Last night I slept with don pancho

Lake Atitlan is a beauty. Surrounded by a necklace of volcanoes mirrored in turquoise-jade waters, it looks like an eye brimming with tears which is a fitting image for a lake so deep the Maya people believed it to be a portal to another world. The lake holds much sadness. Spanish friars, in the years following the conquest, forcibly relocated the Mayan people from their hilltop citadel known as ChiYa to the current location lakeside of Santiago Atitlan, an urban centre where they could more easily control the population for forced labour and conversion to Christianity. Many died from disease, starvation and overwork. In more recent times in December 1990, the Guatemalan army fired automatic weapons on an unarmed crowd of Tzutujil Mayas on the shores of Lake Atitlan, killing 14 people. The massacre prompted international outrage and criticism of the army.

“Damn,” he said, grappling with the steering wheel until he got the truck back under control. With a cliff on one side and a steep hill on the other, there was no space to pull over. “It’s a roadblock.”

To my eyes, the road looked deserted, peaceful even. Nothing looked out of the ordinary except that several whole trees had been uprooted and laid purposefully across the road, their leaves wilting in the sun.

Beyond the next bend stood a car missing its side windows with glass shards scattered on the ground like diamonds below it but no signs of an accident. I looked at Javier puzzled.

“Those windows were blown out by gunfire,” he said. “Roll up your window.”

A chill went through my body and I swallowed hard. I rolled the window up as fast as I could and within minutes saw three men in black khaki uniforms, armed with machine guns, on either side of the road. An army vehicle blocked our passage. The soldier approached our truck and tapped Javier’s window with his gun. Javier rolled his window down.

“Who’s that?” the man asked. He gestured with the gun at me.

“My wife,” said Javier, his voice calm. I didn’t argue the finer point, that we weren’t officially married. My teeth were shaking too loudly.

“Step out of the truck,” said the soldier, has face dark under his cap and sunglasses. Javier followed him round the back of the truck and was soon out of sight.

I wondered what to do. Run? Scream? Pray? Minutes went by. I couldn’t hear anything but was too afraid to turn around. I felt pinned to my seat.

With a whoosh of the door opening, Javier returned, got inside and stepped on the gas. The three soldiers began to argue and one waved his gun at us as we drove away.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I showed him the enormous statue of the Virgin of Guadeloupe you bought at the market and he made the sign of the cross and told me to go.”
We drove in silence down the mountainside. I was shaken and scared. The beautiful scenery was no longer was quite as captivating as it had been earlier. I was drawn to the lake’s wild beauty but wary of its brutal past. My thoughts travelled to my home town of Flin Flon, a mining town of around 5,000 people near Hudson Bay, about 800 kilometres (600 miles) north of Winnipeg. Much like Guatemala, it too had a dark underbelly. Named after Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin, the lead character in The Sunless City a 1905 novel by British writer J. E. Preston Muddock, Flonatin is an eccentric scientist who finds a bottomless lake and journeys to the centre of the earth. A 24-foot tall roadside attraction, a statue of “Flinty”, designed by cartoonist Al Capp (creator of the L’il Abner comic strip), welcomes visitors to town.

With its comic strip background and a sing-song name that’s fun to pronounce, Flin Flon might seem like an idyllic place for a kid to grow up. The very names of nearby lakes--Phantom Lake, Snow Lake, Cranberry Portage--evoke images of untouched wilderness, pristine air and waters jumping with northern pike.

I grew up thinking it was. My grandfather owned Arctic Beverages, the Pepsi bottling plant in town. As a child I’d spend hours in the shop, listening to the jangle of pop bottles on the conveyor belt and eavesdropping on the rough-house banter of the young guys working the line in their sweat-stained undershirts. Summer were so long and lazy there never seemed much more to be do than decide between an icy root beer or an Orange crush soda float.

