Pilgrimage to San Luis, Peten, Guatemala, Part 4
Our “Kids” Lead a Stone Carving Workshop
The “kids”—Chris, Emilia and Pia—had been told that they could offer their stone carving workshop for the “patojas” during their afternoon time for crafts. To our surprise, we were told that 21 of the 30 young women planned to attend. But there were only eight stone tool cutting kits that we had brought with us from the States. Chris and I took a quick walk down to the market of San Luis to find and buy extra stone chisels or more hammers. The very small hardware stores had no chisels and we found only five hammers of appropriate weight. I tried to use my Visa card to buy the hammers, but they didn’t accept charge cards. And, still not having exchanged any dollars for the local currency (called Quetzales), I asked if I could pay with dollars. The answer was no. So, we left the store to see if the bank was open, and it was not. After that, there was no more time to look for tools before the workshop.
There was also a crisis of materials for the workshop We needed stones for carving, lots of stones given the anticipated turnout. But the rocks on the road beside the center were too hard, obviously not the local limestone, which is perfect for carving. And, we needed bags filled with sand or dirt into cushion the rocks when they are carved by chiseling, rasping and sanding. Chris confided me his worry that the whole workshop would be a bust. For my part, I was concerned not to turn the workshop into a burden for the Sisters or a disruption. Finally, I shared our difficulties with Sister Gladys and she said the bags and sand were no problem because they already have sand and empty feed bags of the concentrate, and she said she would see if she could locate some softer stone.
While there were still only eight carving kits, all the raw materials appeared just in time for the start of the workshop. We hoped that not everyone who said they wanted to participate would actually do so, and if too many came, some might get bored and leave. But we were wrong on both counts. Everyone did come, and they stayed. In fact, more came to the outdoor table area where they were working, including even the Anna the veterinarian and eventually Andrea, the volunteer from Mexico. And the two hour workshop extended all the way to the evening. Emilia did the translating for Chris, and both went from “patoja” to “patoja” giving pointers and encouragement. My daughter, Pia, decided to carve an arrowhead for a necklace, and she also runs support errands for Emilia and Chris. When my wife and I stopped by to see how things were going, we say that the “patojas” were carving flowers, birds, crosses and whole scenes in bas relief. Everyone one was working intently and chatting amiably.
In the evening, Emilia exclaimed that she felt that she had witnessed a multiplication miracle like with the loaves and fishes. She said she did not know how all the girls had the tool they needed. When they cleaned up there were additional chisels. Emilia wondered if the girls somehow already had the chisels of their own. My own skeptical speculation is that the girls in the boarding school have learned share easily, and the kids may have missed pockets in the stone carving kits, making it seem that there were additional tools. That’s me, always doubting! After His resurrection and multiple appearances to the apostles, the gospel reports that after Jesus ascended into heaven in front of the eyes of His apostles and many other disciples, there were some who still doubted. Only the Holy Spirit, a gift from God, confers faith on those whose hearts are open and then only at the time of God’s choice, which is why faith can never really be forced on another person.
Chris, too, was impressed, but in a different way. Chris has taught art classes, including one just before the trip at his alma mater, the Delaware Valley Friends School. He said that he had never seen such motivated students. His experience is that the greatest challenge he found in teaching kids in the US was motivating them and getting them to follow through, but the “patojas” were highly motivated, and they learned quickly and developed their own solutions, solutions that worked. Later, the sisters said that in their experience the young, Mayan women have artistic talent and skill in many crafts. Stone carving, however, is something not traditionally done by the Q’ekchi. I thought, though, learning to carve stone is recapturing an ancient Mayan art. Certainly, the pyramids and stelae of the many ancient Mayan ruins were carved in limestone.
The stone carving workshop was to continue day after day during our brief stay, with the women perfecting polishing their carvings. At the end, they wanted to paint their stones and we were looking to buy acrylic paints. After a few days, Chris confided that the best part was that as they continue to work with the young women, they got to know them as persons, learning their names. As I walked through the compounds, the “patojas” became friendlier and friendlier, waving to me with broad smiles, and sometimes asking for Emilia. The “kids” began taking their meals regularly with the “patojas” while Pia and I tended to follow a different schedule, praying the Divine Office with the Sisters in the chapel and sharing meals with them. I thought it ironic that the “kids” were the ones who were really offering a concrete and human connection to the “patojas” while our fellowship was with the Sisters. God is glorified through both believers and non-believers, and everyone plays their role, conscious or unconscious, in bringing about His Kingdom.
I talked to Sister Gladys about her native Cuba. She had asked me if I had ever traveled to Cuba and I said no, but I had always wanted to. She says that she returns to Cuba to visit her nieces that still live there. There is also an Assumption Convent in Cuba. She tells me that despite all the years of Fidel, the convent is vibrant and growing. In fact, two lay people have just taken formal vows to become 3rd order members of the Assumption Order and have received the same distinctive cross that the nuns wear. She said the Catholic Church is growing in Cuba had has many pious, young people flocking to a vibrant Catholic Church. Persecution, it seems, always brings out the best in Christians.
I asked Sister Gladys about the faith of her nieces personally. She pauses, and then says they are good, and they have a “secret faith”. Perhaps this is true of many of our youth in the United States, including Chris and Emilia. In spite of what they may say or do at a particular moment in their lives, but they are essentially good and have a dormant, secret faith waiting to be awakened when God is ready. I am writing this on the Feast Day of St. Monica, the mother who prayed for years for her son to return to the Catholic faith, and when he finally did (after years of self-indulgence and experimentation with “New Age” type beliefs) he became one of the greatest saints and most inspiring minds of the Catholic Church, namely, St. Augustine. The Sisters of the Assumption, in fact, are Augustinians.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Doug continues, Day 3
Day 3, Wednesday, August 20th
The single explosion sounding like a gunshot awoke me. Was that the signal for the rosary? It is still night. It is still hot and humid. I tried to read my watch which has luminescent dots marking the hours. In the darkness I am quite not sure I am reading it right. It doesn’t look like 4:30. I fumble for the flashlight on the nightstand and find it. In the beam of light, my watch clearly shows 3:30 AM. Might my watch be set wrong? We passed through two time zones from Philadelphia, one in Cancun and another in Flores. Perhaps San Luis is in another time zone. Quietly, so as not to awaken Chris in the bunk across from me, I put on my robe and find my way to the bathroom. I floss my teeth, and taking a glass of purified water, I brush my teeth. I dress silently and quickly—blue jeans, a t-shirt, and sandals. I apply the mosquito repellant generously. I may already be late.
Using the flashlight to guide me through the darkness of the compound and up a sidewalk past the Sister’s residences, I reach the gate they said they would leave open. Some of them and some of their students in the boarding school, they said, will also go to the rosary. The gate is locked. There are no lights on in their houses. So, either I am late or it really is 3:50 AM. I consider whether I should return to the apartment, and decide to wait until 4:30 AM. I turn off my flashlight. I am surrounded by the beauty of the night. The stars, brilliant by comparison to what I see in West Philadelphia, shine through thin clouds. The insects sing from the tropical foliage. I give thanks to God for being alive, for being conscious, and being able sense the beauty of nature.
Saying the Rosary, first alone and then with the people
I sit down on a step not far from the gate, and I decide to start saying the rosary by myself as I wait. I am carrying a plastic, glow-in-the-dark rosary. Because it is Wednesday, I will say the glorious mysteries, and the fourth mystery is the mystery of the Assumption, the one that has always been most difficult for me to grasp. I typically recite that decade, praying for the Sisters of the Assumption, which seems more concrete. A high-pitched buzz in my ear tells me that the mosquitoes have found me. It took them a while to follow the carbon dioxide of my exhalation. I am glad I applied the repellant. None-the-less, I get up and start walking back and forth as I say the rosary, thinking this might elude them.
At 4:00 AM, I hear electronic chimes ringing in the Maya Assumption Center compound. I am later told that this is the signal to awaken the young women of the boarding school, at least those whose turn it is to prepare breakfast. Lights begin to turn on in the Sisters’ houses. A few minutes before 4:30, I hear the staccatos of fireworks, and Sister Meche opens the gate. Accompanied by some of the other sisters and a few students, we walk to the church, which is further up the hill and only two blocks away.
I wondered how many people would be at the rosary at this hour. Arriving at the church, I find it is quite full. Over a hundred people of all ages are ready to say the rosary. The Combonian brother named Jesus is there with his guitar and other musicians and the choir as well. Several of the priests, in fact, are also there, again spread out. They are dressed informally, and often surrounded by admiring children. Before the rosary starts, I see them chatting amiably with the children and adults. We recite the rosary. The first decade is done on our knees. The group leading the prayers at the front of the church, about 10-15 people, are kneeling the hard cement floor. They ask all to kneel for the decade. They continue to kneel through the entire rosary. I wonder at their sacrifice because my knees quickly been to ache on the uncushioned, wooden kneeler.
I have my brochure for saying the rosary in Spanish. I am determined to memorize the prayers in Spanish, but I can barely keep to the pace. By the time I finish the second part of the Hail Mary in Spanish, they are already saying the first part of the prayer. As I struggle to keep up, my mind wanders as I think with admiration about my wife, Pia from Chile in South America, and how she relearned all these prayers in English. And she has even memorized prayers in English that she does not know in Spanish.
After the rosary, once again, no one leaves the church, and we are invited to have food. We are given a roll of bread and a banana atole (a drink prepared in the traditional Indian manner). Again, people socialize with each other and with the priests and the Sisters. The religious seem like magnets for the people—there are smiles and jokes. I am thinking to myself how this really is the people of God. Even Chris later shared that he was moved by seeing the people of San Luis in prayer. To myself, I wondered how many people might be there because they are hungry. Later, Sister Gladys confirmed that this indeed is likely the case. I reflected that there is nothing wrong with sharing with those who are hungry. The Sisters are concerned about growing malnutrition in San Luis because the price of food has recently increased significantly, just as in the United States.. A woman another pew across the aisle greets me warmly. As we talk, she says she wished that they had more priests in San Luis. Only during these fiesta days, she says, is a mass every day in town. Normally, the priests are visiting hamlets to bring the sacraments to outlying areas. Now, during the fiesta, people from the hamlets are coming into town for the celebrations. The 4:30 AM rosary is part of a novena for the feast of the patron saint.
I decided to make the 4:30 AM rosary a part of my daily routine, a way of accompanying the Sisters and the people in prayer. I already pray the rosary almost every day, usually in the evenings. I dedicate the daily rosary to the atonement of my own sins as well as the sins of my country. To this I add the sins of the entire world plus other particular intentions. By saying the rosary in the morning and in a group here in San Luis, at least I will not fall asleep part way through, as sometimes happens to me.
Breakfast with the “Patojas”
“Patoja” is an affectionate Guatemalan expression referring to a young woman. Sister Gladys often uses it to refer to the 30 girls and women who are boarding at the Maya Assumption Center for their studies. At 6:00 AM, it is breakfast time, and we have been invited to have breakfast with the patojas. Now, my wife, children and Chris are awake and dressed. The girls greet us warmly, but most are shy with us because we are newcomers. Shyness is to be expected from young women who range from 13 to 23 years of age. And, for many of them, Spanish is a second language. We ask questions, finding that where their families live in different hamlets at different hours of travel from school. Two of the girls are not from San Luis. They are from Sayache, a larger town in the Peten where the Assumption Sisters also have a small mission. Sayache takes a whole day of travel by public buses. So, these two patojas do not see their parents that often.
The breakfast, which seems to be the same each day, consists of black beans cooked in their broth and corn tortillas, all prepared by the girls themselves. Many of the girls tear up the tortillas into smaller pieces and mix the pieces into bowl of black beans. I ask whether our breakfast is cooked with the beans and corn grown at their homes. They say that is possible. The tuition that their families pay for a year’s tuition, room and board consists of $100 dollars cash (which is of course paid in the local currency) plus some bags of corn and beans from the own gardens. This tuition, the Sisters tell me, is too high for many families. Along with the beans and tortillas, the breakfast also has a sweet corn drink, again, an atole, that the girls prepare.
