From Bad to Worse
(De Guatemala a Guatepeor)

It was summer of 1988 - the break before my senior year. I devised a plan wherein I could work on my Spanish and do some archival research in Guatemala and then visit El Salvador. Although I had spent six months in the region just two years earlier, the Salvadoran government was not issuing visas to North Americans at that time. In addition to wanting to get some first hand experience in the country on which I planned to focus my senior thesis, I hoped to check on the family of a Salvadoran co-worker. I was fully aware that both Guatemala and El Salvador were in the midst of ongoing insurgencies and that Americans were viewed suspiciously by both governments, but I had traveled extensively through the conflict-torn region before and since then had gained a lot of knowledge concerning where actual dangers may lie. I left California feeling really excited about improving my language skills in Guatemala and finally getting to see El Salvador.
Flying into Guatemala City felt like a luxury. The last time I arrived in the city it was after a grueling twelve hour bus trip from the jungles of the northeastern part of the country aboard the traditional inter-city Guatemalan transport; a second hand American school bus. As an elementary school student I usually biked or got a ride to class, so I can say with confidence that I have spent way more time in those boxy yellow busses in Guatemala than I ever did in Long Beach. Bus trips in the country could always be counted on for unplanned entertainment. Bodies were packed so tightly that when a fellow passenger dropped an orange none of us who were squished into a seat away from the aisle could move our arms enough to reach down to retrieve it. Instead we all took part in a sort of impromptu seated soccer match in an attempt to return the fruit, while the bus rocked and swayed with the curves of the mountainous roads.
This time I was treated to an aerial view of the metropolis that I would call home for the next month. From this vantage point I was able to see the miles of shantytowns that spread from the downtown core and blanketed the steep canyons with corrugated tin and plastic tarps. Having previously become familiar with the city’s center, and even having developed a fondness of certain haunts, I had considered myself a sort of insider in Guatemala City. This panorama of ramshackle tenements as far as the eye could see forced a realization that I knew little of this town. I would gain some more humility when I discovered that my host family’s residence was a ninety minute series of bus rides from the centro and the school.
The language school was no ordinary institute for wayward gringos. Named after the assassinated archbishop of San Salvador, Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero, the school employed relatives of displaced and disappeared persons and placed students in the homes of members of the Mutual Support Group (GAM), a grassroots organization begun by family members of the disappeared. At the time it was relatively new to use the verb “to disappear” in a transitive form, but it was already common in the Spanish dialects of Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile and Argentina. The family with whom I lived while in Guatemala (Ernesto and Mónica and their children Beatríz and Tomás) had lost two family members. Mónica’s two brothers, one a lawyer and the other a university professor, had been taken from their places of employment by men in uniform and never seen again. As was typical neither the army nor the police admitted to having records of their arrest and claimed to have no knowledge of their whereabouts. The families were left to mourn without any real knowledge of what happened to them and whether or not they were alive.
I took me a while to find this out. I had been staying with the family for about two weeks when I went into the center of the city one Saturday to watch a scheduled protest march organized by GAM and other activist groups. I was surprised by the number of marchers - men and women of all ages, including children - and the protest’s solemn progress through the streets of downtown under the watchful eyes of the very army that most Guatemalans believed to be responsible for the disappearances. I followed the protest as the marchers, many carrying signs with pictures of their missing family members and the words “¿Donde está?” made their way past quiet crowds of onlookers. I took photos with the camera I had borrowed from a friend in California. It was the first time in a long while that I had used a real 35mm camera with a telephoto lens. I imagined myself a photojournalist bringing to light the suffering caused by Reagan’s client governments in Central America. I even got a shot of a man I recognized - the father of a disappeared woman who was featured on an anti-war poster which hung in my host family’s home. I got nervous when I zoomed in on the government soldiers as the march passed by the central army barracks. Real journalists got shot down here.
On my bus ride back to the house I was surprised to see Mónica waving to me from a few seats up. I waved back and then began to stress about the third beer I had drunk before getting on the bus. So far I had been careful not to be noticeably inebriated around my hosts. It wasn’t so much out of fear of appearing drunk as it was me feeling uncomfortable at being able to squander the equivalent of several days’ wages on beer. As I approached Mónica waiting for me after stepping down from the bus, I focused on appearing as sober as possible. We said hello and I asked where she was coming from. “The protest, same as you,” she replied. On one hand I was embarrassed that I hadn’t noticed her there, but I was also ashamed that after two weeks of living under her roof I was just now getting around to asking her about her connection with the school and the families of the disappeared.
