The Taste of Many Mountains

by Bruce Wydick

  Guatemala had its own reasons to look northward to the United States. As coffee exports to Europe were virtually shut down after the onset of the war, it became essential to find new markets for Guatemalan coffee. Responsive to American interests and in keeping with the “good neighbor” policy now in place between the United States and its southern Latin neighbors, Ubico ordered that all German social societies, schools, and sports clubs in the country be shut down as well as many German firms and plantations. Any German coffee exporters identified on a United States “black list” were forced to turn over the export of their coffee crops to the state. Then, six months after the Americans entered the war, an order came from Washington: All German citizens in Guatemala were to be deported to the United States, where they would be held as prisoners of war until a suitable exchange could be made and they would be sent back to Germany.

  The news hit the Erlichmann family suddenly on June 12, 1942: All German families were to board trains immediately bound for the port of Veracruz on the east coast of the country, where American ships would pick them up for immediate deportation to New Orleans. There they would be transported to internment camps in the United States. Coffee plantations would be ceded to the Guatemalan government, to be held indefinitely.

  Although Friedrich loved Ester, he also admired and respected his father, and strongly desired his father’s blessing on their marriage. And while Otto had not urged them to break off their relationship, he had not yet openly assented to the idea of their marriage. Moreover, the turmoil that had surrounded the family in recent months had taken everyone’s attention off such matters. And all of a sudden, it was time for Friedrich and his family to leave.

  A small group of Guatemalan soldiers approached the house to escort the family to the train station. They were allowed to take only the possessions they could carry. Friedrich and Ester embraced, kissed, and tried to say good-bye. Numb with disbelief at what was transpiring, they seemed almost unable to bear the moment. Friedrich looked at her directly and promised, “Ester, I am Guatemalan, and one day I will come home for you, and we will marry and live together in our country. You must believe me.”

  Hardly able to respond from overwhelming feelings of anger and confusion, she managed to say, “Yes, I believe you, Friedrich.”

  And then he was gone.

  Communication was poor during the war, and the first letter that Ester received arrived nearly eight months later. The news was not good. Otto had died of a heart attack in the American camp while waiting to be returned to Europe. Friedrich’s mother and Irma had been sent to Germany in exchange for some British prisoners taken by the Germans. Friedrich had decided to stay in the United States under an agreement with the American government that any Germans who swore opposition to the Nazi regime and wished to stay in the US could remain in the camps until the war’s end.

  Years passed, and although Ester received a letter every four or five months from Friedrich, her parents—and even Basilio—counseled her to move on. She was twenty-eight now, virtually qualifying her for spinster status in Mayan culture. There were a number of sincere young men in the village who had expressed interest to her father. Even Basilio urged her to consider. But every time a letter arrived from the United States, she grew more recalcitrant to the pleadings of her family.

  The war with Germany finally ended, and then the war with Japan. It had been nearly a year since she had received any communication. One day in November 1945, Ester arose early to begin picking for the harvest. She dressed, cooked some tortillas and beans for breakfast, and prepared to make her way outside to the field. Basilio summoned her from outside. She walked slowly out to the pasture and saw her brother.

  Basilio was holding their bridled buro with a leather hat perched on his head. “Ester, someone has arrived who wants to see you.”

  She saw him as he walked out from behind the stable, took the hat off the buro, and put it on his own head. Both his body and his hair were even a little thinner than when he had left, but he was alive, he was home, and he was well. She saw tears well up in him as he smiled and laid eyes on her for the first time in three and a half years. They walked slowly toward each other, looked in each other’s eyes for some moments with ravenous joy, and then embraced. He held her head against his shoulder and caressed her soft, dark brown hair as her sobs were muffled in his ragged shirt. Uncle Friedrich, brother-in-law of Fernando’s grandfather, had come home.

  CHAPTER 16

  Alex

  July 29, 2007

  LOURDES CAME DOWN FROM THE VILLAGE TO FETCH ALEX to go to church. Sofia was also awake and went with them. They approached a large concrete building at the edge of the center of town that had the words Iglesia Pentecostes painted in purple under the eave. Even standing outside the church the sound vibrations from the amplified music were starting to make their feet tickle. “Have you ever been to a Pentecostal church before, Alex?” asked Sofia in English. He shook his head.

  “Well . . . you’re in for a new experience.”

  As they strolled inside, the band was pounding out the rhythmic pulse of the first song of the morning. The beat from the drummer, a Mayan teenager dressed in a tie and nice clothes, grew in intensity and volume as instruments were slowly added in sequence: bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, tambourine, and some other indigenous percussion instruments that Alex had never seen before. The catchy backbeat drove on awhile as the last people filtered in, and continued in the background as a young pastor strode up onstage.

  “Todos listos a amar al Señor ésta mañana?” he shouted to the congregation. Were they ready to love the Lord this morning? There was a loud roar from the congregation as they entered, but apparently not nearly loud enough. The background rhythm picked up in intensity.

