Maseca and loaded into the main silos, then
sent by pressurized pipes into the washing tank where production
of the flour begins.

As workers, we are required to come to work in a presentable fashion. We must be very clean, and we all wear a clean uniform provided to us by Maseca. We wear earplugs, face masks, and hair nets, and we can't go into the factory wearing and jewelry, not even a wedding ring. Inspectors come to our factory pretty regularly, because here in Guatemala there are a lot of rules about how to properly store corn. There are laws that say that if a business is not in accordance with health or security measures, the law will close the company down so that no one goes in and nothing comes out. There are other rules that we follow, as well, because we need to meet the regulations for all of North and Central America. We have factories in Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico. The only place we don't have a factory is in Panama. There is also a factory in Texas, in the USA, and it operates under the name of GruMa, which is short for Grupo MAseca. Occasionally we get visits from the managers of different factories, and from the central management, to make sure everything is in order. At the end of this month, our factory is going to have a visit from the oldest son of the former owner of Maseca. The owner died in an accident of some kind in 1995, and his children took charge of the company along with some other businessmen. I don't really know much about these owners. I don't know where they live, or if they own other companies, or anything. One thing I know that the general director for all of Central America is named Carlos Ambreu. He talks to all of the employees and personnel at Maseca, to tell them when their factory is going to receive a visit.

Gabriel Makes the Most of His 30%

As far as I understand politics, there are a lot of people who want to be the president or the mayor, and when they offer something good to the people of Guatemala I don't actually believe them or trust their promises. As far as the upcoming elections, I've been thinking about voting for Alvaro Colom, from the UNE, from my angle he looks like someone who might do what needs to be done. But, you know, the president from ten years ago (Portillo) went out into the most distant villages with promises to bring help, and when he won he did nothing. His interest was in those people con vienes, with land transport and their own businesses. He was working for the people in Guatemala who didn't need his help. By my calculation, about 30% of what he did was in service to the poor.

Looking at the costs of life from an economic perspective, there are many people here who live in extreme poverty, maybe without any job, and the have no money coming into their home. There are many single mothers in Guatemala, from the war years. If I were going to help, I would put my energies in health and in providing better places for people to live. Some here are living in very humble houses. To give them something better would be to provide them with a prinicipal base for health, and education. Sometimes kids don't go to school because their parents don't have the capacity to provide notebooks, pens and pencils.

When I was young my father enrolled me in the education program through the Ministry of Health and MAGA, but in my time here in El Tejar I've never seen MAGA come here to help the people who need it. No one talks about doing anything unless it is the election season, and then we hear about all sorts of new projects, and some resources become available for local initiatives. All of this is an attempt to win a few votes for mayor, or president. But once they win, they forget about where they have been and with whom they were speaking. They forget about the poor.

You know, some politicians offered to help me build my house, after we bought the land from Don Sulecio. They said they were going to get the funds to build the house for me, and they invited me to join a campesino organization. They was making an application to FOGUAVI (Fondo Guatemalteco de la Vivienda), which is a fund maintained by the office of the president of our republic, working to build houses for those who need them most. I put myself into the project, but everything turned out pretty badly in the end. They never really got me the support I needed, and they kept asking me for more "collaboration and aid in the economics of our association", which really meant paying them lots of money so they could make trips to the capital to establish our application with the government. I got upset with the whole project, and I stopped going to the meetings because I could see that the whole thing was a scam. They cheated me out of my money, and I got no results. Unless I'm mistaken, my neighbors had their house built by participating in the housing committee. But they had to fight for two whole years to make sure the project fulfilled all of its promises.

Years ago, I told my family I needed to have a house, and have a piece of land, in the name of God, so that we could continue forward. I built my house with my own money, by my own efforts, and I myself hired the man who raised the walls. It's really thanks to Maseca that I've been able to build my house. We have an employee's association, and an employee store that sells groceries and other items at a slight discount. At the end of the year, all of the members of the association get a small percentage of the annual sales from our store. Also, as part of the association, we can choose to have an amount of money automatically taken out of our paychecks and put into savings. I save 385.40 Q every month ($50), and this money generates interest in my savings account. I've been saving for several years, and by the end of this year I will have saved more than 10,000 Q ($1300). It is really because of this support that I have been able to build my home. The entire association at Maseca is part of a larger organization called Associaciones Solidaristas Guatemaltecas. They are the ones who support us so we can have our own organization within the business we work for, so we can have a good income and good benefits, and our families can live a little bit better.

Citizenship and Penalty Kicks, Loosely Defined

To touch the theme that is the word of our Lord, I feel proud that we are a humble family who believes in God. We are content, and happy, and we believe deeply that we are His children. I am also pleased to consider myself a citizen of Central America, and of Guatemala. We are near to our brothers in Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. As I see it, though, they don't want to see chapines in Mexico. There is no love for us there. This I have heard, and on the television I have seen that Guatemalans don't do well in Mexico. The Mexicans grab us an punish us in really harsh ways, as if we weren't even humans. This hurts me, to see that the Mexicans treat Central Americans this way, as if there were no firendship beween our countries. A friend of mine from Parramos, who has spent time in the United States, was driving through a part of Mexico called La Ventosa. The brakes on his car failed him, and and he crashed into a wall after going through several flower beds beside the road. He said they treated him really badly, and they made him pay for everything, including the lawns that he damaged. They charge you for everything in Mexico. If it is ever my time to go, I will feel afraid and uncomfortable in that country.

A few weeks ago I got the chance to go to Nicaragua, and I saw that they are really friendly people. The police and government officials we met were really relaxed, and they didn't really bother us at all. A group of us from Maseca all went together to Managua, and we stayed in the Hotel Princess. We went there for a soccer championship between a bunch of teams from all of the different factories in Central America. I got to go along as a medic, because I have experience in first-aid.

Like I say, I have more confidence in the other countries from Central America than I do with Mexico. But at the end of our Maseca tournament Costa Rica took first place, because there was a lot of cheating. One of our goals was disqualified, because the referee was from Nicaragua. Also, there was a foul that was obviously inside the goal box, but he didn't give us a penalty shot. He said "Why don't you guys call Carlos Batres* to come down here and see if it was a penalty or not? Maybe you think you can bicker with the referee up in Guatemala, but not down here in Nicaragua." It was obviously a penalty shot. We were let down by the fault committed by the Nicaraguenses, and for their failure to respect our rights. Because of this error we came in third place at the tournament.

*Carlos Batres is a famous Guatemalan who has worked as a referee for several World Cup qualifiers and Olympic matches.

Musical Interlude

2007-04-13T10:07:00.001-07:00

Terremoto, Bulldozers, and Don Alberto Muñoz

2007-04-11T17:53:00.000-07:00

Well, I don't really know what it is you want me to tell you. I have just entered into my fifty-ninth year. I was born on the eighth of April, 1949, right here on this same piece of land where we are talking now. When I was a child, all of the houses were made of adobe, with tejas (clay tiles) for a roof. That's how they were.

Since the earthquake happened, they've started to build better houses around here, with cinder blocks, iron, and bricks. We call our town El Tejar, which means "Roofing Tile Factory", because here the earth is good for making tiles, bricks--everything you can make with mud. Many people here make their floors with paving stones, because before you didn't see as many floors made of cement, and all of that stuff. The house were adobe, tejas, and pavement. That's how it was in El Tejar.

Before, well, life was really tranquilo, you didn't see much violence, you could just walk along, easy. Okay, in my life there has been a bit of suffering, too. In the end, I think life has gotten really screwed up.

I don't really know much about my grandparents. They didn't live on this piece of land, but they had another house near to here. After a while my father was born, and later he went looking for a companion, who was my mother, and it was the pair of them who came to live on the land here. And after a while we were all born. I have sisters, three of them, and there are four of us who are brothers.

My Grandfather had his little piece of land near here where he planted corn and beans. My father, as well, dedicated himself to agriculture. He would sell his own crops at the market. Back then, you never really saw a vehicle. They all had carts with cattle for bringing their crops into market. There were no machines, everything was done by hand, with an azadón (big hoe). I would help my father in the field, from when I was very little. I would help him make bricks, which was my first working experience.

We would wake up around five in the morning, and we would bring breakfast with us on our way to the field. A little coffee, some beans and tortillas, that's what breakfast was. We'd walk out to the field, and the women would all work at home, making lunch. From there, they'd bring our food out to us where we were working. We would eat different things, like vegetables, or chicken, or beef, or pork. All of this was our life.

Don Muñoz and I rode bicycles out to see a piece of land he rents in
order to grow corn and beans. The corn has been in the ground for
about a month and half. When the corn is waist high, he will plant
beans at the base of each group, so that the beanstalks will be able
to climb up onto the corn as they grow. First he will harvest the corn,
and then a month later he will harvest the beans.

Back then, there wasn't really any entertainment. There were no televisions, or only very rich people had them. We would come home from a day of work, we'd bathe, and we'd go right to bed. We might chat about simple things, like "Today we did all of this work. Tomorrow we'll see what we can do." That's how we'd chat, before we went to get some rest in order to continue our task the next day. One Sundays we would take a break, put on some nice clothes and go for a walk, or eat something sweet. That's how it was, before.

A number of the prefabricated houses brought by a German aid
organization in 1976 are still standing around El Tejar. The walls
are panels of 2x4 and poured plaster, and the roof is made with sheets
of corrugated tin. Several examples are included, both above and in
the following text.

I don't remember the date exactly, but it happened one day in February, in the early morning. I was sleeping when it happened, and everyone else in town was sleeping, which is why so many people died. When I woke up, everything was lying everywhere, all of the houses in town were destroyed and scattered on the ground. After everything fell, we started through some really hard times. There was no food, nowhere to sleep, nothing. While we waited, we ate the little food we had left, and when we ran out we suffered. After several days other countries started to send help. Thanks to God for the help that arrived, because then at least we had a little. They brought us some food, and some clothing, because everything we had to wear was buried. It wasn't much, though, because so many people were going through the same hardships. There was sickness, too, and it was awfully hard work going through all of the rubble finding all of the dead people in order to bury them properly and prevent more disease.

All of the adobe that had fallen down needed to be cleared away, and some machines came to help move it all into the canyons around town. We built champas to sleep under, just a nylon sheet for a roof suspended over four poles. I slept under my champa for five years, right here on the land under our feet right now. It got pretty cold at night, but that's how it was.

I couldn't have one of the pre-fabricated houses brought by the Germans. There was a committee formed to distribute the houses, and as always there were certain preferences. There weren't enough houses for everyone to get a house. As for who got one, and why, I imagine only the committee really knows the reasons. Probably those who got the houses could pay a little. I can say that here I slept under a champa, just like my neighbors on both sides.

It was really hard. It took us more than five years to rise up again. We went back to farming our corn and beans, working, but we'd really been knocked down. We hardly had the will to do anything, you know? After a while we started to forget about the earthquake, and we started to improve our homes again, little by little. I don't know if I feel more comfortable in my new home, but I feel safer because I know the walls aren't all going to come down in an earthquake. The building materials are better now.

I met my wife one day while I was playing football. When I was young we played more football than we do now. We had city teams, and every year the teams changed. I was twenty five when I had my first child.

By this time I had a new job, weaving, working for what they call natural or indigenous people, you know? That was my second job. We were weaving a fabric called morga, using hand looms, making the traditional fabrics for pants and skirts, mostly products we could send to the United States. This was back in 1980. Also, we were producing a lot of hand-embroidered outfits. They would bring traditional costumes here, from Antigua, and we would make more of them and send them north. It was a Guatemalan business, and I worked there for five or six years. Now it's closed.

From there I went to work for the company where I was operating machines. When I started I wasn't operating machines, I was doing something different, and I climbed and climbed up, until I was an assistant, and from there I was driving machines. And by machines I mean the machinery we used to repair roads.

Don Muñoz moves a small part of the earth.

I started at the bottom, working with my azadón, cleaning drains, and pipes. I started to earn better positions. First I was working as a painter, making signs on the side of the road. Then I spent a while working as as assistant to those operating the machinery. For two years I watched the, and learned how they did their work, while I would help by clearing rocks and trees out of my way. Then I was in charge of the machine itself, and I wasn't just pulling roots out of the way. I started with my azadón, the same kind we used in the field.

During la violencia we never felt like there was any danger here in El Tejar. Some of us from town would go out on patrol from eight in the evening until one in the morning. We were never afraid, and nothing happened here. All of the violence happened up north a little ways, in places like San Martin, Comalapa, Patzun, and Tecpan. I was never in the army, and I felt very neutral during the war. When I was working on the road crews, sometimes we would go and work up towards San Martin, and I was more afraid to go there. We didn't have any military protection, but we would see things going on in the woods, and most often we would hear gunshots up in the hillsides.

Don Muñoz and an associate working on a road during the civil war
years, outside of El Tejar.

There sure are a lot more factories here, in town. When I was young there weren't any, but I don't really remember when the first factory opened. None of my friends have ever worked in a factory, but most of our kids have worked there at some time. They're a good thing, though, because they are a source of employment, right? The kids don't have to go off in search of work elsewhere, they can stay here and keep working right here on our land.

I'm not very interested in politics, because all of it is just a lot of liars telling lies. When they come here on their campaigns, what won't they offer me? They'll talk, and say "Look, vos, if I win I will make your life better. I'll even help your kids." They try to make friends with me, but its a friendship with a pretty obvious motive. The worst part, to me, is that they always grab hold of the poorest people, and with their arm around them they'll say "Poor people always come first." But they never actually do anything for the poor. At least, I've never gotten anything from them. All of my life has been this way: If I don't work, I don't eat.

Yes, my job on the roads was working for the government, but I've always had to work for my wages. I've lost my confidence in the government, because everything around here stays the same. They offer us one thing or another, but all they ever really do is put more taxes on everything. Who is getting screwed? We are, because with every new tax it gets harder for us to survive. And if we have any success, we just have to pay more taxes. Our wages stay the same, and the price of everything goes up. I think there will come a day when our wages won't cover the cost of food, let alone the cost of sending our kids to school.

I'd like to see my grandchildren find work in the capital, where there are better jobs. I was a machine operator, you could say, because that was the last job I had. I wouldn't like to see my grandchildren in this job, because it was actually pretty dangerous. I'd like to see them have an easier life than I had. In the fields you really suffer. In the summer you suffer from the sun and the dust, in the winter you suffer from the mud, and the rain soaking your back. If my grandchildren can get through their studies, they might work in an office, with a better wage and a better life. They might go to work in nice clothes, and spend their day under a roof, away from the sun and the rain.

I can't tell you too much about other places in the world, because if you've never been, if you've never lived there, then you can't really know. My son-in-law left a while ago for the United States, and this to me is a very sad thing. He's far way, and his family waits for him here. If you love your children, then your children will love you in return. Up there, you never really know what sort of hardships you might endure. You don't know when, if ever, you will return to see your children again. All of this is very sad. Necessity forces you to make these decisions. For example, if I have enough here in my country to live, to put a roof over my head, and to give food to my family, I will feel happy to be here. Why would I go away? Up there, you don't know anything, you don't even know how to start communicating with other people. It's hard, and sad, but you need drives you to leave your family behind.

The most beautiful thing in my life has been to spend time with my family, together, finding a way to live without difficulties, without worries, tranquilo. You can't always live like this, though, because something always comes along to screw you up a little, and so you almost never really get a chance to enjoy something so beautiful.