Under a light rain we shared my umbrella as we walked the muddy road to the house and she told me the story of her brothers’ disappearances. First her oldest brother, the professor, disappeared after several arrests. The army had accused him of having ties to an indigenous armed opposition movement - an accusation leveled at almost anyone teaching at the university. Her younger brother, the lawyer, began looking into the case. Not long after he was taken from his office and had not been seen since. As we walked I thought not only of the terror that this sort of oppression sows amongst the people of a country, but also of the way in which Mónica and thousands of others like her continued to carry on with life never knowing the fate of their loved ones and never receiving recognition from the government.
Two weeks later I was still thinking about these families as I prepared to leave for El Salvador. From a human rights perspective the situation in Guatemala was bad and seemingly getting worse - de Guatemala a Guatepeor as they say - but much of the violence went unseen. In the parlance of the pentagon, the Guatemalan situation qualified as a “low intensity conflict,” meaning that only one side was actually armed.
In Guatemala the conflict stemmed from the CIA-directed coup against democratically elected president Jacobo Árbenz in 1954. Leftist intellectuals and activists had gone underground to avoid imprisonment and execution, while indigenous groups continued to agitate for the agrarian reform initiated by the Árbenz government. Eventually the military perceived anyone left of Hitler or any indigenous activist as a threat and a legitimate target for repression. This had continued for over thirty years and had claimed the lives of tens of thousands, but the victims were often invisible.
The conflict in El Salvador, on the other hand, could not be overlooked. When, in 1979 and 1980, all democratic political space was closed by a well funded Salvadoran military which supported the small ruling class, the political opposition armed itself and began organizing the rural folk and poor urban workers. By the end of 1980 the armed faction of the opposition political parties, known as the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional) came close to overwhelming the army before the US frantically delivered military hardware and supplies - in violation of a congressional ban - and since then the conflict continued as an all-out civil war. Heavily funded by the United States (only Israel received more military aid during the Reagan administration), the Salvadoran army employed the most gruesome of methods in their fight against the rebels. A common tactic was “draining the sea” in which local populations were decimated in an attempt to rob the FMLN of its supporters. In ten years the war had claimed the lives of 70,000 people, most of them civilians. (It’s helpful to draw a comparison to the US; the equivalent would be 3 million Americans - everyone in San Diego and San Francisco combined.)
So although I knew I was sort of traveling from the frying pan into the fire, I also knew that things were relatively quiet in El Salvador. The FMLN had gained control of certain sections of the countryside and the army worked to keep urban elites safe in the cities. The borders were open and busses were running. Besides, it was only for a week or two.
I was immediately impressed by the bus company which ran the route from Guatemala City to San Salvador, the capital. The bus looked pretty similar to an actual Greyhound in the States and had a just-washed sparkle. The message painted on the door noted that the company was proudly Salvadoran. The twisting ride through jungle, then over green mountains and down through the important trading towns of northern El Salvador was a comfortable one, with only a few bags thoroughly searched at the border. As we neared the capital a steady rain began to fall. By the time we arrived at the station just off the central square the rain had become a heavy downpour and the streets were frothy creeks. Although the walk to my destination hotel wasn’t long, my rain jacket was soaked through within minutes, as the black sheets of rain continued to pour down. I paused at the far corner of the square when another traveler stopped me to ask for help with a map. The man, holding a limp umbrella in one hand and a sodden tour book printed in Japanese in the other, asked which corner of the square we were on while pointing at the map in his book. The Japanese characters through me off, but I took a guess and pointed. When we turned and walked off on our separate paths I was unaware that I wouldn’t see another traveler for the next week.