We take some pictures of the patojas while they are eating breakfast. They show us the white board that, for each day and meal, lists which of the girls is responsible for preparing the meal and cleaning up afterwards. I resolve to arrive early enough on another day to take pictures of the meal preparation. As we leave the mess hall, we notice that the girls are brushing their teeth at an outdoor faucet. Between the buildings in the compound we see the girls arranging their long black hair and neatening their clothes for the day. Many are wearing their traditional Q’eqchi Indian garb. In Guatemala, each Indian group has its own distinctive dress for its women. Oftentimes, the Indian clothing is hand woven by the women. It’s an important feminine skill. Sewing and embroidery are among the crafts that the patojas practice during the early afternoon after they finish their core classes.
The Marimba is Played
Still before classes begin, we return to our volunteer apartment to wait to accompany the sisters to a women’s development meeting in another barrio of the town. While we are waiting, we hear the sound of the marimba being played. The marimba is a traditional Mayan instrument, played with sticks like a xylophone. The keys are of wood and below the keys are either gourds or wooden boxes of differing sizes that resonate and amplify the sound. The music of the marimba is haunting. I recall it well from my first anthropological field work in Guatemala in the early 1970s. In Aguacatan, a highland Mayan community where I lived for almost a year, I hired a marimba band to celebrate my daughter’s Sonya’s birthday (she was then only two years old). So, the marimba brings many found memories to me. The marimba instrument usually has two sections with several players standing behind each section to play it. I wondered whether the girls had a radio or if someone was actually playing the instrument.
Walking down to the auditorium, to my surprise I see that the girls are themselves playing the marimba. It is the first time that I have ever seen women playing the instrument! Other girls have gathered to listen. And sometimes they sing with the marimba. I realize that some of the songs are religious hymns in the Indian language. I dance to the music as I walk into the hall and they laugh. My daughter, Pia, joins me, each of us taking a plastic chair from the stack to sit with the girls in the audience. Pia makes me proud as she takes chairs off the stacks and sets up chairs for more girls as they arrive. I take advantage of the moment to take some pictures. Time for classes to start! Every one of the girls takes her chair and restacks it neatly against the wall. I wondered if women this age in the United States would be so responsible.
Later, Ana, the veterinarian volunteer from Spain, explained that girls that are interested learn to play the marimba. A music teacher comes monthly to give lessons, and some girls are also learning to play the guitar. Ana says that playing the marimba is a favorite pastime for the girls and may be heard whenever they have time between classes and chores. So, the Sisters are preserving the traditional Mayan musical culture and extending its practice from men to women. And, in the US, how many schools in the inner city have curtailed or sacrificed their programs in the arts? I begin to understand what the Sisters mean when they describe the Mayan Assumption Center as offering an “integral” or “wholistic” program of education.
A tour of the classrooms of the Maya Assumption Center
The classrooms are in cement buildings and are small and plain. There are no large lecture halls at the Maya Assumption Center, but aren’t smaller classes better? The classes look to have only 10-15 students, half the typical size of classes in the public or parochial schools of Philadelphia. What is most striking is not the classrooms, but the hand-drawn posters the outdoor walls. In large letters, the posters proclaim such words as these: “Today, keep moving forward, and let no one be left behind” or “Working without love turns you into a slave”. The teaching of values, too, seems a key part of the Sisters’ “wholistic” program of education.
Omnipresent, too, are posters picturing the young and attractive face St. Marie Eugenie, the French mother foundress of the Assumption Order. In large letters she is quoted saying, “The earth is a place for the glory of God!” And, what is the glory of God? I had wondered about that just before the trip, and I read about it. I now understand that it means any manifestation of presence of God that inspires awe. I reflect that the Assumptionist motto is a call to action for us to act to bring the glory of God to each and every place we find ourselves. Back in the states, as I hurry from one thing to the next, I often fail to pause long enough to see the “glory of God” around me and, as I hurry, I also fall short of acting to make glory of God present to others. Here in San Luis, the glory of God thunders around me.
The new vocational day school at the Maya Assumption Center
The boarding school for Indian women is not the only school that the Sisters have founded. Just last year, they opened a vocational high school with a three-year program to prepare young men and women in what we would call business administration. There are classes in mathematics, computer skills, and accounting as well as basic reading and writing. Unlike the boarding school, this program admits young men as well as young women, and the students live in their homes in town. The school also admits “castellanos” as the Hispanics living in San Luis are called. Also, the high school takes children of any faith. There are already 29 students in the program. The tuition is higher, and the school is actually self supporting. The day school classes are in the afternoons, from 2 PM to 6 PM, after the boarding school classes have ended for the day.
Sister Ethel explained the challenges they face. The first challenge is hiring good teachers. Education for teachers, she said, is typically substandard in Guatemala. Oftentimes, certified teachers do not actually know the subjects they teach. So, the sisters have devised their own exams in order to qualify the teachers, and they supervise the teachers closely, reviewing their lesson plans and their conduct with the students. Some of the teachers the Sisters hire are not Catholic, but they may not proselytize in their classes and must attend school religious functions. The sisters seem to have very good relations with the Protestants. They described the Canadian missionary couple that has lived for years across the street as “very good people and excellent neighbors.”
The Sisters also show great respect for Mayan beliefs practices. In fact, I was surprised to find out that, every year, they open the school with a traditional Mayan ceremony to bless and preserve the plants, animals and earth. Our planet needs every prayer it can get! Reflecting on this deference to the gods of the Maya, I recall the invitatory psalm that the church prays daily, the 95th psalm: “The Lord is God, the mighty God, the great king over all the gods.”
The martyred Monsignor Gerardi, who was also a beloved bishop of the country, fought for what he called an “autochthonous Catholic church”, by which he meant a church which respects and affirms universal human values already found within the Mayan culture, while preserving the languages, the artistic styles and music of the culture, but at the same time freeing the Maya from despair and violence (sin) through the good news of the gospel (hope, peace and salvation). Might not all cultures benefit from this? As stated in the Canticle of Zachariah: “in the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
A small crisis for us and a big crisis for the Center’s farm
The farm of the Mayan Assumption Center provides covers about half of the expenses of the Mayan Assumption Center. When I read that the Maya Assumption Center teaches agricultural techniques. I wondered to myself what they could possibly teach that these Indian farmers don’t already know. The Sisters said my wife and I should drive the rented SUV down the road to meet Anna for a tour of the farm. At the bottom of the hill I turn into a small driveway leading to a large gate for vehicles. However, the gate is locked and no one is there. So, thinking this might not be the entrance, I start to back out, but I chose the wrong angle, and the back wheel of the vehicle dips into a ditch and tips to the right. I try to move forward, and the rear wheels just spin. Time for a prayer and for engaging the four-wheel drive! We say a Hail Mary and engage the wheels. Again, no success!
Pia gets out and sees that the right rear wheel is in the air over a culvert. I get out, too, and the whole vehicle tips dangerously to the right side. I quickly get back into the driver’s seat to rebalance the SUV. Pia hurries back up to the Center for help. I am thinking about how disruptive this might be for the Sisters. In a few minutes, the “kids” (Chris, Emilia and Pia) arrive. I ask all three to stand on the side foot panel and maximize their leverage by sticking out their butts. They are enjoying the adventure. The vehicle rights itself. I again try the four-wheel drive and the SUV moved easily forward. The “kids” are ecstatic. I took a picture of them in their victory pose.
Anna shortly arrives in her truck. A workman opens the gate, we drive inside, and the workman sprays disinfectant on the car wheels, our shoes and clothing. With that, I realize that the Sisters are teaching the Indians modern, commercial agricultural procedures. The impression is confirmed as we go through the large and thoroughly modern hog operation, with sections for pregnant hogs, lactating hogs, and finally fattening of hogs to the right size for sale. In contrast to the hogs we see wandering down the streets of San Luis and in the countryside, these hogs are fed with concentrated hog feed for rapid fattening, are vaccinated, are monitored for health and weight gain.
In their operation, the hog manure is washed down canals where the solids are dried to serve as an excellent organic fertilizer. In addition, as Anna explained, hogs digest their food very inefficiently and their manure still has enough nutrients for use as cattle feed. The cattle were kept in a pasture on the nearby hillside, but all the cattle had just been sold as they were at the right weight. Similar to the hog lot and cattle, the farm has a modern egg and chicken operation, producing up to 600 eggs per day. These eggs generate income for the Maya Assumption Center and are sold from the small store. Under the Spanish volunteer’s supervision, the “patojas” of the school do all the work of the farm, learning the agricultural techniques that might generate significant income for their families and raise their status as women in the family and community. My daughter, Pia, later helped the “patojas” collect eggs that help support their school.
There is actually a double crisis at the farm. Just a month ago, the price of the feed concentrate for the hogs suddenly quadrupled. This is undoubtedly related to the rapidly rising price of petroleum, which affects the costs of corn, soybeans and of fuel. I wonder if ethanol fits into this equation. Whatever the cause, the cost of the raising the hogs, which the Sisters monitor closely with their students, has become uneconomic. It costs more to feed the hogs than what they can now be sold for. The Sisters’ solution, they hope, is to raise money to purchase a grain mixer to make their own concentrate, but they just found that that it will cost $5,000, and they do not have the money. With the mixer, they could buy the grain more cheaply from the local agricultural cooperative. But how will they get the money for the mixer?
The other hog lot crisis is that the liquids from the hog manure are now running into a small stream and neighbors have begun to complain. The solution, when implemented, would be to pump the liquids away into a septic tank. They already have determined the cost of this to be about $12,000. About $2,500 in contributions from the United Sates are being sent via the Assumption Convent in Philadelphia to help. We are still far short, and the situation is critical. As I reflect, I begin weigh these needs of the Maya Assumption convent against the costs of the renovation of our church in Philadelphia.
The single explosion sounding like a gunshot awoke me. Was that the signal for the rosary? It is still night. It is still hot and humid. I tried to read my watch which has luminescent dots marking the hours. In the darkness I am quite not sure I am reading it right. It doesn’t look like 4:30. I fumble for the flashlight on the nightstand and find it. In the beam of light, my watch clearly shows 3:30 AM. Might my watch be set wrong? We passed through two time zones from Philadelphia, one in Cancun and another in Flores. Perhaps San Luis is in another time zone. Quietly, so as not to awaken Chris in the bunk across from me, I put on my robe and find my way to the bathroom. I floss my teeth, and taking a glass of purified water, I brush my teeth. I dress silently and quickly—blue jeans, a t-shirt, and sandals. I apply the mosquito repellant generously. I may already be late.
Using the flashlight to guide me through the darkness of the compound and up a sidewalk past the Sister’s residences, I reach the gate they said they would leave open. Some of them and some of their students in the boarding school, they said, will also go to the rosary. The gate is locked. There are no lights on in their houses. So, either I am late or it really is 3:50 AM. I consider whether I should return to the apartment, and decide to wait until 4:30 AM. I turn off my flashlight. I am surrounded by the beauty of the night. The stars, brilliant by comparison to what I see in West Philadelphia, shine through thin clouds. The insects sing from the tropical foliage. I give thanks to God for being alive, for being conscious, and being able sense the beauty of nature.
Saying the Rosary, first alone and then with the people
I sit down on a step not far from the gate, and I decide to start saying the rosary by myself as I wait. I am carrying a plastic, glow-in-the-dark rosary. Because it is Wednesday, I will say the glorious mysteries, and the fourth mystery is the mystery of the Assumption, the one that has always been most difficult for me to grasp. I typically recite that decade, praying for the Sisters of the Assumption, which seems more concrete. A high-pitched buzz in my ear tells me that the mosquitoes have found me. It took them a while to follow the carbon dioxide of my exhalation. I am glad I applied the repellant. None-the-less, I get up and start walking back and forth as I say the rosary, thinking this might elude them.
At 4:00 AM, I hear electronic chimes ringing in the Maya Assumption Center compound. I am later told that this is the signal to awaken the young women of the boarding school, at least those whose turn it is to prepare breakfast. Lights begin to turn on in the Sisters’ houses. A few minutes before 4:30, I hear the staccatos of fireworks, and Sister Meche opens the gate. Accompanied by some of the other sisters and a few students, we walk to the church, which is further up the hill and only two blocks away.
I wondered how many people would be at the rosary at this hour. Arriving at the church, I find it is quite full. Over a hundred people of all ages are ready to say the rosary. The Combonian brother named Jesus is there with his guitar and other musicians and the choir as well. Several of the priests, in fact, are also there, again spread out. They are dressed informally, and often surrounded by admiring children. Before the rosary starts, I see them chatting amiably with the children and adults. We recite the rosary. The first decade is done on our knees. The group leading the prayers at the front of the church, about 10-15 people, are kneeling the hard cement floor. They ask all to kneel for the decade. They continue to kneel through the entire rosary. I wonder at their sacrifice because my knees quickly been to ache on the uncushioned, wooden kneeler.
