Visiting and Remembrence in Rabinal

Leaving Flores at 6am, and three buses later, I walked up the front steps of the organization Qachuu Aloom (Mother Earth) where Aaron and Sarah have spent the last 4 years working on permaculture projects with the community. Tragically, I only had two days to spend there, but Aaron, Virgilio, Julian, and Maria Magdalena gave me the whirlwind tour of the organization, their demonstration site, their homes, the cemetary, and the museum.

Rabinal is perhaps known best for 3 different things. The first is the food. They say here you can eat the cheapest in all of Guatemala. And it´s true, even the beer is cheaper. Second, the Rabinal Achi is a 4-hour epic dance that has occured here for generations. It tells the story of an Achi prince captured by the Quiche who falls in love with their princess. It happens once a year, and since UNESCO named the dance a world cultural heritage site, many more tourists have arrived each year, though the rest of the year Rabinal remains pretty much off the tourist circuit. The third, and less mentioned, is that this area was amongst the most affected by the violence of the armed conflict. The government, under the guidance of General Efraín Rios Montt, carried out massaces in every village near Rabinal between 1981 and 1983, some completely eliminated and others losing hundreds of their mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters. The community Museum pays tribute to those lost in this difficult and complex struggle, and remembers those who committed these horrific acts against the people of the campo.

As I wove through the contryside on my way out of town after two days of visiting, I could only help but wonder... if these hills had eyes. Luckily, there are strong people here working to hold accountable those responsible, despite regular death threats and the few results they are able to obtain from the new governments/international community.

The City of Sounds

I finally left Livingston after three days of intoxicating sun, beer, and the cheapest, freshest, seafood I have ever heard of. Seriously, Im talking fish the size of footballs for five bucks, mounds of buttery garlic shrimp barely contained by the plate, and crabs, well I guess the crabs were fairly run of the mill.

After a boat tour of the Rio Dulce, some hot springs, another stop at Ak´Tenamit, and a long 5 hour bus ride standing crammed in the aisle, I arrived in Flores, the entrance to the enchanted Maya ruins of Tikal. I passed the night in town, and got to the park by 5am in order to climb the highest temple in the known Mayan world and watch a gorgeous sunrise over the dense tropical jungle. Today, unlike the sunrise from the peak of Tajumulco, was a crystal clear sky that the vastness of could not be captured in a photo...though I tried. Really, that place is big.

Regina and I spent the rest of the day trolling around the island town of Flores, taking a canoe out on the river, and making another hike up to an un-excavated temple with a beautiful view of the lake. Tomorrow, to the fertile grounds of Rabinal where I hope to visit a few friends, and learn about one of the last Achi Maya pueblos.

La Buga, aka Livingston Guatemala

In the local Garifuna tongue, its called ´La Buga´, or ´The Mouth´, but most maps still show the name of the English explorer Samuel Livingston who set eyes upon the town hundreds of years ago. From my first moment taking the boat across from Puerto Barrios, I was lucky to meet Joseph Castillo, a Belician activist and leader who believe it or not studied at Michigan State years ago! He has made it a point to give me a crash course in Garifuna culture, including where I´m sleeping, introductions to community leaders, best local food spots, and a private peek at the newly developed Garifuna Cultural Center not yet open to the public. He is on his way back to Belice to work on a project keeping local tourism development along the coast from eliminating a small Garifuna fishing community that has existed for nearly 200 years. I am pushing on to spend a day with the community of Ak´Tenamit, a local Q´eqchi´ village that has created their own schools, health care, ecotourism, and micro-economy, after generations of neglect from the Guatemalan State. And from there, The Peten.

Cowboys and the Copan Ruins

After skipping town in Antigua, I headed for the Easterly scenery of Zacapa, mainly to visit a friend of my cousin Michelles. Their family turned out to be as fantastic as anticipated and left me with a basecamp to set up at while checking out other sights in the area. This part of Guate has a couple main currents: the lowest amount of indigenous people, and a comboy fervor where it is far from uncommon to see a bus driver/shop-keeper with a six-shooter tucked in his belt.

