by Bruce Wydick
“That would be, in fact, almost all of the land,” noted one council member.
Isidro began to speak. “We will rise up and destroy the coffee that is on our lands, restore the lands for hunting.” His voice was growing louder and more confident as he now looked squarely at each member of the council, even Santos Kayb’il. “We will restore them for producing our own food, and not fanciful drink for the Europeans.”
After Isidro yielded the floor, Santos Kayb’il surveyed the room. There were some shouts of acclamation; others nodded in agreement.
“So it will be.”
It was never clear which member of the council leaked word of the plan to the provincial administrator. But two days later, fifteen militia arrived at the house of Santos Kayb’il. One grabbed the throat of his wife as she answered the door.
“Donde está Kayb’il?” Speaking with a strong accent from Spain, a heavy officer drew his face about three inches from her own and demanded to know where her husband was.
“Yo no sé,” she answered, claiming she did not know, but terrified at the ladino militia.
“Are you lying to us?” said the officer. She stood there petrified, able to say nothing. They slapped her several times and threw her to the floor. “Check the field,” he ordered.
There they found Santos Kayb’il about two hundred yards behind the house, hoeing in his milpa. The officer shouted sarcastically: “We have your wife. Would you like us to take her to the prison in Retalhuleu, or would you like to come in her place?”
“With what am I charged?” he had demanded to know.
The officer replied coldly: “Insurrection.”
The militia followed this pattern for other houses of council members, but the ten-year-old son of another council member ran to Isidro’s home.
“Isidro, Isidro!” he yelled in Mam, running as he approached the home. “They’re taking away the council members to jail! They took papa, they took all the council!” He was crying, breathless, and hardly able to speak, but appeared relieved that he was able to reach Isidro before the militia.
“Who?” asked Isidro.
“I don’t know, ladino soldiers with rifles. I’m not sure. They have Santos Kayb’il. They’re taking all of them away in wagons.”
Isidro grabbed his wife and children and all of the food that he could carry in a small sheet, which was about all the food that their house contained. They fled into the forest. One of his daughters returned to town after several days to ask for food from family friends. She returned with food and word that the militia had departed and were no longer actively searching for members of the council.
In total the militia had rounded up more than sixty indigenous men from San Felipe and neighboring towns: members of the council, and friends of members of the council who had scuffled with the militia as they loaded the council members in wagons, as well as the friends of these friends who fought back as their friends were being taken away. All were shackled and hauled to the regional prison in Retalhuleu.
While Isidro’s family returned home, Isidro helped spread the word throughout San Felipe and other neighboring indigenous towns: “Tomorrow night, we assemble to free the prisoners and take back the censo land as our own!”
The next night arrived, and Isidro Ixtamperic had been able to amass a group of two hundred men from San Felipe and the nearby indigenous towns of San Francisco Zapotitlán and El Palmar. Many rode on horses. Most carried torches and the same machetes that they used during labor in the fields. Some carried slings with rocks, and a few had rifles. Many had been drinking heavily. The smells of liquor, the sweat of horses, and burning pitch filled the night air. Years of indignation, suppression, and abuse were now boiling over and manifesting themselves in a fuming horde.
Isidro raised his voice over the roar of the mob, dispatching parts of the group to nearby coffee plantations. The major part of the contingent, and those on horseback, he took with himself. Many in the contingent were coffee field hands who had labored beside Isidro under the habilitación. They headed first to the coffee plantation of Póncio Mendoza.
Mendoza allowed a handful of his mozos to live in a shack in front of his property, partly as protection against such an occurrence, but that night his guards had been drinking heavily and were fast asleep. They never heard the mob as it approached the plantation, but Mendoza heard it and from an upstairs window saw the horses and their torch-bearing riders assembled at the plantation gate. He attempted to usher his wife quickly through the back door. But as she delayed a few moments to collect some jewelry for their escape, it was too late. The mob had encircled the house. They smashed in the front door, charged through the house, and found a terrified Mendoza and his wife hiding in their bedroom. They hauled them out into the yard in front of the porch.
Isidro drew up to Mendoza as the flickering light of the torches illuminated both of their faces. Isidro’s expression burned with anger, while Mendoza looked horror-struck at seeing his docile mozo so enraged. Mendoza recognized some of his own workers in the crowd and pleaded with them, offering to cancel their debts, even offering them coffee land.
“Usted no comprendes, mi patrón. We toil for you daily to repay the habilitación with our labor, and somehow we work and work and always remain in your debt. But you never pay the censo to our community for our land. Not even one time have you paid it. No, Señor Mendoza, in reality it is you who owe us. And we have come now to collect on your debt.”
As Mendoza continued to plead, they forced the couple to a nearby tree and lynched the husband and wife side by side. They returned to the house and looted their possessions, taking money and jewelry, anything they could carry. When they left, they set fire to everything, leaving the two solitary bodies hanging in the flickering orange light of the burning house.
After this the mob rode off to the regional prison twelve miles down the road in Retalhuleu. But neighbors had spread the word rapidly about the lynching of the Mendozas, and the news quickly reached the local municipality. Receiving a tip that the mob was headed for the regional prison in Retalhuleu, local officials wired a telegraph message to Guatemala City beckoning for aid. Officials in the capital then quickly telegraphed an order to a nearby military base to immediately dispatch a company of soldiers to the prison.
