Chapter 32: Shopping for Saints in Guatemala City

Chapter 32: Shopping for Saints in Guatemala City

“Can you make two birthday cakes for tomorrow?” asked a voice in Spanish on the other end of the telephone. We’d borrowed Thelma’s cell phone while she was away and were fielding calls for piñatas, cakes and helados for her bakery

“Yes, but I’ll burn them,” answered Javier who was getting a kick out of answering the phone. Each call was an opportunity for a new joke.

He’d joined me in Guatemala City where I’d scored an online deal at the swanky Barcelo Hotel in Zona Viva, the city’s hub for business, shopping and entertainment. The plan was to relax for a few nights before returning home to Canada.

The city was a welcome respite from the 40 C heat at the family finca (ranch) in San Vicente. It was just a three hour drive but felt a world away from the stark desert lowlands. Here, leafy plane trees offered cool shade and the streets were full of shiny sedans and stylish people strolling from one designer boutique to the next. With the red tiled rooftops of villas and restaurants, it could have doubled as Miami’s Coral Gables if it weren’t for the quantity of campaign posters plastered on poles, buildings and trees. In Guatemala, presidential elections were characterized by a tsunami of campaign posters and a slate of controversial candidates. This year, right-wing retired General Otto Pérez Molina’s “mano duro” (strong hand) campaign placed him as frontrunner despite allegations he had masterminded human rights abuses while serving in Guatemala’s Intelligence agency during the country’s bloody civil war. Also prominent on election posters was Manuel Baldizón, a doctor whose slick black hair, exultant Man of Steel chest and red backdrops evoked Superman, a resemblance too fortuitous to be accidental. More surreal were the election posters for Sandra Torres, who went so far as to divorce President Álvaro Colom, in an ill-fated attempt to make herself eligible for a presidential run even though Guatemala’s constitution forbade it.

With 395 rooms, the Barcelo is a large hotel and it offered a level of anonymity I appreciated after several weeks in a small village. By day, I lolled beside the outdoor swimming pool and at night we joined the other hotel guests – mostly conference attendees who shed their inhibitions as quickly as their name tags --and went salsa dancing and bar-hopping. From my perspective it was close to ideal. There was even a clear view of Agua and Pacaya volcanoes from our balcony,

“I feel very guilty,” groused Javier, who was unmoved by the comforts of bathrobes and matching slippers, unlimited ice and hot water and a pillow menu. “It’s one thing to not stay with family if you’re in Panajachel or another part of the country, but here? In Guatemala City where there’s lots of family? It’s a scandal.”

I was tempted to say that he didn’t look too overcome by guilt as he soaked in the hot tub surrounded by palm trees but didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to admit that I too missed the village and my morning walks with Radar the dog and the toasty tortillas hot off of Mama Tayo’s comal. Such a disclosure would mean I’d have to give up my new-found discovery -- the hotel’s Sala de Belleza or beauty salon. I was busy exploring the world of cepillados (hair blow-outs), rayitos (highlights) and planchados (flatiron). Unlike North America, where hotel hair salons have been swapped for spa retreats, here, an army of white-suited aestheticians was set to the utilitarian task of making women look fabulous as efficiently as possible.

Each morning, I joined a bevy of well-coiffed Guatemalan women in the salon and, with an investment of just $7 got my hair washed, conditioned and blow dried with a rigor usually reserved for ripping skin off a goat.

It was painful but after our recent stint in San Vicente, I needed all the help I could get. The flies had been incessant, the heat stifling and the water pressure non-existent. I hadn’t been able to wash my hair for five days. Now I looked fantastic. My hair had never been so smooth nor my skin so lustrous. There was no way I was leaving this hotel until I had to.

Javier’s nephew Chepito and his bride of two days—also Maria—also joined us. They’d run out of money on their honeymoon so we offered to host them for a night in the suite next to ours. Soon, Javier was on their balcony drinking Gallo beer and catching up, oblivious to the notion that two newlyweds might want some time alone.

The arrivals added a whole new dimension to our evenings out. Chepito, who had done a stint in the Guatemalan army to pay his way through university, assumed the role of bodyguard pointing out drug dealers and their security detail. Apparently our favourite restaurant was a well-known haunt of gang kingpins.