As summer progressed, the row of hollyhocks by the side of the house grew tall as sentinels protecting our home’s eastern flank. My sister and I plucked their parchment blossoms and used them as makeshift dolls. Inverted like overturned cups, they were like princesses in pale yellow and pink ball gowns, poised and regal, until they wilted in the heat.

Despite its pastoral appearance, Flin Flon had a dark side. The town’s main employer Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company was and still is the highest emitter of toxic air pollution in North America. Once bottomless Flin Flon Lake has been filled in with black slag, a molten waste by-product of the smelting process. At the end of the street where I grew up, a smoke stack stretches 251 metres (825 feet) into the air -- almost as tall as the Eiffel Tower.

“In Flin Flon, people wake up to the sound of the birds coughing,” my father used to joke.

On days when the wind shifted, our house was downwind from the stack. We could see the smoke coming like a yellow vapour over the jack pines. Covering our noses, my sister and I would run and press our faces into the green moss, trying to block our nostrils with its softness. But the tendrils of smoke would find us, grabbing and twisting around our throats until we gagged.

As Javier and I drove through the highlands of Guatemala, I realized that although Flin Flon and Guatemala were 10,000 miles apart, they had a lot in common. It was easy to fall in love with Guatemala’s beauty – volcanoes, crystal blue lakes and lush cloud forests but appearances were deceiving. In the last 60 years Guatemala had been invaded, wracked by a decade-long civil war and been home to merciless death squads. The naive part of my heart died. Guatemala wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

As hour later, we arrived in Panajachel. Our hotel, done up in a faux Swiss style with brilliant pink bougainvillea cascading over the balconies, overlooked the malecon, a cobblestone promenade along the shoreline. Up close, the waters of Lake Atitlan were even bluer than they’d seemed from our vantage point on the cliff.

I checked in while Javier parked. The hotel owner, a stern woman with a German accent, handed me the room key and waved Javier returning with our suitcases to a lean-to shed at the back of the hotel. She assumed Javier was my guide.

“We’re staying in the same room,” I stammered.

A look of scandalous shock crossed her face. She frowned at the register. We had different last names.

“No, no, we’ve been together for years, not hours.” I blurted, my face flushing red in embarrassment.

In Canada, many people assumed our relationship was the result of a holiday fling and Javier was a mail-order groom. I hadn’t expected raised eyebrows here.

Once settled into our room, we headed out to explore Panajachel, the most resort-like destination on the lake. Lake Atitlan is rumoured to be one of the world’s three spiritual vortexes (after Egypt and Machu Pichu) and I enjoyed its bohemian vibe of full-moon parties, vegetarian restaurants, internet cafes and New Age services. I sensed a real energy beneath the hype, a magical merger of sky and water pulsing with the memory of the prehistoric volcanic eruptions.

The region’s rich volcanic soil yielded an exceptional bounty of fruit and vegetables. Javier’s agricultural background came in handy for identifying huisquil (chayote), calabaza (squash) and wild herbs such as epazote. A visit to the weekly market in Chichicastenango was an opportunity for him to instruct me on the techniques of choosing produce.

I had a habit of picking fruit with a hidden worm hole or rotten core. Growing up on the prairies, fresh fruit was in short supply. During long winter months, we relied on cod liver oil for with vitamins. Each night, my three sisters and I would line up in the kitchen for a tablespoon of the fishy fluid. After we choked it down, Mom would let us bite into ¼ of a sliced fresh orange to stop the gagging.

When our family had money, we also got cartons of Beep, a Manitoba drink made from orange juice, glucose, water and food colouring. I loved the cheerful bird on the carton and the florescent orange liquid so sweet it made my teeth ache.

In Guatemala there were dozens of varieties of oranges, everything from small bitter oranges for salsas to golden oranges for eating and yellow orbs for juicing. Heaped in baskets their fragrance was as varied as their colour.

“This one was picked before it was ripe,” Javier explained holding an orange that, to my eyes, looked no different than its neighbour.

