Zapatistas

So Id always heard of the Zapatistas, but I never really knew much about them. Now I{ve seen a movie (produced in 98) so now I still know very little, but I{ll share it anyway.

So anyway, On January 1, 1994, the day NAFTA went into effect, Zapatista guerilla troops seiged 6 cities, the largest of which was San Christobal (the city I[m in now). You see, the beginning of Nafta was also the beginning of a new Mexican law that changed the rules of rural land ownership. Before, campasinos owned the land that they tended, but with the new law, the government began reclaiming it. This was the opportunity for Commander Marcos, (a masked frontman, proabably a political science professor from Mexico City) to encourage the beginnning of the Zapatista (named after Zapata, the original Mexican revolutionist) revolution. MARCOS is a acronym, each letter represeting one of the towns that the Zapatista´s overtook on Jan 1 (I can´t remember all the names, so I haven´t listed them). Ironically, the party in power in 94 was called the institutional revolutionary party. . . how can you have an institutionalized revolutionary party. . . doesn´t make sense to me.
Anyway, the´Zapatistas came into town, between 150-500 were killed, the government set up peace talks and shortly thereafter a temporary cease-fire was declared. They wanted change, not death. Peace talks were on going, and very very slow.

The movie that I saw focussed on a small town of zapatista supporters in the North of Chiapas, where a different paramilitary group called Peace and Justice, came in and kicked out the residents. Peace and Justice claimed that the Zapatistas were armed and they wanted change without arms (of course some of them had arms too). Of course, the displaced folks wanted to go back, but they were scared and wanted some sort of support either from Zapatisas, state police, or federal troops. None of the aforementioned groups helped, thouhg the Zapatistas pulled out of federal peace talks. These poor folks were stuck away from their village, out of their homes, without money, food, or any help. Finally, 4 months later, they went back to their town (with nothing but the film crew as escorts)and ended up camping on the outskirts for a month, and finally one group went back into the town.

The film ended, but then it turned out (in the post script) that a big bunch of Zapatista supporters were killed a few months later. Peace talks were set up again, and when I know more, i´ll update this blog entry!

Now in San Christobal

So I made the move from Xela Guatemala to San Christobal Mexico. The 7 hour ride was basically uneventful, I sat behind an overweight dutch guy and the only noteworthy thing worth mentioning was the scence on the border between the countries. I wouldn´t exactly call it organized choas, becasue there wasn´t much organization. There was a huge public market where people were selling fruit, batteries, fake puma merchandise and then suddenly the passport control. My passport was quickly stamped without so much a glance at my face, and I walked across the border with a bunch of different tourists and hopped on a mini bus. Immediately I noticed the absence of Gallo beer signs (ubiqitous in Guatemala) and the deluge of Corona, Sol and Superior in their place. Yet as we made it further into Chiapas, past the farmers and the military installations, the slabs of concrete they call home in Guatemala became comlorful smooth stucco walls of the homes in Mexico.

Arriving in the city, I quickly got money from the ATM and checked my email to find the address of the home that I¨m staying at. I schlepped 20 minutes to Beatrice´s place only to find no one home. I sat outside on my bag for about 5 minutes, hopelessly ringing the bell on occasion, before schlepping back to the center of town. After finding a public bathroom (10 cents to pee in a toilet with no seat), a shoe shiner in the middle of the park called me over and I decided give my boots some love. I took lunch of chicken and rice and beans at a simple restaurant near the center and then returned to Beatrice´s. She was there, welcomed me in, and showed me my room (with a magnificent view of the city). I rested for a while and then returned to the city to walk around again. On a small pedestrian walkway near the central church, there was reasonably good live Jazz blaring from a bar and a guy scooping frozen desert from a funky little cart. He took the cone, opened 4 containers in the cart and and began layering tiny little spoon size scoops of red, yellow, blue and white frozen stuff on the surface of the hole in the cone. The final product was a small work of art to be consumed by a happy kid. I didn´t get one, though I wanted to, becasue my belly, sigh, is bothering me.