The Story of Doña Jesi and the Maquilas

2007-03-26T13:26:00.001-07:00

The factories bring us work, and for that they are an important part of El Tejar. If it weren't for the maquilas, no one would have a job. They have been a great help to Guatemala. Even the first, small factory was a special thing, because it brought 200 jobs to El Tejar. Still, the factories have brought with them some changes. You don't see young men walking out to their field with a pick over their shoulder, going to plant and care for the corn. Most people don't like to get dirty, they'd rather work at the factories. Before, a father would take even his youngest sons out to the field with him, to work. Now when you look you only see the fathers, and they are getting older. My father is seventy, and he still farms corn and beans every year, but my brothers don't go with him.

The factories have helped us, but they have also allowed us to forget about our land, and our parents couldn't show us how to care for it. Now that they are closing the maquilas, we can't go back to working the land, not after getting used to working with a machine. Now the money doesn't reach as far. Like my father says, wood doesn't burn by itself. You have to work if you want something.

Dong Bang Fashion was the first factory to open in our area, and they started hiring workers when I was sixteen. I'd been working in the house with my mother for a few years, and I thought I'd try to get a job on the production line. I was too young, and they were hesitant to give me a job, but they needed workers and I needed work. They were hiring lots of us younger girls. It was a big chance for all of us, to get started with something like that. I worked all day, and at night I went to school. I had special permission from the owners of Dong Bang to leave work at six and go to school. I would get home around ten-thirty, and then I would study until late at night. The next morning, I would start all over again.

When I started, twelve years ago, I was making 140 quetzales for two weeks work. Over the years my salary grew, and the factory grew, and at the end I was making 850 quetzales every two weeks. The regular working schedule is from 7:30 until 4:30, and if you work after 4:30 you get paid for extra hours. They aren't supposed to be obligatory, it is supposed to be your choice to work or not. These extra hours can really help increase your salary. When I left, we were being paid 6.50 Q per hour (approx. 90 cents).

At Dong Bang, now, there are two whole factories, each with twelve production lines, and on each line there are about sixty people working. Dong Bang's main business is in making suits for men and women. We made coats and trousers, in a few different styles. Other parts of the factory make shorts, skirts, and overcoats. We worked with different contracts, but the one really famous brand we worked for was called Sag Harbor, making blazers. Each line makes one article, starting with marking and cutting the material and producing at the other end a finished garment. Since the very beginning, I worked as an "operator", finishing the sleeves, the collar, the lapels. Legalmente, I was building an entire jacket every few minutes. Later on, I was also working as an assistant supervisor on my production line. The managers would show me how to do a job, and I was in charge of teaching everyone else in my group. I liked this part of my job, because I think it's beautiful to teach someone else how to do something new.

What I liked about Dong Bang is they always had respect for what was really Guatemalan. On Monday we would start work at seven, and all of the workers and managers would meet together, and we would do exercise and then sing the Guatemalan national anthem. I don't think all factories in Guatemala have the same respect for our country. They gave us most national holidays to rest. On Mother's Day they paid double wage to all of the mothers working at the factory, and sometimes they would put on a little lunch table for all of us, because we are working and raising children. For Christmas and All Saints Day they would have activities for all of us. I would say there was a real friendship between the management and the workers.

Dong Bang is always one of the highest-ranked export manufacturers in Guatemala, in terms of cleanliness, orderliness, and safety. There is a clinic there for the workers. The bathrooms are always clean, and there is a place for you to wash your hands with soap. Whenever they came to inspect the factory, we'd get top marks.

Let's be clear about something, though. The owner of the maquilas are Korean, not Guatemalan. It's rare that you find otherwise here. Which is to say that they are working for themselves, not for us. Among Koreans there are really angry managers, and there are also some very good people. I had a manager named Mr. Kang. He said to us "If you need anything, or if you want to say anything, I will do everything I can to help you." When one of my daughters got sick, I needed two days off work to take her to the hospital. He gave me the time off, and offered to lend me money to help cure my girl. Thanks to God, he treated us all well. But two years ago he left, and a woman named Mrs. Taka took over. She was really angry. She wanted us to meet all of our production goals, and if we didn't meet them she would make us stay on until they were complete. Some Koreans are very demanding, and in different ways they humiliate the Guatemalans who work for them. Sometimes they shout at you, "Get to work!" or they yell at you in their language, and you have no idea what they are saying. Sometimes they grab a piece you are working on and throw it away, although this never happened to me. We Guatemalans are just trying to do our work, and we ask God to help us understand, or explain what the problem is.

On the line there is always a Guatemalan and a Korean supervisor, to help prevent really big misunderstandings. We have every right to go to the manager's office to make a complaint, or to ask to be moved to different line. We might say "This manager hit me, or cheated, or embarrassed me, and I don't think it's right." But, really, it's rare that they take your side in an event like that. I don't know if it's because they want to keep their job, or if they want to stay on one another's good sides, or what. But you always have a right to complain. If it doesn't work at the office you can go to the labor supervision office in Chimaltenango to make a complaint, and if they ignore you there you can go to the main bureau in Guatemala City. It's a lot of work, but if something happens there are things you can do to defend yourself.

My job, attaching collars and sleeves, was one of the most difficult jobs on the line, and I was using a really heavy machine to do my work all day. I was getting tired, but I knew it would be hard to find someone else to do my job on the line. The managers didn't want to move me, they said "If we put someone else on your machine it won't be the same." But I was tired, so when I went on maternity leave for my fourth time, I decided I would look for work at another maquila when it was time to get back to work. Later, I went back to Dong Bang, because I found out that working in other factories around here can be a really different experience. First I spent almost four years working at Manzanales, another Korean maquila farther away from here. I wasn't doing sleeves, but they didn't have automatic machines, so I was spending a lot more time cutting thread and clearing the piece. I had to pay a lot more money to ride the bus to Manzanales, because it isn't in town like Dong Bang. There were a lot less Koreans working at Manzanales, so when we needed to talk to a managers we would have to spend a lot of time looking around. The bathrooms and the workroom was really different from Dong Bang, too. Less clean. The machines were older. Those were some of the reasons I went back to my old job, on the huge machine.

I met my husband the same year I started working at Dong Bang, when I was sixteen. Two years after we met we went on our first date. We were both studying in escuela basica at night, and working at factories during the day. After three years, we signed a civil union, and moved in together. We only really had our wedding two years ago. My husband worked at Dong Bang for several years, and then he changed jobs and went over to Alianza Fashion, south of town. He was working the second shift, until eleven at night. Sometimes, when they were behind on a shipment he would have to work all night, and he would only have time to come home for some breakfast before going back to work. When they weren't behind the extra hours weren't obligatory, but I don't think they should ever be obligatory. If you've worked your regular day, you should have a choice whether to keep working, or to go home.

Just recently they closed one of the factories at Dong Bang. The oldest factory has been running for sixteen years, and the one they just closed had been running for seven years. They say there is are less orders than before, and that they can do more of the manufacturing there in Korea. It costs less to hire labor in Korea than before, materials are cheaper in country, and export tariffs are dropping.*
*It is possible to speculate that this drop in costs has been achieved domestically through the ongoing creation of tax-free manufacturing zones along the border between South and North Korea, where employees are brought from the North to work for wages that would be illegal in the rest of South Korea.

Work started dropping off at Alianza Fashion as well, and my husband lost his job. He was without work for two months, and for a lot of the time I wasn't working either. For years he'd been saying, "I should go to the United States, we should try our luck up there." This time, when he asked me, I felt it was my duty as his wife to support his decision, because it was the right one for our children. We got a loan from the bank for Q25,000 ($3,300), and members of my family lent us another Q20,000, and with this money he managed to get to Dallas. From there he used another Q8,000 to travel on to Waterloo, Iowa, which is pretty close to New Jersey. So, the whole voyage turned out to be really expensive, especially when you take into account the extra loans we had to take out to support ourselves in El Tejar during his first few months up north, looking for work.

Things haven't been easy for him, up there. He told me about crossing the desert, suffering from cold and hunger. Legalmente, it was only God in heaven taking care of my husband. He left without knowing where he would find work, or what he would do, but a friend who he was travelling with helped him find a job. He's been working in Waterloo for the last eight months, at night, cleaning a meat-processing factory with really big hoses. He says the work is pretty heavy, and with all the stress of life there he hasn't been able to start a second job. He's only working eight hours a day, so we still have most of our debt to pay off. He's working hard to get out of debt, because he say he wants to build a house for his children, and to save enough money to send them to good schools. He wants things he wouldn't be able to get if he stayed here.

He spent a while getting settled, finding work. He lives with a group of men from his work, all in the same house. He says they are all friends, that they have extended a hand to him there. After two months of work he started sending remittances. They come every two weeks, more or less, to pay for our expenses here and to pay down our debt. I think it will take us two years to pay off the debt, at this rate, unless he gets a raise or finds a second job. When we are clear of payments, things will be different. When we talked about this trip, at first, we thought he would stay north for three or four years. Now, talking with him, and considering our debt, we are thinking it will be more like five years.

Now that my husband is gone, working in the United States, there are changes to our lives here. I am staying at home with my children, doing work in the house to help pay for his debt. I do ironing and laundry for other families in town. He was the head of the household, and we are all missing him. My children ask me when he will come home, and I say "God is the only one who really knows." Before, if we had a problem, we could talk to each other to find out what we were going to do. If one of our children was sick, we would look at each other and wonder if we should take them to the hospital. Now I am alone, and if I have a problem I need to be able to solve it without his advice. Calling him will make him worry, and besides, what can he do? As an illegal, he can't come home, even if he wants to.

Today is my son's first birthday without his father here, and you can see in his eyes that even though it's a happy day he is also feeling a little sad. He said "Mom, I miss my dad today." He's completely right, you know? My husband has always been really kind, very loving with his family. He stays close, calling us a few times every week. Even with the distance between us he is attentive to us. As his wife, I am raising our children and taking care of problems down here. If God is willing, one day he will come home and I will say to him "Here are your children, and what I could do I have done for them."

From what my husband has told me, the US is very different from Guatemala. Here we have beautiful landscapes, and the freedom to go wherever we want to go. In the US there are only buildings, everywhere, and no freedom. People with their papers have freedom, but my husband goes out every day with the fear that he will be grabbed and deported. He told me "Everyone thinks the United States is so beautiful, but it isn't like that at all. People are suffering here, too. It's hard to find work, and to meet other people. Here I am alone, without my family. Life is better in Guatemala. Let God help me reach my goals, and help me return home to everyone in my family." I don't think the US will ever, ever, be a home for my husband. It isn't his country. He's able to earn a little more up there, but even when he returns to our family it won't be the same as before.

Now that the elections are coming, the politicians are coming through town making thousands of promises. Sadly, when you promise something to someone poor you don't usually have to follow through with what you've said. They say "We're going to lower the cost of electricity in town!" But when they are in office they forget about us here. In my mind, one day we need a president who is treats rich people and poor people equally. I don't mean someone who gives us everything for free, just someone who gives us a chance to earn a salary instead of humiliating us and taking away our jobs. Governments should support the people, but instead the price of everything just goes up, and our lives get worse.

If there were better opportunities here it would be harder to get young people to leave their home country, but people all around the world will take a big risk to go somewhere to find good work. Immigration is the people's answer to their situation. People don't wait for a solution, they go out and find one for themselves. We have families here, and if we wait for the government there will never be any changes in our situation. Many make the decision to leave for the US, while their families stay behind and suffer in their absence.

When President Bush came the other week, to sign some agreements with President Berger, I thought "How beautiful would it be if those two were working to help both of our countries. When Bush left, we would be able to salute him, and thank him for his visit." But now in the US they are deporting so many men and women, even refugees who have been there since the war years. They are sending mothers home without their children. Those chapines are just there because they want to earn something with their sweat, they aren't asking for gifts. If you go to Antigua you see lots of people from the United States, all walking around without any hassle. I think it would be better if things were a little easier for Guatemalans in the US, if they didn't have to do things like run through the desert and hide in the cities all of the time. But this is how the governments say it should be.

Don Werner Lives in Itzapa and Massachusetts

2007-03-24T09:25:00.001-07:00

Rational Actors, Irrational Stage
After I left the army, I was working as a schoolteacher here in Itzapa. My wife and I met when we were both studying to be teachers. She is still a teacher, at a school in El Tejar. We were living together in one of the houses built by Canadians after the big earthquake. Our first daughter was born, and sometimes she would get sick. Even though we were both working hard, our wages were low and we didn't feel satisfied with what we had. I'd heard about how good the wages can be in the US, and I started to feel restless. One of my hunting buddies, who'd already been to the US, offered to loan me the money I would need to pay a pollero, and I decided to do it. I borrowed $4500 US to travel from my doorstep in Itzapa all the way to New Jersey. In November of 1996, after being married for one year and four months, I left for the United States.

Above is an example of the prefabricated houses built in Itzapa
by Canadian aid organizations after the earthquake of 1976.

We rode north inside of a tanker truck. There were one hundred of us all sitting inside the tank, older people, younger people, and one little girl who was seven or eight years old. There were two lights inside, one red and one green, controlled by the drivers up front. When the green light was on we could move around, shout, whatever. When the red light was on we had to stay very still and quiet, in the middle of the tank without touching the sides, so when the immigration officers beat on the tank it would sound empty. I didn't like being in the tank, because there's no way to run away from the migra if they catch you. The doors are closed with padlocks, and it gets really hot in the middle of the day. For the whole ride I only saw the sun through little holes in the lid of the tank. They gave us water to drink and plastic bags to piss in. We were all seated, back to front, between each other's legs, one hundred of us. I don't know where we went, or on which roads. We got into the tank before sunrise, we drove through the day into night, another day, another night, another day, and then in the middle of the night we all piled out in Mexico City. After all that time, some of us could barely walk.

From Mexico City we travelled north in a first-class tourist bus. Those of us who were well dressed sat up in the seats, and those who were poorly dressed hid down between the seats, or on the floor between someone else's legs. The whole trip was really well organized. When we drove, the guides were in contact by radio with scouts in the hills. Your would hear the drivers saying "How's it look up ahead? Is it clear?" Every caravan has a few scouts, keeping everyone along the route informed. They called us pollos. They'd say "How many pollos are you carrying? Okay, andale, buey!" After a long day's drive we arrived at a ranch outside of Ciudad Juarez. There, at around three o'clock in afternoon, we all split up into groups of fifteen. Each group had two coyotes who were going to take us across the desert into Arizona. They gave us some cookies and a gallon of water, and we left everything else we had in Juarez. We were each wearing two pairs of jeans, two pairs of underwear, two t-shirts and two shirts. When we crossed, the idea was that we could take off the clothes that were dirty, so we could enter the United States in clean clothes.

When you cross the desert, in the scrub lands, you see the skeletons of other immigrants who might have died of thirst, or from snakebite. You don't have time to find out what happened, you just look at them and keep moving, because if you lose the rest of your group you are dead. No one will find you out there. We walked from three in the afternoon until two in the morning, when we met up with a big truck that took us the rest of the way to a safe-house in Phoenix.

The first time I crossed, I barely even saw the migra. We were all covered with blankets and coats in the back of the truck, and in the distance we could see the headlights of a patrol as we drove away. But every year there are more migra, pushing polleros further and further out into the desert, to where it is really dangerous, to ranches that are four or five hours outside of the city. The second time, in 2003, I crossed near Laredo in a group of twenty-five, and when the patrol showed up we all took off running in different directions. They're pretty good, and they caught thirteen of us. They were looking for the rest of us. I was hidden in the bushes less than four feet from two stocky guys who were speaking to us in Spanish through a megaphone, saying "Okay, amigos, come out, you're going to die out here, we've already caught your guides, there are a lot of snakes here. We've got water for you." They looked for all of us, but they didn't get me.