In addition to the market town visits, I loved the cuisine. Breakfast was a colourful affair. Hand-woven traditional Mayan tapestries were anchored by seasonal fruit platters topped with lime-yogurt dressing and accompanied by blue corn pancakes and rich locally grown coffee.

Other local specialties included Pollo Pibil, chicken breast smoked over a wood fire and jocon, a bright green mole of chicken, tomatillos, scallions and green chiles that hailed from Huehuetenango, home to the highland Mam Mayan community, known for their fine weavings in magenta and violet hues.

Lazy days, long lunches and peaceful lake vistas, our encounter with the army faded from memory leaving a wary unease deep in my belly.

Recipe: Jocón (Chicken in Green Salsa)

• 
  Chicken, cut into serving pieces -- 2 to 3 pounds
  
• 
  4 cups water
  
• 
  1 tsp salt
  
• 
  ¼ cup pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
  
• 
  ¼ cup sesame seeds
  
• 
  2 corn tortillas, soaked in water, drained and then chopped
  
• 
  1 cup tomatillos, hulled and chopped
  
• 
  1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
  
• 
  1/2 cup of green onion, green part only
  
• 
  ¼ cup mint, chopped
  
• 
  Jalapeño or serrano chile pepper, chopped
  

1. 
   Bring chicken, water and salt to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.
   
2. 
   Remove the chicken to a bowl and strain and set aside the broth.
   
3. 
   Heat a dry skillet over medium flame. Add the pumpkin and sesame seeds and toast, stirring, until lightly browned. Grind to a fine powder (use a coffee grinder if you don’t have a spice grinder).
   
4. 
   Add seed mixture, tortillas, tomatillos, cilantro, scallions and chile peppers to a food processor. Add 1 cup of the reserved broth and process until smooth. Return the chicken to the pot. Pour over pureed sauce and add 1 to 1 1/2 cups of the remaining broth to give it a sauce-like consistency.
   
5. 
   Simmer for an additional 20 minutes. Adjust seasoning and serve.
   

Chapter 8: A Trip to the Beach

A few weeks later, we said goodbye to the cool highlands and journeyed back down the mountains to the Pacific Coast to make a stop at Javier’s uncle Tio Juventino’s ranch in Ticanlu.

“You’ll love them,” Javier promised. “They live near the beach.”

I was curious why we weren’t visiting Papa Challo’s side of the family, who also lived on the coast. That got me thinking that Javier’s family might have a black sheep side like mine did. In Canada, our black sheep relations lived in “The Caribou” a region in British Columbia’s rough and tumble interior known for its gold rush, lumber mills and get-rich-quick schemes. There, in dramas as large as the Rocky Mountain backdrop, my Grandpa raised his second family. At age 35 he married a 16 year old in a shotgun wedding and went on to have eight more kids. In the Caribou, shotguns went off by accident, limbs were lost in logging machines, homes were seized by the bank and multiple marriages were the norm.

“You were more likely to have an after-dinner fight than a mint,’ said my Dad.

I was curious to hear what dark tales lay hidden in Javier’s ancestral tree.

Trapped in the car with no way to dodge my questions, Javier filled me in. Papa Challo fled San Vicente for the Pacific Coast, after his two older brothers had been murdered in the 1954 revolution. He hid out on the coastal plain for two years and when he finally returned to San Vicente, he met and fell in love with Mama Tayo, 10 years his junior.

“Papa didn’t ask for permission to marry. They eloped and returned married. People in San Vicente said he stole her so he had to ask for perdon. It was quite scandalous,” laughed Javier “Growing up, I don’t remember them ever arguing. Evenings, they’d swing together in the hammock, laugh and eat fruit.”

As we descended, dropping thousands of feet in elevation, heat built inside the truck.

“It’ll be great to swim in the ocean,” I mused, taking off my sweater. Then I slipped out of my jeans and into a loose slip dress. I was wearing what amounted to my underwear and still couldn’t seem to cool off. My hair felt like a fur hat thanks to the hot humid air blasting in through the open window. Javier, dressed in jeans, boots, thermal socks, hat and long-sleeved shirt, seemed to thrive in the heat.

