doubt distorts

i cried trying to hold it in causing that ridiculous, successive hiccup-suction-cup breathing. i was seven years old again. i wanted to crawl into a private part of the world and release, but i live communally and other teachers were scurrying to gather their belongings to leave on the lancha (boat) that i too was to board, weekend bound. as i packed, my new roommate had asked if i was ok, said i had looked sad all day. questions poking a hole in a dyke that soon couldn't be mended. i missed the lancha.

under the protection of my mosquito net, i cradled myself. for the first time i appreciated my new room, a cave compared to my previous room with two walls of netting. for the first time, i found comfort in not being exposed. there, my leaking of sadness became a surrendering of a dream. it was possible that i wouldn't be paid for my new position as a teacher. i would have to find work else where.

while i was gone, on an extended break, the director of the entire project fired three of the guatemalan teachers because she wants as many volunteers as possible. in addition, no longer will a boat be leaving every day to pick up kids from surrounding villages. all in the name of decreasing expenses. the director of the school and the on-sight director of the project can not confirm the pay i was offered in november. no body has any real control except seño angie, the director of the entire project who, we all agree, is crazy. as i wait for her response which has been delayed by her unexpected trip to honduras, the others tell me relax. they comfort me reminding me that i am cheap labor, cheaper than a guatemalan teacher. i don't mind being on the other side of the immigration issue; i expect this as a foreigner desiring pay in another country. what weakens me are angie's porous words. i lose faith in myself. i see the dissolving of a dream as a reflection of my feeble heart. in the darkness i blame myself.

it took a good cry to be able to lift myself out of bed and walk outside.

velorio

in a low voice she asked, "why don't you come and start the compañerismo?" that last word snagged me. i had never heard that word it before. never knew that compañero (companion), could be found in the form of an "ism". the question rang like an invitation to a secret society or a subversive movement.

i had my reasons for not going and i had wanted to explain them to her since she had looked at me with those eyes that stay in their target, long enough to shoot their message, short enough to feign a wandering glance. for me, the velorio was an intimate event for family and friends, and i, being the new comer, didn't yet feel part of the inner circle. i wouldn’t be comfortable spending the night in a room with strangers surrounding the body of walter's dead father.

what i didn't understand was the naturalness of a velorio which shouldn't have surprised me in a land where the dead are celebrated with altars and picnics in cemeteries. the night of the velorio, the family vela or remains awake with the body while the spirit passes to the other world. friends come to accompany the family to help them stay awake with coffee, bread, and conversation. there are jokes and laughter and surprise meetings of old friends. in this, one witnesses compañerismo. it is more than the act of accompanying; it is also the spirit that unifies those who not only work together, but also live together.

a spirit that in moments of special gatherings appears attractive, but suffocating if it is the word to describe the communal movement of the teachers of casa guatemala. "it is another mafia," i explained to my argentinean friend. "they don't go to the dining hall until seño lili, the director of the school, says !vamos!" it might be that they are freshly united after a two month vacation and are eager to re-bond as a group, but this also might be what maria talked about. last year, maria was the arts and crafts teacher for the girls. maria, didn't finish the school year. she couldn't endure the asphyxia of the herd. or maybe it was because she arrived later in the school year and was never completely accepted. maybe it was because she became pregnant by a spanish volunteer. or maybe it was because she spent more evenings at the volunteers' house than the teachers' house. maybe it was because she didn't awake at five a.m. to drink hot chocolate with the others to commemorate the day of the teacher.

if compañerismo is the liberty inside a circle and the judgment outside, if it is movement in masse then my suspicion has found firm ground. however, if there is more to the image than what my cultural lense can see, i hope that the next ten months will create a broader lense.

language school

there is a school in a country where the teachers teach the language of that country. students arrive from foreign lands and the first day they watch a video about the massacres of the country. then the director talks to them about the dictators and the military regimes and invasions and subversive movements. students nod and yawn. they understand little. the director keeps talking passionately.

the teachers teach time: past, future, and past...mostly the past. all times can be progressive and perfect. but the teachers like to share the exceptions of a not so perfect past or present, of the non progressive moods of the past that create the present. they spend less time explaining the future. they leave that for advanced studies.

the school was created to make money off of foreign money to create schools over the hill. foreigners with a conscious come to give and learn.

one of these foreigners had come before, years ago attracted to the social services, pleased to know that her money went to the teachers and not a company. she has returned for a week to polish off smudges. however, she is not young like the others. she is no longer that ignorant little girl wowed by the impunity and horrified by the atrocities.

this student is paired with luis. luis is a pamphlet. no, he is many pamphlets cut up by paragraphs, then thrown in the air, then glued back together.

he asks the new student what she knows about guatemala not to listen to her knowledge of the language to then plan appropriate lessons. no, he listens to tell her what she doesn't know. they can talk the same language of transnational this and psychological that, but soon the woman doesn't want to talk. she stops asking questions. his scattered knowledge of political paradigms bores her when she realizes it is copied materiel. she wants the subjunctive, the imaginary. she needs more instruction in what can not be localized well in space and time.

