We stood outside waiting for the bus. It was my last day in Chiquimula, the Guatemalan town where my friend Marcuse served out his time in the Peace Corps. His house was at the top of a hill above the town, and from where we stood, we could look over what had been his dominion for the past 30 months. It was his last day here. He was going home. Below us, whitewashed houses with red-tiled roofs covered the small valley. A big white Catholic church stood above everything. The headstones of the cemetery lined the top of the ridge opposite us. In the early morning sun, everything looked fresh and clean, and the mountain air was crisp. It seemed idyllic. A picture-perfect Mayan village in the Guatemalan highlands. But I had been on those streets and seen the mangy dogs picking through piles of refuse, looked through the dark doorways of those adobe houses and seen the families with irregularly running water and electricity. I had stepped over Bolos(drunks)passed out in the gutters, soaking in their own urine and vomit. I had eaten in the comedors next to the Catholic church, with a view of the town jail. But still, in my 3 weeks, the place had gotten under my skin, and I was sad to be leaving. "Jaime!" the children would call out in greeting from the doorways and rooftops as I walked down the streets. "Adios!" I would answer back with a wave.
None of us (Marcuse�s fellow volunteer Cruz had joined us) was looking forward to riding the bus all the way into Xela, the 2nd biggest city in Guatemala, and about 1.5 hours away by bus. Not that the distance was really that far. But for the first 20 kilometers the road was dirt and potholed, winding down through the mountains. The buses were recycled US school buses, repainted in outlandish colors. You sat 3 to a seat and one in the aisle. Many of the seats were just barely attached to the floor of the bus, and often you could look down through the holes under your feet and watch the road pass slowly(oh, so slowly) beneath you. It was a bumpy, loud, miserable ride, you were often sharing a seat with livestock,all anyone wanted to talk about was "What does this cost in American, what does that cost?" and occasionally, you got stuck next to a gregarious drunk who really liked touching your face. It was a bumpy miserable ride, so we were delighted when one of Marcuse�s neighbor�s stopped in front and waved us into his van.
Vans and old pickup trucks ran a regular taxi service down the mountain to Cuatro Caminos, where we could catch a bus for Xela. The pickups are only slightly preferable to the buses. You can fit around 20 Guatemalans in the back if everyone stands up. But this was a van. We would be travelling luxury style. And it turns out he is going all the way to Xela, so we won�t even have to switch at the crossroads. We are feeling good. Cruz is going into town to buy some furniture to outfit his place. I am on my way to Guatemala City, where I will take a bus to the Mayan ruins of Tikal, and then on to Belize, before heading northward again in the general direction of Chicago. Marcuse is on the way to a nice weekend with his girlfriend before heading back to the States. He is bragging about having spent 30 months here and surviving unscathed. No pickpockets, no robberies. I had my daypack stolen out of my hotel room the week before. There was nothing in it but books, clothes and hygiene supplies, so it was an annoyance more that anything else. I guess it was foolish to think I could spend 3 months South of the border and get away scotfree. I had ridden the feared Mexican subway and not been pickpocketed. I had ridden a night bus through Chiapas and not been stopped by guntoting banditos. But now I had my robbery behind me, and it was relatively painless, so I figured it would be smooth sailing from here on out.
The van starts to fill up. It was only wishful thinking that we would be able to make it all the way in relative comfort. Soon the I am squeezed next to Marcuse and 3 Guatemalans. Everyone is on there way to San Francisco, the next major town down, for the Friday market, reputed to be the biggest in Central America. The van is bursting with Mayans.
My first clue something was wrong was when my friend started swearing profusely. That�s not really unusual, the swearing. He has the mouth of an Irishman. But this was a different kind of swearing.
"Fuck me! Not on my last fucking day! Cocksucking bastards!"
I looked up and out the window. Two men in black masks were running toward the van with guns, waving it to the side of the road. I looked at Marcuse.
"Hide your money." He told me.
"Its all in my money belt, what do I do?" The men were by the side of the van. One grabbed the driver, pulled him out and threw him to the ground. The 2 others, opened the back door and told everyone to get out.
"It�s too late," Marcuse said as he shoved his wad of Quetzales between the seats, "Just hope they don�t find it."