San Christobal is another world from Xela, things here are pretty: the poeple, the architecture, the ¨cultural¨ scene. Last night I left the house around 9 and actually felt like I could walk around without having to keep both hands in both pockets clutching my wallet and camera. There are street lights, citizens who (unlike Guatamaltecos) haven´t endured years of civil war and less poverty. After eating a light dinner with Beatrice, her 26 year old son and 5 year old neice and then playing barbie with the neice, I returned to the bar where the Jazz was coming from, took a beer and I watched a bunch of teenagers try to rock out. They were bad. I left, walked around past a not so good mariachi band playing on the street to a bunch of gringos, endless habburger vendors (here, perhaps motivated by their names, hamburgers come with a slab of ham on top of the patty) and half internet cafes half pool halls. After my first authentic hot shower in weeks, I slept well.

This mornign I woke up and had two chicken filled tamalitos for breakers, then made off for town again. This time I was trying to find a bicycle tour company whose address is marked incorrectly on the map in my tourbook. I got totally lost in an indiginous neighborhood and tried to talk with a couple of drunk guys on the bank of the dirty river but my Spanish wasn´t up to snuff, sigh. Then I found myself in the middle of the thin rows of the marketplace surrounded by dried fish and bootlet DVDs. I bought an avacado and put it in my bag for later.

Now I´m off to see a documentary about the Zapatista movement, and then I´ll go to bed early so I am well rested for my first day of school at Instituto Jovel tomorrow morning.

I´ll post pictures when I can.

schools

Today, I woke up early and met a bunch of volunteers to go to the health clinic, salud y paz. We got on the bus, but it turned out that they were going to a cooperative glass manufacturing factory (that i had visited 2 weeks ago) So I ended up not getting to the clinic until 930. that kinda sucked, but when we got to there, 4 of us quickly took off to a nearby school to give children floride treatments.

When we arrived at the school, I looked around a bit. Though the buildings were typical ugly concrete slabs with few windows and little decoration, there was a lot going on in the classrooms. In the fifth grade, they were acting out a play and a bunch of smiling kids were wearing black pastic trash bags and jumping around. One child explained that a marimba band was coming to the school next week, so they were preparing a welcoming play. In the 3rd grade, kids were learning their multiplication facts by cutting out red apples with numbers and pasting them into their handmade tree number books. A girl happily showed me how she knew her 3s tables but matching the correct numbered apple with the correct fact in the book.

This was a far cry from the school that I visited last week where the kids, sitting at gender segregated tables, were mechanically chanting pa pe pi po pu over and over for hours. That place was far more depressing, and I{m going there on Friday to teach an english lesson and then talk with the teachers. MArtha, my teacher at school, has been preparing me to use the conditional tense so that I can make suggestions in a gentle and corteous manner.

Anyway, after touring the school on my own, I settled down in a little room with 5 dutch speaking volunteers and began recieveing children to treat. UGGG those teeth were horrible. I{ll bet that most of the children had never brushed in their lives! Deep deep cavitied and bleeding gums were normal, and I was glad to be wearing purple rubber gloves. I would ask the child to put their head on my lap. then I would dry their teeth with gauze and finally take the little yellow brush from the kit, put it into the bubblegum tasting floride treatment and paint their teeth. At the end each kid got a sticker.

Of course, after advising the kid not to eat for an hour, and not to drink hot liquid for 4 hours, the people at the school were handing out watermelon for snack. There were lots of kids jumping around with yellow stickers and a piece of watermelon rind in their hand. Seemed like a waste, but in fact most of these kids needed a real dentist and adding floride to their decayed baby teeth wouldn{t do all that much anyway. It just shows that you really need a well coordinated effort to volunteer successfully.

píctures later.

cemeteries and schools

The wall along the back end of the rich section of the Xela public cemetaries read ël amor a la libertad los hizo heros . . the love of liberty made them heros. This is the only revolutionary memorial, located at a former firing squad wall where the ¨martyrs¨from the first 2 revolutions were killed. This wall divides the cemetery into 2 sections, 1 half is filled with tightly packed together small buildings and mausoleums, the other half is filled with shallow graves. The folks who had money built these small mausoleums, so that they could live well in the afterlife. Sometimes, if they dont pay dues, the cemetary people will take the remains out and sell the plot to someone new.

