Postcard from the Achisphere

The computer screen shows the sharp green peaks of a sound file, with five seconds highlighted. The man in front of the screen turns to the man in front of the microphone. "Ronohey?" he asks. The first man nods. We have been recording excerpts from the Rabinal Achi, an epic poem passed down orally from more than 3 centuries before Columbus, older than the Canterbury tales. The poem is in the Maya language Achi, as is the word "Ronohey" all of it. In addition to the green sound squiggle, the display contains a controller with universal recording icons ("Red Triangle, Black Square") familiar from tape and CD players. The computer operator occasionally uses pull-down menus written in Spanish, but mostly uses icons and wave highlighting, which are independent of language. Much of what he does could be done by some one illiterate, or illiterate in Spanish. And when the two men discuss operating the computer, many of their words are in the same language as the 800 year-old poem we are recording.

Another day I travel in the back of a pickup with a friend to a rural village forty-five minutes from town, where he teaches first grade. All but three of the students speak only Achi and he teaches them in that language: teaches the alphabet, simple words and a few nursery rhymes "Katzenoj we lik katkikotik, ha ha ha!" It occurs to me that although the words are foreign, much of the non-verbal content of the class: the pictures, the activity, even the tune of the song ("if you're happy and you know it") would be recognizable to a teacher in the United States. Like the computerized recordings, these social technologies can be transplanted into all sorts of cultures without separating children from the voices of their grandparents. Of course the classroom is much more basic than anything in the United States and the morning refreshment (a cup of atol cooled over an open fire and served in cups students store and wash themselves) reflects a school system where there was a telethon a few years ago so students would have pencils.

The question of bilingual education in this valley is reminiscent of the issue in the United States. In the US the question is to what extent it is necessary for brown people who speak Spanish to master English, the language which dominates culture and business. In Guatemala the question is to what extent it is necessary for brown people who speak Achi, or other Maya languages, to master Spanish, the language which dominates culture and business. And my friend says, most of the peasant farmers recognize the importance of Spanish for life beyond their valley and want their children to be fluent. Much of the pressure for bilingual education comes from more urbanized people who live very differently from their parents and for whom language is one of the few things connecting different generations. But in places like this, theories about bilingual education matter less than teaching staff. Although most students start off with no Spanish, the fourth grade teacher only speaks Spanish, so all the class takes place in Spanish. Some time is set aside for learning Achi names of plants, but she cannot direct or inspire them having anything beyond a third-grade conversation in the language of their ancestors.

The Rabinal Achi drama is still performed, by people wearing masks and elaborate feathered costumes, and the man we recorded is one of the ones who helped keep the oral tradition alive. During January a few dozen people watched the drama in any single performance, one morning it seemed half the people watching were foreign. At the same festival the mayor sponsored another "Dance" with a huge sound system, roped off and a dozen or so people in Halloween style masks and Costumes moving to booming techno beats. Thousands of people pressed against the ropes to see that performance, without quite so much traditional significance. Of course that is much more in line with modern ideas of spectacle, and in the US as well more people watch the spectacle of WWF and Monster Truck rallies than Shakespeare or recitations of the Canterbury Tales. And even in Shakespeare's time the loudest applause was probably not for the things people study in literature classes.

Throughout the Rabinal Achi, both peoples speak often of nuhuyubal, nutaqahal: my mountain, my valley, to denote where they are from. The play tells the story of how the Achi people won their independence from the much larger K'iche people of several western valleys, who had dominated them for several centuries. The story focuses on a single symbolic event in that battle: the capture of a K'iche warrior by a local warrior, the Rabinal Achi, and the K'iche Achi's execution as a prisoner of War. This is a reminder that war and conquest were not European invention—and would have played a role in the last five centuries of history on this continent even if Columbus had stayed home. But it is significant to compare how different peoples speak of war and battle. The K'iche prisoner of war who dies at the end has many more lines than the Achi characters... as if Beowulf had been devoted more to the words of Grendel and his mother, rather than the eponymous hero, or the Song of Roland had talked about the glory and faith of the Muslims rather than caricaturing them as vicious idolaters. Here the captured prisoner speaks, is killed, and his words are recorded by those who kill him. Unlike European War stories, those who preserve the words of the foreign warrior do not need to describe their enemy as a sub-human monster in order to assuage their guilt about killing him.

