Arriving in Guatemala City at the airport, you have to fill out a customs form. Under “Sex,” they give you two choices: “M” or “F.”
What a backward country, right? Don’t they know there are 50 or 60 sexes now (or “genders,” please)? I think I should sue someone, for hate speech, and pain and suffering …
‐Before leaving home, I jotted a limerick:
I’m headed to Guatemala –
Better, right now, than Ramallah.
Empanadas
Beat intifadas –
Even off nights at La Scala.
The truth is, they beat even some good nights at La Scala, if the productions are insufferable (which is to say, at odds with the score, story, and libretto).
‐Every time I’m in Central America — and I’m not here often — I think, “Central America looks like Central America. Like a movie Central America.” The landscape is lush. Trees, flowers, birds, and beasts abound. No wonder the explorers thought they had found an earthly paradise.
‐Solitary, a boy of about ten practices his soccer. He looks perfectly natural. When I first started seeing kids do this in the U.S., I thought, “Is this the end of the country? Are baseball, basketball, and football to be booted, by the same people who want to impose the metric system on us?”
‐In Guatemala City, there is a classical-liberal university — a university whose mission “is to teach and disseminate the ethical, legal and economic principles of a society of free and responsible persons.” It is a miracle, as far as I’m concerned. And its name is Universidad Francisco Marroquín, or the Francisco Marroquín University.
The first thing I see on campus is La Plaza Adam Smith. I know I’m not in Kansas anymore — or in Ann Arbor (my hometown). Looking at the campus at large, I think of the phrase “academic grove.” And I think, “Even I could get some serious learning done here. Maybe.”
‐The president of the university is from the Canary Islands. I didn’t think anybody was from the Canary Islands. You think of it, or them, as a place to visit. But lo …
‐About 25 miles from Guatemala City is the town of Antigua. (I know I’m supposed to say 40 kilometers, but I balk.) The formal name of the town is La Antigua Guatemala, or Ancient Guatemala. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Guatemala but was destroyed by an earthquake.
‐Speaking of things destructive, Antigua is surrounded by three volcanoes, one of which is called Fuego, or Fire — which is appropriate, because it is active now. Brilliantly orange lava flows, which at night is spectacular. A show for free. (Isn’t that a line from James Taylor? “Put on a show for free”?)
‐If you ever have a chance to stay at the Casa Santo Domingo, a hotel in Antigua, please do. It is one of the most beautiful and unusual places I have ever stayed in. It is a former convent, and a very grand convent it must have been. Also, the place looks like the abode of a James Bond villain, if that villain were Latin American.
‐More than usual, I’m pleased to see a Bible in the drawer — this being a former convent, after all …
‐Early in the morning, here in Antigua, young people scoot around on their scooters. Some older people do, too. The roads and sidewalks are very unsmooth, hard to walk on — and drive on, I bet. A man shaves on a sidewalk: no mirror, no shaving cream, no nothing. He simply stares straight ahead and does it, as he has done, I imagine, for most of his life.
Ancient women are cutting up lemons for lemonade — although I suspect they’re not so ancient. They just look so, after these decades in the sun, hard at work.
Beautiful bougainvillea adorns some buildings. I never tire of bougainvillea. I wish I had some. There are many stray dogs and cats, and much dust. A woman sits down to get a shoe shine. I haven’t seen that very often in my life: a woman getting a shoe shine.
Many years ago — I think I was in India — I wrote in one of these journals, “Memo to self: Do not romanticize the Third World.” Western liberals like the Third World, or “developing countries,” to be cute. It’s not cute for many of the people who live there (here).
Would you like to wash clothes by hand, squatting down? I wouldn’t. It’s cute for Westerners to look at — as though they were watching a National Geographic special. But would you want to do it?
(Actually, I’m told, many women like to wash clothes outside, for the socializing: They kibitz with their friends and neighbors.)
#share#
‐I’ll give you a little vignette — another one: On a sidewalk, an old woman is sitting down, with her head bowed. She has a begging bowl in front of her. Ten yards away from her, a young woman is in almost exactly the same position. But she is stylish and is looking in a mirror, applying her makeup.
‐Much of Guatemala is Indian — there’s another word we’re not supposed to use. I see a man who looks much like Miguel Estrada, the brilliant lawyer back home. He was born in neighboring Honduras. I find myself burning about his case all over again.
Do you remember it? The Democrats blocked his nomination to a court of appeals, because Estrada was conservative, and they figured that a Republican would name him to the Supreme Court.
Sonia Sotomayor is able to serve on a court of appeals, and then the Supreme Court. But Estrada, no.
As I said, I burn, like that lava on the Volcán de Fuego.
‐Okay, so I’m watching University Challenge on YouTube. This is the British college bowl — a joy to watch, at least for me. I could give many reasons.
A question in this particular round has to do with birds on flags. They show you a bird, divorced from the flag at large. And you’re supposed to say what flag, and country, the bird belongs to.