In Phoenix we had a few days to rest, take showers. We started to make calls to our families and friends to send money, and then we started to spread out. Those chapines in my group who were headed to the East Coast were taken to California, where we were given chafas, false driver's licenses, so we could get onto an airplane. None of us knew what to do, but the coyotes did all of it for us. They bought tickets, paid someone to take us to the airport, and soon we were all on our way to New Jersey.

On the plane, I was really nervous. I felt like my hands here tied. The stewardess passed by and asked if I wanted a soda, and I just shook my head, because I was too scared to say anything. Everything has a beginning, and that was mine. Leaving Guatemala for the US is like a change from night to day. The culture is advanced, civilized, and to come from a village to such a place is a pretty big shock. You have to adapt to this culture, not the other way around.

Don Werner Walks in the Strange Lands of Destiny
The first thing that grabs your attention in the US is how the apartments and houses are built. The construction of everything is prefabricated, and really orderly. They ask you to take off your shoes before you go into a house, and then you go in an the entire house is carpeted. In Guatemala, I would never ask a friend to take their shoes off. In my house, my friends do what they want to do, they come as they are.

When there are a bunch of single guys from Mexico and Guatemala all living together, they are all working for themselves. I might leave the house at six in the morning, and someone else leaves at seven, and when we get home we have enough time to shower, change our clothes, and go back to work again. No one has any free time to do much for one another, only for themselves. Here, after you're married, you eat what your wife serves you, but there is no one to serve you in the United States. If you want to eat, you have to cook, and no one will wash your clothes for you. Women wash clothing in the pila here, and in the US you use a machine. These are all pretty rough shocks for someone when they first arrive in the US.

When I started working in the US it was really hard, because I was used to working in a Guatemalan way. Here we get paid a set amount per day, or every two weeks, no matter how many hours we've worked. There it's by the hour, really regular.

During my first time working in the United States, I suffered a lot in order to build the house I have for my family here. Every day I woke up at four in the morning to deliver newspapers. I threw something like three hundred newspapers every morning, as fast as I could, because my second job started at seven. I would do roofing work on a crew until six in the evening. Then at seven I would start my last job, working as a janitor at a public school until ten-thirty. With all of these jobs together I was still only getting paychecks for six or seven hundred dollars a week. Someone like me, with an degree and a career, doesn't expect to work in construction or cutting grass. But I didn't speak English and I was illegal, so when I found work cleaning bathrooms I was glad to have it, even though it only paid seven dollars an hour.

My willingness to work for so little, back then, is a good example of what causes a lot of the friction between citizens and mojados*, regardless of whether they are white, Mexican, or Central American. If you have papers, or citizenship, you don't want a job that pays six or seven an hour. You want a job that pays at least twelve, and you aim to go up from there, right? When someone comes and takes a job for five dollars an hour, they are taking money away from a citizen who could expect make ten or eleven doing the same job. You start to see why someone who is in the US legally would try to make life impossible for illegal workers. This is a problem, that there is some really bad blood at times between Latin-Americans who are there with papers and those who are illegal. They've worked to find their jobs, to learn the language, and they lose their jobs to illegals who are desperate enough to work for lower wages. Sometimes they would mess with me, threaten to call the migra, the police. Here in Itzapa there are times when people who have been deported come to town looking for revenge against someone's family for something that happened up in the US, because those sorts of things shouldn't be happening there.
*Mojado literally means "wet," and is a common Guatemalan term for illegal immigrants in the United States.

At the roofing job I realized that I needed to learn English fast. Someone would ask me for a hammer and I would bring them a screwdriver, and they'd think I was an idiot. To talk to my boss I needed an interpreter, and if the interpreter didn't like me he could say anything he wanted to either one of us. My boss might be saying "Tell Jorge I'm going to give him a raise," and the guy interpreting could tell me "The boss isn't going to give you a raise and says you can leave if you don't like it." Because of the rivalry between me and my interpreter, everyone would get confused and my boss would get angry and start treating me like a bad employee.

To get past this, I had a little notebook, and I would write down every word I heard that was new to me. At night I would sit down with all of these words and ask my cousins what they meant. I didn't know how to spell, I'd just write it down like I heard it. I would write down "Fáchu" and go home, and my cousin would say "Look, they're insulting you." So the next day I would go to work and say "Hey, look, you can't say that to me." Every word I heard, I would file it away. That was how I learned to speak English. It was pretty tough.

While home, Werner is managing the construction
of a house for his cousin, who has worked for five ye-
ars in the United States as a janitor and dishwasher
at a hotel in Boston. He is unmarried, and soon he
will return to Itzapa to live in a three-story luxury
house. However, with low wages and scarce opport-
unities in Itzapa, it is quite likely that after a short
stay the cousin will return to his work in Boston.

Accumulation Strategies
The second time I went to the US, I went straight to my old job and found my boss, and I could talk directly to him. He said "You've worked for me before, come back tomorrow and you've got a job." After a week, he came to me and said "Okay Jorge, we're all glad to have you back in the US, but how much should we pay you? I want to give you the wage you had when you left last time to go home." I didn't really care what they paid, I was just happy to have a job. I could tell them whatever! But I think it was a test, because in the US everyone is really cabron, and I knew they'd have my old wage written down somewhere, so I decided to tell the truth. They started me at my old wage, fourteen and hour, and they started giving me raises from there. They gave me lots of responsibility right away, and then eventually they started me with my own work crew, a truck and a trailer. They would tell me where a job was, and what needed to be done, and we'd go over and get the job done. We did siding, paint, roofing, shingles, drywall, landscaping, whatever. In the summers I was eventually making twenty dollars an hour on al of our construction jobs. In the winters, when work was slower, my boss helped me find temporary work driving a snowplow for twenty-five an hour.

It isn't illegal to send remittances. If I save a thousand dollars, I can pay fifteen dollars and send the whole amount to Guatemala. I sent my money really often, because in the position I was in I never knew when I might be deported. When the migra grabs you, they don't give you time to go to the bank and send some money home. They throw you in jail for a few months, and then they ship you home with the clothes on your back. I was keeping money in cash at my home, thousands of dollars, because I didn't want to lose it if I got caught. But my housemates were freaked out, because I'd have five thousand dollars in the house, and they didn't want that much money around. I managed to get a bank account, and I was keeping money there as well. At first they didn't give me one, because I had no social security number, but eventually, with my Guatemalan ID, my passport, and my US tax receipts I managed to get an account open. It's still open, with a couple hundred dollars in it, for when I go back to work again in the US.

Local albañiles at work on the house Werner's cousin is building.
So, during my second stay I was earning more, but working much less than before. When I had time off, I liked to go deer hunting with my friend Jim. I couldn't have a gun, because I didn't have papers, but Jim was a citizen so he'd let me shoot one of his guns, and we'd put all of the deer on his hunting license. I hunt in Guatemala, too, up in the Petén on the border with Mexico. My friend has a little piece of land, and a group of us will go up there to hunt together. We stay in a cabin, and go out at night with really bright lights that stun the deer so we can shoot them. They hunt deer the same way in the US, but up there the animals are much bigger. I sent Jim a picture of a really nice catch down here, maybe the size of a goat, and he just laughed. Down here the animals are all endangered, and it's illegal to hunt them, so we have a system of sending our meat home with the help of some friends from the army. They carry it in in their supply convoys from the Petén to the capital, and then I go pick it up there. That way we don't get thrown in jail for poaching.

I like soccer, too. The only things I like to do are hunt and to play soccer, or watch soccer. I don't drink. If you ask me to go hiking I will, but I'd rather go hunting. In the US, on the weekends I would play soccer in a city league with teams of Mexicans, Hondureños, Salvadoreños, and chapines. The league had sixteen teams, and some teams were single'nationality teams. I lived with a bunch of Mexicans, and they convinced me to play on their team. We lived together, and ate together, so I thought I should help them out. Sometimes Americans would come and play on our teams, if we invited them, but mostly it was just a bunch of guys from Mexico and Central America. We were always in trouble with the police, or the people who cared for the fields, because when you get a bunch of us together we have a really big impact on a playing field. The fields there are really well maintained, with planting and watering and mowing.* Even though we aren't stupid, sometimes we are unfair to others, and when we played on the field we'd leave a lot of garbage behind. If you go to a football field here you throw your trash everywhere, but Americans like to keep their garbage in one place, and not all of us would imitate Americans when we were living there. When the police or the city hall got called after we'd been using a field, we couldn't go back to the same field. Sometimes our different way of seeing things was an obstacle, but we never gave up. We were saying "Well, even if we are in the US, we're going to play. We'll make teams and leagues, because we want to keep playing soccer."
*In Itzapa there are three municipal football fields. All are made of packed-dirt, which is more economical during the dry season. Jorge told me that one of Itzapa's fields was once covered with grass, but so many farmers used the field for pasture that the field became bare earth again. See photos below

When I was ready to leave, after my second stay, my boss tried to keep me in the US. He said "You're going to be really hard to replace," and offered me three thousand dollars extra, and a two dollar hourly raise, to stay on for another six months. This second trip had been really good. The first time I went, I saved enough to build a house for my family. But the second time I saved enough to buy three trucks, a piece of land south of Itzapa, and to support my family. I wanted to stay, but I told my boss I'd promised my family I would be home in time for my daughter's birthday, two days before Christmas. He really liked me. He'd given me work in his own house, fixing the floors, and he'd just given me the keys to his house and said "Jorge, I trust you. Just come and go as you need to." When I left my boss hugged me and we both cried a little, because I think I'd really started to look at him as if he were my father. He had two sons, one named Bobby Johnny and the other named Brian.

Leaving the United States is easy. They're practically shoving you out of the country. Both times, I flew home in an airplane, and I never had any trouble. They check your bags and say "Okay, all aboard!" If you have any little problem they'll help you solve it, because they all want Hispanics out of the country. When we're ready to leave, we stroll out nice and easy.

A Brief Interlude on the Volcano

A few months ago my entire extended family climbed the Volcan de Agua . About halfway to the top we passed two Americans who were looking really exhausted, red in the face, sweaty, sick. They started trying to talk with one of my coursins, but he couldn't speak any English and they couldn't speak Spanish. My cousin laughed a little because he didn't understand, but the Americans were asking him if he could give them some water to drink, because they were sick from the heat. I was sitting down, but when I heard what they were asking I went over and introduced myself, and told them I could speak a little English. "We are really tired," they said, "And we need water." I gave them my canteen to drink from, and we talked about how much further they would need to go if they wanted to reach the top of the volcano. They thanked me, and we kept going.

See, different languages can be a real barrier. Those tourists ran into the barrier when they needed help from my cousins, and the little English I speak was suddenly really valuable to them. If someone walks up to a Guatemalan living in the US, and he doesn't have a job, and he's hungry, then to speak English to him is like pulling on his feet while he's hanging by his neck. If they say "¿Oye, amigo, estas cansado?" then you can only imagine how happy he will feel. When you ask him a question he'll give you a real answer, because he trusts you.

Alla, Todos Somos Mojados:The Question of Neoliberal Citizenship

Werner's new house, complete with a dalmatian on the roof.

Before I left, I was a schoolteacher. Everyone knew I was on my way north, and my students really looked up to me. When I came back to build my house, they all came to visit. "Profe, How was it, living up there?" They asked.

"You need a little push," I said, "And away you go. Just believe it can be done, and you'll do it. Put your faith in God and he'll come through for you. If I can do it, so can all of you. If you speak a little bit more English, if you have a little more ambition, or a little more experience than me, there you will be my boss, regardless of how much you've studied. It doesn't matter if you are a doctor, a lawyer or a priest, no one there matters any more than anyone else. There, we are all mojados."

One by one, those students of mine have gone north, and they're building their houses here in town. I say, if out of four friends one goes north, the others will go too, one by one. I can take you to villages around Itzapa where one person immigrating has pulled the entire town to go north, so that now there is hardly a house in town that hasn't been built with money from the United States.

Lots of people here talk bad about the United States, like the other week when George Bush came to Tecpan, and there were protests everywhere. I don't think the protesters were thinking very hard, because the tiny improvements Guatemala has made are all thanks to the United States. People only know of the US from the papers, and from the television, but I believe that I can make a comparison because I have lived in both places. I believe that everything really depends on the experiences one has while working in the US. If you get arrested for driving without a license, or the migra finds you and treats you really badly, then you'll come away hating the United States. Or, by extension, if you live in Guatemala and even a really distant aquaintance gets deported to Guatemala, then you'll start to have a bad impression of the US. Now that they are deporting so many immigrants, breaking up families and sending mothers home without their children, you can see the resentment growing in Guatemala. But if you show up, find work, and the Americans you meet and work with are good to you, then you'll feel like you are part of the culture. I have family in the US, and friends in the US, and everything I have in my life in Guatemala I have thanks to the United States. When I hear about a lot of the problems people encounter there, I think it is mostly just a question of getting used to things, and preserving your ambition. The US is like a huge gateway--all of us can go in, but that doesn't mean we will all have the same good fortune. Even good workers have bad luck when they are looking for a job. If they can't find a job they might go to the bar, and then they're screwing themselves up. Once you're drinking in the US, you won't get anything done.

Once, in the US, I was watching a soccer game on the fourth of July, and everyone was singing the national anthem. I sang too, and I really felt something in my heart, like I was part of the US, and part of this big group of people. I didn't know what had happened, but after being in a country that was giving me work, and giving me a life, I know that what I was feeling was real. But you never stop thinking about your own culture. When you are on a roof at work you don't think about anything, for fear that you might fall off. But when I got home at night my mind would float back to Itzapa. I would look at pictures, read letters, watch videos of my children as they grew up. All of this is normal. Life is long, and it's good that things change, and change again. Now that we are talking, my mind is racing through happy memories, thinking about when I will return to the US, and see my friends there. I'm repeating myself, but it is thanks to God and the United States that I have my life here in Itzapa, and my home.

Santiago Spoofs the Hegemon

2007-03-24T09:24:00.002-07:00

This young chapin was recently asked to come to school in a costume representing the United States. He decided to dress as a mochilero, a backpacker, complete with stupid sunglasses, sun hat, sandals, a sleeping bag, and a camera. He is proudly displaying an artisanal souvenir from Quetzaltenango which was quite likely manufactured by a Korean maquila in San Marcos, or even (we could hope) by a larger factory in Guangdong. The American flag tucked into his jeans helps us to recall images of Neil Armstrong and Iwo Jima, while it might also happily serve Santiago as beach towel when he visits the turtle nurseries at Monterrico.

The sound of laughter increases as we proceed to the fringe of our Empire.

Dry Season: A Tour of Tecnología Para la Salud

2007-03-24T09:24:00.001-07:00

Heading East on the Panamerican Highway out of El Tejar, trucks roar past brickyards, mechanics' shops, used car lots, hourly-rate hotels, cheap restaurants and wood-sided cantinas. After passing Burger King on the right, zooming under the pedestrian walkway in front of the Dong Bang Industrial maquila the road continues into the shade of a rapidly dwindling municipal forest, then emerges to cut cleanly through the small town of San Miguel Morazan. The turn to the right under the town's only pasarella is the new cutoff road that leads to the coastal highway, Pastores, and Antigua. To the right of the cutoff sits the Colonia Elvidio Sucelio, as well as the grounds of an environmental project called Tecnología Para la Salud.

