| General Non-Fiction posted January 28, 2017 | Chapters: |
...10 11 -12- 13 
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Chichicastenango
A chapter in the book A Tale of Yucatan
A Tale of Yucatan - Part 12
by tfawcus
| Background A turn-of-the-century travelogue. 19 days on the Yucatan Peninsula. |
By the time we got back to Panajachel Tom was far from well; his chest was in a bad way. Being drenched in a couple of sudden local rain squalls had made matters worse, so we returned to the hotel early and put him to bed.
That evening, sitting on the verandah outside my room as the sun went down, I watched a tiny hummingbird less than three feet away, hovering in the white trumpet of an ornamental tobacco plant. Such fragile and transient beauty! This country is full of surprises.
Perhaps one of the most human of these is the anecdote of Jeanette's lost credit card earlier that same afternoon. During a visit to the ATM she lingered a few moments beyond the twenty seconds allowed, whilst discussing with Wendy the exchange rate and how many quetzales she would need to withdraw. In this brief time the machine swallowed her card, leaving a message on its screen that she could pick it up from the bank. However, it was Saturday and the banks were closed until Monday, by which time we would be gone.
Wendy recounted this minor tragedy in Spanish to the proprietors of the shop next door. They were quick to suggest she went to a nearby luxury hotel, whose owner's son used to work in the bank; the Hotel Posada de Don Rodrigo, on the shore of the lake. Alas, he could not help. His son had now moved to another branch. However, he said they would do what they could. His wife then climbed into her car and drove eight or ten miles through the mountains to a nearby town where she knew one of the bank staff lived. An hour and a half later there was a knock on the door of Jeanette's room, two friendly smiles and a bank card reclaimed. No thought of recompense. Gratuitous acts of kindness to travelling strangers in distress. And this in an area where the guidebook had warned of the possibility of random attacks on lonely country roads, robbery, rape and the murder of tourists.
On Sunday morning we left Tom at the hotel to recover and caught a bus up to Chichicastenango in the Department of Quiché. It was about an hour's drive winding through steep valleys, up and down mountainsides, to this beautiful little town tucked away in the hills. There is a bustling market on Sundays and we arrived just in time to see one of the confradias, or religious brotherhoods, holding a ceremony of slow rhythmic dance on the steps of the church before setting out in procession through the town amid clouds of incense. Also on the steps of the church there were flower sellers, women in traditional costume with huge bunches of gladioli and chrysanthemums.
The narrow streets crowd in, with stalls on every side and a relentless tide of people ebb and flow along the cobblestones paths between. The fruit and vegetable market in the town square has every sort of simple household necessity; pots and pans, brushes and besoms, mattocks and hoes, soaps and spices. There are great piles of dried fish, mounds of sweet green oranges and pink bananas, sacks of beans and maize flour, feathered chickens in bundles hanging upside down from poles and scores of diminutive bustling ladies in brightly woven huipiles, all elbows and shopping bags, racing to make their bargains with gap-toothed smiles before the day is done. Time is short. The flotilla of yellow local buses which brought them in at dawn from scattered outlying villages will all leave again by mid-afternoon, laden with people hanging out of the windows and clinging to chromium bumper rails, their piles of produce balanced precariously on impossibly overloaded roof racks.
Here in Chichicastenango we make our own small purchases; plaited shoulder bags, woven cloth for cushions, a mirror framed with worry dolls, and other souvenirs. By lunchtime we are ready to retire two blocks east of the plaza, to the Hotel Santo Tomás. Steps rise steeply from the street to this oasis, a haven from the bustle and heat of the marketplace. Through its doors lie mosaic paths to a lush garden courtyard with colonial fountains. There are rails among the foliage upon which strut huge scarlet macaws that squawk and eye passing strangers with disdain. Behind, under an archway beyond, a Mayan sits, playing haunting mountain melodies on a xylophone. The rich sonorous timbre of the zericote wood floats upwards through the garden and along the patios with their cane chairs and lazily revolving fans, where weary travellers rest. That's us! We cool ourselves with tropical fruit shakes in tall glasses while tempting delicacies are prepared for lunch.
Around mid-afternoon the bus returned to take us back to Panjachel. It clattered down cobbled streets to a small hotel on the outskirts where there was one more passenger to pick up. Here a small incident occurred which sticks in my mind. Three soldiers stood by a roadside stall, sub-machine guns slung loosely at the shoulder, casting a shadow on this otherwise peaceful Sunday afternoon. The sergeant had in his hand a leather whip with two knotted thongs; the sort which I had seen used by Mayan peasants along the roadside to gently flick the flanks of donkeys, heavy laden and loitering along the way. Clearly the use he had in mind was different as he demonstrated to his two subordinates a variety of cuts and lashes, each adroitly executed with a flick of the wrist. Then he picked up a claw hammer from the stall, carefully felt for a balance point along its shaft and, using the back of one of his colleagues' hands to demonstrate, mimed delicate crushing blows to finger joints and knuckles. The three faces were impassive, devoid of emotion. I had the impression that they would not have greatly cared who their next victim was, or whence he came. Cruelty for them was a macabre art form, insensate and beyond reason. Although the sun shone warmly through the window of the bus, I found the air grow cold and could not suppress a silent shudder.
