XELA, Guatemala -– I set off early this morning to find a café where I could work. It didn’t take long to find one as they are scattered all about the town’s historical center. Before 8 there are few businesses open, which is the main challenge; a couple of comedores are serving eggs, beans and plantains along with the blasting ranchero music, but I passed them by. The Coffee Company, by contrast, serves quiet international music and WiFi with its cappucinos and biscottis. Tomorrow I’ll make Nescafe and my own eggs in the Don Diego hostel where I’m now staying, but today I’m going to splurge, and I’m having my second latte along with a little orange-flavored pastry.
What a contrast to the capital city. I had decided to stay in the historical center, where I could get around by foot. Outside the center, I traveled by car, as middle- and upper-class Guatemalans do, to the modern, leafy zones where you could rightly confuse the landscape with that of Houston or Miami. But my experience in downtown Guate, as the locals call it, couldn’t have been different from my first few days and nights in Xela.
I reflected on the contrast this morning, as I stepped out the door with my computer in my backpack, which I could never do in Guatemala City. Nor could you even find such a place in the historical center of the capital; it would be insanity to sit in a public place with a laptop, apparently, an invitation to theft and perhaps violence. Or at least that was the sense I had when I asked the young woman behind the counter at Rey Sol, a hip and charming vegetarian café a few blocks from Parque Central.
“Internet? That way,” she said, pointing to the computer business down the street with an always-locked iron grate. “I know, but I was wondering if there was a café or restaurant where I could sit and drink coffee and work with my computer.” She stared at me in puzzlement and then laughed and shook her head. Crazy foreigners, her look seemed to say.
Yesterday I rode the buses all over town, something I couldn’t do in Guate, as they call it here, because the buses have been subject to repeated attacks by gangs all over the city. Bus drivers and even passengers have been targeted for months in what some believe is a sinister tactic by the extreme right, which they suspect of using fear to undermine the current moderate government and build support for the coming elections.
Today the cover story in La Prensa Libre quantifies the violence in the capital city: “Victims of gunshot and stabbing wounds overwhelm hospitals.” Since the beginning of the year, 1,299 people have been treated in the city’s hospitals for violent attacks. The situation has been extremely stressful for emergency room staff, particularly those on the night shift, said the director of Roosevelt Hospital, which is expanding its emergency room to accommodate another 70 patients. Still, the hospital is understaffed and the workers can’t keep up with the pace, particularly on Fridays and Saturdays, when the violence reaches a peak.
Almost as a grim subtitle to the current violence are the reminders of the state-sponsored terrorism that swept the countryside during the 36-year civil war. Posters of the disappeared still paper the walls on many streets, and graffiti shouts from those walls at the powers that be, demanding an end to the impunity.
On the columns in front of the national cathedral are inscribed thousands of names of those who died in the war, which claimed more than 200,000 before finally ending in 1996.
A sad underscore to a brutal reality. I tried to stay focused on the positive, which is, after all, my specialty – most reports of violence are exaggerated anyway, I told myself, and they normally don’t affect tourists since they’re in the more marginal parts of the city.
Nonetheless, I kept my explorations in the capital city short, I walked fast and looked like I knew where I was going, and I only carried what I needed. When I took my camera, I held it close to my side. The one night I got caught out after dark, I hesitated when I saw a young woman apparently throwing up behind a light pole. She saw me waver and approached me, reaching for my bag – no, I said, not wanting to stop to fish for spare change, and she grabbed for the bag. A young man who looked like he was with her approached from the other side. NO! I shouted, and the two scattered, perhaps as frightened as I was by the encounter.
Before I left, I hit on a unique anti-theft strategy. I was bothered by the large white block-lettered DIGITAL printed on my camera bag, almost as if to say “STEAL ME.” My sister Trina Brunk, a gifted artist and musician, had given me some stickers she had created in an effort to raise awareness about her work. “Always looking through God’s eyes” read the words, laid out over a beautiful eye – a reference to one of her songs. I cut out the eye and the words “God’s eyes” and made a sticker just large enough to cover the word “DIGITAL” on my camera bag. I placed one on the top of my Mac, just for good measure. So there, thieves – know that I and my equipment are not alone.
After that, I didn’t have any more problems. My forays into the historic center yielded lovely interactions with friendly people, great food, history and culture, and color, as well as some stunning imagery. From the vivid and convival Central Market to the bright green Palacio Nacional (which locals call the Guacamole), to the everyday folks spending a happy Saturday in the Parque Central, here are a few of my favorites.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
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