Tecnología Para la Salud is an integrated program addressing rural health concerns through environmentally sound solutions. The two primary areas of focus are the cultivation of medicinal herbs and the manufacture of sustainably designed domestic appliances. The property contains a workshop, a greenhouse, a demonstration garden, a large orchard, and facilities for making herbal shampoo and soap. I spent a morning with Julio Cesar Coroy, who leads the workshop and specializes in water quality and sanitation issues. He walked me around the facility, explaining the various projects that are underway, and talked with me about some of the larger challenges of operating an NGO in Guatemala today. Through the players below you can listen to Julio as he gives me a tour of his facilities.

Greenhouse

Tecnología Para la Salud maintains a large area of plants and trees, all considered to have medicinal values within Guatemalan traditions. One of the primary activities within TPS is the cultivation of starts in a greenhouse, which will in time be brought out into the surrounding communities to become part of small medicinal gardens, as well as a source of income when the herbs are dried and sold at weekly markets. While two Mayan nurses are employed in caring for the garden and instructing others in the uses of these plants, both women were down with the flu when I visited. Although his own specialities lie elsewhere, Julio made a valiant attempt to explain the medicinal values of a few of the seventy varieties cultivated on the grounds at TPS. For fun, I have decided to provide the Spanish names, followed in parentheses by an English translation. I would also urge you to do your own research before using any of the below information to treat your own illnesses.

Té de Limón (Lemongrass): Used widely in Guatemala as a tea to soothe an upset stomach, lemongrass can also be used to make a concentrated oil that functions as an insect repellent or fungicide.

Orosus (Lantana): Used to cure dysentery and amoebic infections, diarrhea, and other stomach ailments. The leaves, soaked in alcohol, are used as a compress to alleviate rheumatism. There are a number of other uses, from treating muscles and menstrual cramps to treating epilepsy. Interestingly, this plant is considered an invasive weed in Florida.

Sábila (Aloe Vera): TPS uses aloe mostly in the production of shampoo, but it has a large variety of uses, from treating gastritis to sunburn.

Ruda (Rue): According to long-held beliefs in Guatemala, rue is used to cure newborn babies of colic. It is made into a paste, which is rubbed on the child's back. Julio also suggests that it might be used as a pleasant substitute for cologne or perfume.

Epazote (Epazote): The panacea of Latin America, epazote is traditionally added to beans when they are cooking for its ability to reduce their flatulence quotient. Additionally, epazote (along with papaya seeds) is used traditionally to cure parasitic infections of the intestine.

Albahaca (Sweet Basil): Used to treat stomach pain.

Ajenco (Wormwood): An alternative to rue for curing colic, but it has a really bitter flavor.

Romero(Rosemary): This herb is used in Mayan rituals as an incense.

Aguacate (Avocado): Adding avocado leaves to your bath is a traditional cure for rheumatism and backaches. Liquid obtained from boiling an avocado seed can be used to help close a wound that is slow to heal.

Ixbut(Ixbut): According to Mayan tradition, mothers drink tea made from the leaves of this plant to increase lactation.

Macadamia: Macadamia trees bear fruit after six or seven years of growth. To avoid the long wait, many commercial growers use grafts from mature trees instead of growing them from seedlings, but trees grown in this fashion have a shorter lifespan and are more susceptible to disease. The three macadamias at TPS are pure trees that were planted five years ago, and will probably bear fruit in the coming year. Their yield increases annually thereafter, and is of high value in global markets.

Yerba Buena (Mint): Milk that has been cooked with either cinnamon or mint is a regular part of breakfast in Guatemala, usually served over cereal. Kellogg's Cornflakes are so popular here that the box is often painted on the walls of small grocery stores alongside other contemporary staples--beans, cornmeal, canned milk and Coca-Cola.

Solar Powered Dehydrator

The ability to dehydrate herbs allows small farms to package and sell their products at regional markets (Antigua, Chimaltenango) through out the year, reducing individual risk and stabilizing monthly income. As part of its integrated model for self-sustaining rural farms, TPS manufactures solar-powered dehydrators for use in outlying communities. A wooden frame supports a black skin made of sheet metal, and the tapered base contains to metal grills which heat the air and force it upwards into the body of the dehydrator. As an added benefit, the area beneath the grills at the base of the dehydrator remains cooler than the outside air temperature, thus creating simultaneously a cold-storage and a drying area. The dehydrator at TPS was filled with quilete (mulberry), berro (watercress), and lemongrass in preparation for a batch of herbal shampoos.

A shot of the greenhouse (left) and dehydrating unit (center).

Drying racks inside the dehydrating unit.

My visit, in early March, fell within the hottest and driest season in Guatemala. Without its own well, Tecnología Para la Salud uses the same water that supplies the town of San Miguel and its surrounding colonias. Julio told me that during the dry months it is a struggle to provide enough water to support the large number of plants on the grounds. While larger trees and bushes are able to take advantage of natural aquifers, many of the project's seedlings, destined for outlying areas, are particularly sensitive to the heat and drought of the highland summers. According to Julio, there are often times when the water cuts off, and while TPS could store water in tanks on the property they choose not to because to do so would have a huge impact on the water available to neighboring farms and homes. Julio, who orchestrates the installation of wells and pumps around the region, is also currently negotiating municipal bureaucracy top attain a permit to install a well on the property. He has not yet been able to acquire permission, or to find a way to meet the costs of the project.

Ten minutes away, in the free-trade zone of El Tejar, the maquilas, factories and flour mills enjoy a federally subsidized water supply, consuming tens of thousands of gallons of water annually to wash machinery and corn during production. At Dong Bang, the price of unlimited annual water usage for an entire twelve-line clothing factory is about $1,000. For a family of four in the Colonia Elvidio Sulecio, beside TPS, water access is provided after payment of a one-time fee of approximately $500 and an annual maintenance fee of $40. This family, even if employed by one the nearby factories, will most likely never install anything more than a single faucet in their home. I would speculate that the entire annual water usage of TPS and its neighbors is equal to the monthly water usage at MASECA (a mill) or Dong Bang.

Letrinas Aboneras

Human waste remains one the greatest challenges in rural communities around the world. Traditions often provide insufficient means for safely containing and processing raw waste. Contaminated surface water and airborne fecal matter both become vectors for disease, leading to endemic infections, especially among infants and the elderly. I was once told by a UN ecologist who was installing latrines in rural Yunnan, China, that diarrheal diseases are by far the greatest cause of death worldwide. Changing weather patterns and the advance of deforestation lead to greater annual flooding, which only further increases the contamination caused by the improper storage of human waste.

Tecnología Para la Salud fills orders from local communities for both pit toilets and composting toilets. While pit toilets address the issue of surface-water contamination, they carry the likelihood that in time the water table will become contaminated, halting the use of wells for drinking and irrigation. However, the higher initial cost and greater amount of maintenance make composting toilets an unpopular alternative despite the effort expended by environmental agencies around the world to increase their use.

The composting toilet is essentially two tanks for solid waste and one tank for urine, which is kept separate and mixed with water for direct use as a fertilizer. Ash and plant matter are regularly added to solids tank until it is filled. The tank is then switched with an empty tank while the full one is given time to decompose into harmless fertilizer, which can then be added to soil without risk of contamination. Both aging tank and fresh tanks need to be stirred weekly, and this added (unsavory) task is the greatest cause for the composting toilet's unpopularity around the world. TPS processes all of its sewage this way, producing enough fertilizer for its extensive gardens.

Bomba de Lazos
During the rainy season, Tecnología Para la Salud harvests rainwater through a collection system attached to the roofs of the project's offices and buildings, storing the water in a large cistern. Attached to the cistern is a demonstration of an incredibly simple device called the bomba de lazos (rope pump). The pump is built from two cinder blocks, an old tire, three length of PVC pipe, a length of nylon rope, and a handful of rubber beads tied onto the rope at regular lengths. The passage of the beads through a pipe generates enough suction to draw water from great depth (up to 30 bars of pressure), and by adjusting the width of the beads in proportion to the diameter of the PVC pipe it is possible to control the load borne by the entire system.

Turn your head sideways to enjoy a performance by Julio's tiny working model of the pump he has modified for use in rural communities around San Miguel Morazan.

A view of the cistern, with larger versions of the pump visible on top. The bicycle-powered upgrade offers, according to Julio, "a good chance for some exercise".

Estufas Mejoradas

TPS also produces cooking/heating stoves built from cinder blocks and prefabricated metal fittings, engineered for greater fuel efficiency and the elimination of smoke within the home. Many highland families burn wood in open hearths, producing indoor smoke pollution that is a leading cause of blindness, cancer, respiratory illnesses and premature death, especially among women and children who spend much of their time inside the home. The redesigned stoves offered by TPS (and many other NGOs) are designed with a smaller, more efficient burning chamber and a chimney that carries smoke outside of the home (while also serving as a radiant heating element for the home). The material cost per unit is approximately $100, plus the day of labor required to install the unit in the home. TPS manufactures the parts required to construct the stoves, selling them unassembled to other organizations who transport and install them in communities in the Chimaltenango region.

Concerning Idealism, Entropy, Pick-up Trucks, and Irrigation

TPS emerged thirteen years ago, in a decade that saw in Guatemala the signing of the 1994 Peace Accords, the United Nations' extensive documentation of human rights abuses during thirty years of civil war, the dramatic reduction in troop sizes, and an apparent re-structuring of the federal government. Non-governmental aid organizations from around the world matched or surpassed the funding that was offered by national and regional governments in the push to improve living conditions among the rural poor and farming classes. Thirty years of grass-roots activism and independent media work finally attained critical mass in the nineties, and Guatemala was briefly able to enjoy a position in the center of the world's human-rights discourse. If an aid organization could attain legal status it could quite reasonably expect to find a source of funding and the favor of both local and public opinion. Jacob Schive, a Dutch activist who had been living in Guatemala since the mid-eighties, began investigating and interviewing rural communities in the mountains around Chimaltenango to better determine what sort of aid would be most effective in the region. After much research, a team of planners and workers had begun to take shape, and working relationships had been established with several villages. A board of directors was assembled, and Schive began to work on creating an administrative platform for his work, which in time became the non-profit organization called Tecnología Para la Salud. The various elements of the program (stoves, latrines, gardens) began to take shape at this time, as well as a system for making these resources available to their target communities. Contact was established with Ayuda Popular Noruega (APN), an expansive and well-funded NGO with projects throughout Central and South America. APN put its full support into Tecnología Para la Salud, and with this assistance the organization was able to buy land, to create paid positions for technicians and directors, to begin manufacturing stoves, latrines, and cisterns, and to initiate the program's garden.

After several good years, the organization began to lose its momentum, and as founding members moved on to other organizations it became clear that funding from APN was being misappropriated by several of the program's new directors.

"When something is given as a gift," Julio said, "people don't always appreciate it fully. They don't push themselves to improve, to refine their practices. They become content with the abundance provided by other people's hard work. There is a life-cycle in these organizations, from idealism to corruption. It happens so often it almost seems normal, but I don't know why this is. So, money began to run out, and many employees just left for different jobs. It was a mess. But the organization didn't collapse, because the board took the right position, fired the members who were lining their pockets, and they saw everything as a learning experience. The system has begun to change, so there are no longer donations. Instead, the funding structures in development organizations is based on exchanges--we get materials or funds in exchange for our own products, not because we asked for them."

In 2001, after eight years of support, APN withdrew its support from Tecnología Para la Salud, partly in response to the organization's internal problems and partially as part of APN's larger interest in shifting its interests from Central to South America. This departure was not wholly antagonistic. In support of what TPS had done to correct its own problems, and further to support those few workers were continuing work in the region, as a parting gift APN bought the program a new Toyota pick-up to enable them to transport people and materials to outlying communities.

"Currently, much of our funding comes from the sale of pit toilets and the herbal shampoo we make. I am trying to promote discussion about how we can attract outside funding and donations. Our salaries are all determined by the costs of administration and by TPS's income, and they are pretty slim. We work a lot here, and we have to move a lot of capital through the organization in order to aquire materials for what we make. We are surviving on what we are able to sell, but we don't have much room to maneuver. We believe in what we are doing, and that our ideal is to fight for the environment and for public health. But we are making a sacrifice, as well. If things remain the way they are, our work might come to an end, because we can't pull everything we need for food and shelter out of the air. We are continuing, in the hope that we can find more support, so we can continue our work."

Ten White Shirts: Pragmatics and Faith in Chimaltenango

2007-03-24T09:22:00.000-07:00

I recently had the chance to sit down with Elder Hall and Elder West, two young men who came to Chimaltenango as missionaries with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We drank some mint tea and had a great chat. We talked about their own personal experiences as missionaries, what it felt like to make the transition from high school to Guatemala, and what they feel they are learning about their own faith and their own individuality. We also talked about the role of the Church of LDS here in El Tejar, its larger structure within the country and abroad, and some administrative techniques the church uses to maintain uniform pedagogy throughout the world. Lastly, I invited them both to talk about how they see themselves in relation to their communities, both here and at home, and to consider the role of active citizenship within everyday life. I've written out some excerpts from our conversation below, but I would like to encourage everyone to sit back and listen to our whole conversation, which is available through the audio links below.

Sometimes I get a thought, like, "Wow, I'm in Guatemala and I won't be home for two more years."

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As missionaries we have a pretty strict schedule. We wake up at six-thirty in the morning and we do half an hour of exercise. Seven to eight is our time to eat breakfast, get ready. From eight to nine we do a personal study of the scriptures, and from nine to ten we do a study as a companionship, so that we are on the same page throughout the day. From ten to eleven we do a language study, where we can get better in Spanish, or if we are with Guatemalans they might study English with us. From eleven to one we are out on the street. It's called proselytizing time. If we have an appointment we'll go to someone's house and teach, if we don't have anything we'll just walk down the street and talk with random people. If we see someone who needs help, we help chopping wood, or whatever we need to do. We go home from one to two and we eat. From two until nine, or nine-thirty, we're out in the street doing the same for the rest of the day.

As missionaries we have a goal to contact and talk to twenty people a day, twenty random people, so about one hundred and forty throughout the week. With this, after two years you go home having talked to thousands and thousands of people. A lot of the people who you talk to, well, the conversations get pretty exciting.

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It's always out there: when you're nineteen you go on a mission. It's not obligatory, but growing up I always thought I would go on a mission. Then, in ninth or tenth grade, with all of my friends in my life, I kind of lost my desire. I said, "I want to go on a mission, I'm going to lose so much time, you know?" I thought, "So many more people are on a higher spiritual level than me, I'm not going to be able to go out and do that." Finally, in my senior year, I started investigating the mission, weighing my options, and I decided to go. The last summer I worked my butt off to make enough mone, because as missionaries you pay your own way. The church doesn't pay for anything. For two years, it works out to be about ten thousand dollars per missionary. It's cheaper for me to be here, but the money we pay is distributed to support missionaries in other parts of the world, as well, and it wouldn't be fair if I paid less than they did.

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All day long we just wear white shirts and slacks, so you have to get your wardrobe of ten white shirts, your ties, your shoes that are going to last you for two years.