The way in which the traditional languages and folkways have survived despite the influx of globalized technology is visible throughout the valley. There is a new supermarket, owned by the Walmart Chain, well-integrated into the streetscape, a metal-roofed two story yellow building between older one-story tile roofed buildings housing a doctor's office and an internet cafe. No sea of parking, just a mass of bicycle and motor cycle taxis (tuc tucs) in front of the entrance. Inside you see women in traditional clothing and headgear looking at the plastic-wrapped frozen foods in the freezers and tall shelves, the way other women examine salted fish in wicker baskets in the centuries old market two blocks away. I take a minibus out to one of the outlying communities, and listen to people chattering in Achi as the Korean-made minibus speeds the dirt roads past adobe houses and cattle pastures with too many plastic bags. Many items from beyond Guatemala make it into this valley, the market is full of CDs from Mexico, t-shirts with WWF figures like John Cena, the Marine, even the Argentinian Che Guevara. But to the people who make a livelihood selling these things, like the minibus drivers, or the man who runs the internet cafe, these items by themselves are not necessarily evidence of cultural erosion. I am sure that when the Rabinal Achi first celebrated the defeat of the K'iche army the markets of this valley were filled with trade goods such as weavings, cooking pots, maybe even songs, from the many valleys of the K'iche nation. Some of these no doubt out-competed the products of this valley, but a Rabinal musician playing a K'iche song is still a Rabinal musician. A Rabinal vendor selling CDs from Mexico or cellphones from Norway is still a Rabinal vendor. The products come from many valleys: some Achi, some K'iche, some Yankee. Some patterns of commerce enrich the residents of this valley, others do not. I suspect some one driving a minivan earns more than some one working for Walmart, some one selling internet time more some one than selling John Cena t-shirts. And if I am wrong in those specifics, it is questions like that which matter more for the economic health of the valley than the origins.

Seven scenes from Rabinal

In May, before corn planting began I walked out to help prepare the fields. People talk about how the Maya are amazing walkers, but I usually went walking with other foreigners and seldom saw them make the impressive treks to work in their cornfields. This day, however, I followed a boy of about ten to his father’s cornfields. The trail followed the top of a descending ridge for about an hour. There were cornfields on the opposite hillside, irrigated from the creek running in the gully between the ridges. We descended the sloping field towards the gully and begun cutting vegetation with our machetes to clear the ground. Ferns and brushes we sliced like weed-whackers, along with shorter trees. When we came to thicker trees we cut off their limbs. I watched the boy who had guided me climb up a pine tree, cutting off limbs as he climbed. He cut several inches from the trunk so the remaining stubs could serve as a ladder the next time some one climbs the tree. The tree was short and he only climbed about thirty feet, but I have seen men climb much higher. Sometimes people strip the needles from pine branches to carpet their houses or patios in green for birthday parties or religious festivities. Meanwhile his father worked on a deciduous tree, but caught the branches before they fell and hung them from the stubs so the large branches wouldn’t have to be hauled out of the way for planting.

A few hours later the mother came down the trail carrying a large basket on her head. We ate rice and beans with tortillas, sitting on the ground that would provide next years beans and corn. The basket was woven, but the food and drink were in plastic jars. I remember months ago seeing the omnipresent plastic water jugs and being saddened that people had abandoned their traditional pottery. After realizing how much more breakable and more expensive earthenware jugs are I understood why plastic would be favored for everyday use and abuse even if it is disappointing to tourists. And I realized that the earthenware jugs were used because they were available and functional just as plastic jugs are today. And if the colorful plastic tinajes aren’t historical, they are part of contemporary culture in the villages. However while the coffee was transported in plastic, we drank it out of guacales. Guacales are bowls made from the thick fruit of the moro tree, which plays a key role in the Maya foundational legend, the Popol Vuh. The hard globular fruit is cut into hemispheres, hollowed out, painted, and coated with a natural shellac made from a local river-dwelling insect. In the Rabinal area, the red bowls with black and yellow designs are used to drink almost every hot beverage. These drinking bowls are slightly cheaper than modern mugs, not to mention prettier, and functional when you hold a drink and your hand and blow across the wide surface to cool it off. They are less functional around tables, since the rounded bottoms can be difficult to balance on the table when eating a meal, however. Unlike the water jugs this traditional item has not been displaced by a plastic or mass-produced equivalent.

