a barefoot democracy
as one author put it, guatemala in 1954 was a barefoot democracy: 75.8% walked with bare feet.

eating chow mien and reading poems, i sit in a plastic, red chair in a restaurant silenced by the blare of the radio. construction workers, each with mid-day coca-cola, don’t talk. i look up and see her. i first see her feet, dry cracks filled with white plaster, walking in the wind and sun on concrete and cobble stone.

i watch them move toward us, and i think of francisco and maria jesus whose full, round toes spread with the width of shoes. they are sturdy, confident feet that regard shoes as an awkward disturbance. i think of jossie, the new girl from the capital, who came to us one night in darkness and rain. soaked by a storm that had left us without electricity, she was led by the hand to her bottom bunk. a few days later, she scoffs at the suggestion of going barefoot to the costume party. the following week, she is shoeless and smiling. but then i see her going to work on the farm with bare feet, so i finally ask her about her shoes. they broke she replies with her eyes looking down. embarrassed at being a bit embarrassed because here in her new home in the swampy forest by the river, one doesn’t complain about not having shoes. one doesn’t nag to go to the storeroom and look in the pile of donated shoes. it is part of that proud indifference that the older kids wear upon their shoulders.

the older woman enters and unloads her basket on the front table. she offers no disturbance; she doesn’t smile; she doesn’t seek eye contact. she ritually delivers the hot tortillas wrapped in cloth to the kitchen hidden by a draped sheet. she moves as if on the screen of a silent movie with a popular love song as her frame, as her foil. she is the woman who sells tortillas as she walks away as silently as she came, with a steamy basket upon her head, no shoes upon her feet.


antigua, 2007