I have my brochure for saying the rosary in Spanish. I am determined to memorize the prayers in Spanish, but I can barely keep to the pace. By the time I finish the second part of the Hail Mary in Spanish, they are already saying the first part of the prayer. As I struggle to keep up, my mind wanders as I think with admiration about my wife, Pia from Chile in South America, and how she relearned all these prayers in English. And she has even memorized prayers in English that she does not know in Spanish.
After the rosary, once again, no one leaves the church, and we are invited to have food. We are given a roll of bread and a banana atole (a drink prepared in the traditional Indian manner). Again, people socialize with each other and with the priests and the Sisters. The religious seem like magnets for the people—there are smiles and jokes. I am thinking to myself how this really is the people of God. Even Chris later shared that he was moved by seeing the people of San Luis in prayer. To myself, I wondered how many people might be there because they are hungry. Later, Sister Gladys confirmed that this indeed is likely the case. I reflected that there is nothing wrong with sharing with those who are hungry. The Sisters are concerned about growing malnutrition in San Luis because the price of food has recently increased significantly, just as in the United States.. A woman another pew across the aisle greets me warmly. As we talk, she says she wished that they had more priests in San Luis. Only during these fiesta days, she says, is a mass every day in town. Normally, the priests are visiting hamlets to bring the sacraments to outlying areas. Now, during the fiesta, people from the hamlets are coming into town for the celebrations. The 4:30 AM rosary is part of a novena for the feast of the patron saint.
I decided to make the 4:30 AM rosary a part of my daily routine, a way of accompanying the Sisters and the people in prayer. I already pray the rosary almost every day, usually in the evenings. I dedicate the daily rosary to the atonement of my own sins as well as the sins of my country. To this I add the sins of the entire world plus other particular intentions. By saying the rosary in the morning and in a group here in San Luis, at least I will not fall asleep part way through, as sometimes happens to me.
Breakfast with the “Patojas”
“Patoja” is an affectionate Guatemalan expression referring to a young woman. Sister Gladys often uses it to refer to the 30 girls and women who are boarding at the Maya Assumption Center for their studies. At 6:00 AM, it is breakfast time, and we have been invited to have breakfast with the patojas. Now, my wife, children and Chris are awake and dressed. The girls greet us warmly, but most are shy with us because we are newcomers. Shyness is to be expected from young women who range from 13 to 23 years of age. And, for many of them, Spanish is a second language. We ask questions, finding that where their families live in different hamlets at different hours of travel from school. Two of the girls are not from San Luis. They are from Sayache, a larger town in the Peten where the Assumption Sisters also have a small mission. Sayache takes a whole day of travel by public buses. So, these two patojas do not see their parents that often.
The breakfast, which seems to be the same each day, consists of black beans cooked in their broth and corn tortillas, all prepared by the girls themselves. Many of the girls tear up the tortillas into smaller pieces and mix the pieces into bowl of black beans. I ask whether our breakfast is cooked with the beans and corn grown at their homes. They say that is possible. The tuition that their families pay for a year’s tuition, room and board consists of $100 dollars cash (which is of course paid in the local currency) plus some bags of corn and beans from the own gardens. This tuition, the Sisters tell me, is too high for many families. Along with the beans and tortillas, the breakfast also has a sweet corn drink, again, an atole, that the girls prepare.
We take some pictures of the patojas while they are eating breakfast. They show us the white board that, for each day and meal, lists which of the girls is responsible for preparing the meal and cleaning up afterwards. I resolve to arrive early enough on another day to take pictures of the meal preparation. As we leave the mess hall, we notice that the girls are brushing their teeth at an outdoor faucet. Between the buildings in the compound we see the girls arranging their long black hair and neatening their clothes for the day. Many are wearing their traditional Q’eqchi Indian garb. In Guatemala, each Indian group has its own distinctive dress for its women. Oftentimes, the Indian clothing is hand woven by the women. It’s an important feminine skill. Sewing and embroidery are among the crafts that the patojas practice during the early afternoon after they finish their core classes.
The Marimba is Played
Still before classes begin, we return to our volunteer apartment to wait to accompany the sisters to a women’s development meeting in another barrio of the town. While we are waiting, we hear the sound of the marimba being played. The marimba is a traditional Mayan instrument, played with sticks like a xylophone. The keys are of wood and below the keys are either gourds or wooden boxes of differing sizes that resonate and amplify the sound. The music of the marimba is haunting. I recall it well from my first anthropological field work in Guatemala in the early 1970s. In Aguacatan, a highland Mayan community where I lived for almost a year, I hired a marimba band to celebrate my daughter’s Sonya’s birthday (she was then only two years old). So, the marimba brings many found memories to me. The marimba instrument usually has two sections with several players standing behind each section to play it. I wondered whether the girls had a radio or if someone was actually playing the instrument.
Walking down to the auditorium, to my surprise I see that the girls are themselves playing the marimba. It is the first time that I have ever seen women playing the instrument! Other girls have gathered to listen. And sometimes they sing with the marimba. I realize that some of the songs are religious hymns in the Indian language. I dance to the music as I walk into the hall and they laugh. My daughter, Pia, joins me, each of us taking a plastic chair from the stack to sit with the girls in the audience. Pia makes me proud as she takes chairs off the stacks and sets up chairs for more girls as they arrive. I take advantage of the moment to take some pictures. Time for classes to start! Every one of the girls takes her chair and restacks it neatly against the wall. I wondered if women this age in the United States would be so responsible.
Later, Ana, the veterinarian volunteer from Spain, explained that girls that are interested learn to play the marimba. A music teacher comes monthly to give lessons, and some girls are also learning to play the guitar. Ana says that playing the marimba is a favorite pastime for the girls and may be heard whenever they have time between classes and chores. So, the Sisters are preserving the traditional Mayan musical culture and extending its practice from men to women. And, in the US, how many schools in the inner city have curtailed or sacrificed their programs in the arts? I begin to understand what the Sisters mean when they describe the Mayan Assumption Center as offering an “integral” or “wholistic” program of education.
A tour of the classrooms of the Maya Assumption Center
The classrooms are in cement buildings and are small and plain. There are no large lecture halls at the Maya Assumption Center, but aren’t smaller classes better? The classes look to have only 10-15 students, half the typical size of classes in the public or parochial schools of Philadelphia. What is most striking is not the classrooms, but the hand-drawn posters the outdoor walls. In large letters, the posters proclaim such words as these: “Today, keep moving forward, and let no one be left behind” or “Working without love turns you into a slave”. The teaching of values, too, seems a key part of the Sisters’ “wholistic” program of education.
Omnipresent, too, are posters picturing the young and attractive face St. Marie Eugenie, the French mother foundress of the Assumption Order. In large letters she is quoted saying, “The earth is a place for the glory of God!” And, what is the glory of God? I had wondered about that just before the trip, and I read about it. I now understand that it means any manifestation of presence of God that inspires awe. I reflect that the Assumptionist motto is a call to action for us to act to bring the glory of God to each and every place we find ourselves. Back in the states, as I hurry from one thing to the next, I often fail to pause long enough to see the “glory of God” around me and, as I hurry, I also fall short of acting to make glory of God present to others. Here in San Luis, the glory of God thunders around me.
The new vocational day school at the Maya Assumption Center
The boarding school for Indian women is not the only school that the Sisters have founded. Just last year, they opened a vocational high school with a three-year program to prepare young men and women in what we would call business administration. There are classes in mathematics, computer skills, and accounting as well as basic reading and writing. Unlike the boarding school, this program admits young men as well as young women, and the students live in their homes in town. The school also admits “castellanos” as the Hispanics living in San Luis are called. Also, the high school takes children of any faith. There are already 29 students in the program. The tuition is higher, and the school is actually self supporting. The day school classes are in the afternoons, from 2 PM to 6 PM, after the boarding school classes have ended for the day.
Sister Ethel explained the challenges they face. The first challenge is hiring good teachers. Education for teachers, she said, is typically substandard in Guatemala. Oftentimes, certified teachers do not actually know the subjects they teach. So, the sisters have devised their own exams in order to qualify the teachers, and they supervise the teachers closely, reviewing their lesson plans and their conduct with the students. Some of the teachers the Sisters hire are not Catholic, but they may not proselytize in their classes and must attend school religious functions. The sisters seem to have very good relations with the Protestants. They described the Canadian missionary couple that has lived for years across the street as “very good people and excellent neighbors.”
The Sisters also show great respect for Mayan beliefs practices. In fact, I was surprised to find out that, every year, they open the school with a traditional Mayan ceremony to bless and preserve the plants, animals and earth. Our planet needs every prayer it can get! Reflecting on this deference to the gods of the Maya, I recall the invitatory psalm that the church prays daily, the 95th psalm: “The Lord is God, the mighty God, the great king over all the gods.”
The martyred Monsignor Gerardi, who was also a beloved bishop of the country, fought for what he called an “autochthonous Catholic church”, by which he meant a church which respects and affirms universal human values already found within the Mayan culture, while preserving the languages, the artistic styles and music of the culture, but at the same time freeing the Maya from despair and violence (sin) through the good news of the gospel (hope, peace and salvation). Might not all cultures benefit from this? As stated in the Canticle of Zachariah: “in the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
A small crisis for us and a big crisis for the Center’s farm
The farm of the Mayan Assumption Center provides covers about half of the expenses of the Mayan Assumption Center. When I read that the Maya Assumption Center teaches agricultural techniques. I wondered to myself what they could possibly teach that these Indian farmers don’t already know. The Sisters said my wife and I should drive the rented SUV down the road to meet Anna for a tour of the farm. At the bottom of the hill I turn into a small driveway leading to a large gate for vehicles. However, the gate is locked and no one is there. So, thinking this might not be the entrance, I start to back out, but I chose the wrong angle, and the back wheel of the vehicle dips into a ditch and tips to the right. I try to move forward, and the rear wheels just spin. Time for a prayer and for engaging the four-wheel drive! We say a Hail Mary and engage the wheels. Again, no success!
Pia gets out and sees that the right rear wheel is in the air over a culvert. I get out, too, and the whole vehicle tips dangerously to the right side. I quickly get back into the driver’s seat to rebalance the SUV. Pia hurries back up to the Center for help. I am thinking about how disruptive this might be for the Sisters. In a few minutes, the “kids” (Chris, Emilia and Pia) arrive. I ask all three to stand on the side foot panel and maximize their leverage by sticking out their butts. They are enjoying the adventure. The vehicle rights itself. I again try the four-wheel drive and the SUV moved easily forward. The “kids” are ecstatic. I took a picture of them in their victory pose.
Anna shortly arrives in her truck. A workman opens the gate, we drive inside, and the workman sprays disinfectant on the car wheels, our shoes and clothing. With that, I realize that the Sisters are teaching the Indians modern, commercial agricultural procedures. The impression is confirmed as we go through the large and thoroughly modern hog operation, with sections for pregnant hogs, lactating hogs, and finally fattening of hogs to the right size for sale. In contrast to the hogs we see wandering down the streets of San Luis and in the countryside, these hogs are fed with concentrated hog feed for rapid fattening, are vaccinated, are monitored for health and weight gain.
In their operation, the hog manure is washed down canals where the solids are dried to serve as an excellent organic fertilizer. In addition, as Anna explained, hogs digest their food very inefficiently and their manure still has enough nutrients for use as cattle feed. The cattle were kept in a pasture on the nearby hillside, but all the cattle had just been sold as they were at the right weight. Similar to the hog lot and cattle, the farm has a modern egg and chicken operation, producing up to 600 eggs per day. These eggs generate income for the Maya Assumption Center and are sold from the small store. Under the Spanish volunteer’s supervision, the “patojas” of the school do all the work of the farm, learning the agricultural techniques that might generate significant income for their families and raise their status as women in the family and community. My daughter, Pia, later helped the “patojas” collect eggs that help support their school.
