In the fall of 1992, Kay and I attended a Spanish language school in the city of Quetzaltenango in the western highlands of Guatemala. The school we went to focused on teaching Spanish as a way of introducing people from other countries to the realities of daily life in Guatemala. We quickly learned that the Mam people, who founded the city centuries before the Spanish conquest, called it Xela. We were hosted by local families, and Kay’s family household included two young kids, much to her delight.
During our two-week session, we’d meet at school in the morning for lessons, go home for lunch, then meet up again most afternoons to explore Xela by foot and mini buses. Walking through Xela, we talked constantly about what we saw. Xela is full of churches, and dominant Catholic practices there have clear indigenous influences. One day we came across a parish festival where this was especially obvious, and we followed the procession for a long time. Kay was fascinated by the major role of religion in peoples’ lives, and tensions between the dominant Catholic church and fast-growing Evangelical congregations spreading with support from conservative churches in the US. There was also coffee shop Kay liked to go to, both for the coffee and because local teens came to practice their English with tourists. When someone asked her name — ¿Ques es tu nombre? — she’d say “Kay,” and the person would repeat the question. She’d say “Kay” again, then laugh and explain that in English, Kay was a name, and the conversation would go on from there.
Toward the end of our stay in Xela, to share the American tradition of Thanksgiving, she decided to make a pumpkin pie for her host family. We dedicated our afternoon walks to finding ingredients, and with a few modifications she managed to bake something close to what she’d make at home. She said her family ate it politely, but seemed puzzled by this way of preparing squash.
When our classes ended, we took a bus further into the highlands for a few days to visit Santiago Atitlán, a Mayan town on the shore of Lake Atitlán. Like many buses we saw there, ours was an old yellow American school bus, called “Blue Birds” (because they’re made by the Blue Bird Company in Georgia). These elderly school buses were not built for steep, rocky, narrow mountain roads and accidents were common. On our way up into the mountains, we passed a bus that had gone off the road, and were happy to arrive in Panajachel safely. From Panajachel we took a ferry across the lake to Santiago Atitlán. Three volcanos surround the lake basin, and the landscapes were stunning. Once we arrived, the streets there were full of life, and many people around us spoke Mam. The market stalls lining many of the streets were packed with beautiful weavings, fabrics, carvings, paintings, and other crafts. Kay bought a wooden jaguar that she carried around for the rest of the day (I think it still lives in Bruce’s living room). We visited a womens’ collective, an NGO, and lots of galleries.
The next day we visited Maximón, a Mayan deity housed and cared for by the family elected by the community for this honor for one year. To visit Maximón, you have to find out where he is and how to get there. When we paid our respects, Maximón resided in an enclosed patio in a modest home on a back street in a neighborhood we had some trouble finding. He was attended by several men, and several men and women from the community were sitting in his presence, praying and chanting softly in Mam. Maximón enjoys drinking and smoking, so we brought him cigarettes and a bottle of spirits along with our cash offering. One of his attendants poured him a drink from the bottle we brought, and another lit a new cigarette for him whenever the previous one burned down.
Our lakeside hotel was outside of town, a lovely collection of stone cottages. We swam and talked and felt so very lucky to be there. It was also strange to realize that less than two years earlier, 13 Indigenous people had been massacred by Guatemalan soldiers stationed in the area less than a mile up the road, a part of the brutal civil wars in the region at the time. In Guatemala, the military targeted Indigenous communities and areas with Indigenous majorities explicitly. I had worked with refugees fleeing this violence during the 1980’s, and seeing vestiges of what people had told me about, in Santiago Atitlán and other places, was sobering for us both.
Soon it was time to return to Xela to pack our things and head home, Kay to Tacoma Park, and me to California. It was Kay’s suggestion to go back via the Yucatan Peninsula (not exactly the most direct route) and visit Tikal National Park on the way. I’m grateful she did, and will never forget walking among the incredible pyramids and ruins of the ancient Mayan city there, a vast area now covered in thick jungle. On our last day, after climbing up the massive stone steps of one of the pyramids, we noticed we were literally sitting among the tree tops, surrounded by toucans sitting in the branches – a perfect ending to an amazing trip.
