Team Guate

A couple of days ago The Guatemala Times published an interesting post entitled: “International Community agrees: Guatemala urgently needs fiscal reform” and I wanted to pull out a significant statistic:

“Today and yesterday many of the 150 country delegations that participated at Conference for Reconstruction and Transformation of Guatemala expressed their support for the plan proposed by the Government of Guatemala. At the same time it seemed clear to most international participants that Guatemala will never be able to move towards development if the tax revenues stay below 10% of the GDP, the lowest in the region, even lower then Haiti.

The Sub- Secretary of the United Nations (UN), the Mexican, Alicia Bárcena, who is also the executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America (CEPAL) warned: “no country in the world collecting less then 10% of GDP and with a public spending of only 4.5% of the GDP, can exercise effective management, it is a State without the power to act”.

I sent this along to a few friends who are businessmen and know Guatemala to get their take on this. I, of course, have my own theories, but here’s some of the comments they sent along:

COMMENT 1:

Maybe this is the foundation of how to attack it: “It is a problem caused by severe social inequality, a weak state, very low governmental budget and therefore a weak organizational and coordination response of the actions needed to tackle the problem.” Let us turn this into the advantage.

We go after the financial side and make it even more community driven. We also allow the information to flow freely. Some very interesting possibilities for collaboration between two awesome organization here, yet informal. Hmmm I see a lot of interesting approaches from this conclusion. – Erik

Comment 2:

“I was startled to see just how low the tax collection and the government spending %s are and I look forward to seeing your elucidation of different approaches to the problem.

Our attorney in Guatemala, Gladys Porras, worked for SAT (the Guate equivalent of the IRS) as a trial attorney in tax evasion cases and recently left the agency to go into private practice. Every day she had a new case in a new town for 3 years! She told me that during that time the SAT estimate was that the % of citizens who had income sufficient to require the filing of tax returns and that voluntarily complied with the requirements rose from 40% to something over 50%.

That tells me that not the very rich and the kind of rich people evade taxes but also the middle class (I don’t think the poor are required to file). So it is endemic, which is not surprising due to the prevailing culture of rampant corruption in the country.

In the article Pres. Colom says that the business community is blocking tax rate increases. I believe that but I also believe the average citizen is against increased tax rates as they have no reason to believe that the government would use the increase in revenues to benefit them. Based on history, this is a perfectly logical conclusion.

So, if not from the rich (who have almost all the power), the middle class (who do not have much power) and the poor (who only have power when they are in outright revolt — and just why would they revolt in favor of a concept so unappealing on its face as taxes — then where could the pressure for fiscal reform originate?

Here are my off-the-cuff responses to the question, listed in order of importance and potency:

#1: The international community. The conference referred to in the article undoubtedly was initiated by that external force (just as the fledgling moves towards legal reform in Guate was caused by the US and the UN). So that means the US government and multi-lateral agencies such as the UN, IMF, the World Bank, and the IDB. They threaten to cut off aid, military supplies, loans etc., if fiscal reform does not happen. They are the ones that posses Big Carrots and Big Sticks.

#2: “Enlightened” business interests. Just as Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and some other mega-billionaires are pressing for the continuation of estate taxes in the US, some big players in Guate such as WalMart, Big Chicken (Pollo Campero) etc. could come to the realization that the development of a stable, growing economy which benefits the majority of citizens (a.k.a. consumers) is key to greater profits and get behind financial/fiscal reform. This group possess Big Carrots (a.k.a. money for politicians) but few if any Big Sticks as it is well known that businesses everywhere hedges their bets and buys the corporation of all political elements (and that all such elements, left, right and center, are eminently and equally subject to these thinly disguised bribes).

#3: The pollis (the Latin term I use for the general population although in Rome pollis was just those eligible to vote, not the general population) has no Big Carrots but does have a Big Stick as it posses the power of extreme disruption and outright insurrection. Interestingly, while the demands of groups one and two would be, first and foremost, more revenue for the government to spend on services to the public, the pollis would demand just plain more services. (The pollis never worries about where the money for government services comes from.)

So, as I see it, the ideal analogy for the causation of fiscal, financial, and democratic reform in Guatemala would be a pressure cooker. Heat from the outside (see #1), an inflamed “water” (the pollis — see #3) and a shaky lid (big business, see #2, which sees that all this is bad for business) that tries to hold things together. Now, if I could only solve my own personal problems ….
Bob”

When I ask mi mama if she ever paid taxes, she sucks her teeth and says the equivalent of “Please, do you think I’m stupid?” Mi abuela retorts: “What for? So the crooks in the green palace get it?”

I honestly think it has to do with trust – among classes, from class to state, from individual to individual, organization to organization and business to business. Mix and match any of these combinations and there still isn’t any trust any way you put it. There is a certain fabric of trust that is missing for many reasons, but on the national level many people, even the middle class are against paying taxes because they don’t trust the government (how could they after the war and now the syphilis experiments, it takes two to tango on all these occasions) to look after their interests or well-being. It never has, why would we expect anything different?  The wealthy are used to looking after their own interests and doing whatever they want as long as they have money; the middle class is barely scraping by and they certainly don’t trust the rich to pay their share or the governent to take care of them; the poor are in the daily struggle and all the nonprofits (local ones in particular) provide the band-aids when the whole thing is hemorrhaging.

SF BAY AREA – Waking up in one’s own bed after after being away for one year is as close as I’ll get to waking up in a time capsule, buried amid the rubble, rain and weeds that grow around it like a rock. I stare at the red room we painted years ago and look around the partial emptiness from a night’s worth of unpacking. My little shortwave radio I carry everywhere I roam sits on the table next to me and I turn on the news. All in English. There’s public radio here. The foreclosures have been cancelled because of mistakes.

It’s Columbus Day and the windows have steam on them from the chill outside and our warm bodies inside. I amble about, make the bed the way the nuns taught me, eat my oatmeal, pick up my paper in my white socks (curse when I realize my Wallstreet Journal has been stolen) find the physical vessel for this next phase, touch the plants, re-arrange the dishes and then I just listen to this new quiet of change, of settling in. We’re here for three months and i don’t know how much to unpack to signify the long journey has ended and how much to leave packed and ready to sell, to ship to move to another storing unit. Things are liquid and in motion even with the semblance of stillness. I have populated my desk quickly and I turn off the lights to hide in that tunnel of pixels.

“It’s like a spaceship just landed!” Brad said as he walked in for his pajamas. We’re sharing a closet here as well, and so my office is no longer a closed space for my landings on Mars.

Outside my smile is less strained and I relax into the street when I surface from my office in the back of the house. Everything looks wider and more expansive, and yet I’m fearful in that same old way. I stop looking around, behind, and out of the corner of my eye. There is nothing there. No one is following me. I pull my bag close to me, hide my celphone and pull the credit card and cash out of the wallet. I’ve left the dummy wallet back at home I think to myself. Why did I bring a bag? Anyone will see I have my things in there.

The roads are smooth and dark, like a deep dark mirror in the middle of the blazing sunlight. I hit the button to signal I want to cross the street and the pedestrian icon rings from the other corner of the street. A few people pass me, none of them smile or say “Buenos días!”. I am thirsty but Angelica isn’t there for me to say “Kal awech Angelica!” and to watch her make orange juice while the marching bands pound the city’s heart in La Antigua’s central park. It’s quiet and it’s like I’m inside in the middle of the outside world.