There is actually a double crisis at the farm. Just a month ago, the price of the feed concentrate for the hogs suddenly quadrupled. This is undoubtedly related to the rapidly rising price of petroleum, which affects the costs of corn, soybeans and of fuel. I wonder if ethanol fits into this equation. Whatever the cause, the cost of the raising the hogs, which the Sisters monitor closely with their students, has become uneconomic. It costs more to feed the hogs than what they can now be sold for. The Sisters’ solution, they hope, is to raise money to purchase a grain mixer to make their own concentrate, but they just found that that it will cost $5,000, and they do not have the money. With the mixer, they could buy the grain more cheaply from the local agricultural cooperative. But how will they get the money for the mixer?
The other hog lot crisis is that the liquids from the hog manure are now running into a small stream and neighbors have begun to complain. The solution, when implemented, would be to pump the liquids away into a septic tank. They already have determined the cost of this to be about $12,000. About $2,500 in contributions from the United Sates are being sent via the Assumption Convent in Philadelphia to help. We are still far short, and the situation is critical. As I reflect, I begin weigh these needs of the Maya Assumption convent against the costs of the renovation of our church in Philadelphia.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Pilgrimage to San Luis, Peten, Guatemala, Part 2
Doug continues:
Day 2, Tuesday, August 19th
As usual, I am the first to wake up in the morning. Chris is still asleep in the next bed. My wife and daughters are in another room. As quietly as I can, I get up, shower, dress and go to the restaurant, and find out that we can get breakfast in another hotel just a block and a half away. Waiting for the others to wake up, I sit at a table in our hotel’s empty restaurant to pray the divine office—the invitatory, the office of readings and the morning prayers. All of the psalms I pray seem to be emphasizing how much God is on the side of the poor and how God will hear their cry and save them. As for their oppressors, God will utterly destroy them. Knowing Guatemala and its centuries of unbroken exploitation of the Mayan Indians, I find myself longing for the time when God will avenge the poor and set them free. I recalled that Moses did not free his people with revolutionary violence, but by courageous insistence on their freedom and by the power of God acting through nature—they merely watched as the pursuing Egyptian army was destroyed in the sea.
I reflect that, even more than Moses, Jesus did not rely upon violence to defend Himself and his cause, but trusted in God’s saving action. Jesus rejected a violent defense as he was arrested, saying “those who live by the sword will die by the sword”. In this way, by his actions, not just by words, Jesus established a new path, The Way (as early Christians called it), which remains new and totally radical for every generation since Jesus walked the earth. The Way is a fearless confidence that by acting as children of God and if, as expected, enduring persecution with courage, the cause of justice will be victorious. Jesus inspired Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Pope John Paul II—thereby bringing an end to colonial rule in India, to racial segregation in the United States and to the entire Soviet block. So often, Guatemala has fallen into the trap of confronting the violence of the state with the violence of the revolutionary—succumbing to the deception that violence will save. O Guatemala, when will God bless you with a spiritual leader that will really set your people free?
The rest of the family has dressed and we walk to the restaurant for breakfast. We watch to stay clear of the passing trucks, cars and motorcycles as we make our way through the littered street. A radio is blasting out commercials in Spanish. Walls and storefronts are painted with commercial messages, especially the omnipresent “Tigo” for the dominant cell phone brand and for “Gallo” which is the local beer. The five of us sit together around an outdoor table by the road. The menu is simple and very Guatemalan, and the prices are cheap.
As we are eating, Chris declares that he does not really believe in missionaries because they impose their beliefs on others and destroy cultures. In front of our daughters, whose faith is already under constant attack in our secular country, neither my wife nor let the comment pass without rebuttal. We point out that we live in a society where we are constantly bombarded with consumerist propaganda trying to persuade us (and the Mayan Indians) that the path to happiness is to buy, to consume and to have more things. The tidal wave of selling messages encourages us to look good and to indulge ourselves. This commercial propaganda has massive funding and thousands of sales representatives. How can we condemn the effort of a few nuns and priests in San Luis, Peten, who with very limited resources are trying to challenge such values?
From there, the conversation went quickly downhill, and my wife, Pia, wisely grew silent. An hour later the conversation ended with Chris affirming that he believed that human sacrifices by the thousands, such as were performed the Maya (and depicted in the movie Apocalypto), are morally justified because the sacrifices were part of their cultural beliefs. I am surprised, but should I be surprised? In the United States, we have created a new human right, the right to abort over a million defenseless, unborn children each year. So, why not human sacrifices of adults as well? We know that in ancient Mesoamerica, human sacrifices were thought meritorious and the sacrificial victims were cooked and eaten. At that point, I asked Chris what it means to be a good neighbor to those being sacrificed and eaten. We might also ask about what it means to be a good neighbor in Philadelphia where the murder rate is high and there is a culture of violence. And what does it mean to be a good neighbor to Guatemala and Mexico?
Ironic for me, a cultural anthropologist, to be making this argument, given than anthropologists abhor ethnocentrism (namely the idea that our own culture has the best way of thinking or acting). But we can have a false romanticism about indigenous peoples and their cultures. Yet, within every human culture we find the same human foibles. Oppressed peoples are not necessarily morally upstanding. And some cultural traditions are arguably inhuman. There are cultures that have violent conquest as part of their beliefs (such as the ancient empires). There are cultures that subjugate women and the women themselves accept their subjugation (almost all of the cultures of the world), and there are even cultures that have institutionalized the sodomy of boys by older men (such as in certain African tribes).
It seems, I reflect, that cultures have become our new gods. Each culture, even each lifestyle within a culture, has now become ultimate realities that cannot be questioned, gods to be worshipped no matter their objectively negative characteristics. And we have a new syncretism because we feel all of these gods ought to be tolerated, placed as it were within our pantheon. Practitioners of the new syncretism can regard themselves as more broad-minded, more tolerant, in fact, superior to those (such as Catholics, Orthodox, Evangelicals, or Muslims) who believe that there is such a thing as truth. Pilate asked Jesus who he was and Jesus told Pilate that he was the King of the Jews and that he had come to bring truth to the world. Pilate then sarcastically asked, “What is truth?” Pilate’s question reverberates down the ages, all the way to our breakfast table in Santa Elena, Peten.
Thinking as an anthropologist, now, I reflect on how nicely this I’m-OK-you’re-OK syncretism fits with our global economy. We will not act forcefully for human rights in China so long as we can benefit from their cheap labor and loans. We will not act forcefully for human rights in Saudi Arabia, so long as we can benefit from their oil and investments. We will not act forcefully for human rights in Guatemala, so long as we can benefit from its coffee and its meat exports.
In contrast, The Way of Jesus is demanding, just as demanding as it was during the Roman Empire. The Way demands that we not stand by and watch our neighbors being misguided or mistreated. Even worse, if it turns out that we ourselves turn out to be the oppressing Egyptians or Romans of our epoch. Jesus has already told us what he will say to us if we fail to help our neighbors, and by neighbors he meant absolutely everyone we come across. He said, “Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his demons. For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me anything to drink. I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me no clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you did not visit me”.
After the argument with Chris came to a mutually unsatisfying conclusion, we packed to drive to San Luis. My daughter, Pia, was so upset that she cried secretly in her hotel room. I wondered to myself whether I should have left Chris’ original comment unanswered or found a more graceful and earlier exit. I prayed that God would help me wipe away any bad feelings from the exchange. I also prayed that the reality of San Luis and the example of the Sisters of the Assumption would speak more loudly and compellingly than any intellectual disputation.
The drive to San Luis took about two hours. The highway was much better than I expected. The area under reconstruction turned out to be very minor. San Luis itself is a relatively modernized small town. It even has a bank and several pharmacies. The Catholic Church building in the central plaza of San Luis is small and simple, not much better than a warehouse with a corrugated tin roof and rows of hard benches inside. I had to look twice to be sure that it was indeed a church building. We had passed some Protestant churches on our way to the town center, and their churches seemed more churchlike than this small and plain building.
Sister Gladys and Sister Tere were waiting for us as we pulled in front of their house. They said they had expected us earlier in the morning. Sister Gladys, originally from Cuba, seems a strong and decisive woman despite her age of 74 and despite her walking with a cane due to arthritis. Sister Gladys directs the Maya Assumption Center. Sister Tere is originally from Spain. She is middle aged and is also the former Provincial of the Order for Central America, which includes Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Cuba. She is back in San Luis after having had a benign brain tumor removed in a surgery in her native Spain. She has spent many years in San Luis and is glad to be back.
We are taken to the volunteer’s apartment which is located in one of the Center’s main buildings which is located half-way down a steep and uneven, rocky street that leads into the countryside. The volunteer apartment has three medium-sized bedrooms, each containing two bunk beds and a wall of small closets for four volunteers. So, the apartment could accommodate up to 12 volunteers. There is a common room with a combined kitchen, dining and living room. There’s a small refrigerator and sink with countertop. On the countertop there is a toaster oven and an electric stovetop. There is a water purification system. Also in the common room, there’s a sofa, two armchairs, a circular dining table and 5 dining chairs. There is a shared bathroom and two showers, but we found that in the evenings, the water pressure is too low to shower. Even though there is not hot water, the cold shower is relief in the humid, tropical heat.
One window in the common room looks out over the school compound where thirty Mayan Indian young women from outlying hamlets live and study in the Assumption boarding school. The large windows in each of the volunteer bedrooms overlook palm and banana trees. Beyond the trees, you can look over the center’s farm which is partially hidden further down the valley and up the side of the adjoining mountain. The farm is actually quite advanced, using modern methods to raise chickens, pigs and cattle. Profits from the farm have covered almost half of the operating expenses of the Maya Assumption Center. And behind theses trees we look into the Mayan mountains, as they are called, mountains that are low and covered with tropical forest and with parts cleared for planting. Seeing that the apartment is more comfortable than the hotel of the prior night (but without ceiling fans or air conditioning), I told Sister Gladys that the apartment seemed like a luxury accommodation. Smiling, she replied that the volunteers need such accommodations because they often come from first-world countries.
We discovered quickly that we are not the only ones living in the apartment. There is Ana, a young veterinarian from Spain who has been working at the center’s farm for several months and who plans to stay until November. Having found both her personal and professional life unfulfilling, she decided to volunteer at the Maya Assumption Center and take time to reconsider the direction of her life. She looked happy. The Sisters are desperate to find a Spanish-speaking veterinarian replacement for her. There is Andrea from Mexico, just 18 years old. She is helping the students with their homework, especially mathematics and Spanish. Many of the Mayan Indian young women in the school are still more comfortable speaking in their native language. Andrea just graduated from an Assumption high school in Mexico and she plans to stay to volunteer for 10 months, and then continue her studies. She looks as if she is still getting her bearings. As we got to know the volunteers better, we find out that their families were surprised and unhappy that they decided to volunteer. Reflecting again on the shortness of our stay, we again wondered what we would really be able to offer. My 16 year old daughter, Pia, was deeply concerned about this because her Spanish is not strong. Emilia and Chris actually did have something to offer, namely, their workshop on stone carving, but 21 girls had expressed interest and we had only a total of eight stone carving kits (some kits had been carried by Chris and Emilia).
After quickly unloading our bags in our assigned volunteer rooms, we were invited to lunch at the residence of the sisters. We walk through the compound, passing by the school library which adjoins our volunteer apartment within the same building. Also in the building are the center’s administrative offices, where Sister Gladys has her personal office (which I am now using to write these words), a room for meetings and a small store that sells refreshments as well as the eggs and chicken produced by the farm. Walking away from our building and moving deeper into the compound, we pass a large cooking and mess hall for the young women and to the other side a large school hall auditorium with a stage and marimba (the Mayan musical instrument of choice). Walking up the hill, with tropical fruit trees to each side, we take a gravel path into the back of a house that has a small chapel with exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and a circle of benches for praying the Divine Office. Other rooms in the house include a laundry area and bedrooms for some of the sisters. Passing through the house and walking further uphill, we come to a second house with a large kitchen/dining area and a long dining room table where we have an excellent lunch.
At lunch, we meet the other sisters and we find that we are not the only short-term visitors to the center. One of the sisters is Sister Gisela, a Guatemalan in her 30s. She is full of energy and radiates self-confidence. We later find that she is quite musical. With a good voice and playing her guitar, she leads the music during the recitation of the divine office. There is also Sister Meche from Mexico. Sister Meche has a ready smile and shows quiet determination. She always sits with the people at religious services and spends time talking with them afterwards. There is Sister Ethel from El Salvador. She seems too young to have already taken perpetual vows, and I wonder if she is a postulant. But I am wrong. She is actually 39 years old and is in charge of the entire academic program of the Center. And in the afternoon, she teaches classes at the day school that the sisters recently opened for young men and women who live in the town and walk to school from their homes. Sister Ethel also coordinates the youth program for the parish. Living with the Sisters is also a local woman named Hilda. Hilda works in the house, and she is also catechist and also says the Divine Office. She may be considering whether she has a vocation.