I left my things with Oscar and the fam, and headed across the border into Honduras for a couple days, just long enough to check out the Mayan archeological sites that flank the quaint touristy town. This set of ruins, most notably, contains the longest written record of Mayan history in the discovered World, encompassing 72 steps of a brilliant stone staircase and spanning 200 years of local history. One large chunk is missing, releaved of its natural surroundings by a Harvard exploration team in the late 1800's, and now on display at the Peabody Museum in the States.

Also randomly, I ran into some familiar faces from the lake this morning here in Copan, so we are going to a concert tonight, and then Ill be on the road tomorrow for Tikal and the other wonders of the Peten. Saludos.

Colonialism and Volcanoes in Antigua, Guatemala

If you ever find yourself spending a lengthy amount of time in rural Guatemala and feel that some sort of transition would be helpful before the complete culture shock of returning to the fast-paced North American atmosphere, then Antigua is your destination. With streetscapes that reminisce of Ann Arbor in Spring time, and just as many swanky bars and blond-headed patrons that inhabit them, I was not surprised at all to find a menu that consisted of chai lattes and nutella crepes. The colonial influences in the once capital of Guate are well preserved and the cobble stone streets have wreaked havoc on my foot dragging tendencies since the moment I arrived. Yet all of this dwarfs in comparison to the fact that a mere hour outside of the city you are able to get as close as your skins heat shield will permit to flowing streams of active lava at Volcano Pacaya. Yes, Im serious, there is lava flowing from the crater of this volcano and we climbed up mounds of volcanic rock to stand next to brilliant orange streams of molten earth. A picture would be so much better right now. Sorry. Next stop, Zacapa followed by Copan...Oscars family, the black Christ, and Mayan ruins. More to come.

Only 3 Weeks Left

I realized that my time here has nearly expired and after 2 and a half months I got to know 2 different places quite well. The only thing is, there is much more to learn and more friends to visit. So for the next 2-3 weeks, I am going to become super-cliche, super-tourist with camera flung over my shoulder and Nalgene clipped to my hip, and try to make a grand circle of Guatemala, starting here at the Lake and leaving me exhausted and broke at my plane come May 4th. Here´s the list of destinations:
Coban (Mayan ruins)
Semuc Champey (supposedly the ´most beautiful´ place in Guatemala)
Rabynal (the cheapest place to eat in Central America...another piece of objective info ;)
Tikal, El Mirador (Mayan ruins)
La Finca Ixobel (great place to chill in a hammock)
Rio Dulce, Livingston (beautiful and new culture...Garifuna)
Copan (more ruins and beach)
Zacapa (my cousin Michelle´s friends)
Guatemala City (Academy of Mayan Languages and airport)

See ya´ll soon. I´ve got lots of good pics to share.

McDONALD’S USA AND ITS PRODUCE SUPPLIERS TO WORK WITH THE COALITION OF IMMOKALEE WORKERS

ATLANTA – The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), and McDonald’s USA, working with McDonald’s produce suppliers, today announced plans to work together to address wages and working conditions for the farmworkers who pick Florida tomatoes.

Beginning in the 2007 growing season, McDonald’s USA, through its produce suppliers, will pay an additional penny per pound for Florida tomatoes supplied to its U.S. restaurants. The increase will be paid directly to farmworkers harvesting tomatoes purchased by McDonald’s.

The CIW and McDonald’s produce suppliers will work together to develop a new code of conduct for Florida tomato growers as well as increase farmworker participation in monitoring supplier compliance. Farmworkers will also participate in investigating worker complaints and dispute resolution. Additionally, the CIW and McDonald’s produce suppliers will work together toward developing and implementing a credible third-party verification system.

“I welcome McDonald’s commitment to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to improve the lives of the workers who supply their 13,000 U.S. restaurants with tomatoes,” said former United States President and founder of the Carter Center, Jimmy Carter. “This is a clear and welcome example of positive industry partnership. It demonstrates also McDonald’s leadership in social responsibility and CIW’s importance as a voice for farmworker rights. I encourage others to now follow the lead of McDonald’s and Taco Bell to achieve the much needed change throughout the entire Florida-based tomato industry.” Representatives from the Carter Center, based in Atlanta, helped facilitate the agreement with the Coalition and McDonald’s.