Oakland bound – Three hours from Oakland and the landscape is so familiar it feels like an old pair of shoes – familiar, comfortable and with the novelty of not having been worn since we left. We have ten weeks to make a lot of things happen to prepare for three years in Central America. It’s a long list that we’ll do one at a time like an assembly factory that creates order quickly and efficiently. In this way Brad and I are well matched. I have ideas somewhere up there in the stratosphere and he grounds them. And then we meet somewhere in the middle, a little bit above the horizon from a bird’s eye perspective.

We pass the geometrically aligned pistachio fields that will turn into the garlic fields and the tomato fields and the apricot trees and then into suburb, concrete and city, straight into Oakland. Some of the trees are newly planted and the green is winding up the wooden posts that will serve as their backbone until they are grown enough to have their own base to nourish them. This is the nature order of things, birth, discovery, growth, transition, passage and birth again.

Guatemala taught me focus, the US taught me how to create a process, and the journeys in between taught me introspection as a form of nourishment and strength. “You write so much!” Robert’s wife, Nancy, told me while she was reading some of my posts including the one on Mark Francis. “I think a lot about things,” I tell her, when in fact my head is crowded and I use the writing to give things a narrative and some illusion of order. I will keep writing, I promise to myself, everyday while we’re here and when we’re back. It’s a promise I’ve made to myself before, but this time I intend to keep it because I’ve realized how quickly I can connect to a community of people who have lived with two cultures, two countries and this constant bifurcation in their lives. It’s time to listen more by writing.

VENICE – This is as exclusive as it gets: boutique shops, macrobiotic protein-powdered food and women, new fast cars, manicured lawns, hair-sprayed dogs, six-pack torsos and accessories for the accessories. No two people are the same on the Venice Beach boardwalk where entire sections reek of medicinal marijuana stores and people ride their bikes and rollerblades the same way they drive –like unheeding laser-targeted missiles. I feel suddenly small and slow. Literally, I’ve entered the land of the bionic giants. Does anyone actually work here? I wonder to myself, thinking isn’t the heat supposed to make people slower? This has been my operating theory on why coastal people in Latin America tend to be less rushed about things.

In Phoenix there was space, large expanses of desert and cacti to somehow let the spirit wander; the people were older, nicer and quieter, curious, but not unbounded and unhinged in your “space” like you were in their way or had just entered their narrative without being asked. It appealed to my Guatemalan sensibility of considerateness and politeness. At 7 AM we leave our friend’s house in Phoenix after watching them prepare for their own journey to San Francisco Bay Area for a wedding, but this time with their three-month baby. That’s the second couple on our road trip that has gone from two to three. It’s always instructive to see good friends make that shift and enter a different phase of their lives.

In many ways it’s like window-shopping and seeing if it’s a potential future for us. On every occasion we’re always happy for them and happy we can share these moments in our lives where we can our adventures overlap and we welcome a new member to the family who we’ll also be sharing and growing with us all along the way.

The verdict is still out for us on the babies and parenting, but we both trust that when and if and if ever things go in that direction for us, it’ll be evident and we’ll feel it is the right thing for us and the world. Yes, the world. It’s more my own concern over social responsibility and my love for children that I couldn’t reconcile having a child knowing how many children are in orphanages in Guatemala and if it’s a matter of ego, well, most of them look like me anyway, so no loss there. Brad just likes his freedom. And I like mine, too, and we’re both married to our work, so it’s good we’re honest and clear with each other and others about that. The only pressure we feel from time to time is the change of lifestyle we stop sharing with our friends. But we find places to connect, at least if it’s a genuine friendship with some depth. We grow older; we start to appreciate the differences in paths chosen.

We arrive in Venice, a ten-minute bike-ride away from Venice Beach, chat on the porch with our friend Robert who’s sitting outside reading his new soccer referee manual, before he goes to pick up his son. “Take the bikes,” he tells us. “They’re in the garage.” So we unload our bags and head to the beach on the most janky bikes that have seen plenty of ocean salt and have survived being stolen simply by being so ugly, but practical. In an instant our reality for since Sunday is drastically changed. Wind blowing in our hair from our proximity to the Pacific Ocean, we use our legs for the first time to move us through scenes of eclecticism, narcissism, lifestyle vendors and niche entertainment spots with clever names and slogans. Nothing is real except the appearance of things.

The fatigue caught up with me in the car where I fought off a migraine with three Aleves, but this is really the antidote. We spend a couple of hours biking up and down the beach, stop to watch the skaters at the skate park and then park the bikes and plunge into the soft, cold sand. The sandpipers are out rushing quickly from hole to hole that bubbles when the tide pulls back and there are children throwing buckets of sand around them as they prepare for the best castle ever. Women jog by in bikinis and gay male couples walk hand in hand while one talks on his cell phone. We relax into our skin, free from the anger, the frustration, the fear and the knowing that the random is near. Perhaps it’s because we’re just passing through, perhaps it’s because there are different fears and frustrations associated with this life in the US that we have not yet adopted. As I’m reflecting on this, mi mama calls. “¿Ya llegaron?” Are you there yet? Yes, we’re on Venice beach watching people, I tell her. “¿Se siente bin ester aquí verdad?” It feels good to be here right? I pause because I know mi mama’s leading questions and I can either step into her perception that Guatemala is hell on earth and the USA is God’s gift to immigrants or I can just passively agree with her. I tell her in some ways it feels good to be here, in other ways it doesn’t. How can that be? She retorts. “Porque Guatemala si tiene cosas y gente bonita, pero muchas veces no puedo uno apreciarlo.” “Yeah right,” she says to me in English even though I just spoke to her in Spanish. It’s true, I tell her, has she gone to Monterrico, Sipacate, climbed the volcanoes, seen Livingston, what about Petén and the Mayan pyramids? I feel ridiculous having to convince mi mama that her country is not “una pura mired.” Pure crap.

I am disappointed in myself for letting myself play this game. This is not my battle, it is hers. I have baggage when it comes to living in Guatemala, but mi mama has trunks when it comes to living and leaving Guatemala. I take the exit strategy and tell her Brad wants to say hello. It’s easier that way, to deflect, to just let Brad deal with the assumptions she wants to confirm. Brad goes along with it, tells her about the skateboarders, tells her, yes, he’s ready to go back for three years to Guatemala, he’s got work there, friends and another life. I can hear the pause when he shares this with her.

“But it’s still better in the US right?” She continues not dissuaded. Brad laughs and I’m getting annoyed just listening to her insistence. “Oye mi suegra,” Brad finally ends the conversation. “We gotta go and keep biking. But everything is good! No te preocupes, suegra.” They both laugh and thank god we’re off the phone.

We keep riding until he have to head back to meet our friends for the gourmet taco truck dinner that is a phenomenon on Venice Blvd every Friday. We love these folks, their children, their home, their lives and their commitment to both their work and family. They are active, intelligent, loving and warm. They are the best-grounded combination we’ve seen of careers, family and economic stability. One day, we both say to ourselves, one day, we’ll do it our way. We already are, but the path is still unfolding.