My plan was to poke around San Salvador for a few days before going up to Sensuntepeque (usually referred to as just Sensunte) in the mountains near the Honduran border. I worked with a Salvadoran man, Alfredo, at a restaurant in Santa Cruz. A short, stocky thirty year old with a wide Indian face, he was the hardest working dishwasher I knew, working two other jobs and sending money to his family near Sensunte. It had been four years since he left El Salvador and he asked me to check on his mother and son daughter. They lived in a small village called Victoria, high in the mountains and not connected by phone. Not only did it seem to be a nice thing to do, but it offered the excitement of a trip to what was pretty much guerrilla territory. Realizing this was a little dodgy I figured a couple days in the capital to settle in would be a good idea.
The next morning I set out with camera in hand to find the puerta del diablo, a viewpoint from which one could see the surrounding valleys. It was also notorious for being a dumping ground for the victims of death squads, but I was by no means interested in any gruesome finds. I never made it there. I hadn’t walked far from the central plaza when I was stopped by a man in uniform - National Guard I think - who asked me where I was going. I nervously explained that I was going for the view. This was of no interest to him; he wanted to see some ID. I had purposely left my passport in my hotel room for safekeeping. Apparently this was not a wise decision, as I was angrily told to retrieve it before I did any sightseeing in his city. My next move was simple - go back to the hotel and maybe stay there. Something in his demeanor suggested I was safer off the street.
Just a few blocks away I was greeted with a bizarre sight as a short parade of cars and floats - even a couple beauty queens - passed through the muddy streets. From aggressive cops to a parade and everyone I passed looking at me funny, I was starting to feel a little uncomfortable. I was only a few blocks from the hotel when I ran into a full fledged protest march headed up by a cadre from the state employees union. I decided to let the passport wait and get some pictures - again truly just imaging myself a photographer. Looking back I think that as much as anything I was really using the camera as an implied boundary between myself and others, a way to avoid real contact while creating an excuse for me to be there.
Unlike the march in Guatemala, there were no quiet onlookers or solemnity among the marchers. Men with hoods and masks, protected by guys armed with two-by-fours, ran along side the fast moving march gluing posters to walls and windows while others used spray paint to demand an end to the repression and violence. Meanwhile I seemed to be one of very few non-participants following the march as most passersby avoided any outward sign of either support or opposition. They would walk by, eyes pointed directly in front of them, as if nothing was happening. From the large crowd of union activists leading the march came a voice amplified by a bull horn demanding freedom for union leaders as the others chanted, “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido.”
I was shooting photos of protesters affixing posters to a broad green wall when two men approached me and asked me what I was doing there. Obviously part of the march, they asked for the passport I had yet to retrieve, grimaced at my reply, and told me to stop taking pictures. Regardless of my support for the cause, they said, I could never be sure who might end up with my film. I complied until minutes later, when I came upon a group of men with spray cans in action. I could not pass up the opportunity. This time the security detail came with two-by-fours in hand and angrily repeated their opposition to any close-up photos. Now frightened and convinced, I put the camera in my shoulder bag and continued following alongside the march.
I would be lying to say I stayed with them only to demonstrate my support for the group, as several others were now doing. The truth is that after being seen with the protest I worried for my safety walking alone to the hotel. An hour later, as the protest became a mild-mannered sit-in at the federal government building, I changed out the telephoto lens for a wide angle one and took a few distant shots before finally walking back to the hotel - occasionally looking over my shoulder, just in case.
Later, the roll of film hidden amongst socks in my pack and passport securely on my person, I calmed my nerves over beers at a local cantina. I was really enjoying the Salvadoran tradition of complementary snacks - bocaditos - served with each beer. Some places even had several options to choose from. I found that if I drank enough beer there was no need for an actual meal. Around beer number seven, nerves now quieted, I finished the plan for leaving the capital the next day. I was spooked and figured the sooner I got away the better. The next morning I was on a bus to Sensunte.
Going anywhere in El Salvador requires going up or down. Smaller than the state of Massachusetts, the elevation climbs from sea level on the coast to 9,000 feet in its sixty-mile width. In my case the bus made a long winding ascent through the verdant hills and lush forests of the country and in less than four hours I was deposited just off the shady central plaza of the town. After the noisy capital, the quiet narrow streets and mellow square fronted by a colonial church were welcome changes. I settled into a small hotel off the square, and then went in search of Alfredo’s brother, Raúl. As the Catholic priest of the town, he wasn’t difficult to find. We made plans to drive up to Victoria to see Alfredo’s family the next day. As night fell, the cool mountain air was a calming change and the white cotton sheets of the hotel bed - hand washed and line dried - were a welcome sight.