after having her copy all forms of the imaginary and hard to locate, he doesn't know what to do with her. he writes a fancy word which means “words that have more than one definition”, but she knows the ones he lists. she pulls out her literature book and asks for clarification. he stares and stares, speaks superfluously about language being relative and up to interpretation. he does this when he doesn't know.

he seems to know a little about a lot. a sentence about zionists taking over the world followed by the acquisition of the fabric of latin american life, meaning the patenting of beans and corn. he likes the fifties and to talk about a book he hasn't read, but that she has, as if he read it first.

what bothers her most is his lack of humor. only twice does he try to joke, and it is the same joke. he answers "no" to two of her questions and then chuckles slightly, repeating again and again, its a joke, its a joke, of course, of course.

when they shake hands on friday afternoon, they shake hands in farewell without looking each other in the eye. he, still considering her just another foreigner to educate, and she, not quite sure how to recommend a class in rhetoric.

13 de enero, 2008

here, in this second story hotel room
with walls of pink 3/4 of the way up
no painted line is straight
colors drip into other colors
a red laced curtain
blows in the wind

alone,
i have been writing
unaware of time.

on the table,
two apples and a banana
smile at me;
32 pesos
will carry me across the border.

33 years ago
i came out of my mother
and i am content
to be living
before i die.

tapachula, chiapas, mexico

puerto madero / the port of madero

makes you think that god was fucked up when he made this town

-there you are by the flaming lips

it is a centro turistico of the state, one man told me when i asked about puerto madero. others commented, with out much enthusiasm, that yes, it was a good place to bathe. so i came, and found a has been.

the combi dropped me off at an intersection where bici-taxis competed to take me anywhere, even to help me find a hotel. i can do that myself, i informed the eager, young man. el puerto was to the left and playa san benito to the right and the ocean straight ahead; i could see it slightly.

it was obvious that this was a stop over, but according to the locals, there was no lodging in any of the further locations i named. i could possibly ask to stay with a family in san simon or ......., but the driver didn't look too happy to take me and i wasnt feeling too adventurous with out a partner. thus, i resigned myself to search for a hostel in this town no longer accustomed to the foriegner in its streets. the couple at the taco stand sent me to look for a room in a place that no longer had service (maybe because a wave had wiped its color and solid structure to a minimum) and in a store front where no body came to assist me. i made a deal with one lady for a three night stay, but in the end, i was willing to pay more to be with the lying missionaries next to the police station and the catholic candle shop. i think the court yard with the hammock sold me.

to arrive to the closest beach that is not obstructed by a wall of boulders, i walked down a dirt road with restaruants on the left and a cemetery on the right. the restaurants carried names such as charly, palapa eddy, palapa paty, and palapa yasmin. each bellowed different sounds from empty patios opening up to a valley of sand rising to a peak of rocks that hid the sea. to compensate for the loss of the quick access to the ocean, many had built block pools. a voice from with in one of the establishement called to me, pase, but i couldn't find the woman behind the voice to look her in the eye and say, no gracias, not now. i learned later that only on saturday and sunday were the majority of the chairs taken from their tilted position and occupied.

i have seen cementeries in mexico and guatemala that are walled mini-cities with tombs rising several levels taking the form of houses and churches set along perpendicular pathways. however, this cemetery's structures laid low to the ground with tombs scattered here and there, facing this way and that. three wires stretched along slender sticks formed the boundary. the bright pink, blue, green, and purple paper streamers and cut outs, remnants of a previous day of the dead celebration, were now faded and sulking upon tombstones of similar colors. flowers were dried and fallen; plastic decor, dull and forgotten. some tombs were piles of rumble next to piles of plastic and leaves. it looked as if long ago there had been a wild party that no body bothered to cleaned up completely. the disorder had mounted with the reckless throwing of bags, bottles and diapers, the new offering to the dead.

at the end of this road, i came to a beach that was a bowl. the waves were confused in their pulling and throwing. i walked along the lip of sand, running occasionally from water overflow, questioning often the empty palapas and abandoned buildings, most without roofs or windows.

i walked out and back, timing it just right to arrive at charito's store front, buy a beer, walk through her living space, her valley of sand, and up on to the rocks to watch the sun in its final setting. however, i didn't make it pass the counter because there we stood: she with a tired indignation explaining her town, as i with a sad curiosity listened and inquired.

it used to be beautiful, she said, like the beaches up north. my father had a hotel, right out there, she pointed out the back door. that was before the sea grew more than a kilometer to its current level behind the wall. that was before the puerto changed everything.

men had sat with her father in the restaurant of his hotel and explained how the state should look for a natural opening to the sea, or there will be relentless clearing of sand build up from the artificial opening between marsh land and sea. and that is what is happening. according to charito, millions are spent on removing the sand. from her perspective, more money is spent on dragando than what is earned by the port. she offers no facts; she simply doesn't see the benefits.