PHOENIX — Around noon we left Hermosillo after much needed rest and pointed our direction north to the Nogales border. Hermosillo is one of my favorite last stops before leaving Mexico, it’s easy, so easy, to find hotels, restaurants, its proximity to the autopista in unbeatable and there’s just a general ease for the I imagine the many overnight business travelers both Mexican and American. The day was supposed to be our shortest day of travel and our biggest feat would be crossing the border into the U.S. It couldn’t be any more difficult than the Talisman or Tecun Uman crossings, so the stress level was very low.

Brad was ecstatic about coming home after a whole year of being away from the US. I just had anxiety, as I’ve always had in my life when crossing the border into the US. What if they say no? What if the citizenship laws have changed and mine is total void? Has my stay expired? All these questions have crowded my mind most of my life as an immigrant crossing the border. This time, these questions I’ve always asked myself in fearing access to the US came and went quickly and, then, for once a statement emerged: So what if they say you can’t come in? So you go back home, you go back to Guatemala. I smiled when while we waited patiently in a well-organized line of mostly trucks and new cars parked at theses sophisticated lanes lined with steel and tons of surveillance equipment, cameras, laser tracking, and stuff that made me feel like we were about to drive through plutonium. I told Brad we needed to cancel our Mexican permit and get stamped out. He waved his hand and said, “Don’t worry, they’ll know what to do.” That’s what I’m always afraid of with Americans, the skipping of certain vital details that impacted Central Americans.

We waited patiently for half and hour, getting the remnants of the informal economy to clean our windshields, sell us churros, wooden crosses and saints, a few elderly people asking for alms and people in wheelchairs. The signs were in English and Spanish and when it came our turn to talk to the US border agent, I was surprised to hear English again, spoken clearly, gruffly and so direct. I let Brad to the talking and we were asked to pull in for an inspection. We weren’t surprised because in the past couple of days by not having a ton of luggage with us and trying to be low profile, we became very high profile and went through about 5 complete inspections at various checkpoints. Agents didn’t understand how we could have so few bags after being gone a year and they asked us tons of questions.

Where are you coming from? Where are you headed? Where do you live? You LIVE in Guatemala? Why? This one always made me laugh. Because that’s where I’m from and where my family is. But you also live in California? Yes, that’s right. What kind of work do you do? Designer and journalist. “Okay, please pull in here on the right, we need to do an inspection.” We didn’t mind, we both enjoyed grading how well they inspected our car.

Outside of Mazatlan one of the agents actually pulled up both back seats, took out our bags (strangely no one look in our bags or in the Thule on the top of the car, in the US they definitely made us open up the G5 box and the Thule). I asked him if he found any money under there, “not one peso, ma’am.” We all laughed and I told him that he’d done the best inspection yet. He smiled and said, “I’ve never had anyone tell me that.”

That same stretch Brad had his first taste of Pozole, with the thick layers of pig fat pouring right off the garbanzo beans and corn. As we were about to pick up speed I had seen the small chairs and tables lined up outside this food stall and I said, “there’s food there.” It’s the one phrase Brad will screech wheels and doing crazy u-turns to not miss where my finger is pointing. Sure enough, this woman about four times my size, with forearms about the thickness of my thighs (Brad’s words) an a stained apron tied around her trunk for a wait was stirring a huge burned pot in the middle of the hottest day we’d experienced in our drive. Brad watched her and then asked what she was making. She looked at him and cracked a side smile by saying “Pozole.” She kept stirring while Brad found the words to get her to feed him whatever she had in that pot. The two other women who sat next to her were half as big, but they were obviously related and found humor in this gringo salivating at their vat of mystery. I came out from the bathroom just in time to see the last bites of mystery go down Brad’s chute. The woman cackled. Brad looked up from his bowl, his mouth still dripping: “What?”

Back at the border crossing with the U.S. I was convinced that border agents’ uniforms came with Ray Ban sunglasses because all of them had them. Like The Man With No Eyes in “Cool Hand Luke,” there was nothing beyond the glass. We did, however, get a thorough inspection and then the guards finished up with us and let us put our stuff back to its place. We cruised out of there and saw our first speed limit sign in English. From that moment on Brad acquired this ease in all his movements and in his face. Like some veil had been lifted. He didn’t have to read or speak Spanish for the next three months, and he was back home. His home, my other home. Yes, it was easier, the roads were impeccable, there were no tolls, we didn’t have to stop for speed bumps and people had become cars, exchanged limbs, skin and faces for metal, glass and paint. Things were easier, but less human.

When we got not the freeway bound towards Phoenix we realized we weren’t going to make it in time for political conversing and dinner with our friends, so we looked for a place to eat. Brad spotted a 1950’s diner and immediately pulled off the freeway and into the parking lot. “DUDE! Let’s eat there!” It seemed appropriate, let’s go eat somewhere that reminded us of an America that used to be and have nostalgia with our milkshakes and apple pie, except I had a margarita. We sat next to the jukebox and didn’t think to even put a quarter in.

Editors note: in the wake of the ruling against Jeff Cassman, we’ve received several new and interesting comments regarding this post. Therefore, we’re sticking this one to the front page for the next week so nothing gets buried!

HERMOSILLO – I went to sleep with this gnawing feeling of being betrayed and lied to and I woke up with the same feeling. It was a feeling I knew well from having been around so many crooks, liars and scammers most of my life which forced me not only to develop a radar for these things, but to always seek the balance at the other end.

At midnight we checked into the Colonial Hotel in Hermosillo after yet another 12 hour day of driving to get us back on schedule with our travel itinerary. We’d stayed at this hotel before so I bargained them down to $60. Still pricey but we had WIFI, great food, pool and awesome rooms. Worth the splurge and Brad was doing the zombie walk, barely able talk so it was time to unpack our bags somewhere.

Once in the room both of us immediately started checking our emails – starved people come in from the desert of data famine. The first email I opened was one from my friend Rudy Giron with the PrensaLibre headline: “Capturan en Antigua Guatemala a estadounidense buscado por FBI“, American wanted by the FBI captured in Antigua, and right below was the big picture of our friend Mark Francis. I thought it was a hoax, one of those online websites that creates a phony newspaper front page just for laughs. I was frozen after reading the entire article.

“Cross reference it on the Prensa Libre page,” Brad tells me half-heartedly while clicking on his own email. “I already did,” I told him. “I’m reading the story from the Prensa Libre website.” At which point Brad stops everything he’s doing and we both drop our mouths in bewilderment. Brad tries to decipher the story from Spanish to English and so I read it to him and then we both continue to do google searches which brings up something from the Nashville post, email all our Antigua friends, look on Facebook, go to Mark’s GuateLiving bog, read the comments, and, yes, it’s true though truth did prove stranger than fiction in this instance: our friend is a scam artist. His name wasn’t Mark Francis, it was Jeff Cassman, wanted by federal agents for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme and about to face trial for mail and securities fraud charges that could put him behind bars for decades.