Much like everyone else in his family, he didn’t believe in air conditioning and blamed it el grippe (colds) as well as fuel consumption. If there was a button for air conditioning in a vehicle, it was guaranteed not to work. This truck was no different. I pushed every dial to no avail.

“Where’s that beach you promised?” I asked as we bounced towards La Costa, the 300 kilometre coastal plain between the volcanic mountains of Guatemala’s interior and the Pacific Ocean. I had planned to dip my feet in the Nahualate River but changed my mind when I saw it. Although it was crystal blue in the highlands, by the time the river reached the marshy coast, it was muddy like split pea soup.

But all that mud made for highly nutritious soil. The region had been farmed since pre-Hispanic times and now supported industrial-scale pineapple, rubber, palm oil, sugar cane and yucca plantations. Olmec ruins from its early days were rumoured to lay scattered among the sugar cane fields. I had visions of scouting through plantations uncovering carved monuments of pot-bellied humans and majestic jade birds.

In my imaginings I hadn’t anticipated such heat. As the miles droned on, I hung my head out the window like a St. Barnard, feeling groggy as though drugged. In an attempt to promote better circulation and cool off, I ripped off my bra and stuffed it in my purse. Water couldn’t be far away. And with it, cool relief.

We pulled up to a house on stilts where Javier’s uncle, aunt and their daughter stood on a dirt driveway alongside an assortment of skinny kids. I staggered out of the truck.

“She needs the beach!” shouted Javier. Our welcoming committee jumped into the back of the pick-up truck and we all bumped down a dirt path to the family’s palapa, a stick shelter covered with yellowed palm leaves facing a long lonely beach. Surf pounded the sand with such force it filled the air with gusts of thick spray and obscured the water’s edge.

I jumped out and ran towards the water desperate to throw myself into the cool water.

The sand felt strangely lumpy under my feet. I looked down and saw huge horse turds lodged in the black sand. Carried downstream by the river, they were caught in the sandy delta. Dodging the turds like bean bags on a playground hopscotch, I continued undeterred towards the water.

The heat on the soles of my feet began to register at the same time I heard voices shouting “No, No.”

Guatemala’s Pacific Coast is made up of black sand beaches formed by lava deposits ground into fine particles. This black powder sand acts like fresh asphalt, absorbing heat from the sun until it becomes one enormous pancake griddle.

I couldn’t step forward or backward without burning my feet. My eyes scanned the sand for a piece of wood – anything—to stand on. The only thing available was my camisole slip and that would have left me in my underpants. Not much of a sight for Javier’s family.

“I’ll come get you,” shouted Javier as he stomped across the sand in his boots, scooped me onto his back and hauled me piggyback-style back to the truck. His family, their eyes as round as tortillas in surprise, stared at my unceremonious return.

The children looked as though they had just encountered a strange and scary new species. Their village saw few, if any tourists and there was no doubt I looked unusual. The other women, fresh from church, wore long-sleeved blouses, skirts and nylon stockings. I wore a soggy slip.

A small boy mustered up his courage and stepped forward.

“Tu puede mourir alli,” he declared. I could die swimming in the ocean. The powerful surf would break every bone in your body or sweep you away in a powerful rip tide. The family’s palapa was only used for picnicking.

I felt like a beached whale - in underwear.

Back at the house on stilts, I tried to cool off in the outdoor shower and then huddled under a tangle of spindly poinsettias and parched bougainvillea for shade. At the kitchen table, Tia Ana ladled steaming chicken soup, a golden broth with flecks of cilantro, into my bowl. The aroma rose languidly in the humid air while heat radiated though my sandals from hard-packed dirt floor.

Humidity and 45C heat was a two-punch that knocked me out. One minute I was spooning chicken soup into my mouth and the next I was staggering around the yard splashing myself with water from the well. Startled chickens ran squawking.