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I knew that the mission would change me, but I didn't know in what ways. A lot of times people will ask me a spiritual question in their house, and I'll be dumbfounded. We say "I have no idea, but let me go home, I'll study it, let us come back in two or three days and I'll tell you what I've studied, what answer I get." I keep a little book of questions people have asked me that I didn't know how to answer. Then I go home and study it.

****
The best thing for me has been to come and to learn from other people. A lot of people think we (Mormons) come here knowing everything...but I learn so much everyday from people who think they don't know anything.

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It helps a lot, being a more friendly person, going out and experiencing things--kind of taking things into your own hand and making them happen yourself, rather than sitting around waiting for other things to happen.

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We have a scripture that says "Don't seek to declare my word. First seek to obtain my word. Then, if you want, your tongue will be loose, unto the convincing of men."

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In Guatemala they are much more open to the idea of religion, and they're much more loud about it...In the states, if you saw a church with a speaker on the roof and you heard their whole session, people screaming and bands playing, other people would get angry. You don't hear about people making complaints. Here there's more freedom.

****
We do activities in the church where we get together and we eat a bunch of food. We'll do hamburgers, hotdogs, barbecue in the states. Here, they call it a churrasco. You get together, you get your meat, your tortillas, your rice and beans, and that's your basic meal. I love it. It's delicious. Whenever you have a group activity there's always food. Without food there's no fun. Food, I think, brings together the worst of enemies.
****
A lot of people think that missionary work is just full-on teaching the gospel, non-stop. You do teach, but also through your example, Being part of your community, walking around the streets is fun. Helping people build a fence, helping people carry wood, being active in the community makes you feel good about yourself. I would say I'm more active here in Guatemala than I was in my own home.

****
Sometimes I think, "Man, I would never have guessed, three years ago, that I would be walking down a Guatemalan street and ten people would yell my name, because they know me,and not just as a missionary, but by name.

Looking North with Doña Celia

2007-03-10T08:37:00.000-08:00

La Violencia, Chickens, Basketball

I was born in Parramos, between Chimaltenango and Antigua. My family is ladino, but most of the population there is indigenous, and a lot of people from the aldeas come in for the weekend markets. If you go into a church on Sunday, almost everyone there is Maya. There was a lot of violence in Parramos in the 80s, and eventually they built an army base right outside of town. For many years there was fighting, and I knew many people who were killed, or abused, by both sides.

My mother was still pregnant when my father died. She gave birth to my baby brother eight days later, and with my baby brother she was a widow with five children. I was the oldest, so I worked with her to take care of my siblings. There was a Peace Corps volunteer in town, named Jimmy Milton, from St. Luis. He taught us how to raise chickens, so my mother could go to Antigua to sell eggs on market days. Thanks to Jimmy we got through the hardest years. He did a lot of this work in Parramos, with other families as well. I'd really like to find out if he's still alive, but I don't know how. He sent my mother a card after thhe big earthquake, but she lost it after a few years.

There were festivals in town, including the annual festival titular to honor Los Santos Niños Innocentes. Sometimes there were formal dances, they'd rent out a hall and bring marimbas, and everything. Those were special times, because we were allowed to stay out at the dance, even when it was the middle of the night. In those days everyone was well dressed and very decent with one another, and we would dance together. We say the youth of today are very different, with gangs, violence, drugs, and wickedness. When I was young we lived with humility and caution. We thought hard about the company we would keep and the friends we made, and we didn't keep our lives hidden from our parents.

I was friends with other ladino girls in town. When I was fifteen I started playing basketball on a team. We were called "Oasis", and we were really good. We travelled out to Chimaltenango, Antigua to play against other teams. The best was when we would go to some city far away, then come back as the winners. I'm still in touch with some of those girls. We get together for dinner and we tell stories about the basketball years.

Oregon

One of my aunts immigrated to Oregon with her husband when they were both really young. She had four children there, and all of them survived to become adults. I don't know what she and her husband did for work, because my family had no connection with her at all after she left Guatemala. When she was getting ready to leave, and my father was dead, she wanted to take my baby brother with her to Oregon, and my mother wouldn't agree. They fought about this, and finally my mother became so upset that they stopped speaking. My aunt died a few years ago, and they burned her body. That's what they do with the bodies of the dead in the United States.

Cleveland, Ohio

When my oldest son was thirteen, his father took him to the United States because there was some work there. I haven't seen either of them in twenty-five years. My son lives in Cleveland now. For a long time he worked in a plant packing ham. One day there was an accident. His friend flipped on a sawblade as a joke, but it caught my son and took away three of the fingers on his left hand. While he was recovering, I wanted to go and see him. I wanted to, but I didn't have enough money, and my husband here wouldn't let me go. The children I had with my husband were very young. I thought I could ask for help from a church or aid organization, but I was afraid that my son's papers weren't in order and I would bring trouble to him. His employers paid him $70,000 in injury compensation, but losing part of his hand was a really immense blow to his self-esteem. He still lives in the United States, but he is struggling with depression. He doesn't want to come home because he says he would be embarrassed to return to town with his disability.

I would still like to go and visit him, because I don't want to die without seeing his face again. I'm his mother, it's how I should feel. I haven't applied for a passport, or a visa. I just pray to God to let me see my son in Cleveland or in El Tejar. If my prayers don't succeed, so be it.

Chicago, Illinois

I have another son who lives in Chicago. He's been gone for two and a half years, because he wanted to build a house here, above the house I live in. The old house is made of adobe, and we didn't want to use any more because of the earthquake.* We wanted to use cinder blocks. My son was a mechanic, but he was making very little money and he needed to support his wife and two children. He realized is he stayed here and worked as hard as he could, he would still never have the kind of house he wanted for himself.

*Note: The poorer side of El Tejar was once built entirely of adobe, a cheap substitute for brick-and-mortar construction. Nearly all such houses were levelled in the 1976 earthquake, and many died there. On the other side of town, where the houses were built with better materials, there were only three fatalities.

One of my son's friends came back from the United States and built a really nice two-story house, and he painted it yellow. My son said, "I'm going to do that, too. I'm going to have a house just like that." This happens a lot with young people here--they see the success of one man, and they decide they want to do it, too.

I took a loan from the bank for 40,000 quetzales ($5200). That's how much I paid to get my son to the north safely. I owe all of this money, and I don't know how I'll pay, but he is safe. Still, something that really frightens me about the US is that you have tornadoes there. You never know when they come, but then suddenly they appear and destroy every one's houses!

My son joined an evangelical church in Chicago* They asked him what sort of work he wanted to do, and found him a job working in a mechanic's shop. His employers love him, because he's got no vicios (vices). He doesn't smoke, and he doesn't drink, and if he sees that someone likes to drink liquor he distances himself from them. In the last two years, as the lord is good, my son has been able to build his house, here.

*Note: This term is used in Guatemala to describe a any non-catholic denomination.

Celia gave me a tour of her son's house. It has been built on the property the family owns alongside the Panamerican Highway, rising three stories above the family's old single-level house. The entire structure has been constructed in in the absence of its owner, funded through remittances sent piece by piece though Western union. There is no furniture n the house, and the plumbing is still waiting to be finished. In the afternoon the rooms fill with a ghostly light. The walls are built with reinforced cinder blocks that have been stuccoed and painted white. The living area is on the second story, over a garage that is currently being rented to another mechanic until Celia's son returns to open his own business. The house has two bedrooms, a dining room, a spacious landing for a kitchen, a large bathroom, and a balcony looking out onto the highway. In the bathroom are rare items: a large bathtub and a showerhead attached to a "real" water-heater, both are items of luxury in a town where everyone showers under frighteningly informal electric water heating systems. Above the living area is a third level, currently unfinished, that will contain a small bedroom and an open terrace for hanging laundry. From the site of this future terrace it is possible to see the house that inspired Celia's son to undertake his own trip to the United States.

My son tells me he will be coming home at the end of this year. In the winters it is very cold in Chicago, and it snows a lot. He says the ice is starting to get into his bones. When he goes to work in the shop, he says his hands and legs ache. He doesn't want to come home with sickness, so before the next winter begins he will return to Guatemala. People love him here, because he's an honest worker. Even though he is in Chicago, they come here looking for him. When he opens his shop he will already have many clients. He should come home to his wife and children, before he loses their hearts. He's already built his home, what more does he need?

Notes from the Periphery

One of my sisters lives in Encino, where all of the artists come from. She's been there for almost twenty years, taking care of other people's children. She's already a citizen, and all of her children are citizens as well. They come down to Guatemala every Christmas, but in the US she says she mostly socializes with North Americans*. She says there aren't really very many Guatemalans there.

*Note: In Guatemala this phrase is ordinarily used to describe Caucasians with US Citizenship.

Look, every place has its advantages, but I think the major difference is that people in the United States feel more comfortable, they feel they are personally valued. Here you can work and work and never see the reward for your trouble. We are paid by the day, and the day can be pretty long. In the US you work hourly and your time is transformed into money for you to see. I take care of kids in my house, I feed them and bathe them and wash their clothes. One girl's parents work in the courts in the capital. One girl was adopted from an indigenous woman in Panajachel. Their parents are wealthy, but I am paid 200 Quetzales ($25) per month to care for these children. In the US the wages are higher and the gains are greater, because one's labor is valued by society.

My son tells me everything up north is very legal, by the hour, orderly. Here, someone can kill someone else with impunity. In the US they solve murders, right? These three Salvadoran members of parliament who were murdered by the police last week, in the capital--why were they killed? No one knows what happened, who really did it, what they wanted. Saber? The saddest part, for me, is that no one will ever come to justice for this, not really. Everyone is saying these murders are a disgrace for our country.

Now George Bush is coming to Chimaltenango to see the agricultural projects in Zaragoza and Patzicía. There they have huge fields full of vegetables for export, vegetables we don't eat in Guatemala. He's coming because he wants to show how free trade is good for development, how it brings jobs and money. But he can't even get there, an hour from the capital, without riding in a helicopter. The roads aren't safe enough for him. And they are closing down half of Guatemala City just so he can come here for a few days and visit these fields.

My husband was the mayor here for four years, and recently some people in town were asking him to be mayor again. He started to get a campaign ready, but some others started threatening us. They would pound on the door of our home, and call late at night to tell us they were going to kidnap my sons, that would hurt our family. It was pretty terrible. My husband isn't going to run for mayor. It's a bad time for politics in Guatemala.

Post script: Doña Celia requested that if I was going to put something about her on the internet she would appreciate it if I also invited anyone who will be visiting Antigua for Semana Santa to stay in her home, where she will provide square meals and good conversation for a reasonable fee. Please write to me if you would like to discuss this possiblity, and I will help put you in touch with Celia herself.

Don Edgar, Tejareño

2007-03-03T15:13:00.000-08:00

Houses, Earthquakes

My father moved from Totonicapan to El Tejar looking for work as a weaver. Here in town we used to have lots of people making traditional tablecloths, but there are only two people still doing it. He met my mother here, and when they decided to get married their parents were opposed. There was no wedding in a church, only a civil union, and because they were against the marriage my grandparents wouldn't let my father and mother live in their house. I was born, and for the first few years we all lived in a little rented room in the middle of town, next to the pharmacy. After five or six years, the municipality of El Tejar started selling some of it holdings on the south side of the Panamerican Highway, and my parents bought a small piece of land to put a house on. There was no electricity or running water. Next to the highway there was a fountain, and everyone from my neighborhood would walk to the fountain with buckets and jars to bring water back to their house. Our place wasn't very big, but it was built with adobe. In those days to have a house made of adobe was pretty deluxe. Usually houses were made of milpa (dried corn stalks), with tile roofs and a milpa fence around the yard. In our house, where we cooked was made of milpa and where we slept was made of adobe. When I was young I slept on the ground, on a piece of cardboard, and in the morning my back always felt crooked. When I was nine we added a room to the house, and I slept there.

One night my father pounded on my door, shouting "Get up, get out!" He'd been through earthquakes before, but I'd only ever known little shake-ups, not worth worrying about. I covered my head with my blanket and went back to sleep, and a few minutes later the entire houses fell down on top of me. I was covered in adobe bricks, dust, roofing tiles and lots of timber. I couldn't move my blanket, and I ran out of air. At first I was really afraid, but as I started to lose consciousness I felt okay. The next thing I remember was my neighbor's hand under my shoulder, pulling on me really hard. They'd all been digging and pushing stuff off of me, and thanks to God I came out alive.

After the earthquake, a German company started putting in factory-made houses to replace all of the adobe ones that had collapsed. My father asked for one, and since then my brothers and I have helped my parents improve their home. It's bigger, now, all of the walls are made of cement and cinder blocks, and the roof is lighter than the walls, which means it won't fall down in an earthquake. In the old days, we'd make rafters out of whole tree-trunks, then pile on the roofing tiles. Now there are laws about how to make a house earthquake-proof.

Watching Television during "The Reign of Terror"

Look, there have been some pretty tough times here, times when no one had any work, times when we'd work but no one had any money to may anyone else with, times when the clothes we wore were so covered with patches you could barely see the clothes underneath. In the early seventies I used to follow my dad everywhere. The Army had imposed curfews, sometimes we were supposed to in our houses by ten o'clock, sometimes by eight. My dad and I always used to go out after curfew, just like everyone else in town. The army would tell us what to do, and we would do it differently.

In El Tejar in those times there were four televisions, and the families who owned them would charge two centavos as admission to come in and watch. My dad and I would go out to watch TV, and those living rooms were always crowded with people from town, even when the nights were really dangerous.

Sindicato de Peltre

In the decade after the earthquake there was barely any money in town. We all had to go out, to the capital or somewhere else, to find a job that earned a little bit more. In '78 I was working n El Tejar, making bricks for six quetzales a week.When I found work in the capital I was making thirteen quetzales every week. I worked in a factory that made peltre (enamelware) pots and jugs and other kitchen stuff. The factory was owned by a Jewish family, and when I started the workers at the factory had all unionized because they didn't think the pay was high enough. I started out on a verbal contract for six months. After I'd worked six months, the owner said "Remember our contract? Well, here's your pay. Come back in three weeks to see if we have any work available." I stick to my word, so I put my money in my pocket and started to leave. The union leaders had seen me talking with the boss, and they came up to me to find out where I was going. "My contract is up, so I'm heading home," I said. "He can't fire you," they said, "You're emplazado(as opposed to temporary labor)." The guy I worked with liked me, because I pulled my weight and helped out with lots of stuff when I had the chance. The union decided they would go on strike, all 250 workers. The factory was completely frozen, and the owner was pissed. He said "Since they're on strike, I don't want you working here ever again. Get out, and don't come back."

"Okay," I said. I only made six quetzales a week in El Tejar, but at least it was a sure thing. I always think it's best to adapt. I remember a guy from my neighborhood, when I was little. He always had different jobs. He drove trucks, he made bricks, he worked as a chef, or as an albañil. I wanted to be like him, because someone like that never says "Oh, here there's no work for me to do."