Here’s some of the articles we found:

Que.Es
Sweaty Peten
Nashville Post
Mark’s Guate Living blog

Guatemalan National Police video of his arrest:

The first day we met Mark Francis was the week we’d arrived to La Antigua after driving 10 days from Oakland, California. I’d found him through one of my Google alerts for Guatemala where we were preparing to live for a year and his blog, GuateLiving, came up as the most popular blog in Central America. Both Brad and I became instant fans: he was witty, smart, funny and cocky. So cocky at times that it pissed off a lot of people as was evident from the comments. He often came across as making fun at the expense of others and purposely incendiary. “He’s a man’s man,” Brad said when he first read him. “And he doesn’t feel a need to be politically correct.” It was a rare combination in Guatemala to have an expat, pundit, contrarian and unabashedly critical voice on Guatemala.

I looked him up, tried to find pictures of him, learn more about him and his background, but nothing. That meant there was only one way to get to know him, to email and talk to him with the ultimate goal of eventually meeting him in person. We exchanged a few quick emails about how much time he’d been in Guatemala and any travel tips he might have. Soon we were regularly in contact and I asked him to be on the HablaGuate BlogTalkRadio show on “Migrations”. It was a show I had asked Rudy Giron, a Guatemalan who immigrated to the US and then back to Guatemala to be on. Rudy was already showing his suspicion of him and didn’t want any kind of association with Mark Francis whose broad strokes were too broad for the meticulous, detail-oriented, accuracy-driven Guatemalan returnee.

It was an hour-long interview during which Mark shared the story of how he had worked in the financial sector in the United States, originally from Tennessee, and got tired of what he forecasted as the market downturn and the stressful, soul-less life. He and his wife wanted something different, so they sold their large house in Arizona, told their nine kids to pack up a duffel bag each and then got on the bus, all the way to Guatemala. That’s an 11-person family on a public bus. They stopped off in Mexico for six months (the details of why or where he did not reveal) and then decided to move farther south to Guatemala. They loved La Antigua and originally they wanted to live in the small exclusive mostly expat colonial town 40 kilometers from Guatemala City, but since there were so many of them, it was less expensive to live in Ciudad Vieja. They rented what was once a small hotel past the cemetery and on the road to Acatenango and home-schooled all their children.

When I asked him about what he was doing for work in Central America, he said he was looking at options, but that he didn’t need to rush things because he’d invested enough and got our early enough to be able to take care of his family comfortably for a few years. I remember doing the math in my head and thinking, even in Guatemala that’s at least $100,000 a year for what would end up being 12 family members near La Antigua living a US standard. He laughed when I referred him back to the original 11 figure he mentioned for the number of people in his family. “We’ve had our anchor baby,” he said. “Maria was born in Guatemala and so we’re not leaving anytime soon.” An anchor baby, from what troubled seas I wondered.

In talking to mi mama that night and sharing his story, she said in her usually skeptical way: “There’s only one reason anyone leaves the US by bus with so many kids.” “Why?” I asked her. “Because they’re running away from something.” I always took mi mama’s comments with a grain of salt because she’s seen and lived among the underbelly for a while, a survivor, with survivor instincts and the general principle of everyone is guilty until they prove themselves innocent.

“Hay ma, but isn’t it cheaper to travel that way when you have so many kids?” I retorted. “I thought he didn’t have any money problems?” She reminded me. I let the matter drop, I wanted to believe his story, it appealed to my literacy fascination with journeys.

Either way, the guy was, likable. In the car this morning as we make our way to Nogales, I ask Brad why he liked Mark: “He was likable friendly, charismatic, he was an extrovert, funny, he made me feel comfortable around him. He was a good storyteller, a good listener and I liked some of his cheeky opinions about politics even though I didn’t always agree I respected his forthrightness.”

But not everyone liked him. He’d received threats both via email, and now people were coming around his house and throwing rocks in his windows and at his kids. He blamed it on people misunderstanding where he was coming from on his blog. But mostly people were envious of him, had a chip on their shoulders or just felt a need to gossip. The thing that made him laugh the most was conspiracy theories on him just because he was different or had a story unlike anyone else’s. There were stories circulating about him being part of the CIA or that he was part of the Mossad- the Israeli secret service.

Sitting across him at Hector’s restaurant across from La Merced church, it seemed appropriate that we were in a stuffy cave-like restaurant serving hot Italian food in the hot afternoon. He had walked in after us and immediately recognized us sitting by the window facing the church. He was tall, husky, pale with black hair, a goatee and lovely green eyes. On a TV show he would have been Toni Soprano’s younger brother from Italy. He immediately introduced himself, kissed me on the cheek and adjusted his pant legs so his pants wouldn’t get wrinkled before he sat down, legs open and the heft of his belly hanging comfortably under his crossed arms.

“I was expecting someone with more American looks, way more clean cut American, I wasn’t expecting the big Semetic hockey player looking guy,” Brad said in remember that first meeting. Now it doesn’t surprise me, Brad says while driving us the last stretch to Nogales, that he was growing out his mustache and his hair was getting long and greasy. Whenever I’d see him in the park I would say ‘Wow, dude, you’re looking more Chapin everyday.'”

We ordered lemonades, he got a martini. We talked about life in La Antigua, chatted about his new house in Ciudad Vieja, his kids, his blog, Rudy walked into the restaurant for lunch business meeting. He stiffened when he saw Mark, gave him a formal handshake, kissed me on the cheek, patted Brad on the back and moved to the corner of the restaurant. He told us about his threats which he took on with bravado because he had just the same right as anyone to be here. “I’m adding to the economy,” he said. We treated him to lunch for all his help with travel tips and just for being a good person who helped us in our lives and transition down.

“It’s refreshing to spend time with Mark,” Brad said when we left the restaurant. “He’s so direct and straight forward.” At least in the way he expresses himself, I told Brad. You just never know where people have been. The day we met him he’d been to his first Catholic mass in Latin in Guatemala City (the only place where they held it in Latin) in his new used Mercedes Benz that he loved to speed in all the way down to Escuintla.

Over the next few months we stayed in contact via emails, back linking to each other’s blogs, invitations to trips (trips we never made because we were always working) and then the anniversary drinks to celebrate Mark and his family’s first year in La Antigua. We met his wife Sarah and beautiful baby Maria who slept through most of the meetup. There were about 15 of Mark’s friends, mostly online bloggers, expats, students and just funny characters who demonstrated the wide swath of Mark’s eclectic taste in people from different walks of life. It was then that I started to trust Mark more and stopped asking him so many questions to explain some of the inconsistencies.

Christmas and New Year’s rolled around and we got a personal invite to come over to his house for a small dinner with friends and family. We were flattered in a way that our friendship was solidifying. Mi mama was visiting for the entire month so we took her along. On New Year’s eve we found ourselves among a small group of friends and all of Mark’s children, mostly boys, bouncing off ever nook and crevice of the small hotel that had become their home and school. The bathrooms doors still had “Damas” and “Caballeros” printed on them and I got a small tour of each kid’s house, the small school room, the shared bedrooms for the boys and the girls and the living room which was spartan in furniture but full of handmade wooden toys, swords, and shields all in hand-crafted in dark wood. It was a clean, well-organized crew where the roles were well-defined and traditional.