The two Marias couldn’t have looked more different. Maria from Solola wore her hair in a modest ponytail and her dress was an elaborately woven huipil in a rainbow of colours over a boxy wrap skirt. The blouse was so intricate it had taken two months to weave and its design told stories of her ancestors and the village she was from.

Chepito’s Maria, with her lovely green eyes, sparkly halter top, sequinned high heels and skin tight pants, was also a knock-out. As we walked behind them, on a leisurely paseo along 14 Calle past the nightclubs, I couldn’t help staring at her sashaying posterior. It really was impressive. Her waist was no more than 23 inches while her shapely butt was surely 45 inches wide. J-Lo’s insured posterior looked scrawny in comparison.

“Chepito thinks she should lose weight,” said Javier, noticing my gaze. “Then her clothes won’t be so tight.”

I looked at Chepito holding his new bride’s arm proudly, making sure she didn’t misstep and fall into one of the holes in the pavement. He looked completely enchanted and flattered by the attention along the paseo. Touts were literally showering us with pamphlets promoting free drinks at their nightclubs.

“You’re just a prude,” I replied. “Some people enjoy wearing sexy clothes. You think everyone should dress like a pioneer schoolteacher.”

His taste in clothing for women ran along the lines of Little House on the Prairie--gingham, grey flannel, wool stockings and ribbons. Thanks to his subtle influence, my own fashion style had evolved over time, to become more and more conservative until one surprising day I was mistaken for a nun. Now I shopped alone.

The next morning, Javier and I headed to the Mercado Central in the historic centre where we planned to buy a statue to serve as a companion to the Virgin of Guadeloupe we’d bought on our first visit to Guatemala. The subterranean market, topped with a car park and surrounded by underwear and cell phone vendors, hadn’t changed much in 20 years.

Mayan women still offered samples of chuchitos, small tamales wrapped in corn husks, that you could try before committing to a purchase and the market’s bunker-like appearance still hid a wealth of treasures. We began searching on the market’s labyrinthine first level, filled with so many handicrafts and artisanal knickknacks it looked like an episode from Hoarders. Much of it, such as shot glasses decorated with plastic quetzal birds or stacks of gruesome turtle shells, not worth stopping for, but other stands rich with finds. Round grass baskets, smooth bowls made of hollowed-out gourds and even hand-crafted palm brooms, were all worth a second look, but we were on a mission.
“Which saint offers the most protection for the casa?” asked Javier of a vendor, who was so short he could barely be seen behind his collection of saints, virgins and icons. His stand was a veritable religious supply house with everything from pious Catholic saints to Guatemalan folk saints like the cigar-smoking trickster Maximon.

“San Miguel,” said the vendor pointing to a mighty winged warrior with a raised sword standing atop a vanquished devil grimacing in defeat beneath the saint’s foot. “He’s the patron saint of warriors.”

“Do you have a San Miguel who is um, more tranquilo?” I asked, hoping for something beatific, a figure that didn’t evoke a scene from the Exorcist.

“This one,” he said, pointing to a saint with a serene expression, a large staff in his hand and wide wings. This San Miguel, who looked as though he’d popped one too many Xanax, appeared surprised to see a devil beneath his foot but he looked as though he’d do his work quietly, offering protection without waging all out war against evil.

Soon Xanax San Miguel was wrapped in several layers of La Prensa newspaper, stuffed inside a backpack and enroute with us to the nearby Parque Central. My plan was to pay my respects to the Eternal Flame, a monument to the 200,000 Guatemalans who’d lost their lives in the conflict leading up to the 1996 Peace Accord. Our first visit had been so close to the actual events that no memorial had yet existed. I’d visited the Eternal Flame in the Field of Mars in St. Petersburg, Russia and found it a poignant monument to casualties of the Bolshevik revolution. Cold wind had gusted off the frozen canals in the dark of winter, but the burning flame drew people to its warmth and message of struggle and resiliency. I hoped the memorial in Guatemala would be as fitting.

Guatemala’s City’s eternal flame had been extinguished. It was nowhere to be seen. According to my research, it was supposed to be beside the giant Guatemalan flag in the park. I looked all around the base of the flag pole – there was no flame or any sign there had ever been one

“Where is the Eternal Flame?” asked Javier, of a balloon vendor, who was struggling with his handfuls of mylar Dora the Explorer and Spiderman balloons.

