GUATEMALA -2-

QUETZALTENANGO and GUATEMALA CITY

After Guatemala City, my first stop is Quetzaltenango, the place of the bird Quetzal, an ugly looking bird resembling a parrot with a long, long green tail, the icon for Guatemala. Xela, the nickname locals gave it is in a way becoming to it. I never thought a town in a developing country like Guatemala could sprawl like this. My daughter with her new-found Mayan “persona” meets me at the bus stop/terminal. With her white-red flowery asymmetric long skirt, her long red tear-drop shaped ear rings, her hairdo with her locally woven bandana, I couldn’t tell her from a Mayan mixed with a splash of Spanish blood. I take a picture of her, she fakes being upset, how sweet. She must indeed feel like a local and I am acting like a Gringo tourist, of course.

                                                   Quetzal, icon of Guatemala


She guides me through the eclectic streets of Xela. We walk on a divided boulevard, an “avenida” for a while, then find ourselves on a narrow street with sidewalks not even two feet wide, two cars barely fitting side by side, houses rising right by the end of the narrow side walk leaning against one another, color being the only identifier to differentiate one house from the other. We pass through the market place, buy local bananas, small, plump ones just like the local bananas we used to have in Turkey. Globalization brought the Chikita bananas, who knows from where, and local bananas are long gone in Turkey, now. There is so much in this town that reminds me of my activist days from 30 years ago when we used to visit the squatting communities, the gecekondu neighborhoods of Turkey to educate and politicize the working class, the migrants of the time. I breath in the same survival mode in this city. And this is the second largest city of a country.

Sprawling Quetzaltenango


Gradually, we move into residential areas. “Taller de mechanica”, auto mechanic shops sneak into even residential areas. I will discover soon when we ask a hardware store keeper that these shops are one of the hallmarks of Guatemala. I will continue being appalled with the overwhelming number of auto mechanic shops scattered all around the country throughout my stay. There is a reason for that, too, of course. The dilapidated, falling apart school buses not fit for use in the USA apparently are shipped to Guatemala. These shops fix them up miraculously and paint them into designs and cheerful colors that will become the colors of Guatemala for me in such a short time span.  These buses then become “chicken buses”. Now don’t assume they are used to house or transport chickens. They are used for transportation of humans but just as chickens are packed into a hen house. Two-person seats accommodate three. A make-shift seat is created mostly on the spot by a box or a luggage between the two seats to accommodate another traveler that completes the row to 7 seats instead of the usual 4 that it was designed for.

Chicken buses imported from America in Mayan colors

I will hear Zeynep’s friends chat amongst themselves “…. I changed couple of chicken buses….” describing how they travel to places. Chicken buses, referring to locals being carried to places like chickens. I am sure us gringos came up with that term. This is how we see them, when it is a way of life for them. How to change this? Is it possible? I ask my daughter what her observations have been about the discrepancy between the poor and rich in this country. She states it is huge and that in fact she hasn’t had any contact with the rich since they all live in huge homes walled off from the rest of the community in court yards reminiscent of the days of colonial times. She states, through her Spanish school and the volunteer work she has come into contact with only the poor and needy in the country. Intellectuals and the rich enjoy and protect from outsiders a totally different life style than the mainstream. She verifies what I read in my Lonely planet book that this society is highly hierarchical in terms of ethnic and socio-economical status and stratum;  pure Mayan indigenous unfortunately occupying the bottom of this almost-cast system.

Didn’t I observe that in Guatemala City as well as I stayed with my colleague? She, living in Zone 9 or 10, parts of Guatemala City, where the upper middle and upper class families live, with her gym, her shopping center, etc, nearby, traveling to the city only for work. How different things were in the shopping center she took me compared to the Parque Central where the presidential palace was located with almost exclusively the indigenous people spending a leisurely Sunday at the street market and around. I will remember three things clearly among others from Guatemala City:

Presidential Palace was the very place where all political prisoners were tortured in Guatemala during the civil war. My jaw dropped! I am used to, from Turkey, the tormenting fact of torture being part of the political panorama. However, in Turkey, torture is conducted in concealed, distant places that would be difficult for lay people to either consider or discover. Performing this worst atrocity to fellow men under the roof of the very institution that is supposed to protect all citizens from maltreatment is such a bold statement: “I don’t care about democracy and the rights of all men and women, and I don’t give a s… that somebody may not like this!” My stomach turns, my head spins with disbelief and anger. Luckily she says those days are in the distant past. Let’s hope so…

            
              Presidential Palace, Guatemala City

Secondly, we bumped into a religious parade at the Capitol Square, which I am almost sure would never happen in my friend’s neighborhood however intensely religious they may be. Religion is for everybody, some may say, but more so for the poor, especially in this form that I am observing: Life size puppets of Christ, Mary, and saints on floats with clergy and lay people parading together; such symbolic expression of religious life. Passers-by cross their chests with the images they observe with an expression of full submission on their faces. They need this, how else could they endure what they do? Ruling elite knows this well; thus they need this, too, how else could they keep the poor content with what little they have?

But one scene will never go away from my mind’s eye. We are walking on the main street. Within the crowd is a trio: A young man and a woman, the man courting the woman, his eyes fixated on her. She is looking away, but her eyes are revealing how much she is enjoying his attention and likely, words, too. The third element of the trio is a boy of 8-9 years of age. It is clear he is with them, but he is looking away, too, as if he is forced to be there, but feels uncomfortable to be there. Scenes, some visual, some heard from individuals, related to the courting traditions in the lower SES or rural communities in Turkey come to me flying from decades back. I bet the little boy is the guardian for the young woman when the couple, in the process of getting married is allowed to get to know one another better. Love and affection to see in the eyes of young people elate my spirit one more time that there is hope. People continue loving and falling in love, that is good news…

Colors Maya taking over a Turkish girl: Zeynep the Mayan