Mark was the father and patriarch and Sarah was the wife and mother who looked after all the children and the new brownie recipes. Sarah was quiet, nurturing and a bit unsure of herself. She tripped over the stairs going up to the boys’ room and she turned completely red and was confused. The rest of the evening we watched the children light up fireworks and throw them in to the empty lot next door. “Matthew don’t throw fireworks at your brother,” the patient patriarch would say and then one of the younger children would come crying and screaming to get fatherly love and understanding. I got to see Mark in action as the central figure of his family and it was refreshing to see how he communicated with his family, maintained order and shepherded the flock. We left early because my mother was feeling uncomfortable, she wasn’t sure why, she said, but she just wasn’t comfortable there.

Last week, I had my farewell drink with Mark. It was originally a coffee to talk about the HablaCentro project I had recently been awarded an Ashoka fellowship to implement. He was very curious about it, what did it entail, did I have a business plan, how much was I going to invest into it. I appreciate that he was interested in learning more about it, but I was suspicious. I guess coming from a Guatemalan family, I’m always suspicious when someone cares enough to ask these types of questions. I met him at the bar across from Rikki’s where he was the center of attention amid this group of expats laughing loudly and drunkenly. We pulled out of the group and sat one table over. I did the Guatemalan chit-chat which I can do for hours, but he immediately steered the conversation.

“Tell me what you’re doing. Why are you driving back, what’s this project?” I explained to him that we were driving back because he needed to sell the car back home and because we both appreciate a good road trip. “Why didn’t you just sell the car here?” I told him the taxes had been quoted at more than $1,200 dollars on a $3,000 car and he said smugly: “That’s because you don’t know the right people at customs.”

I told him I thought that comment was funny because I did have family that worked at Puerto Barrios customs and I knew exactly what they did and I didn’t want to be part of the larger problem in Guatemala. I wanted to model the Guatemala I wanted to see. “Oh, I get it,” he told me with his usual charming, sarcastic gallantry. “You want to do good in Guatemala and since you have that chip on your shoulder about your family, you’re going the extreme trying to do things the hard way.” I laughed, yes, I said you could say that I went a bit to the other extremity.

There was no doubt about it, he was charming and an incredible storyteller. When he told you a story, he had this way of bringing you right in the middle of the action, you didn’t bother with details like what were you doing in Cuatro Caminos at 2 AM with a drunk British woman in your Mercedes Benz yelling obscenities who you just tied up to the passenger seat so the local indigenous people wouldn’t lynch you both for being so insulting? He would wave off my questions and continue on with his story, he had an endless supply of them and Guatemala seemed to be eating out of the palm of his hands.

He bought his way through the bureaucracy, paying for people to wait in line for him and paying the next person’s turn, he bought restaurants without any real source of income, thought of news businesses like bi-diesel run tuk-tuks, ran up against walls and then walked around them. He just had a way of getting around things. And so that evening, two days before Brad and I were about to head back to Oakland by land, I felt uncomfortable by his questions regarding my project. I felt that familiar feeling of someone wanting something from me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, so instead I cajoled him into tell me stories.

It worked and so the rest of the hour, I listened to Mark, perhaps for the last time, animated, expansive and full of life and waving at every person who passed who saw and knew him through the window. He was like Cool Hand Luke, cool as can be. The hour went by quickly and so I took leave of him. He kissed me on the cheek and I rushed to meet Brad. In my rush I left my umbrella by his table. I called to him from the window and asked him to slip it between the window bars. “Here you go,” he said. “You should never leave things behind.” Not the ones you care about, I said to him and ran up the street.

Last night my friend Mark Francis died for me in a way that public personas die, in the way that people fall before our eyes who we care about and want to believe in because they show us a certain strength perhaps we never thought possible, a certain invincibility and lightness of being. I never knew Jeff Cassman the fugitive, but I knew Mark Francis who was making a new life for himself and his family in La Antigua, Guatemala. Whether that involved becoming a more ethical person, we may never know.

NAVOJOA – The foothills hang on our left forming a striped silhouette of red, to orange, to yellow, blue, darker blue of entering dusk and impending night. We’re in the desert and as we drive into the night headed north to Hermosillo we all settle into our cruise control, passing tractor trailers, and hanging in the right lane where random birds fly out from the brush and cacti. Hundreds of small bugs have lost their lives on our windshield. This has been the day of long stretches between small coastal and then desert cities: Mazatlan, Los Mochis, Navojoa, all the cities of the states of Sinola and Sonora that are often mentioned in the news.

A heavy layer of heat enters our car when we stop to get gas and there’s no letting up until now that we’ve entered the desert’s night where federales, Mexican federal police, pierce the blanket of black sky with their red lights to stop speeders or set up random checkpoints. Brad got lucky with one of them back when he was speeding around Toluca and the federales stopped him and told him that he was going well past the speed limit. “I was listening to music and spacing out,” Brad admitted and he was given a stern warning, but no ticket.

It reminded us both of an era that once was in the U.S. when the Highway Patrol would stop you and actually issue you warnings. Things have changed. I took a picture of a donkey standing by the tree where we got pulled over and just relaxed into it all. It’s easier to relax into this journey because we know what we’re up against, we get how the landscape will change underneath us and somehow that makes us feel more grounded in the way we interact with everyone along the way.

As we enter night, I text mi mama and mi abuela to tell where we are and reassure them things are OK. They are worried about our night driving because this journey they both did under such different conditions in their lives and when the autopistas didn’t exist in Mexico. In part they are right, it’s never safe to drive at night, but it’s safer to do it on Mexico’s autopistas than on Guatemala’s roads, any day. Mostly I want to tell about the white butterflies that fluttered over Highway 15 outside Mazatlan as Brad slept next to me. Hundreds of them fluttered together forming a wave with the wafts of heat coming off the land, carefree, and unbearably light compared to all of us headed wherever we were headed then and now. I saw large bats swooping in to eat their prey by the lamp posts at the tollbooths that are becoming less and less now. I wondered if they had seen similar things on their trips, omens, signs, nature’s sacred moments as we sped by toward our destination.

Every time I take this journey from Guatemala to Mexico I think of passages, beginnings and endings in our lives. When I was a child immigrating illegally to the U.S. it was the end of my life then in Guatemala and the beginning of a new life in the U.S.. All through my life I’ve made this trip and now I make it with my husband. Last year around this time we made it, beginning a new chapter in our lives that would either strengthen or weaken our relationship based on how we worked together in journey, arrival and living out our life in Guatemala.

Now we’re returning for three months to prepare for another three years in Central America. I would never have done this journey alone, nor would I have done it with just anyone. It takes trust, love and daring.

“I’m glad we’re both equally crazy,” I tell him somewhere outside Toluca. He laughs, but it’s true, these journeys some people do because they have to, not because they choose to. We have chosen it and perhaps that arises from the fact that it chose me when I was younger and it was ingrained in me as some mythos or metaphor for my life.

I stare out the window at the small towns passing by and then the dark. In the desert the stars are so bright that the darkness appears to be there just to make them shine brighter, to fall into them like an ocean of expanse.

TEPIC, MEXICO – Every trip is different, even if you planned the same route, things happen and you respond. Yesterday we woke up in Puebla instead of Mexico City and today we woke up in Tepic instead of Mazatlan where I would have been steps from the ocean. It was something I was looking forward to experiencing again as on our first trip, the cool Pacific water on my feet under the soft Mazatlan sand that stretches as far as the eye can see. I always yearn for the ocean and the heat, it’s where I feel most at ease.