Also at lunch and staying in the convent residence are two other women from Spain. One is named Paz. Paz is a sister of Sister Tere. She is visiting Guatemala for the first time. Paz is middle-aged and for many years has been a catechist for the Neocatechumenal Way. Paz just finished working in Ecuador for three years. She was helping three young Ecuadorian families establish the Way in a poor barrio. She and several Ecuadorian families took up residence in a poor barrio with little religious devotion. They found work to support themselves, and then through the example of their lives and of their words of faith, they sought to transform the community. Paz is preparing for her next assignment, which will be do to the same type of work as in Ecuador, but next on the island of Curacao with three Venezuelan families. The other visitor is Paz’s childhood friend, Hortensia. Hortensia is also a member of the Neocatechumenal Way, but has stayed in Spain and in her own parish because of her family and work responsibilities. I wondered whether the Neocatechumenal Way might be for some families in our parish in our parish and resolve to explore it more.
After lunch we sing a prayer of thanksgiving, and Sister Gladys takes us to meet with Sister Tere. Sister Tere’s office is just behind the dining room. We realize that that we are in a much larger house that opens out the street. Sister Tere is in charge of women’s development programs at the Assumptions throughout the territory. Showing us a map on the wall of her office, she explains that San Luis is the largest county (or municipio as they call them) in the Peten. San Luis has dozens of outlying hamlets where people live and work their lands. She explains that women find great difficulty bettering themselves and their families because they must get permission from their men, and the men often prohibit involvement with the nun’s projects. The culture of machismo, she explained, leaves women with very low self-images. For years the sisters worked with the women to encourage them. It takes hours to reach these outlying hamlets where most of the people of San Luis live. When the Sisters first began work in San Luis, they often had to walk to these hamlets. Getting to the hamlets now takes less time because some roads have completed. These are rough back roads by US standards. When it rains, however, many of these roads become impassable. The Sisters’ navigate them with their Toyota truck.
Sister Tere continued that the Q’eqchi Indians that now constitute most of the inhabitants of the territory of San Luis are actually immigrants from the highlands. They began moving into the county about 50 years ago, drawn by government offers of land titles for homesteading. This drew thousands of land-poor Q’eqchi Indians from the neighboring highland territory of Coban. Some of the immigrants to San Luis are also internal refugees from the horrific violence in Guatemala during the late 1980s and 1990s. During those years many Indians found themselves caught between massacres by the Guatemalan army, on the one hand, and selective executions by guerrillas seeking to overthrow the government, on the other.
On a wall of the next room was a calendar that prominently displayed a picture of a priest. I asked who he is. The Sister explained that he is Monsignor Gerardi. He had worked on behalf of the Archdiocese of Guatemala, to collect thousands of accounts of political massacres and murders. Later, I paged through one of his four volumes of accounts from the Sisters’ library. It has been difficult for Monsignor Gerardi to get the witnesses to come forward. The day after Monsignor Gerardi presented his work publicly, he was found murdered at his residence. His head with its considerable knowledge had been crushed with stones. His killers have never been brought to justice. 2008 is the 10th anniversary of his martyrdom. The same calendar, I later found, hangs throughout San Luis. Of the assassination of Monsignor Gerardi, Pope John Paul II stated, “I fervently hope that this terrible crime, which has cost the life of a true servant of peace and a tireless worker for all the different groups in the country, will demonstrate clearly how pointless violence is.”
Returning to issue of the Q’eqchi immigration into San Luis, Sister Tere went on to explain that the original inhabitants of San Luis were Maya-Mopan Indians. The Maya-Mopan refused to get titles, saying the titles were unnecessary because all the land has always belonged to them. But they were wrong. After a number of years, they discovered that they had become landless. As a result, many Maya-Mopan have moved to the neighboring country of Belize, where say they have more economic opportunity.
Now, there is a new land problem. The crops do not generate enough money for the rising consumer expectations of the Maya of San Luis. Electricity, radios, and televisions now extend into remote hamlets. The Maya can now see all the things they do not have and see how happy those who do have these things seem to be. There are now television antennae protruding from wooden huts with dirt floors. The Maya Q’eqchi now want the same things as American—cell phones, motorcycles, cars, fashionable clothes—but they don’t have enough money. One way to get money is sell the land to pay a coyote to sneak a man to the United States where more money can be made and then sent back to the family. The stays in the US are typically for three or more years. If a man borrows the money to get into the US, it may take a year or more to pay back the loan. Then the family can start receiving its contributions. The Western Union office is a prominent building in town.
Who now buys the lands of the Maya Q’eqchi? Sister Tere and Sister Gladys say the lands are now passing into the hands of drug traffickers to grow marijuana and of large landholders to pasture cattle after clearing the forests. The cattle are sold in Guatemala City or nearby Belize. The best meat, the Sisters say, is exported to wealthier countries, including the United States. As I listen, I reflect the global consumer economy will be the true destroyer of Mayan culture. The Mayan culture, we anthropologists know, was based on living on the land, on families working the land together, and on growing corn. This culture extends back thousands of years. Now, the land is being lost, the corn is being replaced by marijuana and cattle, and the men are being exported to the United States. Yet, we are no better than the Maya Q’eqchi. We are susceptible to the same sensual allures and to wanting many possessions. In fact, we already have everything they desire, but we want more. The first temptation of Jesus while very hungry during His fast in the desert was to turn the stones into bread, as Satan slyly suggested. Jesus gave us the answer for all time, when he responded that man does not live by bread alone, but also on every word of God.
After the general orientation with Sister Tere, we met with Sister Gladys to discuss the plan for our stay. I worried aloud what we could offer except the burden of their having to take care of us. Without hesitation, Sister Gladys responded that our visit gives them hope. I was moved because in my heart I had thought the same and had also planned to accompany them and the people of San Luis in prayer. Sister Gladys also made clear that the Sisters needed an update of their brochure to help them raise funds. The farm and low tuition paid by students does not cover the expenses of the center. Almost all of the buildings were constructed with funds from one or another US and European foundation. Sister Gladys gave us permission to take pictures everywhere we go with them, and she also revealed a detailed, typewritten schedule for our stay. We would tour their school and their farm, visit women’s groups both in town and in a hamlet, and see an agricultural cooperative they had helped found. The schedule also had a day for us to visit the ancient Mayan ruins of Tikal, one of the wonders of the world, which only a three-hour drive away. We also had time set aside to observe the celebrations that are a part of the annual feast of the patron saint of the town, Saint Louis, the 9th King of France.
I read the Office of Readings for the feast of St Louis. He ruled France during the 13th century. King St. Louis was very devout. In a letter, he counseled his son to promote virtue in the kingdom of France and to favor the needs of poor over those of the rich. This holy king died in North Africa on his way to recapture the tomb of Jesus in a crusade. Reflecting on St. Louis, I wondered where are such holy leaders today? Now, we don’t even expect holy men to govern us; in fact, we expect the opposite. In the US, our courts guarantee the freedom of speech for deceptive, commercials, for bawdy sitcoms on television, and for coarse, sacrilegious language. What would have good St. Louis done? And, do our leaders risk their lives by accompanying the troops into battle?
After a light dinner, we went to the 6 P.M. religious services and discover that there are still others working in San Luis, namely, the Combione missionary fathers. About two years ago, the Combiones assigned four priests to San Luis—Father Agustin, (a Mayan Cakchiquel Indian from Guatemala), Father Pedro (from Spain), Father Joseph (from Italy), and Father Jose Manuel (from Mexico). There is also a Spanish Combione brother called Brother Jesus (from Spain), and a lay Combione volunteer named David. David is a young American from Chicago. He teaches English at the Maya Assumption Center in the afternoons and has committed to spending three years in San Luis. There are also two physician Combione volunteers working at the parish clinic. They are a husband-wife team from El Salvador together with their toddler daughter. I had never heard of the Combione missionary fathers and found that they are a newly founded order and they work principally in Africa. Three of the Combione priests and the brother previously worked in Sudan.
The Rosary lasted almost an hour and the mass another hour. The small church was packed, and the music was lively, sounding like popular Mexican music and sung with the accompaniment of guitar, tambourine and a rhythmic tapping from an instrument I could not see. The Rosary prayers were those dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe. The introductory and concluding prayers are different from those in our parish. The Virgin of Guadalupe goes back to just after the Spanish conquests and refers to Mary’s appearing as a young Indian woman who spoke in the Indian language and performed many miracles. Mass conversions followed her apparition. The people of San Luis feel close to the Virgin of Guadalupe. Pope John Paul II has named the Virgin of Guadalupe as Patroness of all of the Americas and also the Patroness of the new evangelization of the world. There was singing after each decade.
After a short break, the Mass started. After the readings including an Old Testament account of Moses leading his people through the Sinai desert, to our shock, Father Jose Manuel stepped back and let a lay religious leader give the homily. The theme for the week is emigration to work in the United States. There are prayers for loved ones working for their families while living in the U.S., prayers for their own safe journey through the desert, prayers for them to be able to preserve a moral life while in the United States, and even prayers for the good people of United States.
After communion and to our complete surprise, Father Jose Manuel introduced us, after all five of us stood up, asked whether one of us would like to address the congregation. He said that we could speak in English if we wanted because many people understand some English because they have lived in the United States. After failing to get my wife, Pia, to talk for us in native Spanish, I took the microphone and went to the front of the church. Speaking in my non-native Spanish, I thanked them for their warm welcome to San Luis I explained that we had come to San Luis and the Maya Assumption Center to visit for just a week. We had come to listen, to understand and to learn. I said that we were well aware of the suffering and exploitation of people working without papers in the United States. We recognize the need for justice. I concluded by saying that just as we pray for our conversion here in San Luis, we also pray for the conversion of the United States.
After Mass ended and Father Manuel gave his blessing, no one left the building. Instead, we were told to wait a few minutes and that food would be served. As people waited, people conversed. I saw that the Sisters and the other Combione priests were spread throughout the crowd and talking with the people. A signal was given and we streamed into an adjoining building that also looked like a warehouse, but unadorned and dingy. There, each of us received two, delicious tamales wrapped in banana leaves and a traditional, hot corn drink. Casting aside the advice of the travel medicine clinic at the University of Pennsylvania, we decided to eat the food and drink the drink. People stood and talked for a time and gradually streamed out into the street. The Tuesday evening religious services and events had lasted two and a half hours, but the experience was exhilarating.
I resolved that I would go to the Rosary Service at 4:30 AM the next morning. Worrying whether I would wake up on time, I was told there would be fireworks announcing it to the town. Back at our apartment, since the water pressure was now too low, I showered by panning water from a bucket while standing in the shower stall. We collapsed into our beds, reapplying our mosquito repellant. We all wondered how well we would sleep in the heat I fell asleep immediately.
Day 2, Tuesday, August 19th
As usual, I am the first to wake up in the morning. Chris is still asleep in the next bed. My wife and daughters are in another room. As quietly as I can, I get up, shower, dress and go to the restaurant, and find out that we can get breakfast in another hotel just a block and a half away. Waiting for the others to wake up, I sit at a table in our hotel’s empty restaurant to pray the divine office—the invitatory, the office of readings and the morning prayers. All of the psalms I pray seem to be emphasizing how much God is on the side of the poor and how God will hear their cry and save them. As for their oppressors, God will utterly destroy them. Knowing Guatemala and its centuries of unbroken exploitation of the Mayan Indians, I find myself longing for the time when God will avenge the poor and set them free. I recalled that Moses did not free his people with revolutionary violence, but by courageous insistence on their freedom and by the power of God acting through nature—they merely watched as the pursuing Egyptian army was destroyed in the sea.
I reflect that, even more than Moses, Jesus did not rely upon violence to defend Himself and his cause, but trusted in God’s saving action. Jesus rejected a violent defense as he was arrested, saying “those who live by the sword will die by the sword”. In this way, by his actions, not just by words, Jesus established a new path, The Way (as early Christians called it), which remains new and totally radical for every generation since Jesus walked the earth. The Way is a fearless confidence that by acting as children of God and if, as expected, enduring persecution with courage, the cause of justice will be victorious. Jesus inspired Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Pope John Paul II—thereby bringing an end to colonial rule in India, to racial segregation in the United States and to the entire Soviet block. So often, Guatemala has fallen into the trap of confronting the violence of the state with the violence of the revolutionary—succumbing to the deception that violence will save. O Guatemala, when will God bless you with a spiritual leader that will really set your people free?