The central government had purposely designed this rapid-response system for such a contingency. And it was something that Isidro and his company had not anticipated. A force of several hundred government soldiers was quickly marshaled and awaited the mob at the prison gate. When they arrived at the prison, the soldiers easily quelled the drunken mob, detaining the leaders. Isidro Ixtamperic was identified and arrested as the ringleader, and shortly after, he was sentenced to death by firing squad on the compound of the Retalhuleu prison on one count of arson and two counts of murder.
But his name remained a legend among the Mam for decades.
CHAPTER 12
Alex
IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON BY THE TIME FERNANDO FINISHED the story. It dawned on Alex that he had been so wrapped up in it that he hardly moved, and his right leg had fallen asleep. He looked over at Angela, who had seemed to latch onto every word of Fernando’s narrative. Alex got up to stretch, feeling the pain of the pins and needles as the blood circulation returned.
“Lourdes, mi hija, would you fetch me some eggs at the tienda?” asked Juana.
“Sí, Mama.”
Alex explained to Fernando and Juana that he was a bit hungry and would like to get a snack at the tienda, and would they mind if he accompanied their daughter? Regrettably at this particularly inopportune moment, it seemed the idea did not translate well. Fernando gave Alex a quizzical look as the room burst out in giggles.
Alex looked over at Sofia for help. “Sofia, tell me what did I just say?”
Sofia looked at him. “Unfortunately, it was something very close to ‘Do you mind if I am hungry for your daughter?’ ”
“Estoy extremadamente embarazado,” he conf
essed to the room. The giggles were now replaced by a thunderous laughter.
“Alex?” said Sofia, looking genuinely sorry for him.
“Yes?”
“You just announced that you are exceedingly pregnant.”
Little Ema’s laugh was the loudest and most contagious. Alex looked helplessly at the petite nine-year-old girl who couldn’t help laughing uncontrollably at the foreign man who did and said so many silly things. Lourdes was the one to rescue Alex, dragging him by the arm out the door in the direction of the tienda, shaking her head, still laughing herself and wiping the tears from her eyes.
The tienda was about half a mile away. It was a tiny store owned by a family that operated it out of the side of their house, selling food, soda, and bottled water. They purchased their items, and Lourdes asked him, “Do you want to walk down to the arroyo? It is quite beautiful; I would like to show it to you.” It was a little creek not far away.
They sat down on a fallen tree, watching and listening to the water trickle over the round, polished rocks in the arroyo. Ferns adorned the banks of the creek, and a gentle moss covered the logs and boulders that surrounded the water, creating a lush carpet of green everywhere around them that smelled of fresh forest. An orange sunset provided a canvas for the shadowed outline of some willows that hung over the water. They sat in silence for a while, enjoying the sensory delights of the arroyo.
Finally Alex asked, “How do you feel about the baby?”
“God gives life, Alex. Sometimes even through sin. But he has a bigger plan. Even my family has had to learn this.”
“Your family must be eager to see justice done to this man.”
“I had to forgive him, Alex.”
“You what?”
“After it happened, I went to his cell. It was hard for me at first to look at him, I must confess to you. But I forgave him. I have myself been forgiven; it was the right thing to do.”
“And?” Alex asked.
“He cried.”
“But you choose to have this baby. Why?”
“There is a purpose in every life, Alex. The baby will be loved by all of us. In the end with my family there is always grace and love.”
Alex thought for a moment. “Your family is different than mine, Lourdes.”
“How?” she asked.
“If such a thing should happen to my sister, my father or mother would of course offer to pay for an abortion. But if she for some reason chose to keep the baby, they would not have supported her as much as your family. She would probably live alone somewhere with the baby. Somewhere in Amsterdam, somewhere in an apartment,” he guessed.
“That apartment sounds like a lonely place,” said Lourdes.
Alex reflected for a moment. “I believe my family was a lonely place.”
Lourdes glanced down at Alex’s arm. “But I’m not sure you would like being in my family. They do not like tattoos,” she smiled.
“Oh, that. I got the sea serpent with some friends after a party. Let’s say I was not in a very discriminating frame of mind. Do you like it?”
“No,” she said, still smiling at him just the same.
Here it was again, the mysterious separation of transgression from tenderness.
Alex laughed, helped her up off the log, and they headed back to the house.
CHAPTER 13
ANGELA NOTICED HOW THE RAIN IN GUATEMALA DIDN’T fall randomly throughout the day and night like it did in California. The months that North Americans call summertime—June, July, and August—are what Guatemalans call winter. She learned that it was not because the weather is colder during this time, for the temperature remains virtually the same year-round, but because this is when it rains. Ninety percent of Guatemala’s rainfall occurs from April to October. She became used to the regular pattern, the rain starting its pitter-pat like clockwork at about two every afternoon, and gradually increasing in its intensity until about four. About four thirty, the sun typically made a brief reappearance and then set quickly around six o’clock in its vertical arc perpendicular to the horizon. Combined with the extensive comida that everyone unhurriedly ingested with their family around one o’clock, it created a substantially reduced workday for the average person. But for students with a limited number of weeks to complete their fieldwork, it made for soggy afternoons and wet clipboards.
