como no?

'Como no?' - 'Why not?' A recent saying I've picked up while travelling around beautiful Nicaragua.

After a few nights in Guatemala's capital accompanied by wonderful city-dwellers, I hopped on a bus to Managua to track down Michelle G, a fellow TIEger from Ecuador 08/09. The idea is to do some meandering until the beginnings of 2012... lately, 27 hours of bussing over three days, to San Salvador, Managua and up to Somoto in Nica's north -- a town that reminds me of a living version of magical realism or a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: maniquered streets, open porches with wicker rocking chairs, cool breezes, mountains looming. Then to Leon: joking Sandinista veterans singing FSLN songs and telling stories of Sandino, the war, the contras...  murals of resistencia, and, a few blocks away, the place where Somoza himself was shot dead by a young rebel.

I have to make it down to Costa Rica to renew my visa in the C-4, so we are heading south: Granada and Ometepe, then at least 72 hours (says migracion) in a national park on the Costa Rican border. 

Nicaragua is stunning, and safe to travel in. Feels like it is worlds away.

la capital

no to the fascist coup d'etat in Honduras, no more militarism

con buena onda

As November winds down the nights get cooler and the rains cease – a chance to finally use my wool sweater, ‘winter’ sprung. Days disappearing: barely two weeks before vacations begin, when I’ll take a bus south, to Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras … to visit the museum of the revolution, a liberation theology mass, hikes, wanders… For now, promises of painting and translation, costume-making for the Rabinal-Achi dance. At home: sawing, building, planting, juggling between less-clumsy fingers.

Last week Sandia and I coordinated a book-binding workshop – real bees wax, a few sheets of paper, paints, string to sew the folded pages; a full morning of using our hands, each book a different Nawal. The idea is that if we bind our own books we'll buy and waste less - in January each teacher can pass on the workshop to students. My search for materials brought me to a man who cares for bees, 'apicultura' just a kilometre outside of town, real honey and wax by the litre... 

In a 'salon' that shaded us from Friday's afternoon sun, ECAP (Estudios Comunitarios con Aplicacion Psicosocial) awarded diplomas of ‘cultura de paz y participación para el desarrollo’ to over 60 local teachers  – i.e. recognizing their participation in ECAP seminars all year long, and their contribution to historical memory, peace, and community building here in Rabinal. Students performed a series of ‘dramatizaciones’ - skits on gender, poverty, cultural difference - followed by a meal to share to the beat of a marimba band: chicken, rice, tortillas, fresco... 

'roots of poverty'

proud graduates: FNE teachers

Then a BTS 'reflection weekend' in Monterrico, croaky buses on highways winding at dawn, pacific waves and bird-watching - yet another world; black sand and white bellies, salty skin. 

lately

5:30am runs
to the water tanks, up a winding dirt road
that climbs to San Rafael, red sunrise on blue grey mountains;
gathering soil between corn fields, a rooftop garden to be built from used wood,
Guatemalan reggae in the afternoon heat
and chicken-coop engineering for red lay hens;
one-two-three kittens on my patchwork quilt, folded together,
away from the seeds planted in pop bottles,
juggling balls and jibberish hand-gestures that arise
at an overcrowded kitchen table

nuestra minería

Yesterday I stumbled upon a beautiful spoken word piece of Rachel's, 'Lot 8'. A fellow intern this year, Rachel visited mining communities around Guatemala then performed this poem for a G20 resistance slam last spring: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_7inUJdS9FM#

Also worth a watch: human rights activist Graham Russell speaks about Canadian mining here in Guatemala on Face to Face, shedding a little light on what it means to be Canadian in Central America: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71mB0JuJSpE

mural in san juan (photo by joanne!)

ps. out of curiosity, who in Russia is reading this?

yo no sé nada

lovely poem by argentine poet oliverio girondo

Yo no sé nada 

Tú no sabes nada 
Ud. no sabe nada 
El no sabe nada 
Ellos no saben nada 
Ellas no saben nada 
Uds. no saben nada 
Nosotros no sabemos nada 
La desorientación de mi generación tiene su expli- 

cación en la dirección de nuestra educación,cuya 
idealización de la acción, era - ¡sin discusión!- 
una mistificación, en contradicción 
con nuestra propensión a la me- 
ditación, a la contemplación y 
a la masturbación. (Gutural, 
lo más guturalmente que 
se pueda.) Creo que 
creo en lo que creo 
que no creo. Y creo 
que no creo en lo 
que creo que creo 
«C a n t a r d e l a s r a n as»
¡Y     ¡Y      ¿A       ¿A     ¡Y       ¡Y 
  su     ba       llí        llá      su       ba 
   bo       jo          es           es        bo         jo 
   las      las          tá?            tá?       las        las 
     es        es          ¡A                 ¡A           es          es 
      ca       ca            quí                    cá            ca          ca 
       le        le            no                          no             le           le 
         ras      ras          es                              es             ras        ras 
         arri     aba         tá                                   tá            arri        aba 
         ba!...    jo!...       !...                                       !...            ba!...     jo!...

así es

Well, I have good news and bad news. I’ll start with the bad news.

Yesterday, 4 million Guatemalans took to the polls to favour former General Otto Perez Molina with 54% of the vote (out of a population of roughly 14 million, 4 million voted - about 30%). As the global media will tell you, Perez is the first military man to take office since the country’s transition to civil rule in 1986. He vows to bring security back to Guatemala with an iron fist, by increasing military spending, employing at least 10,000 more police, expanding video surveillance, lengthening prison sentences, building prisons, and lowering the age of criminal responsibility. Perez has strong ties with the US embassy and the Mendoza family, allegedly one of the largest narco powers in Guatemala. 

According to the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission, Perez was a graduate of Guatemala’s National Military Academy, the US-run School of the Americas, and the Inter-American Defense College. Known as comandante ‘Tito’, he is a man formed by the army and was the general in charge of the Ixil triangle from 1982-83, when the government’s “scorched earth” policy massacred 80-90% of the region’s population.

In the 1990s, Perez was National Director of Military Intelligence, at the same time that the government systematically tortured and executed captured prisoners, including guerilla commander and husband of American lawyer Jennifer Harbury, Efrain Bamaca. When heading Guatemala’s most feared military intelligence unit, the G2, Perez was stated to have directed a secret torture centre on the Mariscal Zavala military base while on the CIA payroll.

For more on Otto Perez Molina's past and what his presidency means for Guatemala, see a Rights Action report here.

I wish that I could write something to make sense of all of this.  I've heard many times the voiced feelings of fear in what a military government could mean for Guatemala and for Rabinal - places with a past that is too often buried by impunity, whose resources and media continue to be dominated by the powerful elite: the miltary men, the plantation-owners, the drug-traffickers... those who get a seat in politics. I'm still in digest-mode. Even just walking the streets of Rabinal, you can feel that something has shifted... but I can't yet put my finger on exactly what that feeling is.

...And now, if it’s possible, the good news!

It’s personal, and Gwen-centred (and I kind of wish I had written it sooner in a different post).  I have found a lovely collective to live in in the heart of Rabinal, with 4 rabinalenses who all happened to have met at circus school; we have juggling balls, stilts, cats, worms, a big clumsy dog, stories and food to share - a stunning view of the mountains and countryside from our kitchen and rooftop. A little love to make this big world feel a whole lot safer. 


So yep, that’s it. Elections in Rabinal were tranquilo, other than a larger-crowd-than-usual in the plaza for Sunday’s market. Otto Perez Molina won here, too, getting more than 58% of the vote... así es.  

ayo the kitten from our rooftop