There are all kids of different architecture, reoman, greek, even Egyptian, there were someminteresting stories, one group of german immigrants died when the couldn’t adapt to the environment of Xela,

One woman who supposedly helps couples who are having maritial toubles has a tomb and people scribble on it. In another section, there are a whole bunch of marble angels, but they are all missing heads. Supposedly, shortly after the peace accord in 96, a satanic gang required the head of a marble angel as an initiation right. hmmmm.

fact

I found out the Bolivia is the Latin American country with the most coup attempts, I think it´s 108, crazy.

lago atitlan

Lago Atitlan is about 2 1-2 hours away from Xela, but our trip back today took about 4. We arrived in Panachel around 1 and found the 1 direct but to Xela. We got on. We sat, we waited. 30 minutes later, as the black smoke rose from the tailpipe, we took a little tour through the town, only to come back to the same place (facing the other direction) and rest for another 5 minutes. Finally, the green, white and orange striped schoolbus was full, and we took off. As we ascended the first hill from the lake to the mountains, boom, clank, thud, stop. We all sat, looking around, wondering what was happening. Scott, who had chosen to get off his last bus (2 weeks ago) from Atitlan to Xela becasue of smoking tire problems, suggested that we do the same. I flipped the emergency exit handle and hopped out the back of the bus. I looked aorund to see the driver, lying underneath the bus, fiddling with the broken rotor (I think thats the name of the thing that connects the 2 wheel axels. . . ) We knew not to wait, luckily none of us had paid, or put our backpacks on the roof of the bus, so we hopped off, hailed down the next bus, and got on. About 25 people joined us, making the already full bus, even more full. A fellow with a big hat fell asleep on my arm. I met a couple whom had graduated from Oberlin in 91. They happen to be studying at the same school, hmmmmm. small. . . . .

The new bus took us to Sonola, where we got out and transfered to another bus to Los Encuentros. IT was also very crowded, nonetheless, a boy walked on and started handing out honeyroasted nuts, shouting, ¨manis manis manis, uno quetzal¨ I bought a little bag and munched them as we headed off the los encuentros. There were 7 people in my row designed to fit 4 school children.

We got off at los encuentros and transferred to another bus for cuatro caminos, where we would finally meet a bus to Xela. The rest went smoothly, and now I{m back at Xela.

So Lago Atitlan was entertaining. We (7 folks from my school) stayed at a 3 room Hacienda style hotel complete with mud walls, stone sinks, and lake water showers. It was owned by a curly white haired, 60ish, jewish, gloucester raised, ex-pat, woman named Terry. She invited us to her treehouse home to sample some of her cert org homegrown coffee and listen to her strum the guitar and sing songs of guatemalan history and hardship. Later that night we saw her again playing her flute along with a hippy dippy latin band called Mamalapacha. Actually, even though the band was lousy, they were playing at a commune place where the 4 resident families open their ¨grounds¨ every afternoon for children to come engage in creative art projects, dance and circus arts. Sadly a lot of it was disturbed during a recent hurricane (It wasn{t Katrina, I forget what it was named). In fact a lot of the lake area was destroyed, but the expat population seems to be pumping money into the economy adn the recovery is going ok (from my uneducated eyes).

In general, our weekend involved learning the gringofied area known as Lago Atitlan. The departure city (where we left from Friday night), called Panajachel reeks of pot and there are lots of pizza places and cheap hotels. From Pana, it{s possible to catch little boats that take you to the other towns. Each town has it{s own little personality. We stayed 2 nights in San Marcos, the ¨chill¨ place with lots of message, ¨wellness¨ centers and folks like Terry. San Pedro, where we went on Saturday afternoon, has a party, and study, reputataion. I may return there for a week (I could swim and not be too cold for a week, nice). I looked around at a few schools, trying to determine which was best, but quickly realized that I couldn´t tell becasue theyñre all similar, small thatched roof huts with little tables and 2 chairs. Also, all have words like [cooperative or volunteer or development in their titles. They realize that the target audience has left leaning sentiments, but that few actually want to get their hands wet in volunteer opportunities. I may return.

There is Santa Cruz, which is sorta chill, sorta party. Lonely planet reports, and others confirm that there is a cross dressing party every Saturday night. Then there is Jaibalito, which is small and has only one hotel called Casa Del Mundo. We went there to swim, drink liqidos (smoothies) and play scrabble in their spic and span surroundings. Then we hiked back to San Marcos. Next weekend there is a ¨folk fest¨ in Santiago, a pueblo that we didn{t visit.