In my life I’ve learned that there is nothing you control, even the illusion of controlling things is something so far out of your reach. Having realized that we can travel by night on the autopistas, we’ve pushed more of our driving time well into the night because we’re so exhausted from our 12-15 hours days of driving. We blame this pattern on the autopista closure down by Suluya, but really there’s nothing or anyone to blame. It just is.  I think of a quote from Buddhist Ming-pen: “Who cares whether it takes twenty or thirty years; you’ll be naturally at peace, without the slightest bit of doubt or confusion. How can there be any obstruction again after spontaneous acquiescence? How can anyone arrive by way of externals?”

So we rolled into Puebla around midnight after a dangerous foggy stretch with the tractor trailers through the mountains. Puebla is a city I’ve heard much about, but never visited. I planted the seed in Brad’s brain while we were driving the foggy road. “If I was getting paid for this I could see myself driving through fog right now, but honestly, what is the point of getting to Mexico City just to say we did?” Puebla, I whispered, Puebla. As the clock pushed 11 at night on our dashboard, Brad surrendered the detonation for the journey.

Puebla at night was magical, like a one-way journey into Mexico’s colonial past from autopista to Centro Historico which was empty, well-lit, impeccably beautiful and had the feeling of a luxurious home where no detail had been left untended. We gawked at every building and quickly found our way in Puebla’s downtown grid where every street had a sign and a lamp post. We took the long way around to see this lovely city by night and then found the two hotels we were looking for right next to each other: the Gifford and the Royal Palace.

Of the two, the Royal Palace which rented us a room for M$420 with parking and fast wi-fi and actually had someone waiting with a smile at 12:30 at night is the option we went with. It’s really in Puebla that I started to appreciate our journey as a time of discovery. We woke up late, had a leisurely breakfast, got me a Mexico SIM card for my phone (for $45 I could have unlimited pre-paid data on my cellphone for 30 days, a bit pricey, so I only got the line for calls) and just enjoyed watching Puebla’s picturesque hustle and bustle almost like we were on a movie set. Appropriately enough a news crew showed up with cameras to film the morning voice on the street.

We left Puebla at noon knowing we had a 10-hour drive ahead to Tepic and then another 11 hours to Hermosillo the next day. The present too is part of what has happened. Yesterday we were in driving hell and today we were in paraiso and our experience was complete. “It was a good place to recharge our batteries,” Brad said.

Puebla _ We drove through the mountains of the spirits last night on the heels of tractor-trailers in their nightly journey through the dark winding roads that start outside Cordoba, Mexico. We were the only small car drifting among these giants of the midnight hour carrying double loads slowly in and out the mountain through the autopista to Puebla and Mexico City where we were pushing to arrive, exhausted, delirious and full of adrenaline. Unlike our first trip where we had our CB radio working (our magnetic antennae got stolen the first month in Guatemala) we were not tuned into their frequency, their casual banter, cursing and fireside story exchange. But I felt it and it was comforting to feel that collectivity in the effort.

“Remind me again why we’re driving at midnight to get to Mexico City,” I asked Brad during a particularly thick stretch of fog. I knew he wanted to make up lost time for the biggest detour we’d both ever had to do.

We were pushing our 15th hour of driving. The floods and derrumbes from the various tropical storms during the season had made climate change a thing of the present in Mexico where one of the most used autopistas from Coatzacolacos and La Tinaja and Veracruz was closed completely. That’s 271 kilometers of road that is the portal from Southern to Central Mexico is entirely closed.

The most difficult part is that is that the only way you’ll find out is by pooling the knowledge of everyone along the road. I had read and watched the news about these derrumbes and road closures but nothing was really specific like: the entire autopista is closed and now just follow these detour signs. There was no such thing. But being Guatemala’s driving veterans by now we had figured out that you have to ask casually along at every point along the way. This I’m good at since I did it as a child with mi mama when we would make the journey up by land to the US. So for those traveling this week, I hope this guide serves you well:

(1) From the autopista from Tuxtla Guiterrez go until the city of Chapo, 16 KM before Coatzacolacos, Veracruz on the Gulf Coast.

(2) Go West taking the Libre or Public Road towards Minatitlan and Cosoleaoleacaque and eventually Acayucan. Part of the autopista is open here, but they will re-direct you towards the public road, so just save the toll money and get on the public road that has signs for “Acayucan”. It’s slow and congested because of all the redirected traffic, but enjoy the local scenes out your window.

(3) When you get to Acayucan to south towards Suyula and Palomares. You will be heading south at this point and crossing into the state of Oaxaca and taking that 80 KM detour. Be prepared mentally for the worst road you’ll probably ever had journeyed in your life (well, unless you’ve lived in Guatemala and travelled to Lancetillo, Zona Reyna). Buy yourself water, food and have a full tank of gas (most definitely a spare time) because I didn’t see a single gas station along the way. Now, what makes it so bad? It has potholes big enough to swallow up your car and the whole concept of continuous asphalt for more than one minutes is something you soon abandon.

After getting off this road for a few hours later I had visions of potholes wherever there was a dark spot on any roads any major road. The road alternates between graded road, no road, broken asphalt and for most of the way looks like a moth-eaten blanket. But you pass through some incredibly beautiful scenery and small towns with very good tacos.

(4) Once you’ve completed your 80 km of purgatory, you can turn right at Palomares and head northwest towards Tuxtepec which was the road people used before the autopista. You will be covering the same distance as the autopista, but since the road isn’t as bad as the road to Suyula, it’s still incredibly narrow, pot-holed and just not a place you want to drive a night or if it’s been raining. One pothole taken at a wrong angle and you got a blowout or worse if you’re trying to go fast. Good luck with that and all the stalls along the way.

We got out just as dusk set in, but it took us six hours to travel 250 Km or 156 miles.

(5) Once you enter Tuxtepec you’re in the biggest town since Acayucan, but it doesn’t mean the roads are without potholes. In fact, we almost lost tires to these massive potholes at the entrance to the city.

From Tuxtepec you have to keep heading northwest to Tierra Blanca. Go straight straight, do not veer off anywhere until you get to the puente headed towards Cosamalopan that is really backed-up from all the re-routed traffic. Make sure to ask all along the way, roll down your window, holler at the cab drive next to you or any decent looking local how to get to Tierra Nueva and follow the long line of tractor trailers. You will have to pay a cuota to get on the bridge and the road that you will eventually be redirected to in order to get to Tierra Blanca.

When you finally wind around after the bridge and onto the road to Tierra Blanca the road is awesome, long continuous stretches of asphalt, but be VERY VERY careful of the topes that punctuate all the small downs. There are usually two at the entrance and two before exiting and 80% unmarked by paint or signage. Again, not a road I recommend driving at night, but if you have to as we did, then it’s a relief to be able to count on the ground underneath you.