Most of their time each day was spent walking the steep paths between the fincas of coffee growers, taking surveys of coffee production costs, household data, and coffee yields. Despite the rain, Angela enjoyed this time in the outdoors, free from the burdens of her problem sets and papers and the assorted anxieties created by the constantly impending deadlines of graduate school. The coffee growers were generally cooperative and found the students to be a novelty. Many appeared to take a curious interest in the students’ interest in them. And outfitted with her Gortex parka and heavy leather hiking boots that she had wisely purchased for the trip, the warm rain didn’t bother her much.
After a month of surveying, interviewing, and compiling coffee production statistics, the students had collected coffee data from over a hundred members of the cooperative. One grower belonging to the cooperative, Guillermo Ixicuat, had been randomly chosen for a case study, and lived about fifteen miles outside of the town. The last ten miles of the trek were impassible by jeep or even by horse or mule, except with a very experienced rider, and so had to be taken on foot via a narrow walking path through the high jungle. The four set out before dawn that day under the steady guidance of José-Ernesto.
Alex noted the size of Rich’s pack, which was quite hefty, especially since they planned to return that night. “Rich, do you plan to leave us and continue hiking all of the way to Mexico with that backpack?”
“Yes, didn’t you guys know? Rich is carrying out his own simulated experiment on illegal migration by foot from Guatemala to the Tijuana border,” said Sofia.
“Hey, Rich, what have you got in that gi-normous mochilla of yours?” asked Angela, piling it on.
“Stuff,” Rich replied, his mind apparently on something else despite the teasing.
“Like what kind of stuffs?” probed Alex curiously.
“Like stuffs we might need.” He added a little extra twang to the last couple of words to indicate the tinge of annoyance. “Funny how same people accusing me of hauling the county hospital around are usually the ones later needing meds for their tummies or moleskin for their blisters.”
“Keep an eye out for snakes,” José-Ernesto said as they left their four-wheel-drive vehicle and walked along the narrow path.
“Snakes?” asked Sofia. She turned to Angela. “I like almost everything about fieldwork, except . . . . that,” she said. Angela looked at her face. It was clear she wasn’t joking.
José-Ernesto led the group with a machete, hacking bushes, vines, and small branches away from the trail as they made their way up the side, through the wet brush, and over the pass of a large mountain. Angela wasn’t sure if José-Ernesto had made the comment about the snakes because there really were snakes to be concerned about or just to liven up the hike a little.
“Couldn’t we have randomly chosen some growers a little closer to San Pedro?” Angela asked Rich.
“Well, if we would have done that, it wouldn’t have really been a random sample, would it?” replied Rich. “Being lazy and cutting corners. Great way to introduce bias in your study. You think living way out here in the bushwhacks ain’t correlated with impact?” Angela got the point, and there was a pause in the conversation for a while.
“Are there really snakes here?” she asked outside the earshot of Sofia, and in English so José-Ernesto wouldn’t be offended. To be honest, she was a little concerned too.
“Are you kidding, Junior Trekker? You got your different coral snakes that are all more than plenty venomous, your coffee snake—bright red as a fire truck but luckily not nearly as poisonous as it looks—just freaks the heck out of you when you come across it by surprise.
Then you got your Guatemalan palm pit viper that likes to bite barefoot people between their toes and sink its venom right there in that little tender spot. And that’s forgetting to mention the barba amarilla, or yellow beard, that’ll drop a full-grown man stone hard cold to the ground with a single strike to the leg. Probably what we’ve got slithering around up here is your common Godman’s montane pit viper, which the Mayans call the Sheta. Not quite as venomous as the yellow beard, but let’s just say you wouldn’t want it curling up with you in your sleeping bag.”
Angela was surprised Rich possessed such a wide-ranging knowledge of Guatemalan snakes, and now a very large part of her wished she hadn’t brought it up. But it gave her more confidence that José-Ernesto knew what he was doing.
Less than an hour later, Alex and Sofia were engaged in a conversation, walking slightly ahead of José-Ernesto on a relatively spacious part of the trail. Alex was first in the line of hikers with Sofia following right behind. Suddenly everyone in the back of the group heard a yell from Alex up front. Then Sofia screamed and yelled something Angela couldn’t understand in Spanish. Angela knew immediately what it was.
Sofia sprang back away quickly from the snake and immediately looked like she was about to pass out. Angela saw the brown snake with black spots that Alex had casually stepped over in his shorts. It now was raising its head to strike him on his bare leg. The viper missed Alex, extending its lean body across the trail after the attempt. José-Ernesto quickly ran to the front, expertly trapping the Godman’s montane pit viper directly behind the head with the V-shaped notch at the bottom of his walking stick. Pinning the snake to the ground with the stick in his left hand, he reached blindly behind his back for his machete with his right hand. The back end of the snake flicked and thrashed about from behind the notch. José-Ernesto raised up the machete and slashed off the viper’s head, kicking it into the woods with his boot.