Proyecto AGUACAPA

Later on, I got hired by a Mexican company that had a big hydroelectric project going on the Rio Maria Linda, on the road towards El Salvador. The camp was set up, with barracks for sleeping, and a mess tent, and a mechanic shop, and we all lived and worked there together. I went because they were paying ten times what I was making at home, and I wanted to learn how to work with explosives. Once in a while they had me carry the dynamite, or help make the holes, but they never taught me how to place the charges. Most of the time I was working as a sweeper, carting away all the rock and gravel that came down after they blasted the mountain. Sometimes this was dangerous, when the rock would slide while we were working on it. Also, the had me working a lot at night. I can sit here and talk until two or three in the morning, but I'm no good at working those hours. I decided I needed a new job in the camp, and so in the mornings I would go straight from work to the shop to bug the mechanics for work. They'd say "Wait a while, maybe." Sometimes I would sleep in their doorway. Finally they offered me a day job that paid better than my old job. "Can you work as an assistant? Do you really know mechanics?" "Sure," I said, "Sixty percent." But I'd never worked in a shop that big, and I had to sweat to learn everything quickly. I asked everyone questions all of the time, and eventually I fit in.

I worked in the camp for two years. We worked from seven to noon, had lunch for an hour, then worked until seven, ate dinner, and went back to work until ten or midnight. We worked a lot of fifteen hour shifts. I was young, I could take it, and we were all working to earn as much money as we could. It wasn't like you could work your ten hours, and then say "That's enough for me." When the boss decided to work late, everyone worked late.

We didn't really do anything for fun, I guess because we worked so much. We all used to chat over our food, about where we'd come from. There were people from San Marcos, Quiche, Xela. I worked with a few guys from Honduras, who were engineers. Sometimes people would play card games, poker, dice, but I never learned the rules. They'd have all kinds of money on the table, but I didn't play. If we had free time, the thing to do was cook your own food to share. The food they gave us to eat was terrible, and they would put lots of iodine in it. We all said the iodine was to keep us all calm, because there weren't really women around. Iodine tastes horrible, and you can taste it in everything. We had a pan, oil, salt, eggs, beans, and Incaparina. Whenever we could, we'd cook our own food. Every eight days, or fifteen days, we could leave for a day or two, so I'd go home to fiestas and weddings to get some better food.

When the project was finished the Mexican company invited me to go with them to a project in Colombia. I thought "If I go, I'll have to work until I've made back the money they pay for my plane ticket." I decided to stay in Guatemala.

El Comisionado

In those days they didn't try to convince you to join the army. There were a lot of rumors about war with England over the sovereignty of Belize, and no one wanted anything to do with the army. They needed soldiers, so they had guys called comisionados who supposedly recruited, but really they would just go through small towns and grab all of the young men. They'd throw you in a pick-up, hit you over the head like thieves, and haul you away to training. I did a short stint in the army, and then I was back working in the capital. Friends of mine who were still in the army told me it was pretty ugly, with soldiers getting beaten up by officers, then beating each other up to get even. New arrivals got it the worst. I decided that if I got put back in the army I would wait till they gave me a gun, then I would just start shooting officers until they killed me, because I won't live to be beaten and ordered around, and denied food. The comisionado in town said to a group of people "I want to see Edgar doing more military service. That's my goal." When I was in town he would set up to try to grab me, so I would have to sneak around like I was a teenager. Friends would say, "Edgar, they're waiting for you down the street, next to your parents' house." My girlfriend's mother used to say "Edgar, I'll make a bed for you to stay here," but I'd say "No, I'm fine. I'm not afraid."

Once they did get me, not the local recruiter but some other soldiers who came through town with a big truck to fill with soldiers. I was walking wit a friend of mine who only had one leg, who got around with a special bike he'd built. He said "Why do you need Edgar? He helps me here, I think you should leave him." My dad went to the local office to try to buy me out, because he knew the comisionado was building a new house, but even when he offered a lot of money he couldn't get me out. They took the truck to Chimaltenango, and I was in the back with another guy. He said "Let's escape!" But we had to wait for the right chance. When the truck stopped to corral a group of farmers, I jumped out of the back and started running. The soldiers were busy with the other ten, and they couldn't chase me.

After that the comisionado really wanted to catch me, but I was spending most of my time at work in the capital and I didn't worry. Once, I was riding my bike and I saw him getting gas for his car. I waved, and he shouted something at me. That was the last time I ever saw him. He died a while back.

Dong Bang

I tried to get a mechanic's job in town, at Dong Bang, the Korean maquila, They make suits for men and women, shorts and skirts to sell in the US. They wouldn't give me a job as a mechanic, because they said I was too old. I said "I'm only thirty-seven!" They offered my a job as a plumber, and I took it because I thought I could get my foot in the door until I could get a mechanic's job. They gave me all kinds of little jobs to do. I took care of their guard dogs, I fixed pipes, and I worked as a handyman on their house when something went wrong. They had a garden with Kanchong, Korean radishes and watercress, and they had me work there as well as trimming their trees. I would ask whenever I could when I could work in the factory, but they would say "Relax, have a Coke, eat something. We'll never yell at you here, you can take a break. If you're bored, take a walk, or go buy the dogs some food." They liked me a lot. They trusted me to go into their bedrooms in their house, where they had wallets and stuff all around. When I would go into the boss's office he always had export-grade bananas on his desk. We never see export-grade bananas here, and he'd always offer me one to eat. But I was being paid a caretaker's salary, and so one day I went to his office and asked for a job as a mechanic. "You're very old to be starting that job," he said. I said I wasn't going to work as a caretaker, because I had other jobs I could do. I quit, but they just didn't get it. They followed me out, saying "Why are you leaving? Stay here."

Most of the people working at Dong Bang are eighteen years old. The mechanics are twenty-five, sometimes. They want young people who will work for low wages because they are trying to get ahead. They don't want guys who will look out for their own rights. They want kids who will just say "Yes" to everything. The guys my age in mechanics all have lots of experience. I wish we had an adult-education program here, because I feel like a lot of opportunities are hard to get without more experience. I would go to the classes in the capital, but it costs a lot in time and gas to get there a few times a week.

Espantas

There is a well around the corner called "La Pila Colorada," because its always been painted different colors. It used to be yellow, I think now it's red. People say a spirit used to go there to wash her hair. They say you couldn't go out late at night because you might find her there, leaning over the water. Her body was so beautiful tat i men saw her they wouldn't be able to resist approaching her, to hear her voice, to see her face. She always washed in a silver bowl, and the light of the moon would reflect upwards, hinting at her beauty. Then, when they were close, she would sweep her hair aside to reveal that she had the face of a horse. In the dark, they say, people's entire bodies would swell their fear, they would vomit and lose their ability to speak.

Two views of La Pila Colorada

There was a ghost, called La Llorona, who was the spirit of a woman who lost her child and died from the grief. In the old days, you would hear La Llorona's cries in the night, and in the morning your would find yourself sick with fever.

But people aren't afraid of spirits anymore, they're afraid of being robbed in the streets by gangs, or being kidnapped for ransom money. Drugs are everywhere in town now, we've got addiction and problems. Kids are into drugs because the money is really good. You see them driving their new cars around, and wonder. I work twelve hour days in my shop, sometimes more, and I don't drive my own car. Here you can work for a month and only make 900 quetzales. I don't really know ow it works, but if you and me go get a kilo of cocaine we can probably make a whole bunch of money. Some young people only see this side, they don't see the risks they're taking.

El Norte

We used to go to the capital to look for work, now people go looking up north. In the capital we would go there, and sleep on the ground, under some cardboard, because there was a job there. If there was more work in town, people would stay here. They only leave because they have to.

My friend used to own a bakery here, but he closed it down and started getting ready to go north. "My brother called me," he said, "He's making a hundred dollars a day. The price of flour is too high, and I'm not making enough profits here. I'm going." He used to live in a pretty basic little house here in town, and after a year of work he came back and made it into a two-story place, with cinder-blocks.

A while later, his boss from up north called, and he just left two months ago. He told me he's going to save enough to open a little abarroteria (convenience store). "We can't eat on what I earn here," he told me. His wife worries that something will happen to him when he's crossing the borders. There are farmers in the US who have started killing immigrants when they cross over the farmers' lands. I heard about this from some other people who've made the journey.

Arturo, Travel from Jiutepec to Sacramento

2007-02-13T10:51:00.000-08:00

"I was really young, maybe five when I went to the United States. My sister was three. My mother was maybe twenty four. There were some problems between my mother and my father. We were living with my grandparents, and my dad knew where she was. I don't know when she decided to leave, but one day she said to us: 'Okay, let's go!' I remember riding in the bus for four or five days, staying in the houses of people we didn't know, who charged us for staying with them and transporting us, polleros, coyotes. It was tough for me, I was uncomfortable. We traveled across the border to Sacramento.

"There's something that always comes back to me when I try to remember this trip. I have no idea where we were, or anything, but we were all hidden in a dumpster. I was carrying a Transformer in one hand, and I dropped it into trash. One of the polleros must have been an okay guy, because he picked up the toy and gave it back to me. Maybe he wanted to keep me from crying, to keep us from being caught.

"We went through at a place where there were a lot of drainage pipes and ditches. I don't know if we were in Tijuana, or where. I remember going into to these pipes, crossing the border, and they put us in a car and drove us to Sacramento.

"We stayed in Sacramento a year, in a place where people on all sides were immigrants. I didn't know where all of them came from, what countries, but when the patrol cars would come by we would take off running. The adults would put us kids in boxes, close the lids, and put shoes on top. They would say 'Don't move, don't cry, don't breathe.' I remember this very clearly. I also remember going out to look through the trash for toys.

"We were staying in a house with my mother's blood relatives, but they here horrible to us. They'd come from Mexico too, but they looked down on us. There's real trouble with accpetance, between groups of recently arrived immigrants and those who've been in the US for some time. They treated us really badly, no help, nothing. Our own people turned their backs on us. It was so bad, after we came back to Mexico we never spoke to that family again.

"Once my mom tried to get me into a school, but it didn't work out. I stayed with people we knew, but it was pretty tough. They would see my mother off, then say 'Go stay out on the patio, until she comes back.'"

I asked Arturo if he felt like this year in the US made improvements in his family's situation when they returned to Mexico.

"I guess I feel like it was harder. I spoke a little English. But if I'd stayed in the US I think I would have lost my identity, forgotten my town, my community, my sense of tradition. Some Mexicans ho have lived in the US for a long time say to me, 'I don't remember how to speak Spanish anymore, that's why I have to speak English.'

"I don't feel like the US lacks identity, but I wonder if Mexican identity and American identity have anything to do with one another. I know there is some common ground, but sometimes they seem like they don't go together very well. Some people up in the US think of Mexico as a country of poor people, like we're all fucked. I wonder what it would be like if I went there, if I want to go at all, if they'd think of me as an indio."

Arturo is now 22 years old. He is completing the necessary exams to become eligible for admission to the National Center of the Arts in Mexico City. His artistic focus at the moment is drawing, and the sketches I have seen are heavily crafted portraits within large areas of clean space. Arturo's attention to detail and volume in his drawing are both exquisite. He select the image below for inclusion with this text.

Arturo works at the Casa Vecina, helping with the planning and installation of
exhibitions, and he enjoys this work because of the number of interesting people he meets at the center and beneath it, in La Bota.

"Un Barrio De Sombras"

2007-02-12T15:23:00.000-08:00

"Yes, yes, she should take him to see Tepito."

Night was creeping in around the table where we were finishing a late dinner and a few beers, and I was beginning to drift in and out of our table's conversation. I hadn't really slept since leaving Olympia four days earlier, and the conversation was roaming wildly through topics as diverse as an apocryphal inner-city cult to Santa Muerte, and the enormous fanzine Siegfried Kaden had drawn in Sharpie all over a local gallery's walls. I lost track, looking out onto the street to a group of young men who were cutting open garbage bags in search of recyclables, under the patient gaze of a policeman. When I listened in again, I realized I was the topic of conversation, and my hosts were saying, "Yes, she should take him to Tepito." They sounded like they were daring one another to do something foolish, their eyes were a little wild. "No, it will be fine if he goes with someone who knows. It won't be dangerous, not really." A moment later I was holding a cellphone, and on the other end a young woman named Yutsil Cruz was saying "Please tell me a bit more about what you are doing, and tell me what you are hoping to find in Tepito." I babbled as best I could, certain that I wanted to see Tepito, whatever it was. The nervous energy in my hosts' voices when they said the name was enough of a reason for me. After a few moments of awkward explanations, Yutsil agreed to meet me at ten, the following morning. Glancing at the clock, I realized that I had less then eight hours to sleep and get ready. "Good," I thought, uneasily, "I won't have a chance to reconsider."

Tepito, I later learned, is the stuff of legend. It is said that Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec Emperor of Tenochtitlan, surrendered to Hernán Cortés in a place very near the center of Tepito, offering his own knife to the Spaniards in a request for an quick death, which Cortés eschewed in favor of torture and humiliation. From this point on Tepito's legend has grown.

The market has roots that go back, some say, "to the time of the gods," but during the seventies and eighties it attained enormous economic stature as a source for fayuca, illegally imported goods from the United States and abroad. During the decades when foreign imports were either heavily taxed or completely prohibited, Tepito emerged as the only place most people could afford to buy brand name clothing and electronics, as well as other highly desirable products from the other side of the US-Mexico border. The goods themselves arrived in large truckloads through border checkpoints that were adequately subsidized by smuggling organizations with strong bases on both sides of the border. There is a tale told that during this period the officials in Mexico City wanted to shut down the markets in Tepito, but its commercial allies in Texas were so heavily invested in the illegal merchandise there that they stepped in and prevented the government from enforcing its own trade laws.

Now, under NAFTA, there is no such thing as fayuca, and barely such thing as a trade barrier. Violating copyright law has become the new shortcut to accumulation, and the name for Tepito's bounty has been changed to pirata. Through the crowded pathways of Tepito's markets and stalls the wealth of the world's media production is offered up on stacks of hand-labelled compact discs, stored in photocopied sleeves. Complete collections of obscure anime series, British sitcoms, Scandanavian pornography, and Mexican norteñas lie side by side in neatly categorized piles. Booths sell counterfeit sneakers alongside genuine imports, and their vendors are happy to discuss the minuscule distinctions between the real and fake. In the next stall digital cameras and plasma-screen televisions are sold at cut-rate prices with no guarantee that they are indeed the brand they appear to be. A relatively recent development in Tepito is the sale of used clothing, imported from the saturated thrift-store market in the United States and sold by the pound in Tepito to distributors who resell the clothing in stores and market stalls through Latin America. Meanwhile, the fairy tales and rumours continue apace--that technicians in Tepito were the first to crack the piracy protection software on video games, or that they were the first to design the notorious chip that allows Playstions to run copied video games and play pirated films. As in the days of fayuca, Tepito still owns up to its mythical stature as an unacknowledged but unsinkable contestant in the battle between socio-economic heavyweights.

But Tepito's myth extends into dark places as well. The same corridors that offer a haven from the demands of governments and film studios also offer a place for illicit economies to distribute their product. It is rumoured that deep within the maze of Tepito there is a private firing range, where prospective clients can try out an assortment of weapons before making their final selection. Other booths offer prescription drugs and more "alternative" substances to those who know how to find them, and for every hundred youths shopping for music and clothing there is a bedraggled addict cruising the stalls in search of a stray purse or cellphone which might be traded for a sachet of heroin, only to reappear on the sale racks later as a discount item, a real steal. Some deserted eateries within the markets do not actually serve food, but offer more intimate company in private facilities above ground level. In accordance with the ruthless calculations of the open global market, it is certain that absolutely everything that can be counted, measured, copied, bought, sold, or stolen, there is a place for it in the stalls of Tepito.