what she has seen is the rise of the sea, the construction of a wall to hide behind, her father dying of a heart attack inflicted by the stress and sadness of the losses, and the export of young men, often entire families, to el norte. there use to be a row of hotels and restaurants, now most of the buildings are abandoned or barely stuck together like mine, she raised her eyes to the palm leafed roof where i could see through to the sky. damnificados multiple times, but now there is no money to repair, to rebuild. el gobierno no ayuda, no hace nada. the government doesn't help, doesn't do anything. what it does do is "re-direct" relief supplies and funds.

during the last hurricanes of 2007, the ones that brought flooding compared to those brought by huricane katrina, mel gibson donated a million dollars, money charito and her neighbors have not seen. yet, it doesn't surprise her. in 2005 during the aftermath of hurricane stan, a cargo ship arrived with relief supplies. when days passed, and nothing had been distributed, and they had no food, her eldest son, then 13 years old, rowed out to the port in a small canoe. they threw him crackers.

charito recognizes that she could move, but she is accustomed to living by the sea, living so close to nature, even though it is presicely that which has caused so much suffering.

on my last day in puerto madero, i walked again to the puerto, more for excercise than in hopes of seeing anything new. the only building on the strip that had a direct view of the ocean was the punto de vigilencia of the mexican navy. an artificial mound of sand blocked the other homes and restaurants that line the left side of the road. the mound was a high plateau that cars drove up on and parked to watch the horizon. coming around the last bend, i had to stop and stare to stabilize the dizzying, shrinking sensation. rising above the palm thatched roofs and banana fronds was a giant cruise ship, a floating city that seemed so out of place. why is it that nobody in the town had mentioned them when i asked about present day tourism?

the answer came later that day when i arrived to the center of tapachula, a major city 30 km to the north east. tour buses lined the plaza and hundreds of fair skinned people in shorts and white tennis shoes roamed in safe groups of threes or fours or behind women holding signs with the cruise ship trade mark. traditional dancers performed on a stage and artisans displayed their work under white canopies. when i asked the man in the gallery what the festiviteis were about, he replied, well, for the cruise ship and, of course, it is sunday. even the tourists are shipped away.

as i move on, i can't forget charito's words that made me miss that sunset. as she handed me my change, she asked me what i was doing in guatemala. i explained that i was working in a center for abandoned children. she quickly replied, we need help here!

*i visited charito the following evening as well. upon parting she invited me to return and stay in her house and travel with her to las palmas in the protected marshlands to the north. she is a single mother of three boys. the oldest studies in the evenings while working on a tuna boat. her husband is/was a captain of a boat sold to a dutch company. when she was pregnant with her youngest son, he left for for northern seas. a year later he stopped communicating. she hasn't heard from him since. her greatest illusion is to visit egypt.

for a new visa

there are places you don't write home about. tapachula, mèxico in the state of chiapas is one of them. travelers pass through on their way from san cristobal de las casas to the beaches or vice versa. they spend the night before crossing the border into guatemala or upon arrival from that country to the south. i joined this latter group and simply wanted a safe hostel with good cafes near by to pass the three days before i can return to guatemala with a new visa. i could find that eight hours to the north in the colonial town of san cristobal de las casas, but i am not interested in passing another day in a bus.

yesterday, i crossed two borders: el salvador-guatemala and guatemala-mèxico. from the time we left rancho palos in el salvador to when i could grab a pen and jot a few thoughts before dozing off to sylvio rodriguez, fourteen hours had passed. cecilia and i parted in esquintla. she, to continue on to casa guatemala and i, to the next border.

the information in the central america guide book stops at the border. it does include a section on the yucatan and chiapas, but their chiapas is limited to san crisobal de las casas and palenque, the archeological site, way up north (or is it east from here? el salvador has confused me).

i woke up this morning with the fan blowing on me thinking: i could be content here for a few days. these are days that despite the tears of reflection, i wake up giving thanks, a strange impulse that hastened overcome me, in a long, long while. sure there are times i have to remind myself to be thankful, make a mental list of the positive, but these impulses have occurred in the raw moments upon waking. signs of internal change, i say. i hope it lasts.

so, i left the hotel del terminal open to staying or going, to where, i was not sure. i walked up to the central park on an inclined street lined with vendors. an every day open market. old men and women selling chicken and fish sat lazily waving hand made pom-poms to keep the flies away. in the park the mèxican military hung recruitment banners, and even though shops were slow to open, the children with clown faces stood at the intersection juggling for change. the only indigenous people around crouched on the side walk. they were like statues with their hands out held and heads bent. the mexican bank tellers, just as i remember; they avoid eye contact, do not say hello, do not offer explanations, and the only indication that the transaction is over is that the money has been pushed towards the client with out being counted.

i ordered an orange juice and huevos rancheros and considered. san cristobal is known and far away. the beach is unknown and close.

i am here in puerto madero near playa san benito. it is hot, or as the spaniards say: it is so hot that you shit yourself (un calor que te cagas). many empty palapas line the beach and restaurants with music, lights and no customers. if i had a travelling partner, we would venture out to the barra and walk for miles and look for the paradise shown in the movie Y Tu Mama Tambièn. but where i am at, is nice enough to finish another book, begin preparing for my new job, and drink a beer as the sun sets.

this is how i write