la triste verdad

San Marcos is a divided town. The main road splits it into two disparate worlds and few cross the boundary. On one side lies the maze of restaurants, resorts and healing centers. The extranjeros live here and the gringos have a space in which to play. On the other side are the barrios where the natives dwell. There are steep cobbled streets and a few small tiendas, empty dirt lots with sticks and futbol goals and children one tenth their size guard them. A single gnarl of rose brush crowns an alley in arch, dripping goblets of crimson onto steps below. Coffee fields with rich ripe berries—yellow, red and dried to brown. Young boys march in at early morning with empty milk crates on their backs and return to fish hooked weights and tally the harvest and go home hungry. Buildings stenciled with Unionista sun symbols and branded murals: Tigo, we are with you.

The people are surprised to see us pass. Some of the children chime greetings. Others run and hide. Because of my sunglasses, Israel tells me. The sun is not bright enough. It makes me seem frightening. I take them off. We reach the mirador, a plot of land owned by his friends.Lago Atitlan spreads her fingers before us, intertwined with golden inlets rising into mountains of cross hatched crops, colored crosses and green jungle. Beams of prismed colorless light strike each lakeside town. De dios, I say. No, de San Pedro. This is his land.

The man is wearing overalls with bleached patches on his joints and building a hospital on this plot. They have carried the construction materials up the hill—the same way we have come but with cement and glass and steel and wood. He asks me where I’m from and tells me how it came to be known. The Jesuits, he says, were like the conquistadores. They wanted all the land for themselves, so they gave the towns good Spanish names to show their strength and solidarity. From Los Angeles and San Diego through San Antonio across to La Florida. All of this. To name a thing is to try to take its power.

I never learned this in school, I say. This is why I travel. To come to know new things. And old things in other ways.

Learn from people, Israel tells me. They experienced it. Son historia viviendo—they are living history. But the books are necessary too. For names and dates.

La cosa es que, I begin… it’s easy to remember that the stories people tell are their own. It’s more difficult with books. Books are stories too. Each one has a perspective. But because they are written and bound we believe they are truths, facts, and we trust them . En realidad, you must find many ways to see a thing and decide for yourself which you feel is right.

Twenty three Mayan tribes exist today. Each with its own language. Each with its own style of clothes. The clothes themselves speak, showing language, tribe and town. Patterns of peacocks, of rain, of crops, of blood. The Mayan Cross is a universal symbol. Its four points represent the cardinal directions, the four colors of corn, and the four realms of social life: priest, king, artist, and the rest.

Ixchel Diosa is the goddess of the moon and the textile. She comes often to this world in the form of the serpent. The women wear almolongas, long, intricately designed bands around their heads to serve as snakes that connect them to her. In Guatemala, most wear the traditional dress. But still, little by little, they are losing their heritage. People come to see them as puppets and take photos, and buy trinkets, and leave. Con ojos que no vean, corazones no sientan. With eyes that do not see, the hearts do not feel. I am told that "the elders and leaders often stand fast and steady in their homes, suffering silently with sullen hatred in their eyes" as the others pass blindly by.

Memorias Muertas

For a long time I thought it was a canon. The explosions seemed to come from everywhere at once, unlike gunshots that let you feel their direction of origin in your belly. The noise bounced off the mountains and a puff of smoke held high overhead. It isn’t until the old man lights one off next to me, and the sound makes me almost deaf but leaves just enough so I can hear the second blast a few moments later that I understand these are fireworks.

I watch as he reloads. He holds a small newspaper bomb up to the sky and against his breast to bless it. There is a cringle of paper as he wraps another layer around it and slips it into the metal cylinder. I suppose it is like a small canon. He moves the cylinder around on the dirt, finding solid ground and searches his pockets for matches. When he bends the fuse down a woman nearby stops wailing and walks away, just behind a concrete grave. The man stoops to light the wick then takes several swift steps back. It explodes. Little pieces of charred newspaper hang in the air like black snowflakes and fall to the ground. And the man moves on, to honor another ancestor.

Each mausoleum is painted in bright colors and patterns and adorned with wreaths of plastic flowers, bouquets of lilies and marigolds and gaudy garlands. Offerings of thin burning candles and scraps of food and juice frame the names of loved ones. Families eat ice cream bars and smoke cigarettes and sit and talk. Several marimba bands move from one group to the next, playing the favorite songs of dead relatives competing to make themselves heard by the living and the dead. Libations of alcohol and water and coconut juice pour upon concrete.

In other towns, people fly spectacular kites that represent dreams or messages to the gods, to the ancestors. The tails carry evil thoughts back to the earth while the pure ones remain in the sky. I remember that ala means both wing and soul and almost understand.

I have no altar, no family here. I buy a garland of paper flowers to give as gifts to the women I love when I come home. A drunken man tries to interrogate me when I place one over the gated entrance to the cemetery. I watch the others mourn and think of my own ancestors-- the ones I’ve known, the stories I’ve heard, and the ones that are lost, except in me and my brothers. Invisible hands that shaped our minds, bodies, hearts. But my soul belongs to me alone. I move on and feel the eyes of angels.