“Maybe, they put it inside,” he shrugged, who pointed to the Palacio Nacional, the pastel green building flanking one end of the park.

Black graffiti scribbled across the front of a pale yellow building read Justicia por los desaparacidos - justice for the disappeared. Something politically significant must be nearby.

But the National Palace was blocked by armed security personnel. It was closed for a presidential function.

“It should be accessible to the people all the time,” Javier said with a frown. A vendor, this time an older man selling ice-cream from a cart in front of the park’s monuments, overheard him.

“There is a memorial to los muertos there,” he said quietly, directing us to the cathedral anchoring one side of the park

It wasn’t surprising that the memorial would be at the Catedral Metropolitana. The Catholic Church had stood in solidarity with the Mayan people in their struggle for justice against the state-sponsored terror that raged through the 1980s and 90s. One-eighth of the population was displaced, more than 400 Mayan villages were burnt to the ground and the UN-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification identified 626 massacres carried out by security forces.

In 1996, when Peace Accord negotiations got underway and it looked as though war criminals would be given impunity, the Catholic Church organized its own Recovery of Historical Memory (REHMI) commission led by Bishop Juan Gerardi. The Bishop was bludgeoned to death in 1998 just after the report was published.

Originally built in 1792, its architectural grandeur was a deliberate attempt by church authorities to ensure that Guatemala City’s places of worship were as awe-inspiring as its government buildings. The blue-tiled dome sparkled and its white façade looked both welcoming and impressive.

We entered through wide doors and took a quick turn through the three naves, but there was no sign of a memorial. A priest directed us back outside.

“Look for 12 pillars circling the front of the church,” he said. The memorial formed a fence circling the entrance. We’d walked right past it on our way in.

Each column was titled. The first one I stopped at was for Victimas de Masacres (massacre victims) with hundreds of names of men, women and children etched into each side of the column in tidy rows like headstones in the WWI graveyards I’d seen at Vimy Ridge, France. At the top of each column were the names of the communities the people hailed from, most of them Mayan communities in the highlands.

Next, I moved to another column Victimas Desaparecidas (Disappeared Victims) and read the names of Santiago Cu, Pedro Cu and Felipe Cu. Maybe a man and his two sons?

Javier had gravitated to a column marked Disappeared in Guatemala City. He was looking at the column carefully, his eyes scanning the thousands of names.

“I’m looking for my friend Mario de Leon,” he said, his eyes following the names as they marched up the pillar into the soft grey sky. I knew he’d lost several friends in Bloody August, the month in 1989 just before he’d come to Canada, when right-wing death squads killed or abducted 22 students, labour activists and suspected guerrilla sympathizers. But he’d never mentioned his friends by name.

“Mario was such a good student. He got top marks effortlessly, while I studied all night and barely got C’s. He asked me to go with him and speak at a rally but I had to work,” said Javier, moving to search the other side of the column. “He went alone and I never saw him again. His family searched garbage dumps and ravines for his body but never found him.”

Now, I joined Javier in searching and focused my attention on a pillar marked “Executed.” By the time I reached the pillar listing persons Tortured, my eyes welled with tears.

I couldn’t help thinking that Javier’s name, instead of being on his passport or on our marriage certificate, could have been one of these names on the pillars.

There were so many names. Guatemalans struggling for political, social, economic and environmental justice -- 200,000 people’s lives ended with just faint words etched in stone and the memories of their families to record their time on earth. But with this testimony in stone, at least the silence of their fate had been broken. Tears ran down my face. Javier noticed how upset I was and rushed over.

“Stop, it’s OK,” he said, consoling me. I didn’t have to explain what I was feeling. He knew. “Everything is fine. I’m here – I’m OK now. ”

We stood on the wide stone stairs, a bag with a saint at our feet, imagining what could have been and being thankful for what was.

Twenty years of a life together, one that might never have been.

Recipe: Chuchitos

These economical little corn bundles are often eaten by students and other on the go. Stuffed with loroco, chipiline or frijoles they keep for a full day, making them popular with those on pilgrimage or students gone from their home for a full day. Once cooled, they can be sliced and fried until crispy like thick chips.

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