After enjoying lunch we worked on, pausing for a snack of a few sweet mangoes about midday. Then, after weed whacking about an acre, the seven of us started up hill as the chill of evening set in.

I should point out that many families lack access to land, or have fields much farther than the one hour walk I took. These fields were put up for sale about ten years ago and many families in the village bought adjoining parcels. On the other hand, slightly more affluence has its own pitfalls. The family I worked with that day can’t afford chemical sprays. In another community where many people have relatives in the states, and thus nicer houses and disposable income I walked with the women carrying baskets of food to the workers at lunch time. In this one family three of the men were traversing the steep stony fields with backpack sprayers. In a few hours the herbicide eliminates days of machete work. As in much of the third world, chemicals which have been banned in the US for years are available at cut-rate prices in Guatemala. No one was wearing gloves, or goggles, or masks, though everyone carefully rinsed their hands before sitting down to eat the delicious-smelling chicken soup—sitting on the rocks of the cornfield they were spraying.

II
Electrical bills can be a problem, not because people use a lot of electricity, but because the hook up fee is usually six times the marginal usage. This would still arguably be cheaper than buying candles, though of course the money goes to the city. However there are some inconsistencies in the bills: bills for one month were sometimes inexplicably seven times greater than other months. And because there is no mail service in the villages, paying bills often means taking a day off to pay in person. Most of the houses have electricity, but some of the more memorable dinners took place in those which did´t.

We ate our tortillas as darkness fell, our faces painted orange and gray by the dancing flames of the cooking fire. Then the father dipped a small scrap of wood in the fire and set it on a rock. The brightly burning five inch piece of wood illuminated the whole room with an amber glow much brighter than a candle. This was first time I saw ocote, another item mentioned in the Popol Vuh. Ocotes are pieces of pine wood cut from trees heavy in resin, so they burn readily with a great deal of light. They are used to start fires and also as torches, and give a distinctive smell. After an evening of prayer at church, each family group often carries a bundle of ocote. It feels very different than the focused white-yellow beam of a flashlight, and watching sets of orange flames on a far hill moving with the half-illumined family groups can be amazingly beautiful for an observer. That night several shims of ocote, each in their turn, illuminated our dinner, and our conversation.

III
I am halfway down the mountain and sitting on a stool cut from a tree trunk and watching a man twist fibers over an upturned sandal over his knee. Little by little the eighteen inch strands form a rope, which will in turn be woven into a string bag. A generation ago the fibers were made from the leaves of maguey, but few people raise the plant in these parts anymore, and the man is using thin plastic pieces of a modern “burlap sack.” This is another example of evolving tradition, the raw materials have changed, but the process has been preserved. The man complains that few of his sons’ generation know how to make these bags, that few still wear the broad-brimmed hat, that among their peers many prefer to speak Spanish rather than their Maya mother tongue.

IV
I am sitting outside an adobe hut in the valley talking to a woman about the disappointing corn harvest, and the latest episode of pig-stealing. I ask about the sewing machine in the corner. It is an old treadle Singer, with intricate curving ironwork supporting a nicely detailed wooden box and the old black mechanism with shiny inlay. In our country these machines sewed many handmade clothes in our grandparents’ day and now sit in antique stores, perhaps awaiting a new life as a table, but unlikely to ever return to their original purpose. Here in Guatemala not only are old ones still working, I’ve even seen stores with new models. The ironwork supports are much simpler and all the lines are straighter, but they are immediately recognizable. Part of the story of Central America is told when you walk past a store and see a pedal sewing machine being sold next to a large flat screen TV.

“It was that and my azodon which kept my family alive after my husband was killed. I sewed blouses for cash to buy firewood, and used the azodon in my cornfields.” Today she is using the sewing machine to make a long purple skirt to be worn by schoolgirls in the independence day parade of a local school.