The rest of the family has dressed and we walk to the restaurant for breakfast. We watch to stay clear of the passing trucks, cars and motorcycles as we make our way through the littered street. A radio is blasting out commercials in Spanish. Walls and storefronts are painted with commercial messages, especially the omnipresent “Tigo” for the dominant cell phone brand and for “Gallo” which is the local beer. The five of us sit together around an outdoor table by the road. The menu is simple and very Guatemalan, and the prices are cheap.
As we are eating, Chris declares that he does not really believe in missionaries because they impose their beliefs on others and destroy cultures. In front of our daughters, whose faith is already under constant attack in our secular country, neither my wife nor let the comment pass without rebuttal. We point out that we live in a society where we are constantly bombarded with consumerist propaganda trying to persuade us (and the Mayan Indians) that the path to happiness is to buy, to consume and to have more things. The tidal wave of selling messages encourages us to look good and to indulge ourselves. This commercial propaganda has massive funding and thousands of sales representatives. How can we condemn the effort of a few nuns and priests in San Luis, Peten, who with very limited resources are trying to challenge such values?
From there, the conversation went quickly downhill, and my wife, Pia, wisely grew silent. An hour later the conversation ended with Chris affirming that he believed that human sacrifices by the thousands, such as were performed the Maya (and depicted in the movie Apocalypto), are morally justified because the sacrifices were part of their cultural beliefs. I am surprised, but should I be surprised? In the United States, we have created a new human right, the right to abort over a million defenseless, unborn children each year. So, why not human sacrifices of adults as well? We know that in ancient Mesoamerica, human sacrifices were thought meritorious and the sacrificial victims were cooked and eaten. At that point, I asked Chris what it means to be a good neighbor to those being sacrificed and eaten. We might also ask about what it means to be a good neighbor in Philadelphia where the murder rate is high and there is a culture of violence. And what does it mean to be a good neighbor to Guatemala and Mexico?
Ironic for me, a cultural anthropologist, to be making this argument, given than anthropologists abhor ethnocentrism (namely the idea that our own culture has the best way of thinking or acting). But we can have a false romanticism about indigenous peoples and their cultures. Yet, within every human culture we find the same human foibles. Oppressed peoples are not necessarily morally upstanding. And some cultural traditions are arguably inhuman. There are cultures that have violent conquest as part of their beliefs (such as the ancient empires). There are cultures that subjugate women and the women themselves accept their subjugation (almost all of the cultures of the world), and there are even cultures that have institutionalized the sodomy of boys by older men (such as in certain African tribes).
It seems, I reflect, that cultures have become our new gods. Each culture, even each lifestyle within a culture, has now become ultimate realities that cannot be questioned, gods to be worshipped no matter their objectively negative characteristics. And we have a new syncretism because we feel all of these gods ought to be tolerated, placed as it were within our pantheon. Practitioners of the new syncretism can regard themselves as more broad-minded, more tolerant, in fact, superior to those (such as Catholics, Orthodox, Evangelicals, or Muslims) who believe that there is such a thing as truth. Pilate asked Jesus who he was and Jesus told Pilate that he was the King of the Jews and that he had come to bring truth to the world. Pilate then sarcastically asked, “What is truth?” Pilate’s question reverberates down the ages, all the way to our breakfast table in Santa Elena, Peten.
Thinking as an anthropologist, now, I reflect on how nicely this I’m-OK-you’re-OK syncretism fits with our global economy. We will not act forcefully for human rights in China so long as we can benefit from their cheap labor and loans. We will not act forcefully for human rights in Saudi Arabia, so long as we can benefit from their oil and investments. We will not act forcefully for human rights in Guatemala, so long as we can benefit from its coffee and its meat exports.
In contrast, The Way of Jesus is demanding, just as demanding as it was during the Roman Empire. The Way demands that we not stand by and watch our neighbors being misguided or mistreated. Even worse, if it turns out that we ourselves turn out to be the oppressing Egyptians or Romans of our epoch. Jesus has already told us what he will say to us if we fail to help our neighbors, and by neighbors he meant absolutely everyone we come across. He said, “Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his demons. For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me anything to drink. I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me no clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you did not visit me”.
After the argument with Chris came to a mutually unsatisfying conclusion, we packed to drive to San Luis. My daughter, Pia, was so upset that she cried secretly in her hotel room. I wondered to myself whether I should have left Chris’ original comment unanswered or found a more graceful and earlier exit. I prayed that God would help me wipe away any bad feelings from the exchange. I also prayed that the reality of San Luis and the example of the Sisters of the Assumption would speak more loudly and compellingly than any intellectual disputation.
The drive to San Luis took about two hours. The highway was much better than I expected. The area under reconstruction turned out to be very minor. San Luis itself is a relatively modernized small town. It even has a bank and several pharmacies. The Catholic Church building in the central plaza of San Luis is small and simple, not much better than a warehouse with a corrugated tin roof and rows of hard benches inside. I had to look twice to be sure that it was indeed a church building. We had passed some Protestant churches on our way to the town center, and their churches seemed more churchlike than this small and plain building.
Sister Gladys and Sister Tere were waiting for us as we pulled in front of their house. They said they had expected us earlier in the morning. Sister Gladys, originally from Cuba, seems a strong and decisive woman despite her age of 74 and despite her walking with a cane due to arthritis. Sister Gladys directs the Maya Assumption Center. Sister Tere is originally from Spain. She is middle aged and is also the former Provincial of the Order for Central America, which includes Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Cuba. She is back in San Luis after having had a benign brain tumor removed in a surgery in her native Spain. She has spent many years in San Luis and is glad to be back.
We are taken to the volunteer’s apartment which is located in one of the Center’s main buildings which is located half-way down a steep and uneven, rocky street that leads into the countryside. The volunteer apartment has three medium-sized bedrooms, each containing two bunk beds and a wall of small closets for four volunteers. So, the apartment could accommodate up to 12 volunteers. There is a common room with a combined kitchen, dining and living room. There’s a small refrigerator and sink with countertop. On the countertop there is a toaster oven and an electric stovetop. There is a water purification system. Also in the common room, there’s a sofa, two armchairs, a circular dining table and 5 dining chairs. There is a shared bathroom and two showers, but we found that in the evenings, the water pressure is too low to shower. Even though there is not hot water, the cold shower is relief in the humid, tropical heat.
One window in the common room looks out over the school compound where thirty Mayan Indian young women from outlying hamlets live and study in the Assumption boarding school. The large windows in each of the volunteer bedrooms overlook palm and banana trees. Beyond the trees, you can look over the center’s farm which is partially hidden further down the valley and up the side of the adjoining mountain. The farm is actually quite advanced, using modern methods to raise chickens, pigs and cattle. Profits from the farm have covered almost half of the operating expenses of the Maya Assumption Center. And behind theses trees we look into the Mayan mountains, as they are called, mountains that are low and covered with tropical forest and with parts cleared for planting. Seeing that the apartment is more comfortable than the hotel of the prior night (but without ceiling fans or air conditioning), I told Sister Gladys that the apartment seemed like a luxury accommodation. Smiling, she replied that the volunteers need such accommodations because they often come from first-world countries.
We discovered quickly that we are not the only ones living in the apartment. There is Ana, a young veterinarian from Spain who has been working at the center’s farm for several months and who plans to stay until November. Having found both her personal and professional life unfulfilling, she decided to volunteer at the Maya Assumption Center and take time to reconsider the direction of her life. She looked happy. The Sisters are desperate to find a Spanish-speaking veterinarian replacement for her. There is Andrea from Mexico, just 18 years old. She is helping the students with their homework, especially mathematics and Spanish. Many of the Mayan Indian young women in the school are still more comfortable speaking in their native language. Andrea just graduated from an Assumption high school in Mexico and she plans to stay to volunteer for 10 months, and then continue her studies. She looks as if she is still getting her bearings. As we got to know the volunteers better, we find out that their families were surprised and unhappy that they decided to volunteer. Reflecting again on the shortness of our stay, we again wondered what we would really be able to offer. My 16 year old daughter, Pia, was deeply concerned about this because her Spanish is not strong. Emilia and Chris actually did have something to offer, namely, their workshop on stone carving, but 21 girls had expressed interest and we had only a total of eight stone carving kits (some kits had been carried by Chris and Emilia).
After quickly unloading our bags in our assigned volunteer rooms, we were invited to lunch at the residence of the sisters. We walk through the compound, passing by the school library which adjoins our volunteer apartment within the same building. Also in the building are the center’s administrative offices, where Sister Gladys has her personal office (which I am now using to write these words), a room for meetings and a small store that sells refreshments as well as the eggs and chicken produced by the farm. Walking away from our building and moving deeper into the compound, we pass a large cooking and mess hall for the young women and to the other side a large school hall auditorium with a stage and marimba (the Mayan musical instrument of choice). Walking up the hill, with tropical fruit trees to each side, we take a gravel path into the back of a house that has a small chapel with exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and a circle of benches for praying the Divine Office. Other rooms in the house include a laundry area and bedrooms for some of the sisters. Passing through the house and walking further uphill, we come to a second house with a large kitchen/dining area and a long dining room table where we have an excellent lunch.
At lunch, we meet the other sisters and we find that we are not the only short-term visitors to the center. One of the sisters is Sister Gisela, a Guatemalan in her 30s. She is full of energy and radiates self-confidence. We later find that she is quite musical. With a good voice and playing her guitar, she leads the music during the recitation of the divine office. There is also Sister Meche from Mexico. Sister Meche has a ready smile and shows quiet determination. She always sits with the people at religious services and spends time talking with them afterwards. There is Sister Ethel from El Salvador. She seems too young to have already taken perpetual vows, and I wonder if she is a postulant. But I am wrong. She is actually 39 years old and is in charge of the entire academic program of the Center. And in the afternoon, she teaches classes at the day school that the sisters recently opened for young men and women who live in the town and walk to school from their homes. Sister Ethel also coordinates the youth program for the parish. Living with the Sisters is also a local woman named Hilda. Hilda works in the house, and she is also catechist and also says the Divine Office. She may be considering whether she has a vocation.
Also at lunch and staying in the convent residence are two other women from Spain. One is named Paz. Paz is a sister of Sister Tere. She is visiting Guatemala for the first time. Paz is middle-aged and for many years has been a catechist for the Neocatechumenal Way. Paz just finished working in Ecuador for three years. She was helping three young Ecuadorian families establish the Way in a poor barrio. She and several Ecuadorian families took up residence in a poor barrio with little religious devotion. They found work to support themselves, and then through the example of their lives and of their words of faith, they sought to transform the community. Paz is preparing for her next assignment, which will be do to the same type of work as in Ecuador, but next on the island of Curacao with three Venezuelan families. The other visitor is Paz’s childhood friend, Hortensia. Hortensia is also a member of the Neocatechumenal Way, but has stayed in Spain and in her own parish because of her family and work responsibilities. I wondered whether the Neocatechumenal Way might be for some families in our parish in our parish and resolve to explore it more.
After lunch we sing a prayer of thanksgiving, and Sister Gladys takes us to meet with Sister Tere. Sister Tere’s office is just behind the dining room. We realize that that we are in a much larger house that opens out the street. Sister Tere is in charge of women’s development programs at the Assumptions throughout the territory. Showing us a map on the wall of her office, she explains that San Luis is the largest county (or municipio as they call them) in the Peten. San Luis has dozens of outlying hamlets where people live and work their lands. She explains that women find great difficulty bettering themselves and their families because they must get permission from their men, and the men often prohibit involvement with the nun’s projects. The culture of machismo, she explained, leaves women with very low self-images. For years the sisters worked with the women to encourage them. It takes hours to reach these outlying hamlets where most of the people of San Luis live. When the Sisters first began work in San Luis, they often had to walk to these hamlets. Getting to the hamlets now takes less time because some roads have completed. These are rough back roads by US standards. When it rains, however, many of these roads become impassable. The Sisters’ navigate them with their Toyota truck.
