We´ve had quite an introduction to Guatemala.
We arrived in Guatemala City on Monday at about 2pm and walked out a long, narrow corridor to the airport parking lot, where hundreds of people were waiting, lining the corridor like papurazzi at the oscars, but with more dignity. There were women with their bulky, brightly colored traditional dresses, rental car representatives, many children, and one woman with a sign that read "William and Kelly".
While we waited for her to bring the car, we had the opportunity to see one of the other sides of the immigration question. We had flown over with about half Guatemaltecos, and stood in line with several of them to check luggage, where it appeared that they were bringing an entire household in their bags. And now we landed with them, mostly men, returning after who knows how long in the States. A man came behind us with shiny snakeskin boots, a elean white Stetson, a crisp button-down shirt with the top two buttons left open, and jeans fresh from the store. I had noticed him on the flight, mustached and clean shaven, stoic. But when his family surrounded him with kisses and embraces in the parking lot, tears fell down his face and his hands trembled.
On Tuesday at school, they informed us that we would be taking a trip that afternoon to Zuníl to visit a very old church and the shrine to San Simón. Sounds great, we said.
Zuníl is, according to my teacher, world famous for its agriculture, and we had the opportunity to see some of its fruits: carrots the size of my forearm, brilliant white onions, beets, lettuce, cabbage, all grown intensively in raised beds on hillsides. It was impressive.
We went inside the church, passing by maybe a dozen figurines of various saints, while Marvin explained to us that many people came to church just to pray to one or two saints.
Then we followed a winding cobblestone street up a hill to a nondescript house which was the home of San Simón. Also known as Maximón, San Simón is a syncretic saint that has been expulsed from the Catholic church but is venerated by many nonetheless. We paid 5 quetzals each to enter, and if we had brought our camera could have paid 5 more to take a picture of the saint. In a small, dark room, lit only by 15 or 20 candles on the floor in front of the throne, a handful of people gathered around San Simón, gazing at him imploringly, talking quietly to one another. At two tables fortune tellers or witches or espirituistas sat "helping" some people with their problems. And San Simón? He is a life sized wooden doll fully dressed in a black cowboy hat, aviator sunglasses, and a bandana. He actually looked a lot like Michael Jackson, strangely enough.
There´s more about San Simon, including a picture of him, at this website: http://www.answers.com/topic/maxim-n
and here http://www.thresholds.net/zunil/index.html
On an upstairs patio were some priests performing a ritual for a woman who was sitting nearby. One priest poured sugar in a pattern on a wide cinderblock shelf, while the other unwrapped packets of what looked like horse manure. Around them were empty bottles of alcoholic beverages and the ashes of things that had been offered to San Simón.
On our way out the door, we noticed one of the espirituistos outside talking on his cellphone. He was well-dressed, all in black, and I thought that he must be making a pretty good living helping people with their problems.
As we stepped off the bus in Xela, the sky exploded and rapidly turned the streets into rivers. Without umbrellas or raincoats, we were very quickly soaked to the skin.
And that was our first day in Xela.