Yutsil met me the following morning, and led me to an open doorway where a man was selling fresh fruit juices. We boarded a bus, and as we bounced along she explained that as an artist, she has always sought to create a social field within or around her work. When she was invited by a gallery within Tepito to do some work with them, she decided to set herself as a guide, extending an open invitation to artists and friends for a walk through Tepito, and a chance to meet some of its most prominent citizens.

The streets blurred outside my window, and I was concentrating on Yutsil and finishing my carrot juice. Then, quite suddenly, Yutsil said "Here we are!" and began weaving her way through the crowded bus and and out into the busy street. Blinking in the sun, I sheepishly asked "Is this really it?" After all of the hushed conversations and sidelong glances, stories of cults and freewheeling criminals, Tepito appeared to be pretty similar to the rest of Mexico City. Yutsil led me quite quickly along a wide, crumbling street filled with speeding buses and taxis, lined on both sides with awnings and racks of cheap merchandise. The most apparent danger was from taxis shouldering past within inches of my feet. Still, I was nervous, and I slid my backpack underneath my shoulder in some vain effort to protect it from being grabbed by an opportunist. Perhaps I was being needlessly cautious--I later heard a story that Tepiteño merchants are known for actively policing their own stalls, whenever pickpockets begin to have an impact on the pace of business. When they find someone stealing, they chase him down, shave his head, take his shoes, and then send him along through crowded streets to find his destiny.

Yutsil turned sharply, leading me into a maze of shops and bodies, then around a corner into a quiet courtyard. There was a sign on wall that read "Association of Established, Partially Established, and Fully Mobilized Businesses from the Barrio of Tepito." I'm translating pretty loosely, here, especially with the word ambulante, which is specifically used to describe the practice of vending wholesale and pirated goods from a portable stand set up on the side of the road. If one were feeling poetic, ambulante might be translated as "trafficker in the ephemeral".

The office that opened onto the courtyard contained five or six neatly spaced desks, behind each of which was seated an older man, busy with papers and letters. In the middle of the room, a group of uniformed children were eating lunch and listening to a story before returning to their school for the afternoon. We were here to meet Alfonso Hernandez, the founder of the Centro de Estudios Tepiteños and self-assigned historian for the neighborhood. His office is filled with books, in stacks, including several unique editions of a few of Benjamin's lesser known works, photocopied in their entirety and bound with wire. A special note on the cover of these books reads: "Limited Edition, Printer's Guild of Tepito". Alfonso works as a guide and liaison for the various anthropologists and UN fieldworkers who prowl through Tepito's markets, and he has been invited to discuss his work at conferences in London, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Bogotá, and elsewhere. "They all want to know how we do it," he told me, "How we can exist without becoming part of a larger governmental structure."

In conceptual terms, Tepito has persisted for decades as an working space wherein Mexico's governmental authority has almost no direct control over the lives of Tepito's citizens. The state's principal modes of expression, from the administrative to the carceral, are either ignored or denied entry into the complexity of Tepito's economy, warded off by the dynamism and efficiency of its rhizomatic self-organization. The expansive reach of its reputation for danger and lawlessness is a good signal of Tepito's success as an alternative to the societal structures beyond its outer edges--that which is incompatible with the fabric of established institutions and orders appears within those orders as unapproachable, inadvisable.

The men seated in neatly spaced desks outside of Alfonso's office, I can now presume, were a few Tepito's sixty-two prominent lideres, who together form something like a council of representatives for the merchants and residents of Tepito. Their posts are awarded according to their experience, success, and prominence, and the degree to which they defer to the best interests of their constituency is not clearly defined. There are many in Mexico who suggest that this system of government is more closely based on a Sicilian model than an Athenian one, but they are not acknowledging the genuine complexity of the situation.

Between 1972 and 1982, in turn of militaristic city planning that united twelve governmental agencies, the city's "Plan Tepito" was unveiled. In essence, the plan eliminating all existing structures and rezoned the area for the light commercial and low-density apartment residences more in tune with the modernizing image then being encouraged by Mexico's dialog with the World Bank. The residents of Tepito, recognizing the threat levelled at them, petitioned alternative plans from student architects and international artists. These invitations resulted in a much elevated visibility of the community as it stood, winning design prizes and inspiring sympathetic civic projects as far away as Lyon, and succeeded in putting a stop to the city's plans.

Today, along the main street of Tepito's markets, a long stretch of elevated shops has been built over the ground level, doubling this area's capacity. As we walked past, Yutsil pointed these structures out, saying "They built this, the merchants did, with their own money, and their own plans. They never got permission from anyone. It shouldn't be here, but it is." When I asked how the construction of this structure was related to the sixty-two lideres, Yutsil confirmed my suspicion that they would have been instrumental in the planning and execution of this project. When I pushed for details, she told me she knew almost a little as I did. The structure of Tepito's preferred administration, it seems, is a bit more nebulous than its dominant counterparts.

I asked Alfonso about child care, hoping to find out about a specific example of community organization. Alfonso shook his head, saying, "Look, here all networks are informal. Our past experiences have taught us to atomize our organizations, in order to prevent any sort of political control. Having an identifiable hierarchy would simply attract the attention of the police." He hadn't really answered my question about childcare. I remembered the table full of uniformed children eating lunch and listening to a story, and behind them the row of leaders planted in their desks.

"Here, you won't encounter illiteracy. In Tepito we are in contact with the greatest technologies of the entire world. But in the schools they are teaching unnecessary things. They are preparing the children for a kind of life they will never have." When Alfonso said this to me, I was immediately struck by the conflict between the two models of citizenship available to a child in a neighborhood such as this. One, the white-collar, mortgage-paying worker who fills their apartment with laptops, hybrid cars, designer jeans. The other, a technology savvy, freewheeling entrepreneur thriving within the blinding pace of business in a world of piracy, cloning, and informal rent agreements in neighborhoods on the edge of legality. The prior struck me a fantasy justification for the advance of neoliberalism, the latter as its unmistakable reality. Illegal, improvised, opaque, according to unwritten agreements and unmistakable necessity, the citizens of Tepito have crafted a new form of government for themselves. The challenge they face is to retain their hard-won position, in the face of transnational accords and corporate development schemes that, by dearth of positive effects, appear to simply be the most successful form of organized crime in North America.

"Tepito's identity is found in a balance between its charisma and its stigma," Alfonso said. "It has a history of being the barrio that fights for its place, that defends itself in a city that would like it to disappear. We have learned from the example of cities like Los Angeles, where the process of urban renewal shuffles the poor from one place to another according to the whims of real estate speculators. But in Tepito we have never raised political banners. We have defended ourselves with artistic and cultural expressions, which exist outside of the criteria used by our government. Our charisma is in our culture of poverty, and it overcomes the stigma of our marginality, organized crime, and addiction. To one another we say 'A barrio without shadows instills no respect, and so we spread rumors, we make our shadows darker.'"

The Road

2007-02-11T12:36:00.000-08:00

Conversations at Casa Vecina

2007-02-07T13:29:00.000-08:00

In the mid-eighties, the historical center of Mexico City was fast becoming a ghost-town. Low property values were fueling a massive takeover of the center's storefronts and houses, while the long-term families from the city's venerable streets began an exodus to the suburds and newer residential areas in distant parts of the city. The results were easy to see: throngs of day-visitors came in to fill the franchises and fast food restaurants, and in even the early evening the streets were empty, shutters closed and locked tight.

In an attempt to counter this, the Fundacion Centro Historico was established to recuperate the center as a living space for families and small businesses. Backed in part by the enormous and controversial power of Mexico's richest man, Carlos Slim, the foundation embarked on a multi-faceted project to recover the historical center's community. Initially conducting psychological studies and establishing child-care centers, the foundation later decided to divide the city center into thematic corridors, in order to specialize its involvement in specific neighborhoods. It developed a technological corridor, an entertainment area, a small business area, and it selected a set of intersecting alleyways as the site for its "cultural corridor." Seeking to foster an artistic community, the city cooperated with the foundation in offering affordable lofts to young artists, renting spaces to galleries, establishing a small museum, and linking all of this to a nearby university. Also, the planners created a youth hostel for visiting art students called La Señorial, which is running and available to all.

Casa Vecina was conceptualized as a space to support community-focused art programs, and as a project to strengthen the relationship between long-term residents and newer arrivals. It aimed itself at a different audience other than existing consumers of conemporary art, seeking to draw in the grocers, restauranteurs, tailors and other full-time residents of te historic center. After a year of remodelling and planning, the Casa Vecina began its projects, opening its spaces to local and foreign artists, and to the community around its doors.

I spoke with Iván Edeza, the Casa's artistic director, about some of the strategies the center is using to make their programs available and accessible to the people of the surrounding community.

Workshops

In the year since its opening, the Casa Vecina has been offering a variety of art classes to the children of the community. They decided that rather staying within traditional genres of art teaching, they would offer thematic classes like puppetry, pottery, and theater. "We gave workshops without specifying what kind of 'art' we were doing," Iván said. This summer, they are planning to offer a course in making movies to neighborhood adolescents, and then to exhibit their films in a community film festival held at Casa Vecina and nearby locations.

Initially, these classes were offered to the community free of charge, but the center began to sense that parents were sending their children to workshops simply so they would be out of the house, rather than out a genuine enthusiasm for making art. Children were arriving without focus, goofing off, and making it difficult for instructors to ruin their workshops. "Adding a small fee," Iván told me, "made all the difference," and since this time they've had a drop in attendance but a great deal of improvement in the interest level of the students who attend.

"The important question to ask," Iván said, "Is whether art is really for everyone. In truth, I don't think it is for everyone. But I don't think this distinction is made according to one's affluence, but according to the level of one's interest. I think my job is to make a new opportunity available, and to put it out there for people to enjoy, if they wish. Museums are so cold, they require so many codes just to get through the front door. We are making a few minor changes, to try to make art more accessible."

El Callejon

Out in front of the Casa Vecina is a patch of freshly lain tiles and paving stones, embellished on one side by some iron stumps to stop cars from passing through. When the Casa Vecina was first opened, this alleyway was a throughfare for taxis and speeding motos, lined on both sides with trash. One of the center's first projexcts was to collec siognatures and arrange funding to stop traffic through the tiny street. It led the community in a series of work parties to clean the street, tear up the old asphalt, and intall the new pavement. Their hope was to make it a place where children could play, and on most afternoons there is are at least a pair of kids kicking a ball back and forth. On the afternoon that I was visiting, Casa Vecina's director Antonio Calera Grobet was standing outside, locked in conversation with several other members of te center about how and where to install a bicycle rack. In a city reknowned for its pollution and pettty street crime, the amount of cycle communitng that occurs is negligible, but their plan is wonderful in its optimism and assertiveness.

"Un Espacio Convivencial"

Recently, the center has begun projects dedicated to creating a shared sense of space in the street, and in collective activities. They have begun setting up community gatherings around the neighborhood, and leading thematic walks through their streets. "We're thinking about things like assembling a group of cyclists for a ride around the community to visit cycle repair shops, in order to meet with cycle mechanics and talk with them. Later, we could hold an exhibition of interesting bicycles in the center, and have a screening of Vittorio De Sica's film The Bicycle Thief!"

A related strategy has been to arrange neighborhood outings to other parts of the city to see exhibitions that ordinarily would escape local notice. The center is organizing just such a visit to see the Gabriel Orozco retrospective at the Palace of Fine Arts, about ten blocks away, followed by a group stroll and a visit to the comissioned installation Orozco made in a nearby library.

"Now, more than being a place people come to for art lessons, we are hoping to become a place people can move outwards from, into other parts of the center. Our goal is to assist people in recognizing the vibrancy of their own community, seeing their own lives with interest and excitement, and enjoying the vast amount of heritage we have aound us here. We want people here to appreciate their own houses, because in a community as old as this one it is often said that the houses are ugly, they are falling down. When you watch the telenovelas you see modern houses, suburbs, and we want to redirect everyone's attentions to the beauty we have around us."

La Cascarita

Casa Vecina's newest staff member is Victor Ibarra, who has lived within the center for his entire thirty-nine years, working for the last ten as the manager of a bar called La Cosmopolitana. He will be working with the center to further improve the relationship between the budding art community and its neighbors, taking advantage of his vast network of family, friends, and aquaintances in the area. When I was in Mexico City, Victor hadn't yet begun his new job, and over a drink at La Cosmopolitana he told me how he'd made the transition from bar manager to cultural liason.

"We were all pretty aware of Casa Vecina, because it took a year to restore the building, and we'd pass by. One day a friend of mine came into La Cosmopolitana and said 'Hey, what's up wit that new place around the corner?' They'd built a bar into the bottom floor, called La Bota. I liked to go and get a drink there, because it was a quiet place.

"One day I noticed a little poster advertising art classes for kids upstairs, and when I got home I told my wife about the classes. I have a daughter who is ten and a son who is six. We signed them up for a drawing class and some acting lessons. So, a few times a week, I'd bring them over to the Casa Vecina, and while they did their classes I'd have a beer at the bar. I got along right away with Antonio, who owns the bar [and is also the director of Casa Vecina]. It was great, there was some art for the kids and some downtime for the grown-ups.!

"Well, last summer the Fundacion Centro Historico was encouraging small community events, for families, to take place in different parts of the neighborhood. Antonio told me about it and I decided to really get involved. I invited my brother's family, and we all started to make some plans. We thought it would be a great thing if all of us played a few games of football, in the street. When we play out in the street we call it a cascarita, when there's no referee, no real firm rules, and someone's always shouting to everyone else 'It was out! It was in!'

"We had six teams: two for young kids; two for chavos, fourteen to sixteen; and then on one side we had a bunch of us from La Cosmopolitano against the guys from La Bota. You know, it was more to play for the joy of the game than to win or lose, especially for us older guys."

"La Cosmopolitana"

La Bota

"It turned out that a whole bunch of my family showed up to watch the games. My mom and dad were there, and the families from everyone at La Bota came down as well. So we played football all morning, and then we all ate together. We brought some steaks and stuff, and Antonio brought a case of beer out from La Bota. It was the day of the World Cup Final, so we all sat down together and watched Italy beat France.

"That's how I got to be friends with Antonio and Casa Vecina. Later on, I was telling Antonio how tired I was, how my ten years in the bar were catching up with me, and he said 'Why don't you come work with me? You know everyone around here, you've lived here your whole life, we need your help.' I thought about it, and I thought, 'Sure, I'll be coming from outside, with my own perspective, and without a really fixed idea about what "art" really is.' I see this as my first chance to really work for my community. It's tough, because so many people say 'Oh, I don't have time,' or they want to go to the movies, or the domina hall, or the cantina. Yeah, it will be really difficult, but I'm thinking it will be really great.

"We're even using La Cosmopolitana for art shows. We just had one here, called Acerca de la Lucha, which was a set of paintings of boxers. You know, lots of people who own shops around here, they don't have time to go home for lunch, so they come in here. They saw the show, and now a lot of them are asking, 'Where are those paintings?' We're thinking about putting up a group show. We're even talking about showing documentaries or film projects on the television in here, instead of music videos, but we'll need a lot of them so it doesn't get repetitive. So, even though I'm moving over to Casa Vecina, there's a really great relationship between these two places, and we can keep working together."

Fireworks

I'd only intended to spend the afternoon at Casa Vecina, but after several long conversations I found myself still fixed at a table in La Bota, hoping to find someone to else to talk with, more perpsectives. I looked out at the alley Casa Vecina had restored a few months earlier. It extended a few yards past the front door of the center, then sharply changed into a hard packed dirt street that may, at one time, have been paved. Past that point the alley darkened, and I wondered when, if ever, the warmth within La Bota would expand out into the far reaches of the community, now shrouded in darkness. The security guard employed to keep watch over the block, not an uncommon sight in Mexico, strolled past the open walls near my table.