Sister Tere continued that the Q’eqchi Indians that now constitute most of the inhabitants of the territory of San Luis are actually immigrants from the highlands. They began moving into the county about 50 years ago, drawn by government offers of land titles for homesteading. This drew thousands of land-poor Q’eqchi Indians from the neighboring highland territory of Coban. Some of the immigrants to San Luis are also internal refugees from the horrific violence in Guatemala during the late 1980s and 1990s. During those years many Indians found themselves caught between massacres by the Guatemalan army, on the one hand, and selective executions by guerrillas seeking to overthrow the government, on the other.
On a wall of the next room was a calendar that prominently displayed a picture of a priest. I asked who he is. The Sister explained that he is Monsignor Gerardi. He had worked on behalf of the Archdiocese of Guatemala, to collect thousands of accounts of political massacres and murders. Later, I paged through one of his four volumes of accounts from the Sisters’ library. It has been difficult for Monsignor Gerardi to get the witnesses to come forward. The day after Monsignor Gerardi presented his work publicly, he was found murdered at his residence. His head with its considerable knowledge had been crushed with stones. His killers have never been brought to justice. 2008 is the 10th anniversary of his martyrdom. The same calendar, I later found, hangs throughout San Luis. Of the assassination of Monsignor Gerardi, Pope John Paul II stated, “I fervently hope that this terrible crime, which has cost the life of a true servant of peace and a tireless worker for all the different groups in the country, will demonstrate clearly how pointless violence is.”
Returning to issue of the Q’eqchi immigration into San Luis, Sister Tere went on to explain that the original inhabitants of San Luis were Maya-Mopan Indians. The Maya-Mopan refused to get titles, saying the titles were unnecessary because all the land has always belonged to them. But they were wrong. After a number of years, they discovered that they had become landless. As a result, many Maya-Mopan have moved to the neighboring country of Belize, where say they have more economic opportunity.
Now, there is a new land problem. The crops do not generate enough money for the rising consumer expectations of the Maya of San Luis. Electricity, radios, and televisions now extend into remote hamlets. The Maya can now see all the things they do not have and see how happy those who do have these things seem to be. There are now television antennae protruding from wooden huts with dirt floors. The Maya Q’eqchi now want the same things as American—cell phones, motorcycles, cars, fashionable clothes—but they don’t have enough money. One way to get money is sell the land to pay a coyote to sneak a man to the United States where more money can be made and then sent back to the family. The stays in the US are typically for three or more years. If a man borrows the money to get into the US, it may take a year or more to pay back the loan. Then the family can start receiving its contributions. The Western Union office is a prominent building in town.
Who now buys the lands of the Maya Q’eqchi? Sister Tere and Sister Gladys say the lands are now passing into the hands of drug traffickers to grow marijuana and of large landholders to pasture cattle after clearing the forests. The cattle are sold in Guatemala City or nearby Belize. The best meat, the Sisters say, is exported to wealthier countries, including the United States. As I listen, I reflect the global consumer economy will be the true destroyer of Mayan culture. The Mayan culture, we anthropologists know, was based on living on the land, on families working the land together, and on growing corn. This culture extends back thousands of years. Now, the land is being lost, the corn is being replaced by marijuana and cattle, and the men are being exported to the United States. Yet, we are no better than the Maya Q’eqchi. We are susceptible to the same sensual allures and to wanting many possessions. In fact, we already have everything they desire, but we want more. The first temptation of Jesus while very hungry during His fast in the desert was to turn the stones into bread, as Satan slyly suggested. Jesus gave us the answer for all time, when he responded that man does not live by bread alone, but also on every word of God.
After the general orientation with Sister Tere, we met with Sister Gladys to discuss the plan for our stay. I worried aloud what we could offer except the burden of their having to take care of us. Without hesitation, Sister Gladys responded that our visit gives them hope. I was moved because in my heart I had thought the same and had also planned to accompany them and the people of San Luis in prayer. Sister Gladys also made clear that the Sisters needed an update of their brochure to help them raise funds. The farm and low tuition paid by students does not cover the expenses of the center. Almost all of the buildings were constructed with funds from one or another US and European foundation. Sister Gladys gave us permission to take pictures everywhere we go with them, and she also revealed a detailed, typewritten schedule for our stay. We would tour their school and their farm, visit women’s groups both in town and in a hamlet, and see an agricultural cooperative they had helped found. The schedule also had a day for us to visit the ancient Mayan ruins of Tikal, one of the wonders of the world, which only a three-hour drive away. We also had time set aside to observe the celebrations that are a part of the annual feast of the patron saint of the town, Saint Louis, the 9th King of France.
I read the Office of Readings for the feast of St Louis. He ruled France during the 13th century. King St. Louis was very devout. In a letter, he counseled his son to promote virtue in the kingdom of France and to favor the needs of poor over those of the rich. This holy king died in North Africa on his way to recapture the tomb of Jesus in a crusade. Reflecting on St. Louis, I wondered where are such holy leaders today? Now, we don’t even expect holy men to govern us; in fact, we expect the opposite. In the US, our courts guarantee the freedom of speech for deceptive, commercials, for bawdy sitcoms on television, and for coarse, sacrilegious language. What would have good St. Louis done? And, do our leaders risk their lives by accompanying the troops into battle?
After a light dinner, we went to the 6 P.M. religious services and discover that there are still others working in San Luis, namely, the Combione missionary fathers. About two years ago, the Combiones assigned four priests to San Luis—Father Agustin, (a Mayan Cakchiquel Indian from Guatemala), Father Pedro (from Spain), Father Joseph (from Italy), and Father Jose Manuel (from Mexico). There is also a Spanish Combione brother called Brother Jesus (from Spain), and a lay Combione volunteer named David. David is a young American from Chicago. He teaches English at the Maya Assumption Center in the afternoons and has committed to spending three years in San Luis. There are also two physician Combione volunteers working at the parish clinic. They are a husband-wife team from El Salvador together with their toddler daughter. I had never heard of the Combione missionary fathers and found that they are a newly founded order and they work principally in Africa. Three of the Combione priests and the brother previously worked in Sudan.
The Rosary lasted almost an hour and the mass another hour. The small church was packed, and the music was lively, sounding like popular Mexican music and sung with the accompaniment of guitar, tambourine and a rhythmic tapping from an instrument I could not see. The Rosary prayers were those dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe. The introductory and concluding prayers are different from those in our parish. The Virgin of Guadalupe goes back to just after the Spanish conquests and refers to Mary’s appearing as a young Indian woman who spoke in the Indian language and performed many miracles. Mass conversions followed her apparition. The people of San Luis feel close to the Virgin of Guadalupe. Pope John Paul II has named the Virgin of Guadalupe as Patroness of all of the Americas and also the Patroness of the new evangelization of the world. There was singing after each decade.
After a short break, the Mass started. After the readings including an Old Testament account of Moses leading his people through the Sinai desert, to our shock, Father Jose Manuel stepped back and let a lay religious leader give the homily. The theme for the week is emigration to work in the United States. There are prayers for loved ones working for their families while living in the U.S., prayers for their own safe journey through the desert, prayers for them to be able to preserve a moral life while in the United States, and even prayers for the good people of United States.
After communion and to our complete surprise, Father Jose Manuel introduced us, after all five of us stood up, asked whether one of us would like to address the congregation. He said that we could speak in English if we wanted because many people understand some English because they have lived in the United States. After failing to get my wife, Pia, to talk for us in native Spanish, I took the microphone and went to the front of the church. Speaking in my non-native Spanish, I thanked them for their warm welcome to San Luis I explained that we had come to San Luis and the Maya Assumption Center to visit for just a week. We had come to listen, to understand and to learn. I said that we were well aware of the suffering and exploitation of people working without papers in the United States. We recognize the need for justice. I concluded by saying that just as we pray for our conversion here in San Luis, we also pray for the conversion of the United States.
After Mass ended and Father Manuel gave his blessing, no one left the building. Instead, we were told to wait a few minutes and that food would be served. As people waited, people conversed. I saw that the Sisters and the other Combione priests were spread throughout the crowd and talking with the people. A signal was given and we streamed into an adjoining building that also looked like a warehouse, but unadorned and dingy. There, each of us received two, delicious tamales wrapped in banana leaves and a traditional, hot corn drink. Casting aside the advice of the travel medicine clinic at the University of Pennsylvania, we decided to eat the food and drink the drink. People stood and talked for a time and gradually streamed out into the street. The Tuesday evening religious services and events had lasted two and a half hours, but the experience was exhilarating.
I resolved that I would go to the Rosary Service at 4:30 AM the next morning. Worrying whether I would wake up on time, I was told there would be fireworks announcing it to the town. Back at our apartment, since the water pressure was now too low, I showered by panning water from a bucket while standing in the shower stall. We collapsed into our beds, reapplying our mosquito repellant. We all wondered how well we would sleep in the heat I fell asleep immediately.
Pilgrimage to San Luis, Peten, Guatemala
Doug has written:
Monday, August 18, 2008
The three of us, Pia Nicolini (my wife), Pia Brintnall (my daughter) and myself (Doug Brintnall) awake a 4:00 AM to pack the van to drive from Philadelphia to Newark Airport. As we make the drive we pray the rosary together. The intentions of the prayer are for the success of our trip to Maya Assumption Center in the town of San Luis in the Peten of Guatemala. We have never been there before and we have minimal information about it or the surrounding territory. We don’t know the conditions we will find. Sister Gladys, the Assumption Nun who heads the center, e-mailed us that transportation is an issue and it would be preferable if we could rent a vehicle that is able to handle rough terrain and please not to travel at night.
So, we putting ourselves into uncertainty with prayer and trying to trust in Holy Spirit to guide us. But is this pilgrimage really any different than our everyday life? In the United States we have an illusion of certainty when we make a trip and, trusting our own efforts, may forget to ask for God’s help in everything we do. Yet, is our first-world certainty really just an illusion, an illusion that is shattered as soon as the unexpected occurs, and it always does. It is with the unexpected that we are likely to turn to prayer. I guess the only difference is that in our pilgrimage, we have chosen uncertainty and have done so trusting God to turn any evil that may befall us into something good, if not for ourselves then at least for others.
Our five-hour flight from Newark to Cancun is uneventful. Our worry is getting all of our bags through Mexican customs without questions. We have a total of six suitcases, not just clothes but also sheets and pillows. Plus. we have a whole suitcase of school supplies we had purchased at Staples. Spread throughout the luggage we have six brand-new stone carving kits for a stone-carving workshop planned by my daughter, Emilia, and her friend, Chris Terrell. They traveled ahead of us on a flight to Guatemala City and will take a day-long bus ride to meet us in the jungle lowlands town of Flores. My worry is that customs will take us aside and demand tax payment, either in Mexico or Guatemala, which might be costly and also cause delays. The checking of bags is randomized. You press a button and a light comes on either green or red. I say a Hail Mary and press the button. The light comes on green, and we pass through with all of our luggage unopened. We were to have no problems in Guatemala either.
And what if the light had turned red? And then we would have had to open up everything, give explanations, perhaps argue about import taxes, and perhaps pay a tax just to be able to catch the next flight. If that had transpired, our spiritual challenge would have been to accept the cross and bear any injustices with patience and forgiveness. The flight to Flores, just one and a half hours from Cancun, was in a small plane with air conditioning not functioning even close to well enough in the tropical heat, which seemed no less even at a higher altitude. I did my best to be cheerful
Once through customs at Flores, I decided it was prudent to call the Alamo car rental office before going to the car rental location. I was concerned about having made the arrangements via the internet just the day before and without ever talking to a human being to confirm that everything is OK. Calling the local office, I get an automated phone answering system with a menu of choices. I go through the choices wondering how long it will take to get to a human being. I finally get to the choice of speaking to a reservations representative, but there is no answer. I try several times, following other menu choices and always with the same result. It is 4 PM in the afternoon on a Monday. I think to myself that the office must be open. I decide we’ll have to take a taxi and hope that the car is there.
I ask the woman at the airport restaurant for directions to the Alamo office, showing her the local address on the printout. She tells me that they closed their offices because of a lack of business about a week ago! She explains that very few tourists are coming to Guatemala this year, perhaps because of the generally poor economic conditions in Europe and the US. She says this has made conditions difficult for many businesses. She calls long distance to the Alamo offices in Guatemala City (8 hours away by bus). She speaks to a representative who takes my reservation information and says he will call back. But the call is never returned. Sympathetically, the woman finds car rental options for me.