This incident grimly foreshadowed the latent dangers of the next stage of our journey, up the west coast of Guatemala and across the border to San Cristóbal de las Casas, at the heart of the Chiapas region of southern Mexico. Only a few years earlier, an extremist left-wing group, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, had been active in the area, taking control of key infrastructure and attracting much publicity in the world press. Tensions still exist not far below the surface in this part of the world, as we soon discover.
That evening, sitting on the verandah outside my room as the sun went down, I watched a tiny hummingbird less than three feet away, hovering in the white trumpet of an ornamental tobacco plant. Such fragile and transient beauty! This country is full of surprises.
Perhaps one of the most human of these is the anecdote of Jeanette's lost credit card earlier that same afternoon. During a visit to the ATM she lingered a few moments beyond the twenty seconds allowed, whilst discussing with Wendy the exchange rate and how many quetzales she would need to withdraw. In this brief time the machine swallowed her card, leaving a message on its screen that she could pick it up from the bank. However, it was Saturday and the banks were closed until Monday, by which time we would be gone.
Wendy recounted this minor tragedy in Spanish to the proprietors of the shop next door. They were quick to suggest she went to a nearby luxury hotel, whose owner's son used to work in the bank; the Hotel Posada de Don Rodrigo, on the shore of the lake. Alas, he could not help. His son had now moved to another branch. However, he said they would do what they could. His wife then climbed into her car and drove eight or ten miles through the mountains to a nearby town where she knew one of the bank staff lived. An hour and a half later there was a knock on the door of Jeanette's room, two friendly smiles and a bank card reclaimed. No thought of recompense. Gratuitous acts of kindness to travelling strangers in distress. And this in an area where the guidebook had warned of the possibility of random attacks on lonely country roads, robbery, rape and the murder of tourists.
On Sunday morning we left Tom at the hotel to recover and caught a bus up to Chichicastenango in the Department of Quiché. It was about an hour's drive winding through steep valleys, up and down mountainsides, to this beautiful little town tucked away in the hills. There is a bustling market on Sundays and we arrived just in time to see one of the confradias, or religious brotherhoods, holding a ceremony of slow rhythmic dance on the steps of the church before setting out in procession through the town amid clouds of incense. Also on the steps of the church there were flower sellers, women in traditional costume with huge bunches of gladioli and chrysanthemums.
The narrow streets crowd in, with stalls on every side and a relentless tide of people ebb and flow along the cobblestones paths between. The fruit and vegetable market in the town square has every sort of simple household necessity; pots and pans, brushes and besoms, mattocks and hoes, soaps and spices. There are great piles of dried fish, mounds of sweet green oranges and pink bananas, sacks of beans and maize flour, feathered chickens in bundles hanging upside down from poles and scores of diminutive bustling ladies in brightly woven huipiles, all elbows and shopping bags, racing to make their bargains with gap-toothed smiles before the day is done. Time is short. The flotilla of yellow local buses which brought them in at dawn from scattered outlying villages will all leave again by mid-afternoon, laden with people hanging out of the windows and clinging to chromium bumper rails, their piles of produce balanced precariously on impossibly overloaded roof racks.
Here in Chichicastenango we make our own small purchases; plaited shoulder bags, woven cloth for cushions, a mirror framed with worry dolls, and other souvenirs. By lunchtime we are ready to retire two blocks east of the plaza, to the Hotel Santo Tomás. Steps rise steeply from the street to this oasis, a haven from the bustle and heat of the marketplace. Through its doors lie mosaic paths to a lush garden courtyard with colonial fountains. There are rails among the foliage upon which strut huge scarlet macaws that squawk and eye passing strangers with disdain. Behind, under an archway beyond, a Mayan sits, playing haunting mountain melodies on a xylophone. The rich sonorous timbre of the zericote wood floats upwards through the garden and along the patios with their cane chairs and lazily revolving fans, where weary travellers rest. That's us! We cool ourselves with tropical fruit shakes in tall glasses while tempting delicacies are prepared for lunch.
Around mid-afternoon the bus returned to take us back to Panjachel. It clattered down cobbled streets to a small hotel on the outskirts where there was one more passenger to pick up. Here a small incident occurred which sticks in my mind. Three soldiers stood by a roadside stall, sub-machine guns slung loosely at the shoulder, casting a shadow on this otherwise peaceful Sunday afternoon. The sergeant had in his hand a leather whip with two knotted thongs; the sort which I had seen used by Mayan peasants along the roadside to gently flick the flanks of donkeys, heavy laden and loitering along the way. Clearly the use he had in mind was different as he demonstrated to his two subordinates a variety of cuts and lashes, each adroitly executed with a flick of the wrist. Then he picked up a claw hammer from the stall, carefully felt for a balance point along its shaft and, using the back of one of his colleagues' hands to demonstrate, mimed delicate crushing blows to finger joints and knuckles. The three faces were impassive, devoid of emotion. I had the impression that they would not have greatly cared who their next victim was, or whence he came. Cruelty for them was a macabre art form, insensate and beyond reason. Although the sun shone warmly through the window of the bus, I found the air grow cold and could not suppress a silent shudder.
This incident grimly foreshadowed the latent dangers of the next stage of our journey, up the west coast of Guatemala and across the border to San Cristóbal de las Casas, at the heart of the Chiapas region of southern Mexico. Only a few years earlier, an extremist left-wing group, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, had been active in the area, taking control of key infrastructure and attracting much publicity in the world press. Tensions still exist not far below the surface in this part of the world, as we soon discover.
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