Once, in conversation, Iván interrupted me to point out a group of street kids who had pulled open the garbage can across the alleyway, and were hunting methodically through soda bottles and fruit rinds for something of value. As night fell around the bar, a pair of teenagers paced nervously back and forth in the alleyway. They were carrying a bag of fireworks, and occasionally would light a really loud one somewhere out of sight. I noticed that as I spoke with Iván and Antonio, their eyes would drift over my shoulder to the alleyway outside, where the teens leaned against one of the iron stumps the center had installed. Then, just when all of us were deep in conversation, a huge bang sent me out of my seat, and it was clear that the firecrackers were beginning to be a little too close to La Bota to be an accident. When I looked outside, I saw Antonio lecturing the two culprits, gesturing with one hand. When he came back I went to stand at the window with him, where we looked out to where the boys were still leaning against the stump, looking sour and insulted.

Antonio's mind seemed to be racing, working to produce a solution to this dilemma that worked for all parties. He looked at me, as if to ask what I would have to say about this incident. He said "You know, we're not the bad guys, here. We made this for them. We are doing this, and we aren't going anywhere. They have to respect us."

The Road

2007-02-04T17:48:00.000-08:00

Lost and Naked in El Paso

2007-02-01T14:54:00.000-08:00

The Greyhound arrived in El Paso at 3.30 in the morning, dumping us in a poorly-lit courtyard surrounded by the crouched forms of ramshackle buildings, broken bits of wall, and the sound of engines roaring through the orange night. I pulled my bag out from under the bus and walked into the station lobby, where a long line of people were waiting to be searched by a group of security guards. Half-asleep, one man muttered, "Guns, knives, mace, pepper spray, drugs, alcoholic beverages, needles, I'm looking for these, okay?"

I sat down on the bench. After forty-eight hours of coffee, energy bars, and little sleep, my nerves were bare. Conversations on the way from Pendleton to Salt Lake City had focused on the benefits of mixing methamphetimine with ecstasy, several reasons why buying a car on eBay is a bad idea, and the cultural highlights of prisons in the Boise area. One woman had just had her thumb broken by her boyfriend's brother, and just outside of Tucson she began having hallucinations that the man was on our bus, trying to get to her. When an ambulance came for her it was discovered that she was diabetic and in the first stages of a hypoglycemic coma. I'd made things worse by spending most of the trip reading a book about institutional violence in Guatemala between 1954 and the late nineties. When I tried to sleep, my head filled with images of the Kaibil's disinterred victims, open pits filled with skeletons wearing rubber boots, voices calling out in terror. Now, seated on a bench in the lobby of the El Paso bus sation, I found myself unable to stop staring at a scar that cut cleanly across the face of a young father who stood in line, holding his gurgling child in both arms. "Guns, knives, mace, pepper spray..."

Turning away, I saw a boy, maybe seventeen, leaning against the doorway of the gift shop, next to a pile of toy parrots and children's books. His eyes were hollow, and one of his cheeks was covered by a deep bruise that must have only recently stopped swelling. I surveyed th room, flinching at every stain on someone's jeans, every fleck of dirt as though it were a scab. I couldn't escape the naked sense of my own skin, like it was a blank sheet awaiting the inscription of some violent act. Under my clothes, I could feel a blade drawn lightly along the soft curve of my stomach.

An hour later we were called to board a bus to Juarez, and after loading my pack underneath I sat in the dark cabin of he bus listening to mariachi tunes and advertisements for used cars. In the darkness I felt safe, invisible. I took out some cash from one backpack, transferring it to my wallet so I would be able to change it when I arrived in Juarez, and as I slid a thin stack of bills into my wallet I looked behind my seat to meet the same deep eyes I'd seen in the bus station. Defensive and embarrssed, I forced myself to smile, saying "Is it cold in this bus?" He shrugged, as if this question were irrelevant.

His eyes were so wide they seemed to shine in the darkness of the bus, and when he spoke it was so quick and soft that I could only catch some of what he told me. He repeated himself often, punctuating his sentences with a jab of his chin and a widening of his eyes. His name was Luis. He told me he came from Veracruz six months earlier, with several friends. They'd found work in El Paso, working in construction and demolition. The contractor he worked for didn't always pay his employees on time, and was involved in moving drugs north from Texas. Sometimes the contractor would pay his employees with drugs, or give them drugs to make up for not paying them their wages. The group of men who worked for this contractor lived together in a small house, and spent their time off together as well. They liked to go dancing. Luis started becoming involved with a girl who had dated another of his co-workers, and this began to cause some tension. There had been a fight the left Luis with the bruises he had on his face, and others he indicated along his ribs. He was forced to leave the group of workers and to stay with other friends in El Paso. His boss paid him, and gave him a handful of drugs as a parting gift. Luis never said exactly what sort of drugs they were, but he explained that while we spoke he was coming down from four days of being high and confused, wondering what to do and where to go next. He decided he would return to his home in Veracruz to heal, rest, and in time he would try to return to the US at a different spot than El Paso-Juarez.

His voice was afraid, wounded, and also intensely threatening. As he spoke he would sway towards me, then lunge a little, to emphasize his point. Every time he lunged, I would fight my urge to flinch, countering by consciously leaning in towards him, towards his face. Softening, he would tell me how difficult life was, how frightened he was, how badly he needed help. Then, fierce again, he made it clear to me that he was still carrying drugs, and he began pressuring me to buy some from him. When he said this he would nod towards my backpack, as if to say "That's where you keep you money." I decided I needed to leave the situation, and so I forced the conversation to drop, feigning distraction in the process of readying the bus to depart for Juarez. My skin was prickling with sleeplessness and fear, and the horrible clarity of my situation. After a year of study and talk, I'd travelled south to encounter the reality of immigration, to speak with the men and women who were crossing the border, and to learn about the illicit economies that thrive in the interstices between Mexico and the United States. Now, I was sitting next to Luis, who had survived some of the cruelest truths of immigration, who smelled of exhaustion and fear from life in a world my books could never actually describe. I stared into the darkness outside the window of the bus, hearing again the sound of engines roaring in the night. I felt unprepared, vulnerable, and ashamed.

In the bus station in Juarez I found Fulgencio, who I'd met in Colorado. We struck up a conversation, and I began to feel calm. I watched a little boy put a quarter into a robotic horse, swaying easily in his saddle as the sun began to creep into the waiting room of the station. Although Luis travelled with us in the bus all the way to Queretaro, I didn't let a conversation with him begin again. I spent most of the morning talking with a farmer from Villa Aldama, and trying to sleep. The bus driver chose movies about arms smuggling, genocide in Rwanda, spousal homicide, and the death penalty. After hours of this, I found myself smiling with relief when a comedy about family reunions came on, and with this feeling of relief I finally fell asleep.

Later, when we stopped in Ciudad Delicias, I saw Luis sitting behind a booth that sold coffee and candy and cigarettes. He had taken his shirt off, laying it out in front of him, and he was staring up into the sunlight with his hands clenched together in prayer. He rocked back and forth, gently patting his hands down onto his shirt and then raising them over his head. When he came back on the bus, he was carrying a large bag of fruit, and he walked patiently down the line, offering oranges and bananas to each passenger. When he came to me he thrust an orange at me, and said "Look, when we get to Mexico City, I can take you to the cathedral, I can show you around." I told him I was meeting a friend, and thanked him. When he offered the orange to me again, I said I wasn't hungry, I smiled, and deliberately turned to look out the window as if there were something fascinating waiting for me there.

When Luis stepped off the bus in Queretaro, Fulgencio smiled to me and said "Well, there goes that young man. He's going to back to Veracruz for a while, to be with his family."

Fulgencio, Travelling from Grand Junction to Acapulco

2007-01-29T18:02:00.000-08:00

Fulgencio was born in Chilpancingo, in Guerrero. He first came to the United States when he was nineteen years old, and following the advice of some friends he found work in a restaurant at the Denver International Airport. The restaurant served breakfast food, sandwiches, pizza, chicken, and burgers. Fulgencio collected dirty dishes, cleaned tables, and occasionally helped out in the kitchen, where there were cooks who spoke Spanish. Although his English skills were very basic, Fulgencio enjoyed the awkward conversations he had with customers who came from as far away as Korea and the Middle East. After working there for a year, Fulgencio had developed a good friendship with one of the managers at the restaurant, who had himself emigrated from France, and married a woman from Denver. When Fulgencio decided to return to Guerrero, this friend promised to bring his family to Mexico for a visit. A few months later Fulgencio's friend arrived and stayed for several weeks with Fulgencio and his mother, in Chilpancingo.

Fulgencio moved to Acapulco and found work there in a restaurant, and stayed with some friends from back home. Through friends, he met a woman whose family was from Acapulco, and shortly after they began dating they decided to get married. As she was still living at home, and Fulgencio was staying with his friends, they began planning a way to earn enough money to buy a house and live together. Fulgencio was dissatisfied with the work he had in Acapulco, and didn't like having to wash dishes, so he suggested perhaps he could return to Colorado and find work there, then return after a year or so. He invited his fiancee to come with him, but she was frightened of the trip, and wanted to stay close to her family.

Back in Colorado, Fulgencio found work with some aquaintances who were working in construction. They taught him the skills he needed to become a framer, and they worked jobs in Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Cheyenne. When I asked if he could sink a nail with one blow, he smiled and mimed the gesture, sayng "Like this? Of course!" He liked this job, he liked going to different cities, and he was earning better wages than he did at the airport. His only compaint was that the wind and cool air in the Rockies made him fear for his health.

After about six months of work with this crew, the head contractor offered Fulgencio a new job, delivering landscaping equipment to various locations around the US. The contractor told Fulgencio that if he could find a way to get a driver's license he would give him a raise and a chance to travel all over. Fulgencio decided to go to Indianapolis to get his license, and was back in Colorado, ready to start, in just a few days.

This new job was his favorite. He followed routes from LA all the way to Kansas City, and even as far north as Missoula, Montana. The scenery led him along, he said, and the weather was always surprising. However, he was living in the US without papers, and he began to worry that at some point he would be pulled over by the police, who might want to investigate his citizenship status. His English hadn't really improved, as most of his friends spoke Spanish, and he always spoke to his boss with a friend to interpret for both of them. Once he had spoken with the police when a break-down left him stranded by the side of the road, and they had helped him by giving him a ride to the nearest town, and towing his truck out of harm's way. However, he was still unsure that the next time would go as smoothly.

Sometimes he would drink a beer when he paused at a rest stop or convenience store. He told me he didn't think drinking and driving was a great idea, but when he was younger a beer didn't really effect him much. When he was finally pulled over for speeding, his cab had three empty bottles in it. When he was released from custody to await trial, he decided rather than face charges he would return to Mexico with the money he'd saved, and try to convince his wife to come back to the US with him.

A few months later they came to US together, and went to Indianapolis to try to arrange a temporary work permit legally using Fulgencio's driver's license as some form of proof that they would find work. His prior arrest and outstanding fines (which had increased in his absence to $1700) turned up, and he was taken back to jail for a few days until his case could be tried. He was given access to a public defender, but felt frustrated that he couldn't speak to the lawyer directly and had to rely on a translator. The judge suspeded his fines and sentenced him to a year of probation, along with classes and mandatory attendance at Alcoholics Anoymous meetings. In addition to regular drug testing and meetings with his probation officer, Fulgencio had to adhere to a strict schedule of call-in sobriety tests. Every evening, between six and seven, he would call an automated service that was programmed to play a memory game with him. In Spanish, it would supply him with strings of numbers or letters, which he had to re-enter into the phone exactly. If he missed a single button, he was required to come in the next day for blood and urine tests.

Fulgencio told me the strict regimen of probation requirements made it difficult for him to find regular work, as he was accustomed to on-call arrangements with fluctuating schedules. Further, most of his contacts were outside of the state, and he was forbidden to cross the border. His wife worked to support them both, but she was pregnant and would need to take a break towards the end of her pregnancy. During this time Fulgencio worked hard to establish evidence of having paid tax on his wages from years past, and to complete the paperwork required for his family to become eligible for social services like Medicaid and WIC. This work was successful, and though we did not talk directly about how these programs had been useful to his family, Fulgencio expressed a deep admiration for these systems of social care, which he believed were much more available and supportive than equivalent programs in Mexico.

Also, Fulgencio succeeded in attaining a US citizenship for his son when he was born in Indianapolis. He was very excited about this, because he believed this meant his son would attend public schools, and be able to enjoy the stability afforded by full citizenship, rather than Fulgencio's experiences with temporary work permits, under-the-table jobs, and a persistent concern about the security of his stay in the US. However, shortly after his parole ended, Fulgencio's wife decided to move back to Acapulco with their son, in order to be closer to her mother and sister. Fulgencio was disappointed by her decision, and laughingly said that she "didn't last long" in the US. He decided to stay, in order to save enough money to buy a house in Acapulco.

Fulgencio spoke with friends in Colorado, and through them he heard about a job in Reno installing roofs on new houses. With his prior experience as a framer, he got the job and moved away from Indianapolis. As before, Fulgencio enjoyed the work. After the house had been framed, he would lay down a layer of plywood and tarpaper, and then would lay out the shingles. Instead of having to haul all of the bundles of asphalt up to the roof, Fulgencio's boss had invested in an ajustable conveyer-belt ramp that could lmove a roof's worth of hingles to the top of a house in twenty minutes. He said that it was a little scary working so high up, and always wearing a harness, but I sensed that this was also an exciting part of the job for him. After about six months the contractor who had hired Fulgencio hired a second roofer, who was only nineteen years old. Fulgencio liked his new assistant, and saw an opportunity to be a mentor, and help a young man in his first few years working in the US. They worked together as a roofing team in Reno for several years, and Fulgencio was able to send enough money to his wife in Acapulco for her to buy a small house. When we met one another in Grand Junction, Fulgencio was on his way home for the first time in three years. His son was four years old, and he had not yet seen the house his work had paid for. He told me he was planning to stay a few weeks with immediate family in Chilpancingo, andt then to spend several months with his wife and son in Acapulco. After these visits, he told me he was planning to return to his job in Reno.

I asked Fulgencio if he felt his family was facing a difficult decision between staying within their family network in Guerrero and living permanently in the US, so their son could take advantage of his US citizenship. Fulgencio agreed. He himself felt certain that life was better in the United States, and seemed pretty clear that he wanted to persude his wife to return to the US. In his eyes, the Unted States was a place of greater security and better employment opportunities. He shared with me some of his fears about being mistreated by police in Guerrero and other parts of Mexico, of paying bribes and having his possessions taken away. He told me "sometimes they take your money and just leave you in the street." He contrasted these fears with his own experiences in the United States with police and jail. He saw his own arrest and punishment as justified within the laws set by the United States, and he did not feel like he had been made a victim. I asked if he felt his probation had been beneficial, insofar as it had connected his family with social programs. He agreed, but also told me that this year had been the hardest of his life.

We finished this conversation by the time the bus had reached Queretaro, north of Mexico City. The bus driver turned on the television, and Fugencio and I watched "The Family Stone." Later, we drank coffee in the bus station, and he told me that he wasn't sure whether he liked the tacos for sale in Reno better or worse than the ones he would find in Chilpancingo.