(6) From Tierra Blanca to Tinaja is 36 KM of pure anticipation for the autopista. When you get to Tierra Blanca veer right where the road forks and get on the Cuota road to Oaxaca, it’ll also be on your right. From there you will follow signs to Cordoba/Oaxaca and eventually just to Cordoba and Puebla. Eventually you will pay your toll money and right after the roll booth is a much needed espresso pit stop at the Italian Coffee Company store right next to the Pemex. If you’re driving at 10 PM towards Puebla after a 12-hour downward journey to meet with Orpheus, I recommend this pit stop. If the espresso is not what you’re looking for, they also have pretty awesome carrot cake, sandwiches wifi and a children’s playground.

The sun has peaked out from the low rain clouds and we continue to pass areas under construction or recovering from derrumbes from this season’s storms. Dozens of caterpillar trucks and tractors pile away dirt and rubble and a few times we are a total standstill where we sit watching giant dragonflies zoom past the windshield. We started out with a 534 mile drive ahead of us and we are quickly making it up towards California, which seems still so far away in our psyche. The changing landscape will help us adjust to the change and what’s ahead of us the next few months.

Waking up in Tuxtla Guiterrez makes me feel like a part of the rest of the world – connected, efficient and hopeful. It hurts me to feel this way because I love my country and the warmth of everyone in Guatemala, but it is simply just not there yet, for whatever history, for whatever reason, for whoever may have the blame for this then and now, Guatemala is definitely one world below Mexico.

As I sit in the restaurant of Hotel María Eugenia’s glass surrounded lobby I watch the new world walk by early on a Monday morning. The two business men in suits one table over sit and read their newspapers, the clean public buses pass by, the women next to us are talking about their new jobs and Brad just went up for the buffet after having three servers quickly bring plates, silverware, and drinks with just one question asked, no follow-up questions, no asking permission, just that, speed and efficiency in a situation that doesn’t require options that slow down the mundane. Work smarter, not harder. There’s also that subtle feeling when you get when you meet people comfortable in their own skin (if ever), people in Tuxta Guiterrez are comfortable in their city and are not ducking between islands of safety for fear of random violence. At night people crowd the civic center and parents sit and watch other people’s children making out by the light of the cathedral.

It’s the small comforts that really give it away that we’re in Mexico. “This is nice,” says Brad as we stop between lights where there’s a sign for a woman’s clinic. We quickly drive out of Tuxtla following all the clear signage to Mexico. “There’s like trashcans and stuff.”

It’s true, at 4 AM Sunday morning come rain or shine we’re getting on the road bound for Cali. We’re well aware it may take us twelve hours to leave the country with all the landslides from the rain, but trust that we’ll be documenting the entire route. Looking forward to the drive back!

I started to feel better when I stopped fighting; when I stopped being angry, let myself relax into the surrounding darkness and those feverish dreams I was having about a big earthquake destroying all our homes and everyone waiting outside the rubble, barefoot, holding on to their children and whatever they could grab hold of as they ran out of their homes. Their faces like chipped cups. All in unison they would look up at the night sky as the moon hid itself behind a cloud and Brad and I still asleep inside our home while the earth continued to shake. Brad said it was the sleeping pills I was taking to help me get the much needed rest while I fought off the flu for four days. I slept, but I saw the end of something. And then on Thursday when I was supposed to drive to Patzún to meet with a youth group, I could barely make it out of bed, so I had to tell them through my horrible coughing and sneezing that I wasn’t going to make it. It was painful to admit it. Feebly I said to the organizer, “How about you Skype me in?”. We laughed. Espero que se sienta mejor, “Please feel better,” he said warmly. At 9 AM I hung up the phone. At 11 AM I was in front of thirty children over Skype talking about citizen journalism and teaching them how to become reporters:

It helped to be awake more often

Things happen when they happen. This past week was an emergency break for me to slow down, reflect and be mindful. Many changes are about to happen with our drive back home and it’s important to be present.

Every joint and muscle ached today and I thought immediately of my cousin Lucky and her children and how we share everything in my family, including horrible, miserable one-day flus. Nonetheless, “No hay mal que por bien no venga,” there isn’t a bad that doesn’t come for a good reason. And, sure enough, I watched all the donations alerts on my cellphone as I ambled around town imagining myself on a stretcher or on a heavy dose of pain killers to make the joints stop aching. If I had the sound of a one Quetzal coin dropping into a glass bottle, it would have clinked incessantly today.  A smile was plastered on my face.

By the end of the day the race was won: we had reached our $3,200 goal! Even though our Paypal thermometer says we have $ 3,035 of $3,200 raised – some people sent checks directly to our account – we couldn’t figure out how to add them.  Yes, you read it correctly, today we have reached the much anticipated goal of $3,200. Thank you all – friends, family and good samaritans –  for being so generous and amazing! It has moved us, but more than anything is has created a fabric of trust, love and support that often is not something we feel in Guatemala when faced with poverty and the hardships of surmounting it alone. Monday I will see Tio Nefta and show him the list of people who supported him. He’ll laugh that shy grin of his and comb out his graying chin beard. Karol? Karolina!

Later in the I day called my grandmother immediately. She was flabbergasted. Nunca pensaba que esto fuera posible, mija. I never thought this was possible. That lasted for about two minutes and then she moved on to address what was missing. But what about the plaster and paint for the house? It’ll make it last longer. While I take great measures to shield myself from the persistent pessimism of my family and how they find fault with everything and distrust anything that might present a solution, this statement did bring up a good point: Stefan of ConstruCasa had also informed us that if we plastered and painted the house it would last longer in that harsh climate that characterizes Media Luna. But, would it be fair to ask for another $269-$306.25 to paint and plaster the house? What of the extra cost for digging the well for the bathroom or other added costs that might come up?

After much thought, we have, therefore, raised the end goal for the fundraising to $3,600. The show will still go on on Monday, September 20, but please feel free to keep contributing if you want to see his house painted!

To reassure me that we’re doing the right thing with the right people for the person that needs it most, I received Stefan’s awesome email with all this information:

The final blueprint of the final house:

CC-16B

Here’s our list of materials to build the house:

materialesCC2CyS

And here is our contract, notice the $3,300:

contratoNeftali

The first thing that surfaces from my bed is my arm scrambling blindly for my cellphone – my umbilical cord to the pixel world scrolling through my email. Sometimes it’s good news and I jump out of bed, sometimes I just bury my head in the pillows after one glance. It’s my own personal roulette wheel and it’s self-inflicted, make no mistake.

This morning the first email I read was: “[Donation Can] A donation of $200 has been made to Tio Nefta’s House.”

Bah, $20 I thought, and then looked again. Wait, that was TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS! And so I jumped out of bed and skipped the crawl into awakening. Our good friend, Mark Savage and his family, had donated $200 and now we were only $290 from our end goal of $3,200. My uncle’s machete-carrying silhouette across the banana fincas late in the day when the shadows are long flashed before me. He smiled that sideways grin and push his bicycle along the dusty road. I missed him as I imagine a daughter misses her father. It’s always been the feeling I have for him. I’d been putting off a trip to visit him since end of July, but I was not about to arrive to Media Luna empty-handed, full of false-promises and the hot air of ideas to add to the desperate heat that is thick against your forehead in that finca that I’ve grown to know well. This morning brought me closer to fulfilling that promise I made him:

“Next time I come here we will build you a casita.”

