Excerpts from “Time Among the Maya” by Ronald Wright
(^^^ Above: Street mirror hanging on lamppost at the newly revamped 4 Grados Norte section of Guate City)
I cant say that I have read this book. The writing style doesnt gel with me, a very strong personal reading style obstacle. But I did read sections and scanned through others for moments of validation of my own experiences in Guate, more political background info and the fresh eyes of someone other than myself. Below are words and ideas that stuck out to me:
Oh, need a disclaimer here. From what I can gather, the travel that the author did in this book was in 1985, almost 10 years before the 36 year civil war ended. Needless to say, his impressions are stark, harsh and not all too pleasant. Even so, I think he has some piercing insights, even some 20 years later.
“I begin to notice the old-fashioned good manners that I remember as characteristic of almost all Guatemalans. Where are the killers, the torturers, the experts in mutilation? They seem to belong to another country, one that existed in the recent past but is now miraculously purged…” p65
“Guatemala has acquired the mythic status of a nightmare country, a Lebanon or Uganda. Sitting in your back garden with a book and a beer, you ask yourself; How can anyone live there? How do countries like that go on? And the answer seems to be that chaos has become normality; violence feeds on itself, one corpse nourishes another, Human beings have an endless capacity for optimism, a boundless faith that the worst is over, that terrible things happen only to strangers, that the villages destroyed are always tiny and far away.” p 64
“Guatemala is a country where things are easily hidden, especially the truth. It is cloaked with forest, concealed by clouds, mists and the smoke of volcanoes; culturally and geographically as convoluted as a brain. The land is repeatedly flooded, buried, burned, and racked by earthquakes….There is a symmetry to history and geology.” p 64
(^^^ Above; Poor Guate, Hillary had to cancel her concert there due to a sore throat.)
“In the Western Hemisphere, only Haiti’s social statistics are worse, but Guatemala is very far from being among the poorest countries; the problem is the way its wealth is distributed.” p 116
“Tranquilo; calm, quiet, peaceful-everywhere you go in Guatemala this is the word you hear. Its peace, but the peace of military occupation, the pax Ladina. The war was fought to change the structure of power and ownership in Guatemala. Now, after all the killing and destruction, the best that can be hoped for is a return to the status ante. That is what tranquilo means.” p 175
Tags: Guatemala, Travel writing