After a peaceful night it wasn’t long before I was again in a state of panic. And once again the camera invited the trouble. While waiting on the square for Raúl, I started taking photos of an army squad practicing marching routines. I felt like the imposing image of the soldiers with the backdrop of a shady central plaza would make for a good composition. Within minutes I was confronted by a rifle-toting soldier and his commander telling me that photography was not allowed. I wasn’t about to argue, but the commander didn’t leave it at that. He wanted my film so he could develop it and examine the photos. This was a fresh roll of film - not the one from the San Salvador protest march - but there were some shots other than these soldiers marching in formation. Earlier in the morning I’d noticed American-made attack helicopters flying in and out of a base behind a nearby mountain. Again I was thinking about militarism in a tranquil setting when I shot the photos. With the commander staring me in the face I was imagining his interpretation of those photos as something completely different. Maybe intelligence for the guerrillas? It was like an involuntary reaction to pop open the camera back and expose the entire roll to the light. The commander realized that I had ruined the film, but he took the roll anyway. I decided to wait for Raúl at his office.
The trip up to up to the village of Victoria helped calm my nerves - true even traveling on a road essentially controlled by the FMLN. The army wouldn’t admit that, but Raúl noted that it had been months since the military had ventured east of town. In Victoria we spent some time with Alfredo’s mother and his children, took some family photos and started back for Sensunte. When I told Raúl I was planning on leaving town the next day he frowned. Then he told me that he’d heard there was a paro planned for the next few days.
Paro was a term used for transportation stoppages that were occasionally called by the FMLN as a means to sabotage the economy and also to demonstrate popular support for the guerrillas. Practically speaking, driving during a paro implied support for the military in their brutal campaign against the FMLN. In most areas outside of the capital and the beaches nothing moved for days that wasn’t painted olive drab. There was also an understanding that any vehicle on the road was a legitimate target for the guerrillas. It didn’t happen often, but semi trucks and military convoys had been attacked in the past. Buses were stopped, their passengers removed, and the busses burned. By conviction I was not going to travel during a paro, but those attacks helped ensure I wouldn’t change my mind. I resigned myself to a few extra days in Sensunte.
Later that night, back at my hotel, the idea of staying in town for a few days became a lot less comfortable. Another hotel guest, a Salvadoran man, started up a conversation with me as we watched the sky darken from the hotel’s balcony. “You’re American, yes?” he asked. When I agreed he continued, “I’ve been to the United States. Georgia. Fort Benning.” My heart sank. It had been rumored that covert training of Salvadoran intelligence officers was taking place in the US, but this was for real. It got worse. “I work for army intelligence; I was assigned to you when you entered the country.” I suddenly felt like I was watching our conversation from afar; a witness to the surreal. He told me that he his training taught him to trust no one and that he didn’t trust me. For some reason I just continued to carry on a pleasant conversation with the man, changing the subject to his feelings about Georgia (he didn’t have many - he was forced to stay on base) and asking him about the paro (it had officially been called at six that afternoon). I didn’t really hear a thing he said for the next few minutes and I was happy when the conversation just faded to nothing and I could comfortably excuse myself.
The next morning I awoke to the sound of a chopper circling close by. I didn’t get out of bed as it continued to circle, but I could see its shadow glide across the yellow curtains. That’s fucking low, what are they trying to do, scare me? I fought the paranoia that said this was all about me. After all, choppers hover like this over parts of LA. And there isn’t a war going on there - at least not this kind. Shakily, I got dressed and ready to leave my room. I fully expected uniforms to be waiting outside. This wasn’t the case, but my friend, the intelligence officer, stopped me on the way out of the hotel to say hi and remind me that he was keeping an eye on me. If so, he watched me walk directly to the corner cantina and order a beer, the first of many.
