Escuela de la Montana

We left you after our fourth of July, which we spent ignorant of the important celebrations going on in the USA until the day was almost over. From San Marcos Atitlan, we traveled in a Lancha to the town of San Pedro, where the street festival was almost all packed up and put away, and where the people seemed tired and strung out from the weekend of partying and eating pizza.

We ran into the capitan of our lancha from the previous day, who helped us to find the bus stop for the camioneta that would take us up to the ¨ruta principal¨or pan-American highway (CA1) where we could change to a camioneta to Xela. As we sat on the corner with a large group of people, a very sincere boy of about 12 years old approached us. ¨Are you waiting for the bus to Xela?¨he asked. We told him yes. ¨There aren´t any buses today, because of the fiesta.¨He pointed sadly at the tents strung up in the street. ¨You will have to take a truck, but luckily, I know one you can take.¨ How much will that cost? Only 400 Quetzales... Approximately 50 times more expensive than the Camioneta for the two of us.

We told him ¨NO gracias,¨and he said in essence, ¨suit yourselves.¨ Less than a minute later, we heard the telltale roaring of an old Bluebird bus from Cincinatti Ohio, and roaring into sight around the corner, belching fumes and blaring its horn, rolled the Camioneta to the Ruta Principal.

We left without a backwards glance.

We navigated two transfers, to another camioneta on the Ruta Principal, and then a camioneta in Xela´s hectic Minerva bus terminal, that to our mutually experienced eyes seemed a place of peace and calm in contrast to past experiences. Leaving Xela we climbed through hill country with incredibly lush landscapes overflowing with green, the shining leaves of coffee plants reaching over the roads, and the mud and tin huts of the campesinos huddled along narrow paths uncertainly. We got off after descending into cloud forest, and Catherine walked the remembered path down to the mountain school, where we had missed the tour but not dinner. After dropping our bags we were whisked off downhill to the towns of Fatima and Nuevo San Jose, both formed by former Finca workers who had struggled for the right to receive wages and have access to medical care, and who had been denied their rights for years. This is the story of many of the Fincas of Guatemala, where the barest minimum of protection for the people who work there is tantamount to rebellion, and where the Dueños (bosses of the Fincas) hire thugs to burn houses, shoot out the windows, and blacklist workers who organize.

Catherine is staying with the family of Lizbet in the town of Fatima, while I am staying with Irma and Casinto in the town of Nuevo San Jose. Dinner was sopa de pollo, and I talked with Casinto who was up at three in the morning to catch the first Camioneta into San Juan, the nearby town where itinerant day laborers such as himself go in search of work.

In the evening we met up at the school for a history of Guatemala, leading to the present and touching on the events in Guatemala city where camioneta drivers are being murdered in an effort to terrorize the population and attack the transportation system. It seems that the attacks (supposedly because drivers are not paying the mafia fees that are being demanded) are an effort by the military and its paramilitary arms to reassert itself in the face of threats to its massive budget, and they have been effective, as evidenced by the fact that the budget was since restored and increased, and new military bases opened. At the same time, the right wing of Honduras has orchestrated the coup against their moderate president, and it´s up in the air whether this will work or not. If the coup is successful, the president of Guatemala, Alberto Colom, may risk the same assault on his own presidency from the right within Guatemala, whereas if the coup is unsuccessful and the orchestrators discredited, the presidency of Colom may survive to the end of his term. Scary stuff, but very interesting.

We have now been at Escuela de la Montaña for three days of classes, and are learning lots. This is clear because I clearly need a lot of help, and Cat´s blazing through the spanish and rocking and rolling. We are now about to get booted from the internet here and sadly the photos aren´t working again!

As soon as we get a reliable source of internet we´ll get some pics up.

Love,
Brian and Catherine