V
I once thought I heard the sound of a dot matrix printer as I sat shelling squash seeds by a cooking fire in a dirt-floor adobe house. The next day I wandered inside and found out why. The computer sat on a makeshift wooden table, with the cover off while some one repaired the disk drive. It seemed an odd artifact in a village where the doors don´t have hinges and the few windows have shutters but no glass. It turns out people decided the computer for the local school would be safer in a house full of people than in a school building empty and unguarded at night.

VI
There are few foreigners in Rabinal, but almost all stop off at the internet café at some point. Nonetheless, a majority of the patrons are Guatemalan, some playing games, some sending emails, and some writing on reports for school. (In the anonymous crush of the capital, some patrons of internet cafes are also viewing pornographic movies, but that seldom happens in the close environment of provincial towns). Sitting at the terminal I send emails to friends, read political commentary, google William Morris, and read weblogs from Iraq. Then I walk by the cashier to pay.

A few weeks before a friend saw a man in the café staring at a large black and white photo of a man’s face. You often see these framed in people’s houses—enlargements of photos from old identity documents, made to memorialize those who died in the violence twenty years ago. Some were killed in sudden massacres in the villages, others abducted on the streets of town and never seen again. A recent excavation at the army base on the west side of town uncovered seventy-eight corpses tossed into a well. In most cases their clothes had not rotted although the bodies had. After two decades all that remained of the dead were pieces of cloth and these would be laid out in the town hall in a few days in hopes that people might come to identify their deceased relatives by their clothing. This man is contemplating the photo of his disappeared father and debating whether he dares to go to look for him in this grim exhibition. Many of those responsible for the deaths are still in positions of power and influence and unlikely to look kindly on anything which might lead people to discussions of things they might have been involved in. Witnesses had identified the parts of the base most likely to contain other mass graves, but excavations had to be postponed when the mayor fenced off those areas to graze his cattle. He graciously allowed the forensic team to excavate elsewhere on the base.

At the end of the exhibition the half of the bodies remain unidentified.


VII
Leaving the internet café I walk out into the market square at night. The east side is dominated by the white triangle of the tallest building in town, the Catholic church. Four chapels, Santos Domingo, Sebastian, Pablo Apostol and Pablo Martir flank the stone-paved market at the four corners. I walk past a few brightly lit metal carts with gas grills offering french fries, fried chicken and tacos. Further on another well-lit counter has blenders for smoothies. Along the south edge is a band of twelve foot square shops in the one story market buildng. A few merchants still have their wares set out under florescent lamps. I venture deeper into the market. Most of the light blue wooden tables are empty, but at a few women sell dinners of beans, eggs, or rice, potato turnovers or bowls of chicken soup. Here in the center of the market no one has electricity, so the tables are lit with candles stuck at odd angles between the baskets, bowls and trays. Women move the candles as necessary to get at the bowl of beet salad.

I head for the women selling atol—the traditional drink made from ground corn: a white, creamy beverage which tastes very good drizzled with chili sauce. Like the coffee brought to people working in the fields it is stored in blue plastic jugs insulated with towels. And like that coffee it is drunk from the traditional red guacal, made from the moro fruits which became the talking skull of a deceased hero in the Popol Vuh. The women laughingly exchange with me the few words of Achi I know. “Ah Nayo, Utz a Wach?” The atol is cheap, about 6c, and I am a regular customer. They scoop my atol out with one guacal and pour it into another to cool it down, like the practiced moves of an expert pizza-maker spinning the dough. As the bowls move up and down, the atol pouring between them looks more like white taffy expanding and contracting than the liquid it is. I sit against a table opposite the atol venders, along with a few others enjoying the night. I look above the tarps which stretch above the stalls to protect them from rain, over the one-story shops at the edge of the market and see the half-moon hanging in the sky. Sitting at the computer screen two hundred feet away I was connected to people doing the same in other countries and continents. Sitting here in the candlelit market, sipping atol from a guacal and looking up at the moon, I feel my link with those in this valley who doing the same in other centuries.