  “I said, ARE YOU READY TO MEET THE LOVE OF GOD THIS MORNING?” He bellowed it so loud and in such close proximity to the microphone that the amplifier severely distorted his voice. This time an acceptably boisterous and collective shout emerged from the church, so voluminous that it caught Alex off guard. The few times he had been to a church, it was full of quiet old ladies and an aging priest, sleepwalking through a set of harmless but banal rituals. To say the least, this was an altogether different atmosphere. Furthermore, nearly everyone in the crowd seemed to be under thirty, another aspect he found surprising.

  The band ratcheted up both volume and beat another notch. The bass player, drummer, and other percussion instruments played with the synchronicity of pistons in a four-stroke engine. A young Mayan woman in a colorful, gypsy-like dress strutted onstage playing a tambourine to the complex beat, perfectly syncopated to the pulse being laid down by the band, and went into a frenzied dance while chanting in an unintelligible language. Was this a Mayan dialect or was she speaking in tongues? Alex really had no idea. Regardless, the band was really cooking now. Some parishioners, many of the women wearing the Sunday best of their colorful indigenous clothing, began to dance around the aisles and others just stayed in one place subtly swaying in rhythmic gyration to the tandem pulse of the bass and percussion.

  Lourdes looked over and smiled at Alex, and raised her eyebrows in a smile that suggested, “Well, here we are in my world. Does it suit you?” While Alex wasn’t exactly comfortable, he was engaged enough in the general atmosphere of things to genuinely smile back. He looked over and saw Sofia clapping with the rest of the congregation and dancing around a little bit in front of her seat. She seemed to feel at home, so to hell with self-consciousness, he might as well too. Alex began to clap and even sway with little baby steps. Some words finally appeared on an overhead projector at the front of the room and the people started to sing enthusiastically as the jumping and dancing continued. The band cranked up song after song, each more fervent than the last.

  During the animated time of worship, several people went up to receive prayer, for what Alex couldn’t tell. A couple of them fell backward after receiving prayer, apparently fainting. They were caught by some ushe
rs standing behind them who seemed to be prepared for it. The people were gently pulled away from the altar toward the side of the church. The ushers’ hands supported their shoulders as their feet dragged along the floor, blissful expressions illuminating their faces as the band continued to play. After more than an hour, sweat poured down the faces of the worshippers; now it was time to sit down for the sermon.

  The sermon was a little long, a little loud, and more than a little confusing to Alex for both linguistic and theological reasons, but he tried to understand as much as he could. After church, they had lunch with some of Lourdes’s friends at a comedor near the Hotel Chinita. Alex enjoyed Lourdes’s friends. They were friendly to him and asked him lots of questions about Europe. Outside of the church, they seemed completely normal.

  After saying good-bye to Lourdes, Sofia and Alex walked back to the hotel. “Well, are you glad you went?” she inquired with a smile.

  He glanced at Sofia with an awkward look on his face. “Yes . . . you know, believe it or don’t, I am glad to go.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Angela

  AFTER A NUMBER OF WEEKS OF HARD WORK IN THE FIELD, Sofia asked the group, “How would you guys like to spend the weekend in Panajachel?”

  Angela eagerly anticipated the trip. It was a place she had read about in the travel guides, located on the rim of spectacular Lake Atitlán, one of the most beautiful lakes in the western hemisphere, surrounded by breathtaking volcanoes.

  They made their plans together for travel, and the next Friday they were headed back down the Pan-American Highway toward the lake, about four hours away. Angela was put in charge of ground travel and made sure that they upgraded their journey this time from the usual chicken bus to a Pullman, which departed from the city of Huehuetenango, taking them straight to the lake.

  They hopped up into the bus, which had individual seats made of comfortable suede, contrasting with the green vinyl bench seats of the chicken bus. It had a restroom of sorts in the back. Assuming their passengers needed to be visually entertained throughout the journey, it came with a television monitor mounted above the first row of seats, visible from the front half of the bus. Apparently judging that hair-raising vehicle passes on the winding mountain roads didn’t sufficiently spike the adrenaline of the passengers, the video entertainment for this trip was a series of grainy, yet uncommonly violent, kung-fu movies poorly overdubbed in Spanish. The movies were densely packed with a truly extraordinary number of fights per scene. Angela tried to have a conversation with Sofia, but the volume being at least two to three times what would be comfortable for the normal human ear, precluded the possibility of any normal conversation. The groan from each body blow and nunchuck strike reverberated throughout the bus. Angela noticed, however, that many of the Guatemalans, even the older Mayan women, seemed captivated by the film series.

  Rich yelled up at the bus driver to turn down the volume, “Señor, puede bajar el volumen, por favor!” Angela laughed at Rich. The driver’s attention was difficult to attract above the chaos of the movie. Moreover, his concentration was singularly focused on tailgating and aggressively overtaking every vehicle that lay in his way, especially the lower-caste chicken buses with inferior horsepower. But after a few of Rich’s shouts, the bus driver, without acknowledgment or emotion, reached his arm over and adjusted a nearby knob, setting the volume at a compromise that was perhaps only 75 percent louder than normal.