Finally, everyone agreed I needed a Canadian climate and if they could have supplied me with snow they would have. Our plans to explore the archaeological ruins abandoned, I was bundled back into the truck amid hurried goodbyes.

We drove back towards Guatemala City, leaving behind the family, the plantations and Pacific Ocean. Mangrove swamps transitioned into forests and with each mile, I felt guiltier about robbing Javier of a chance to visit his family.

As we crossed a river where icy blue water tumbled over big rocks, I urged “If I can just cool off, we can go back.”

“We can’t stop here,” said Javier “Someone will rob us.”

He was right. Apart from the beach town of Monterrico, the cities along the Pacific Highway between Mexico and El Salvador were commercial centres better known for their street gangs than their sight-seeing opportunities. Curve after curve, we climbed higher into the cooler mountains until we spotted a modern gas station illuminated like a beacon by the roadside. Shielding me from the eyes of other customers as though I was a celebrity pursued by paparazzi, he led me to a cooler filled with Gallo beer and Coca Cola. Waving away the security guards, he turned a beer crate on its end and motioned me to sit. His plan worked. Each time the cooler door opened a rush of icy refrigerated air washed over me and I began to revive.

When I regained my composure we drove back to Guatemala City. The family looked dismayed at my condition. A few weeks earlier I’d left the city in prime condition. Now I was a mess. I had heat stroke and an intestinal bug.

“Dios mio! Why did you take her to the coast?’ asked Thelma. “It’s too hot for anyone there.”

“She’s fine,” said Javier, with confidence. “Look, see? She’s better already. She’s practically chapina (slang for Guatemalan).”

I could have screamed in frustration. Although I usually found his optimism to be contagious, that day I just found it maddening. Doubts about the decision to come to Guatemala filled my head. What if something serious happened to me? Who would look after the kids?

I called home hoping for reassurance. Instead, my girlfriend was burned out from babysitting. When I suggested coming home early, she jumped at the offer. Soon I was on a plane back home.

Anxious to get to the ranch, Javier look relieved to see me go.

Fine with me, I thought. I didn’t plan to return. And if I did, I’d be much better prepared.

Recipe: Chojin (Radish and Pork Rind Salad)

This popular snack can be purchased at food stands in the markets of Guatemala City and surrounding towns, but it’s also a ritual food for chapines Guatemalan guys to make together when the women of the family aren’t around. They set up a burner and big pot of oil outdoors and fry the pork rinds while drinking cold Gallo beer or having shots of venado, the colourless white rum. Salad ingredients are laid out on a side table to be mixed with the pork rinds or, most often, a spoonful of the salad will just be placed atop a pork rind wrapped in a warm tortilla.

Ingredients

• 
  Radishes, trimmed and sliced into thin rounds -- 1 pound
  
• 
  Chicharrones (fried pork rinds), chopped – 2 cups
  
• 
  Mint, finely chopped -- 1/4 cup
  
• 
  Orange juice -- 1/4 cup
  
• 
  Lime juice -- 1/4 cup
  
• 
  Salt and pepper -- to taste
  

Method

Mix the ingredients together in a shallow bowl and chill well before serving

Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> 2015
2015 -> Police Militarization
2015 -> 2015 ihbb championships: hs history Bowl Round 4 – Prelims First Quarter
2015 -> Wrtp/big step · 3841 W. Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee, wi 53208
2015 -> Rao bulletin 1 December 2015 html edition this bulletin contains the following articles
2015 -> Darton College
2015 -> Training Workshop on Planning and Implementation of Multi-Sectoral Development Programme (MsDP) in Bihar Date : 6th
2015 -> Rao bulletin 15 June 2015 html edition this bulletin contains the following articles
2015 -> Rao bulletin 1 September 2015 html edition this bulletin contains the following articles
2015 -> Rao bulletin 1 August 2015 html edition this bulletin contains the following articles
2015 -> Science, and transportation united states senate

Download 7.12 Mb.

Share with your friends: