Roots

I've spent the past three days retracing my roots here in Guatemala City, where twelve days past the due date and weighing in at ten pounds, six ounces I came into this world back in the year of 1982. An evangelical televangelist was the president of the country at the time - or dictator, I guess I should say - and once the dust settled on the 36-year civil war it turned out he was one of the most ruthless offenders of indigenous human rights the country had ever seen. And the country has seen its fair share, tragically.

I share that for no reason other than that this country is a land of contradictions, which was perfectly illustrated earlier in the week at a restaurant way out in the highlands when the faucet in the restroom didn't work -- instead you had to dip a bowl into a bucket of water sitting in the corner -- and yet the automatic hand-drier worked just fine. As I was pondering this afterwords it occurred to me that Guatemalans ought to really like Johnny Cash because he too was quite contradictory for most of his life.

So here I am in this city of three million in a fairly poor and tumultuous country, this city where I was born and where I have so many memories, and I've been going here and there in taxis, without a clue as to the layout of the place. It's a tricky city to navigate because it is on a plateau but has ravines all around it with little fingers of flatness sticking out as if to taunt the elements of nature, which also means you rarely can get from points A to B in a direct line.

On Thursday I headed over to a bookstore/cafe I had read about because, well, it is a bookstore/cafe and I am who I am. It was so posh, though, it made me scratch my head, puzzled that this place and Sipacapa -- where I had been just one day prior -- could actually exist in the same universe, much less the same developing country. Yesterday I visited a few museums and a market, and on the way back in the taxi I got into a discussion with the driver about world Christianity and the rise of Pentecostalism. He said that in Guatemala City people are leaving the Catholic Church in droves and joining evangelical and Pentecostal churches. I had heard that 60% of the country identified as either Pentecostal or charismatic, but I also know about where Guatemala ranks in terms of homicide and corruption, and you wonder how these faith and crime statistics can coexist. But they do.

So today I headed downtown, to Kilometer Zero, to the central plaza which has on two of its sides the National Palace and a cathedral, respectively. During part of the tour of the palace we walked through a photography display of the quetzal, Guatemala's national bird. Legend has it that when the Mayan warrior Tecun Uman was fighting against the Spanish invaders back in the day, a quetzal descended on him as he was dying, and ever since the bird has a bright red chest on account of spilled Mayan blood, and it refuses to sing. It is also said that the quetzal cannot live in captivity, which alludes, apparently, to the fact that Guatemalans highly value their freedom.

Today on the tour as the guide pointed out the series of photos of quetzals in captivity, an older Guatemalan man said, "What about the saying, about quetzals not being able to live in captivity?" The guide didn't skip a beat, and responded, "That's right. They cannot live in captivity." And we moved on, down the hallway, no questions asked.