I was sort of becoming a regular there so it wasn’t unusual to strike up a conversation with the owner’s son, a young, round, jovial man about my age. Never bringing up the nine a.m. beer, he asked about my trip to Victoria. He mentioned the danger that road could pose. He mentioned that only a few people were guaranteed safety up there. People like Raúl, the local doctor, himself. I shot him a questioning glance. “Yeah, I arranged a deal with the guerrillas.” Except he didn’t use arreglar, to arrange, but colaborar, a word I’d never heard used in Spanish, but one I easily understood. And three months ago, anticipating this trip in the comfort of Santa Cruz, this would have been a dream conversation - an opening to a contact with an FMLN source. The kind of thing that makes a thesis publishable. As it was it felt like a trap. I tried my best to appear as if I didn’t understand the comment - or care to.
Later that day I walked the half mile to a smaller church where Raúl was giving a service. I sort of had this idea to tell him about the situation, see what he had to say. I sat down on the steps in front of the bright yellow chapel and waited for the service to end. I watched as a chopper flew down from the mountains, bank right towards the church and pass in front of me, then circle around behind the building and slow to a hover as it came into view directly in front of me. There was a machine gun mounted in the doorway and a helmeted soldier behind it. The barrel of the gun was pointed down to the side, but the soldier turned his head towards me, lifted his face shield and smiled. After what seemed like hours the chopper ascended, swung around to the left and soon disappeared over the hills.
Again I tried to calmly analyze what had just happened, but there was no use. Frightened of remaining out in the open and not sure that it was a good idea to bring Raúl into what could be a paranoid delusion, I headed to the hotel, stopping for a bottle of rum on the way. If you’ve ever been so anxious that a fair bit of hard alcohol provides not even a mild buzz, then you know how I felt. I sat on the old wooden chair in my room, feet on the bed and a tin cup full of rum in my hand and weighed my options. There weren’t many. Subconsciously it occurred to me that I felt safest when drunk, and subconsciously a decision was made. I spent the next few hours at the cantina, passed some time playing lotería on the square and called it a night.
I awoke the next morning to find the paro still in effect and my friend the intelligence officer eyeing me from across the hotel’s patio. I still couldn’t say that any of the threats I felt were real. The chopper pilots could just be having fun, the collaborator just being friendly, the intelligence guy just doing his job. But I couldn’t buy everything just being a coincidence. I passed the day drinking beer and making trips to the telephone office to check for an open international line. Sometime after dark the operator was able to get a line to the US. I didn’t want to sound hysterical or frightened, I just wanted someone to know where I was in case I didn’t make it out. I reached my girlfriend, Denise, in Santa Cruz and told her about seeing Alfredo’s family, about the protest in San Salvador, about the paro and being stuck in Sensunte. The connection didn’t last long, but I said what I needed to. A sort of inner peace came over me as I stepped into the lotería tent.
I was able to leave the next morning - the paro was called off at midnight - and got on the first bus to San Salvador and from there caught a bus to Guatemala. There’s a scene in the Oliver Stone film, Salvador, where the journalist character, played by James Woods, improbably makes it to the Guatemalan border while in San Salvador a general signs his death warrant. At the border he is beaten and turns over coveted rolls of 35mm film to his tormentors before his life is saved by a last minute call from the ambassador. Although that scene played in my mind as we were ordered off the bus on the Salvadoran side and searched before entering Guatemala, the crossing was uneventful. Five hours later I was having a beer at my favorite Guatemala City bar and telling a friend about my experience.
Amy wasn’t just a friend, but also a colleague - if you can have colleagues as an undergraduate. She and I were both studying Latin American political economy at UC Santa Cruz, but we often had different takes on things. I found her pushing the limits of structural analysis when we discussed Central American politics, while I wanted to focus on glaring injustices and popular responses that were succeeding. This conversation, however, found us in agreement. She had recently had a near-miss situation while working with a UC professor in the highlands. We talked about the overwhelming fear and complete panic we experienced - the realization that we may not be getting out of this alive. We talked about being able to meet for draft beer at El Portal after having walked away unharmed. We talked about our return tickets that would take us back to the activist intelligentsia of Santa Cruz. We talked about the fact that all these things - except for the fear and panic - were not available to the people of Central America. That we had experienced this thing like tourists of misery; white kids with liberal guilt weighing heavy enough to lead us willingly into war zones. Ultimately we agreed that even with our harrowing experiences, we would never know the reality of life here and that in learning more we came to know less.