I began my six months in Central America with a visit to Honduras, so here’s a very superficial comparison of Honduras and Guatemala, based on a little over a week in both countries:
Hondurans (los catrachos) speak fast and eat their s’s, while Guatemalans (los chapines) sing their words at an intelligible rate.
Honduras undulates between forested mountains and valleys—the word itself shares a root with “undulates”—and has virtually no volcanoes. Guatemala, on the other hand, has the highest density of volcanic sites in the world. Its name comes from an indigenous word for “the place of trees,” though this word could just as easily refer to Honduras.
Both countries have been militarily and economically subjugated to the United States and its corporate affiliates. On both sides of the border, I’ve been told not to lay all the blame for the resulting violence and delayed development on my government because preexisting corruption made it possible to buy out local politicians in the first place. In addition to bloodshed, the legacy of coups has included bitterness, disillusionment, and more extensive corruption.
For whatever reason, Guatemala is seen as a more violent nation than Honduras. One individual (a catracho if I remember right) attributed the greater violence and machismo found in Guate to the influence of indigenous culture. As a foreigner, I don’t think I’d ever be able to test that hypothesis, let alone after two weeks.
This debate is a distinction of frequency, as these days instances of senseless bloodshed occur in both nations. The most gruesome story I heard before crossing the border concerned a Honduran national who had earned a Ph.D. and started a family in Norway and then returned to show his wife and child his homeland. When he parked on the outskirts of a small town to take a leak, he was gunned down for his pocket change, his wife and daughter witnessing the murder from the car.
Then I got to Guatemala, where gangs recreationally kill several scores of busdrivers annually. In fact, ten minutes after we stopped at customs, I was involved in an act of bus-related violence (ok, it was an accident but horrific nonetheless). I had shelled out for a tourist-favored luxury bus and expected to confront my sleep deficit and wake up in Antigua Guatemala 8 hours later. Not only were we delayed, a man was seriously injured—that is, if he survived. Rolling into a small town, we came to a halt with the sound of shattering glass. I looked out the window and saw a heavy-set man spitting up blood and struggling to breath on the side of the road. The drivers went out and scratched their heads around his body; those of us watching anxiously from the bus were advised not to get involved because of liability, which was probably the reason for the drivers’ inaction. Five minutes later, we moved to the police station, where the bus parked and we disembarked. We subsequently learned that the man was brought down from the telephone pole where he was doing cable work when our bus ran over a stray cable hanging in the road. His body slammed into the side of our bus, sending a Dutchman flying across the aisle onto the feet of John the Irishman and Sparkle the Brit. With these latter three and two more Brits, I killed the time with my first experience of the Guatemalan beer monopoly until our replacement bus showed up. All I know of the injured cable guy is that he wasn’t taken to the hospital for about two hours and was somehow at fault because he had a purchased driver’s license.
The dark magical realism of my entry into Guatemala hasn’t really diminished in the last week, though it has become more indirect, channeled through stories rather than personal experience. Many of these can be traced to Gerónimo, the professor I commute with from La Antigua to the capital everyday at 5:05 a.m., or to Juan Carlos, my boss here. Negotiating the afternoon exodus from the capital, Gerónimo has told me about Cash Luna, the aptly named Evangelical pastor that milks his congregation for all they’ve got; the origin of the phrase panza verde (“green belly”—residents of Guatemala’s third capital who resisted the mandatory move to its current location following the earthquakes of 1773 fled to the surrounding wilderness where they lived off herbs); and loads of anecdotes on gang violence, presidential corruption, and Catholic miracles. Juan Carlos explained how the absence of the state outside of the capital has its roots in the colonial-era reliance on priests as local governors and how only 2 percent of murders lead to prosecution.
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| Through the gate of the old national prison |
These glimpses of absurdity have led me to think that magical realism did not require much of a stretch of the imagination on the part of Asturias or García Márquez. On a daily basis, I come across at least one or two characters that would feel at home in Macondo. Take, for example, the daughter of my landlady who studies interior design and lynched some twenty stuffed animals on the walls of my apartment, or the transvestite prostitute who chased me through the streets of Antigua while on my way home (I was later told my experience was nothing special, that it has happened to everybody at some point).
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| From left to right: teddy bear, teddy bear in lederhosen, teddy bear, poodle. All really dusty and glaring at me from all angles. |
I’m not sure if I’ll get around to making any sort of narrative out of these experiences. Maybe after I finish reading Gravity’s Rainbow I’ll give it a shot. In the meantime, I’ve been spending the few hours I’m not at work or in transit schmoozing with expats in the fine establishments of Antigua or messing around with the guitar I acquired from a father-son artisanal instrument workshop on the outskirts of town. If I record anything worth sharing I’ll put it up here. And of course after my field work starts this week I'll get into the substance of what I'm doing down here.