We all piled out of the van. I looked around for Marcuse or Cruz. We were being told to go and lay face down on the side of the road. I wanted to get near one of them. My Spanish was not so good, and probably less good when there is gun being waved in my face.
A man pointed his pistol at me and waved me along. We were not the first car to be pulled over. There were two others that I could see, and already 50 people were lying in the dirt. Cruz was too far away, and I wasn�t going to argue with the guy and his gun. Marcuse I couldn�t see.
I remember things moving real slow. Like when you�ve just heard someone close to you has died. Everything was sort of a blur. Sounds seemed far away, like I was on the other side of a thin wall.
I lay down in the dirt. Cars were still being pulled over. It was a very busy road on market day. Lots of people going back and forth carrying lots of money. Which is why this is a common spot for hold ups. The police are aware of the problem. But it is only indigenous people being robbed. Most of the police are ladino. They either don�t care, or, not unlikely, they take a cut of the loot.
So a man is going down the row of people saying "Pisto! Pisto! Pisto!" I know this is slang for money. I take the 20 Quetzales(about $3US) I have in my pocket out and put them on the ground in front of me. He comes by and picks it up. Maybe this is all they will get. I have all my things on me. In a neck pouch under my shirt, I have my passport and $40 in Travellers Checks I was going to cash. In the money belt, tucked under the front of my pants, I have 2 credit cards, $600 in Travellers Checks, and $400US cash.
All the Mayans are crying and praying to God. I can hear Cruz saying "Tranquilo, Tranquilo."(Calm down, Calm Down). The woman lying in front of me keeps kicking dirt in my face. The woman next to me cradles her baby under her. I look up to see what�s going on, then realizing that looking around is probably not proper hold-up etiquette, I quickly put my head back down and resume counting the grain of dirt in front of my face.
I start to say a prayer. Then I realize I don�t mean it. It�s not that I don�t believe in God. I just don�t believe in a God that reaches down and manipulates things like a giant game of chess. If God is there, and I think he is, He is more of a presence. Maybe not even that. Not even a consciousness, at least not the way a person would think of a consciousness. God just "Is." It�s funny. I have been pondering the idea of God and what I believe a lot lately, and now in the middle of a robbery, I have an epiphany. Things are clarified. God is . . .
I hear more shouting. More cars are being stopped. The robbers are getting nervous. There are more people than they can handle. One of them is making his way back down the row of people. He is rolling people over onto their backs and searching them.
"This is it," I think to myself. This is where I lose it all. He is on me. He grabs my arm and jerks me over. The gun is in my face. He is very small. He is telling me to take out my money. I look up and think how easy it would be to grab him, pull him on top of me, and disarm him. I am only an average sized American, but Guatemalans are all very small. I have 50 pounds on the guy. I could be a hero. They would build statues of me. I could grab the gun, shoot him, and then pick off the . . .Oh yeah. There are 5 other guys with guns. And for all I know, they didn�t have the money to buy bullets for all the guns, not an uncommon dilemma for the small time Guatemalan crook. And for all I know, this guy is low man on the totem pole when it comes to bullet rationing. His gun could be empty. And where would that leave me?
He is patting down my chest, the breast pockets of my shirt. He is tentative, almost like he is afraid of me. Maybe he knows what I am thinking. He misses my neck pouch and moves down to my pants pockets. The money belt is flat against my waist. He is reluctant to get near my crotch. Heading him off, I reach into my pockets and pull the lining out to show him there is nothing there but the case for my contact lenses. He looks at me questioningly and reaches to take the case from my hand. "For my eyes," I say in Spanish, "lenses for my eyes." He seems to understand. He kicks me back over onto my stomach.
I feel a rush of relief. I am going to get through this allright. Then I start to think about all the things in my bag. My camera, my film. I am going to lose all the pictures I have taken. I am pissed off. I am going to lose all my clothes. I am going to have to go home. Everyone told me what I was doing was dangerous. "Why do you want to ride a bus all the way to Guatemala? Don�t you watch the news? Are you crazy?" Before I left, my Dad had sent me the US State Department travel advisories on Mexico and Guatemala. They were full of all kinds of bad things that could befall you. I got price updates on airline tickets from my relatives. "Oh, it will be fine. The news only reports the bad things. The State Department has to say those things so they don�t end up on Dateline NBC across from Stone Phillips asking them "So why didn�t you let people know that they might get robbed." As if it doesn�t happen in the US every day.