Thats it for this weekend

some pics

A boy near a church in San Andres (45 minutes from Xela), (taken from the hip, i find it problematic to take pics of people without asking)

baddass buses (on the way to San Andres)

In San Andres with my new friend San Simon, I gave him 5 quetzales, and he will give me love luck.

life in Xelaju

Here´s the situation. Since arriving in Guatemala, I have spoken exponentially more Spanish. 5 hours with Juan, my teacher, every meal with Doris, my madre de casa, and even during free time with the other gringos. I feel more confident and i´m getting around the city of Xela more easily becasue I communicate with people. yay for me ,)

So that´s it for studying, there is no need to bore everyone with the intricacies of irregular verbs in the past imperfect tense, so I´ll get onto other things. I went back to the hotspring today, becasue I actually hiked up a volcano yesterday. The Volcano was supposed to be a beautiful expoerience (and we got up at 4:15 AM so ensure that we took in all the beauty) but alas, la nina, or something has caused abnormal numbers of clouds to decend on Xela (as I experienced before) and there was no view from the top of the Volcun. hmmm. But today was really sunny and a much better expeience at the hot springs because I was warm, and I drank beer in the middle of the day. Alas, I acutally spoke some english with the other students. . . that wasn´t great, but it was also nice to take a break and know that people understood instead of just nodding their heads.

SO Xela is a small city of about 100g people, there are some cobblestoned strets, and other concrete ones. It´s funny the majority of the cars here are mid 80s colorras, simialar to the cars that both Mom and Ellen had. My 2 taxi rides were in an 87 corolla sedan, and an 82 corolla station wagon. Also, they recycle old US school busses, but they jazz em up with what looks like chrome (but is, I think, actually aluminium), atypical colors, and sometimes even drawings. Since I´m in the highlands, I see in the street lots of indiginous Qui´che folks who do actually wear traditional clothing, live in the mountians and farm for a living.

My teacher Juan and I talk about all kinds of things. It´s good, I actually have the time to express what I think abuot politics etc, and he is patient (And paid) to listen, egagae and correct me. IT´s great. He is hoping to study in Maine this summer (at an english immersion school). Maybe I´ll get a chance to see him.

Doris, my madre de casa, lives alone in a rather large 5 bedroom house. Her job is to host students and take care of the house, but alas (for her, not me) we´ve been alone the last week, she hasn´t gotten much rent, and I get her all to myself. We talk and she has told me her story. She was born very poor, rurally, her father died and her mom moved her, and the 3 sisters to Xela. living on the streets, her mother was identified and brought in by a Swedish woman who married a Guatamalteco (the word for gualamalan guy) and started working. Doris and her sisters lived in the same house, but her mother was the nanny for the other kids, and the other kids were priority. It was very hard for Doris. The family got divorced, and then the Swedish woman fell in love with antoher woman, her daughetr went to America and was killed in a car accident. oy! Now, Doris has grown up, she has 3 kids, but no husband (didnt tell, didn´t ask). When her kids were little, she moved, without the kids, to Santa Monica for 3 years and worked to make money. She came back, a couple of her kids have been not so nice and dont talk with her, (though the other came for lunch last week). A few years ago Doris tried to buy a house, but defaulted on the loan and the bank re-possessed everything (she told me with a tear in her eye.) She does have a big house now (she rents) but I think she has cable. (no TV in the common spaces) She cooks me all kinds of nice things, and she is very kind to me. IT´s the first stranger I´ve lived with, and it´s going AOK.

I have my own room, with a queen size bed, and 5 blankets (it gets cold at night)and nothing on the walls. THere is a little wooden desk, a lamp with no lampshade, and a small armoir to hold my clothing. I have my own bathroom (right now, because there isn´t another student)! with the crazy shower. IT´s crazy becasue of how the hot water comesout. If you want a hot shower, you need to hit a circuit breaker switch, and then turn on the water. There is this big bulbous shower head that has wires sticking into the wall, and a broken pencil plugging a hole and pointing out. I assume that there is a little hot coil in the shower head and that it heats water as it goes through. So, if you want a lot of pressure, the water isn´t hot. oh well. Usually my showers feel kind of like someone peeing on me, because it´s so hot but so weak.