This house:

With this roof:

With this bathroom:

Once out of bed the next email is from Stefan from ConstruCasa: Come on over at 9:30. Over the piles of dishes and the unmade bed I saw the clock turn 8:52. Who needs a shower? We rushed out of the house, past the marching bands, the hundreds of kids dancing to “JailHouse Rock” by El Calvario church and straight to ConstruCasa to talk logistics. Stefan is just the person for it, kindle, gentle, reassuring and patient. Here goes:

Money?
We will wire transferring whatever we have to them, about $2,900 and Stefan will send me all the wire transfer info. (This by the way is very rare in most Guatemalan nonprofits.)

The Plan (“Solo si Dios quiere!” mi abuelita reminds me)

• Departure with the albañiles or freemasons is now set for Monday, September 20 at 4:30 AM from La Antigua. I’m swooping them up from a gas station at the top of the hill in San Lucas and we will fly through the night and all through Guatemala City before rush hour even thinks about rushing in on us.
• We swing by Estanzuela to pick up Omar (Tio’s youngest son who’s expecting his first kid in October, so it’s taking some convincing to get him away from his wife for two days) and then head over to Media Luna, pulling in around 13:00.
• I introduce the albañiles, chain-smoking 73-year-old Alejandro and young freemason in training Feliciano, to Cousin Santos, Tio Nefta, and the whole clan. We eat in Media Luna.
• Around 3 PM (Yes, still on Monday and possibly moving into Tuesday) we drive back out to Puerto Barrios to find the nearest hardware store. I meet with the lawyer to start drafting up the contract with Santos and Tio Nefta. Damage: Q1100 or $138. Trust me I got him down from Q1,500.
• We crash at the Holiday Inn in Media Luna (Wi-FI and AC even). Riiiight.
• Tuesday we take care of business we couldn’t do on Monday. I take pictures like a madwoman. I leave a Flip camera for Santos to document the entire project with extra batteries of course.
• Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning we head back to Estanzuela and Chiquimula.

Sleeping arrangements?

Everyone bring their petates or straw sleeping matts and mosquito netting and flash light. We either sleep under a kind stranger’s house, in the car, or in the empty church or school house.

What’s going to be done in 2 to 2 1/2 weeks?

• The building of a simple two-room house with bathroom (toilet and shower)
• Possibly digging another poso or well if the old well doesn’t have capacity for another toilet and shower. Could cost an additional Q1000-Q1200 ($125-$150)
• There will be no electricity connected, but they will leave the house ready with spaces for outlets and wiring when and IF electricity ever makes it to Media Luna.
• They will provide a spot for hanging Tio’s hammock.
• ConstruCasa will generate a contract in Spanish with the material lists that we’ll use to give Santos some guidance on the completion of the project.

We can add the following for additional costs:

• Another well for the shower
• Plastering (repello) and painting which increases the lifespan of the cinder. Added cost: $269-$306.25). Otherwise they have to wash the wall every 6 months. There is a new colored plaster called Prismacal which is Q45/Q50 per bag.

Here’s Stefan from ConstruCasa talking about the house:

For more videos and pictures click here.

This is when it hits me that I won’t be there when the house finishes because we’ll be driving to Oakland. It hits me hard, but I’d rather know he’s got a place to rest his head during that four months we’re gone then know he’s homeless during yet another rainy season.

When I come back in January, I tell myself, I will bring him a housewarming present. I will bring him pictures of all his family to hang on the walls.

When he wakes up everyone will be smiling at him.

The marching bands are all over La Antigua (thumping incessantly near your house even) this week in preparation for Guatemala and the Central American States’ Independence Day on September 15, 2010. There’s a frenetic youthful energy that is hard to encapsulate into one moment, but I’m sure this one does a good job:

It’s so quiet now as the rains have stopped in La Antigua and the Central part of Guatemala. This time yesterday the mountains had buried the living with avalanches of mud along the Ixtahuacan region, Alaska to be exact, KM 171. As families searched for their disappeared more were buried, 150-200 the mayor informed us around midnight over the radio waves.  I listened to his voice crack and invoke God’s mercy.

Volcán Fuego rumbled beneath us, a hollow groaning moan of malestar or malaise.

At the bottom of the revine the long bus stuck out of the mud like a cigar tilting out of its own ashes, surrounded by layers of people with blank stares watching as the big Catepillar tractor scooped up mud to pull the bodies out. Already I can feel a numbness, just by knowing how quickly life can be taken away.

“Guatemala made the Swedish headlines,” my friend tells me. I think of the ink splotching the immaculate white of newsprint turning yellow. I think of the large hole in Zone 2 and how we made headlines there, too, while Agatha pounded the rural villages on the West, by the Lake Atitlán, one fell swoop taking twenty houses in Santa Catarina Palopo.

With the firefighters we were poised for a 3 AM night run to dig bodies out, but CONRED warned us to stay put. So we waited in silence, texting, retweeting, Facebooking from afar as the news crews flew in through helicopters in the area that was too unstable even for help crews. Volunteers were already sinking into the mud and more rains were coming.  It was nature’s wrath, it was our whimper.

I felt it all day, even while the sun mocked us with its brilliance in the morning. Is it really better to dig up 37 dead by the light of day?

Please join us for the opening reception on Saturday, August 21st at 6pm. Food, drinks and music will be served. At Iglesia Santa Clara, across the street from Tanque de la Unión. Exhibit will be open through September 4.

Spanish flyer

July 23, 2010

Zona Reyna, Lancetillo

I am sitting in an open salon of some one hundred young indigenous children watching “La Isla” quietly and attentively after having finished their hot chocolate and sweet biscuits on a Friday night in Zona Reyna, El Quiche. Not a single whisper escapes in the group as they stare intently at the Guatemalan army marching sequences and footage of the National Police Archives being recovered and the testimonies from family members of the disappearances of their family members. The crickets’ song fill the night and every once in a while the iron of a desk scrapes against the cement floor of this Catholic School. It’s cool and humid outside and I can hear the nuns in the kitchen. It reminds me of my own childhood growing up with the nuns in the United States, in a world so different than the world my family had immigrated from in Guatemala.

During the chocolate intermission break I tell them to line up against the back of the salon for a group picture. They all rush back quickly and obediently and I find myself staring at them, feeling a wave of peace.

The four hour drive from Uspantan to Zona Reyna in Lancetillo, El Quiche was the roughest terrain of Guatemalan terreceria, graded road, full of deep holes, steep switchbacks and sudden drop offs to plummeting heights where the fog rolled over the tops of the Cuchumatanes and the tree line thousands of feet below. We pass young girls carrying heavy loads of wood on their heads, children peaking out from the bottom of windows, older men with their shirts off, galoshes over there pants chatting to one another while draped along door frames. It’s late day now and we did not anticipate the terrain would take all of us to maneuver. There’s no turning back, we’re here to train a large group of young indigenous people how to tell their stories using photo and video. The result of an entire day of reporting and production resulted in these:

Puesto de Salud en Lancetillo, Guatemala from Habla Guate on Vimeo.

El Rio en Lancetillo, Guatemala en julio 2010 from Habla Guate on Vimeo.

Las Hermanas de Lancetillo, Guatemala en julio 2010 from Habla Guate on Vimeo.

Un recorrido por Lancetillo, Zona Reyna Guatemala from Habla Guate on Vimeo.