“Two years ago, our agreement with Yum Brands marked the first step toward a distant dream of ensuring human rights for workers in Florida’s fields,” said Lucas Benitez of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. “Today, with McDonald’s, we have taken another major step toward a world where we as farmworkers can enjoy a fair wage and humane working conditions in exchange for the hard and essential work we do every day. We are not thereyet, but we are getting there, and today’s agreement should send a strongmessage to the rest of the restaurant and supermarket industry that it isnow time to stand behind the food they sell from the field to the table.”

“We have always respected the CIW’s commitment to enhancing conditions for the workers,” said J.C. Gonzalez-Mendez, Senior Vice President, Supply Chain Management, McDonald’s USA. “We’ve made progress with our suppliers through our existing Florida tomato grower standards, which hold the growers accountable to standards higher than the industry, but that was only the beginning. We believe more needs to be done. McDonald’s produce suppliers are required to purchase tomatoes only from those growers that have adopted our standards.”

To foster further improvements throughout the tomato industry, the CIW and McDonald’s produce suppliers, with McDonald’s support, will also work together toward the development of a third-party mechanism that would carry out similar monitoring and investigative functions at the industry level. The third-party mechanism will be developed in such a way as to be expandable to include the participation of other willing members of the foodservice and retail food industry that buy Florida tomatoes.

CIW has ended its two-year campaign against McDonald’s and pledged to work with the company and its suppliers to drive systemic and sustainable changes in the Florida tomato industry.

http://ciw-online.org/CIW_McDonald's_Release.html

The First Rain!

Yesterday was the first real rain of the season here at IMAP, ending six months of extreme dryness. This microclimate around the lake and all the various bioregions throughout the country will soon transform into a lush paradise capable of bountiful harvests. Then, just as abruptly as it started, the celestial tap will be shut off for another six months, and the hard working farmers of Mesoamerica will return to more labor intensive irrigation methods. Only 12 hours after this humbling and equivocal downpour, our many varieties of flowers and vegetables, from the orchids to the coffee, have livened their proud stances in the gardens in a way that the daily offerings of the hose could not provide. The sprouting plants, Calendula and White Mans Footprint, stand with a small but sturdy frame like that of their Guatemalan counterparts, and leaves that rest on their haunches like the limbs of an onlooking farmer surveying his plot after a hard days work.

पॉप वुह ऎंड थे बाइबल/तोराह...

The Christiano-Judeo world share the first half of the Bible and one interesting perspective about their surroundings. The Mayans that inhabited the majority of Central America share the foundations of the Pop Vuh, which is by rough comparison the Mayan Bible/Torah. These ancient scripts both lay out a sacred relationship of people and the land that has helped me to understand a little more about the current state of affairs in parts of the world where these foundations guide policy decisions.

The beginning of the Bible/Torah repeatedly describes the land as a possession of man, which God has given to them in one form or another. God is also depicted as creating man before the rest of his creatures, which are made for man's sake. (by my interpretation)

Abraham "On that day, God made a covenant with Abraham, saying: "To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river the Euphrates. The land of the Kenites, Kenizites, Kadmonites; the Chitties, Perizites, Refaim; the Emorites, Canaanites, Gigashites and Yevusites." (Genesis 15:18-21)

Isaac "To you and your descendants I give this land." (Genesis 26:3)

The LORD God said: "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him." So the LORD God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each of them would be its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals; but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man. (Genesis 2:18-20)
Jacob "The ground upon which you are lying I give to you and your descendants." (Genesis 28:13)

Moses "I made a pact with them to give them the land of Canaan.” (Exodus 6:4)


The Pop Vuh is constructed in two parts - the written word and the living word (people), and it is not complete without both. The writing compliments what I have learned during my time here; the Mayans that follow the Pop Vuh teach and believe that humans are but another element of the Earth. That amongst the most sacred elements are the seed, water, insect, and sun. That it is not possible to own the land. And that our interactions with it must be treated the same as if we were interacting with a family member or another part of life we could not live without.