And now here I am. I start to plan what I will do. Go to the Counsulate in Xela. They will put me on a bus to the embassy in Guatemala City. There they will put me up in a hotel and then fly me home. Everyone will say I told you so. And I still had so many things left to see. These bastards are going to ruin it all.
I am really upset about losing the film. And now I am starting to get worried. I wasn�t really scared before, just dazed and disbelieving. Now I wondered, "What will happen if they come down the line again, and search me more thoroughly." It would only make sense. I am one of 3 gringoes out of what must now be 200 people here on the side of the road. I am probably carrying more than 100 of them combined. And the robbers should know that. Gringos are all rich. What if they search me again and find my money, and realize I held out on them the first two times? Will they beat me? Probably. Will they shoot me? Maybe. I am a little concerned. I wonder what it feels like to get shot . . .
And then it is over. They are telling us we can get up and leave. They have run off into the woods. I look for Marcuse and Cruz and we go back over to the van. The bags inside have been dumped on the ground and searched. I find my backpacks. I look through. Nothing missing in the big one, but that was all clothes. The small one had my camera and film. I found it. They had pulled out some of the books I had on top, which revealed more books, and given up. My camera and film were still there at the bottom. I had lost nothing.
Marcuse lost his Peace Corps issued pager. Cruz lost nothing. While we were standing there, an old woman asked me if I had a towel. I didn�t know what she wanted it for, but I had one, so I gave it to here, and from that point on had to dry myself with a shirt every time I showered.
We piled back into the van. Marcuse�s money was still there. We looked at each other and laughed with relief. We had all apparently thought about being heroes. Marcuse said if he heard a gunshot, he would have been up and off into the woods, which he knew well. I said that if I had heard a gunshot, I would have just got up and dove down the slope, figuring they wouldn�t pursue and couldn�t hit a moving target through the trees. Marcuse cursed some more about being robbed on his last day.
The van pulled to a stop about 100 meters up the road. The driver got out. All the trucks had stopped. The men all gathered in a group in the middle of the road. They were mad. This was the 3rd time the driver of our van had been robbed. He had a bullet hole in his dashboard from the time he tried to swerve around them. So sometimes they do have bullets.
I saw the men picking up rocks. They want to go back. They outnumber the gunman by over 100 to 6. They figurq they can lynch them. "They can�t shoot everybody," one said.
"Marcuse, they respect you," I say," Go and talk some sense into them."
Marcuse gets out of the van. I see Marcuse reasoning with them. I see them talking to Marcuse. I see Marcuse go over to my bag and get the machete he had given me. I see Marcuse waving the machete over his head. Marcuse is going to lead the charge. Cruz is out and about to join them as well. I want no part of it. I will take my bag and walk the last kilometer if I have too.
Marcuse�s good sense prevails. He reminds the men that while the robbers can�t shoot all of them, they can shoot some of them. Everyone gets back into their vehicles and we go down to Xela.
When we get out, I have no Quetzales to pay the driver. I feel bad. I give him $5US, which is way overpaying. Marcuse, Cruz, and I go to the Mennonite bakery. We figure we deserve a treat. I buy some brownies and some cookies. We go to the internet caf�. Marcuse sends an email message to his pager, now in the hands of the gunmen. "Where are you now, Bitch?" he writes in Spanish. We have a good laugh. We regale the caf� denizens with out story. We sit outside in the park and eat our baked goods. It feels like we should be doing something. But what do you do? You go on. It seems weird but that is all there is to it. I will go to Tikal and onward, Cruz will buy his furniture, Marcuse will see his girlfriend and return to America. It is funny. It is a good story. That�s about it.
Marcuse will call the Peace Corps and let them know what happened. The police have ignored the robberies until now, because it was only Mayans. But now US citizens have been robbed, specifically two members of the State Department. The US Ambassador will mention to the president of Guatemala that he would appreciate it if the police put some extra patrols on that road during market days. And it will be done. It is sad, but, as a man told us "Such is life in Guatemala, such is the reality."