Anyway that´s it for now.


So, Semana santa is in one month. I was just sitting here in the intenet cafe, and this huge procession of preists followed by a large marching band, carrying a big Jesus float, came walking by. woah, smelly incence!

yes!

Yesdterday afternoon, Colleen, Betsy and the 2 germans from Nuremberg met outside school at 2:30 with intention to go to Fuentes Georginas, a hot spring [spa[ nestled between 2 volvanos, Zunil and Santo Tomas.

We walked to a corner and hopped on the first bus with the sign for Zunil in the window. It had orange racing stripes, big chrome rims and gold rods horizontally parallel along the techo (roof). We haggled with the conductor guy, who charged us 4 quetzales (rought 50-60 cents) becasue the lonely planet guide said it would only cost us 25 cents. I think it{s pretty stupid tohaggle becaseu its so cheap to begin with and . . . its serously only pennies and they culd use more than us affluent gringos!

Anyway, we paid 4 quetzales and rode along for about 20 minutes stopping periodically to let on and off a series fo quipu clad women, some with baskets and shawls on their heads. I said buenos dias to the lady sitting next to me but nothing else. 2 little girls sharing an ice cream laughed at me when I missed a clump of sunscreen that I was rubbing into my face. They got off in Zone 3.

Finally we got off the bus at a bridge crossing a river into the 6000 person town called Zunil. As we stepped onto the bridge, a patch of sun illumiated a woman hurrying by. She began dumping her bag of trash into the river. Corn husks, old toilet paper, and a big green plastic thing cascaded through the air and plopped into the roaring river beneath. Just then a truck stopped and offered us a ride to go to the hot springs. We quickly accepted their offer after realizing that bargainin would have only saved us about 30 cents each. We hopped in the back of the blue pickup sharing the space with 3 indiginous women and their 8 sacs stuffed with lettuce, onions and brocolli. We entered town, took a right, and entere3d a plaza. Some village folks laughed as the truck rolled into the marketplace with 5 gringos. Perhpas they thought the same joke that I did. . . .ahh, gringos for sale at marketplace. WE stopped and everyone got out (except me) and i helped the driver push the vegetable sacks out of the pickup.

Everyone else hopped onto th epickup and we began heading up through the town, past a pristine white church and onto the narrow road up the side of the mountain. We stopped for a fellow with a gigantic machete and his friend carrying 5 pcv pipes. We drove by gardens: lettuce, cabbage, beans, corn all planted in little squares looking like a patchwork quilt.
20 minutes and 8 kilometers later, rain drops began falling as we approached the top of the mountain. 5 minutes later, after negotiating our return trip in the same truck and then walking past 7 villas,3 people and a small restaurant, pebble sized hail balls began falling from the sky! WE quickly changed, put our things in a broken wooden locker and then jumped into the welcoming, warm thermal pools. For the next hour we swam around, found hot spots with protection from the hail-rain and generally enjoyed the warmest water we´ll have for the next month.
5:00 approaced and we knew we needed yto be back in Zunil by 6 if we wanted to get back to Xela for the night. The rain kept falling and we lept from the pool, got our stuff and attemped to dry ourselves as best we could without towels. Though glad to be wearing various forms of fleece, I knew my jeans were bound to get soaked.
We quickly stopped at the restaurant for m&ms, fake doritos and beer, then we headed for the pickup. Betsy and the German lady sat in the cab with our backpacks, while colleen myself and the german guy began braving the elements in the flatbed. After trying, unsuccessfully, to stay dry under colleens travel towel, I stood up, held on the the top bars surrounding the flatbed and practiced scream therapy for the entire rapid, wet and scary ride down the mountain. When we got to town, we hopped right onto another chicken bus. It left without Colleen, but we shouted ¨Espere, espere (wait, wait)´ and, lcukily for her, they did. She got on and we all began ringing out our clothing. I shivered all the way back to Xela and only began warming up when I stopped for a hot cheese filled corn pancake on the street. Though the bus dropped us off far from school, the necessary (and thankfully dry) walk was fun to experience because we got to see a different part of the city. This was my first ¨¨wuthentic¨Guatemalan experience.