One option is an independent dealer just two blocks from the airport. She refuses to accept any reimbursement for the phone calls and when I ask for her name to be able to say who recommended us to the dealer, she tells me just say to him the “woman at the airport restaurant.” So, she remained anonymous, like an anonymous charitable contribution. She smiled; she was generous with her time; she was helpful with cheerful. Like Mary at the marriage in Cana, seeing a problem she interceded to help, but she herself stayed in the background and did not look for a personal recognition. The car dealer just happened to have the vehicle we needed, a four-wheel drive Mitsubishi SUV that should be able to navigate any rough back roads. Thank you, Lord!
While I’m at the car dealer, I receive a cell phone call from my wife, Pia, saying she is being eaten alive by mosquitoes in the airport waiting area where she is stationed with our suitcases, waiting for me to make the car arrangements. I tell her to open my suitcase to find the insect repellant we had brought with us. We had started taking our anti-malarial tablets a week before. You take a tablet once a week. Malaria is a risk in this part of Guatemala. In fact, the malarial mosquito is making a comeback, not just in Guatemala but worldwide. After World War II, malaria was almost eradicated with DDT. But the mosquitoes evolved! A few were DDT resistant, and their millions of DDT-resistant descendants are retaking the Guatemalan lowlands.
Reflecting on the fall and rise of malaria, I ponder how we Americans have convinced ourselves that we can have quick fixes to problems through our science and technological progress. Yet, so often the gains prove to be short-lived or to have unintended negative consequences, like poisoning our environment and ourselves. How hard it is for us to be patient and careful in technological development! How often businesses rush to make profits off of a new technology? We hope in science. We think we may eliminate disease, that we may extend our lives nearly indefinitely with organ transplants, bionic limbs and embryonic stem cells. In other words, we will save ourselves through our own intelligence and skill, and not through God. Yet, as we pursue these illusions, reality breaks through, the reality that we actually cannot save ourselves and that short-term gains often turn into long-term losses or lead to new, anticipated problems. The suffering servant of Jesus remains the fundamental truth of human existence. Why do we have malaria and then the failure of DDT? Perhaps it is so we can come to our senses, understand who we are, and turn to God.
The car dealer drives us to a hotel in nearby Santa Elena where, ignoring the pained looks of my family, I decide we will spend the night. In the back of my mind I am thinking that I have no idea what our living conditions will be in San Luis and the Mayan Assumption Center. So let’s stay at a poorer hotel as a transition. The hotel is primitive by US standards. It is clearly a place for locals, not tourists, to stay. The rooms are bare, illuminated by a single bare fluorescent bulb. The water in the swimming pool is murky. But they have a ceiling fan and even a wall air conditioner. Even though there is a restaurant, we are told that it is not serving dinner. In the morning we find out that they are not serving breakfast either.
We are to meet Emilia and Chris at the bus terminal in Santa Elena, a short walk from the hotel. The bus from Guatemala City is slated to arrive at 6 PM. We walk to the terminal and they are not there and the bus has already arrived. Fortunately, our cell phones are working, we call and find out they are at the adjoining town of Flores, a place nice enough to attract some tourists because of its beautiful lakefront. Most tourists, however, just fly into Flores, go directly to the Mayan ruins of Tikal, and then fly out without even setting a foot in the town. After picking them up, we go directly to a fancy tourist restaurant that overlooking the lake.
Except for the five of us, the restaurant is empty. We say a prayer before our meal, giving thanks that we have arrived safely and asking that our visit bear fruit for the Sisters of the Assumption and for ourselves. We dine on the local white fish from the lake. It is truly delicious. The fish comes with vegetables and rice. We have bottled water, sodas and beers. Asking what they have for dessert, they say they have ice cream. So we decided for the ice cream. The waiter returned to say that, unfortunately, they actually are out of ice cream. As we ask for the bill, we note that there are still no other patrons in the restaurant. The meal is quite inexpensive by American standards, only $66 dollars for the five of us. We compliment the food and thinking of the waiter, the busboy and the chef working in an empty restaurant, we leave a generous tip. Hopefully, the restaurant workers sense the genuine love of God reaching out to them through us.
Back at the hotel at night, I do the Examen, reviewing the events of the day and how I handled them and where I fell down. On balance, I am thankful it was a good day. Yet, one always wonders about self-delusion. We all have a tendency to see ourselves and our actions in the best possible light. It is so difficult to truly know ourselves. Lord, reveal to me the sins of which I am as yet unaware.
Monday, August 18, 2008
The three of us, Pia Nicolini (my wife), Pia Brintnall (my daughter) and myself (Doug Brintnall) awake a 4:00 AM to pack the van to drive from Philadelphia to Newark Airport. As we make the drive we pray the rosary together. The intentions of the prayer are for the success of our trip to Maya Assumption Center in the town of San Luis in the Peten of Guatemala. We have never been there before and we have minimal information about it or the surrounding territory. We don’t know the conditions we will find. Sister Gladys, the Assumption Nun who heads the center, e-mailed us that transportation is an issue and it would be preferable if we could rent a vehicle that is able to handle rough terrain and please not to travel at night.
So, we putting ourselves into uncertainty with prayer and trying to trust in Holy Spirit to guide us. But is this pilgrimage really any different than our everyday life? In the United States we have an illusion of certainty when we make a trip and, trusting our own efforts, may forget to ask for God’s help in everything we do. Yet, is our first-world certainty really just an illusion, an illusion that is shattered as soon as the unexpected occurs, and it always does. It is with the unexpected that we are likely to turn to prayer. I guess the only difference is that in our pilgrimage, we have chosen uncertainty and have done so trusting God to turn any evil that may befall us into something good, if not for ourselves then at least for others.
Our five-hour flight from Newark to Cancun is uneventful. Our worry is getting all of our bags through Mexican customs without questions. We have a total of six suitcases, not just clothes but also sheets and pillows. Plus. we have a whole suitcase of school supplies we had purchased at Staples. Spread throughout the luggage we have six brand-new stone carving kits for a stone-carving workshop planned by my daughter, Emilia, and her friend, Chris Terrell. They traveled ahead of us on a flight to Guatemala City and will take a day-long bus ride to meet us in the jungle lowlands town of Flores. My worry is that customs will take us aside and demand tax payment, either in Mexico or Guatemala, which might be costly and also cause delays. The checking of bags is randomized. You press a button and a light comes on either green or red. I say a Hail Mary and press the button. The light comes on green, and we pass through with all of our luggage unopened. We were to have no problems in Guatemala either.
And what if the light had turned red? And then we would have had to open up everything, give explanations, perhaps argue about import taxes, and perhaps pay a tax just to be able to catch the next flight. If that had transpired, our spiritual challenge would have been to accept the cross and bear any injustices with patience and forgiveness. The flight to Flores, just one and a half hours from Cancun, was in a small plane with air conditioning not functioning even close to well enough in the tropical heat, which seemed no less even at a higher altitude. I did my best to be cheerful
Once through customs at Flores, I decided it was prudent to call the Alamo car rental office before going to the car rental location. I was concerned about having made the arrangements via the internet just the day before and without ever talking to a human being to confirm that everything is OK. Calling the local office, I get an automated phone answering system with a menu of choices. I go through the choices wondering how long it will take to get to a human being. I finally get to the choice of speaking to a reservations representative, but there is no answer. I try several times, following other menu choices and always with the same result. It is 4 PM in the afternoon on a Monday. I think to myself that the office must be open. I decide we’ll have to take a taxi and hope that the car is there.
I ask the woman at the airport restaurant for directions to the Alamo office, showing her the local address on the printout. She tells me that they closed their offices because of a lack of business about a week ago! She explains that very few tourists are coming to Guatemala this year, perhaps because of the generally poor economic conditions in Europe and the US. She says this has made conditions difficult for many businesses. She calls long distance to the Alamo offices in Guatemala City (8 hours away by bus). She speaks to a representative who takes my reservation information and says he will call back. But the call is never returned. Sympathetically, the woman finds car rental options for me.
One option is an independent dealer just two blocks from the airport. She refuses to accept any reimbursement for the phone calls and when I ask for her name to be able to say who recommended us to the dealer, she tells me just say to him the “woman at the airport restaurant.” So, she remained anonymous, like an anonymous charitable contribution. She smiled; she was generous with her time; she was helpful with cheerful. Like Mary at the marriage in Cana, seeing a problem she interceded to help, but she herself stayed in the background and did not look for a personal recognition. The car dealer just happened to have the vehicle we needed, a four-wheel drive Mitsubishi SUV that should be able to navigate any rough back roads. Thank you, Lord!
While I’m at the car dealer, I receive a cell phone call from my wife, Pia, saying she is being eaten alive by mosquitoes in the airport waiting area where she is stationed with our suitcases, waiting for me to make the car arrangements. I tell her to open my suitcase to find the insect repellant we had brought with us. We had started taking our anti-malarial tablets a week before. You take a tablet once a week. Malaria is a risk in this part of Guatemala. In fact, the malarial mosquito is making a comeback, not just in Guatemala but worldwide. After World War II, malaria was almost eradicated with DDT. But the mosquitoes evolved! A few were DDT resistant, and their millions of DDT-resistant descendants are retaking the Guatemalan lowlands.
Reflecting on the fall and rise of malaria, I ponder how we Americans have convinced ourselves that we can have quick fixes to problems through our science and technological progress. Yet, so often the gains prove to be short-lived or to have unintended negative consequences, like poisoning our environment and ourselves. How hard it is for us to be patient and careful in technological development! How often businesses rush to make profits off of a new technology? We hope in science. We think we may eliminate disease, that we may extend our lives nearly indefinitely with organ transplants, bionic limbs and embryonic stem cells. In other words, we will save ourselves through our own intelligence and skill, and not through God. Yet, as we pursue these illusions, reality breaks through, the reality that we actually cannot save ourselves and that short-term gains often turn into long-term losses or lead to new, anticipated problems. The suffering servant of Jesus remains the fundamental truth of human existence. Why do we have malaria and then the failure of DDT? Perhaps it is so we can come to our senses, understand who we are, and turn to God.
The car dealer drives us to a hotel in nearby Santa Elena where, ignoring the pained looks of my family, I decide we will spend the night. In the back of my mind I am thinking that I have no idea what our living conditions will be in San Luis and the Mayan Assumption Center. So let’s stay at a poorer hotel as a transition. The hotel is primitive by US standards. It is clearly a place for locals, not tourists, to stay. The rooms are bare, illuminated by a single bare fluorescent bulb. The water in the swimming pool is murky. But they have a ceiling fan and even a wall air conditioner. Even though there is a restaurant, we are told that it is not serving dinner. In the morning we find out that they are not serving breakfast either.
We are to meet Emilia and Chris at the bus terminal in Santa Elena, a short walk from the hotel. The bus from Guatemala City is slated to arrive at 6 PM. We walk to the terminal and they are not there and the bus has already arrived. Fortunately, our cell phones are working, we call and find out they are at the adjoining town of Flores, a place nice enough to attract some tourists because of its beautiful lakefront. Most tourists, however, just fly into Flores, go directly to the Mayan ruins of Tikal, and then fly out without even setting a foot in the town. After picking them up, we go directly to a fancy tourist restaurant that overlooking the lake.
Except for the five of us, the restaurant is empty. We say a prayer before our meal, giving thanks that we have arrived safely and asking that our visit bear fruit for the Sisters of the Assumption and for ourselves. We dine on the local white fish from the lake. It is truly delicious. The fish comes with vegetables and rice. We have bottled water, sodas and beers. Asking what they have for dessert, they say they have ice cream. So we decided for the ice cream. The waiter returned to say that, unfortunately, they actually are out of ice cream. As we ask for the bill, we note that there are still no other patrons in the restaurant. The meal is quite inexpensive by American standards, only $66 dollars for the five of us. We compliment the food and thinking of the waiter, the busboy and the chef working in an empty restaurant, we leave a generous tip. Hopefully, the restaurant workers sense the genuine love of God reaching out to them through us.
Back at the hotel at night, I do the Examen, reviewing the events of the day and how I handled them and where I fell down. On balance, I am thankful it was a good day. Yet, one always wonders about self-delusion. We all have a tendency to see ourselves and our actions in the best possible light. It is so difficult to truly know ourselves. Lord, reveal to me the sins of which I am as yet unaware.
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