  As the bus turned south off the Pan-American Highway and began its winding descent into the Lake Atitlán basin, Angela gazed for the first time at one of the most breathtaking landscapes in Central America. Enormous volcanoes ascended from the shores of the large, pristine Lake Atitlán, over nine thousand feet into the clouds. The sheer natural beauty of it produced a pleasant new feeling inside Angela; she felt almost proud to be related in some small way to the breathtaking natural beauty unfolding before her.

  Small Mayan towns adorned the flat aspects of the encompassing mountain range, hazy clouds of smoke rising above them from hundreds of small household fires. Angela could see several large ferries crossing the lake in different directions, taking local residents and tourists from one lake town to another. It was the easiest method of transportation, for there was no easy access through these steep mountains by road. Although she had been to Lake Tahoe in California, even Tahoe in its deep blue enormity was no visual match for Atitlán.

  They wound down toward the lake through the regional capital of Sololá, finally arriving in Panajachel. For the bohemian connoisseur of indigenous American art and handmade tourist paraphernalia, Panajachel was a mecca. Shops hawking everything from backpacks to purses, from pajamas to hacky sacks—all constructed from handwoven Guatemalan textiles—lined Calle Santander, the main street of the town. Angela was bewildered by the variety of textures and colors of indigenous Guatemalan handicraft. It again made her proud, that people in her native country were so adept with art. She laughed with Alex, who looked like he’d gone to heaven as he purchased a pair of pajama bottoms made from patches of pink and purple indigenous textile.

  There were lots of North American and European tourists, almost all seemingly in their twenties. The only exceptions were a few older ones who, she learned, had fled to Panajachel during the late sixties to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War. Entranced by the easygoing lifestyle of the place, they never returned home.

  The four checked into an inexpensive guest house just off of Calle Santander. The rooms were a little musty, and the beds were even harder than at the Hotel Chinita, but it worked for a weekend.

  It was dinnertime, and Angela was famished. She and the others slowly ambled down the main street toward the water looking for a suitable restaurant, taking in the sights and smells, trying to pull Alex away from the bin full of multicolored hacky sacks. They settled on the Sunset Café, located right on the lake with a perfect view more than ten miles across the water of the Volcán San Pedro, one of the enormous peaks that lined the lake.

  The place had drawn its usual Friday night crowd, and they had to wait for a table. The students mingled with the others in the queue. Angela watched as Alex struck up a conversation with an American wearing Levis with holes in the knees and a collared shirt with Mayan patterns. He and Alex appeared to be engaged in an animated conversation about social justice issues.

  Alex brought him over and he introduced himself to the rest of the group. “How ya doing—Gary Kautsky from the State University of New York.”

  The first thing that Angela noticed about Gary was that he was an extraordinarily hairy human being. Along with his shoulder-length hair, an unbroken carpet flowed from underneath his nostrils down to a voluminous mustache and beard that covered his lips, which in turn fully connected with the chest hair protruding from his open collar. He looked to be in his early thirties and wore narrow wire-rimmed glasses and spoke with an East Coast accent. He reminded Angela of a late sixties John Lennon strutting fully bearded across Abbey Road.

  When he introduced himself to Angela, she could sense his eyes lingering on her birthmark. Get past it, buddy, she thought to herself.

  Rich interrupted and offered his hand. “What do you study, Harry . . . I mean, Gary?” Angela suppressed a giggle as Sofia elbowed Rich hard in the ribs without breaking her smile and eye contact with Gary.

  “Yes . . . well . . . sociology. Doing my dissertation on fair trade networks and alternative movements to, you know, the normal exploitative commodity channels. Alex says you’re doing something similar in economics?”

  “For the time being, yes, I suppose we are,” Rich offered.

  “I’m Sofia. Pleased to meet you, Gary.”

  Angela noticed how the focus of Gary’s attention now seemed to rest on Sofia. She wore a tank top that night and her long brown hair now fell softly over bronzed shoulders.

  “Are you also an economist?” he inquired. Angela surmised that Gary was probably hoping for something closer to sociology.

  “Yes
, I’m at Berkeley in the same program as Rich. Most of my work is in development.”

  “Wait . . . are you Sofia Cavallera?” he asked.

  Sofia nodded. “Er . . . yes.”

  “I read your paper, the one that applies semiparametric estimation to understanding causal effects of development program impact. It was suggested reading at an international social sciences conference I went to. Math was a bit over my head, but the paper has some interesting ideas.”

  “Thank you,” Sofia replied.

  All conversation was drowned out temporarily by a pickup truck rolling by with a loudspeaker announcing a church service later that evening.

  “These evangelicos crawling all over Guatemala drive me nuts,” Gary observed.

  “Why’s that?” Sofia asked. Angela recalled that Sofia had grown up as a pastor’s daughter, but had shared her disenchantment with some of the preachers on American television, where, as Sofia had put it, “the ratio of spiritual encouragement to hair gel was a little low.” Even so, she told how she had been introduced to a place in Berkeley called the Spirit Garage, where she had met some of her good friends who joined together on Sunday nights to sing songs, pray, and take communion. It was a little mysterious to Angela; her own family was mildly Catholic but not particularly religious.