One of the birds turns out to be plucked from the Guatemalan flag. And that bird turns out to be the resplendent quetzal.
I never knew of such a thing — neither did the kids who were called on. But they knew all the other birds — from the Egyptian, Zimbabwean, and Papua New Guinean flags. Amazing.
‐If you ever have a chance to go into the Casa Popenoe, please do. It’s one of the most beautiful houses I’ve ever been in — a colonial-era beauty. “Popenoe” was Frederick Wilson Popenoe, a botanist who worked for United Fruit. His gardens are stocked with exotica (or at least they’re exotic to me — orchids in trees, for example). The house now belongs to Francisco Marroquín University.
‐I’m in a group of people, all of whom have been staying at the Casa Santo Domingo and having discussions in the Casa Popenoe. One of the people in the group says, “I’ve never been to Latin America before. It’s so beautiful.” A Venezuelan cracks, “It’s all like this.”
The crowd breaks up. Honestly, it’s one of the funniest lines I’ve ever heard.
‐There is a restaurant called “Y Tu Piña También” — “And Your Pineapple, Too.” This must be an idiom. Its meaning, I can’t tell you.
I also see the Tienda Shalom — the Shalom Shop. Interesting. And a Tienda El Buen Samaritano, the Shop of the Good Samaritan. There is also a joint called “Kafka” — a “Comfort Kitchen and Bar.” Kafka gets around, doesn’t he? He would be pleased, as any writer would. Of course, he is also an adjective.
I’m a little surprised to see a place marked, proudly, “VEGAN.” That has gotten around too.
‐For as long as anyone can remember, American stoners have come here to Central America to live, at least for a while. Some of them are political — like the “Christies,” as we called them, back in the ’80s. These were devotees of the Christic Institute, a Left organization. But some of them are apolitical — they’re simply stoners, playing their hacky sack and whatnot.
They’re still here.
‐I meet a much different type — a young law professor at Francisco Marroquín. He is Venezuelan, and I ask him how he came to his views (classical liberal). When he was a student, he tells me, he found Tocqueville — Democracy in America. That launched him on his way.
Was he assigned the book? Oh, no! He found it on his own.
Tocqueville still packs a wallop, that glorious Frenchman.
#share#
‐I meet another person from Francisco Marroquín — a director in the business school. She tells me about the civil war, and her own education, her own experience. She was taught by nuns, Maryknoll nuns, who were supporters of the Communist guerrillas. They propagandized their students. Some of those students (from wealthy families) joined up with the guerrillas. My friend did not. Why?
I’m sure the explanation is longer, but she tells me that her father had impressed on her two things: respect for private property and respect for life.
His respect for private property was so great that he would say, “At work, you must not make a personal photocopy — that photocopier is only for work-related materials.” And respect for life, of course, meant, “Thou shalt not kill.”
Therefore, this dear young woman could not join the Communists.
‐Once, she went on a business trip to Communist Nicaragua — Sandinista Nicaragua. She was delighted to sit down and find a full menu: steak, chicken, fish, the works. She ordered, first, the steak (let’s say). And the waiter or waitress said, “We don’t have that now.” Then she ordered the chicken. They didn’t have that either. She went down virtually the entire list, and the answer was the same: “We don’t have it.”
“Well, what do you have?” asked the visitor. An omelet, came the reply. A plain omelet, with no ham or anything.
“But why then do you put out this menu?” asked the visitor. The Sandinistas made them — to put on a show. To pretend there was no scarcity.
My friend shares other such tales with me as well.
‐Who is the most famous Guatemalan of them all? Why, Rigoberta Menchú, needless to say. I got to know her, so to speak, when I wrote my history of the Nobel Peace Prize — for Menchú was the winner in 1992.
There was a time when millions and millions of kids around the world — certainly in America — were assigned her book, I, Rigoberta Menchú. It shaped the world’s image of conflicts in Central America.
Menchú’s story is not a cut-and-dried one, meaning that there are nuances to it. But the bottom line is this: She was a supporter of the Communists and a dazzlingly effective tool of theirs. This is thoroughly understood in Guatemala …
… which helps to explain her showings in presidential races. She has run twice, receiving a handful of votes. Almost certainly, she is more honored abroad than she is at home (which is true of some great people, granted).
‐For some reason, I’m surprised to see joggers in Antigua. Early-morning joggers. Most of them are women. I think I see two men, one of whom is almost certainly a tourist.
‐Many, many people travel by bus, and there are obviously prearrangements. (By the way, aren’t all arrangements “pre-”? And should we really say “forewarning,” given that warnings are supposed to be “fore”?) The bus pulls up to your house or wherever you’re staying, and a young man on the bus, working for the company, yells for you to come out. Especially in the morning, this is a kind of music in the air.
‐I’m back at the airport, and have to fill out the same customs form. “Sex: M or F.” Will these people ever learn? And why is the “M” before the “F,” huh? A bald expression of patriarchy.
I sense a class-action suit …