Juxtaposition

I remember very distinctly learning the word Juxtaposition.  I was 19 years old, in my first English Composition course. I can’t remember the professor’s name, but I remember he was young, like me. And like me, probably suffering from some combination of confusion and sorrow about the world, replaying our minidramas over and over again. But that professor left a mark on me, albeit futile. “Juxtaposition.” he would say, “It’s the smartest word you can use. Fit it anywhere you can, in any paper you can. It enlightens every subject.” The notion stuck with me.  Juxtaposition: an act or instance of placing close together or side by side, especially for comparison or contrast. Everything has juxtaposition, if we look deeply enough. It’s the beautiful, constant contrast of the world, and by engaging it we find a more profound, beautifully layered understanding to our surroundings.

I’m living in a place with endless juxtaposition.  The drastic differences I am confronted with everyday in Guatemala are both stunning and frightening. Guatemala is a juxtaposition – an act of placing together side by side so many of these opposing ideas, one could assume it was done especially for comparison and contrast. I see it in nature, the biological juxtaposition of Guatemala. A biodiversity hotspot, a tropical paradise of infinite species that crash right up against each other and criss-cross lines of inheritance. The stately pines that shadow my weekend bike rides and remind me of my Colorado past are only a short walk away from forages of bamboo and eucalyptus that remind me again I am in the tropics. I live in a tropical mountain valley at 7000 feet, where volcanic peaks spear into a sky so blue you seem to understand the meaning of the word "celeste". Where fierce early-morning sunshine is followed by rainy afternoons and lightning shows, and topped off with chilly evenings that tickle your nose like only brisk mountain air can. A mere 60 km down that mountain slope out of the valley lay the coastal plains, where sweat pours out of your pores like a faucet, where scorching sun can only be appeased by the generous palm and mango trees, where the flora refuses to be tamed, transforming every square inch of open space into an unintentional garden of orchids and Birds of Paradise. 

Ecological zones juxtapose themselves, but then this entire package of natural beauty is juxtaposed against the obvious consequences of man. Mist flows across millions of green hues blending and meshing across the hilly landscape, an impeccability unfortunately soon disturbed by the remnants of this society’s struggle to define its ‘development’. Endless trash heaps like landmarks laid along the highway - styrofoam, plastic wrappers, beer bottles, diapers, food scraps, old cell phones. The contrast is mind-boggling. Mother Nature showcases her talents of mountains and valleys, explosions of creativity, and we invoke the Monroe Doctrine of Man against anything precious and beautiful, lazily tossing our resources out the window of the bus.
However, sometimes I think this is juxtaposition at work - perhaps these trash heaps, this contrast of opportunity and neglect actually make the beauty all the more obvious, forcing me to take notice.

I see this juxtaposition in the spectrum of strangers. I am living in one of the most dangerous country’s in the world, so they tell me. From Aljazeera News to the US State Department, they never tire in telling the tales of drug cartels lording their power over the Southern Coast, the gang killings in Guatemala City, the theft and rape that fills the local newspapers day to day. And its real – bus drivers in Guatemala City are being killed by the dozens as they stand up to gangs, refusing to let them on the bus to take everyones money. A few months ago a 20 year old was shot in Xela, a few blocks from where I live, after the bank security guard texted his buddies telling them the kid had just withdrawn $600; they got him a block away from the bank, with his backpack on. And what do we expect in a country where the police force is corrupt, where justice is foreign, where vigilante action is the only thing you can count on. 
Then, juxtaposed to all of this, there’s this funny little statistic about Guatemala being one of the happiest countries on earth, with some of the most open, friendly people. And I can attest. I get to enjoy that statistic nearly every day of my life. In one of the most dangerous country’s in the world, I have never been invited to as many family gatherings, fed as much free, delicious food, been hugged as many times in my life. Strangers are an incredible, sustainable resource in this country. They help you get on the right bus, they help you find the right bank, their kids play with you in Parque Central, and they let you hang in their hammock when you need a little afternoon nap after working in the hot, coastal sun. In the States I can’t even get someone to let me borrow their cell phone. Everytime I go back to the US I’m reminded how much of this my homeland lacks – our private properties, our fences, our numerous symbols of independence, like the cars we drive straight into our garages, shutting the door and turning on our television without ever meeting our nextdoor neighbor. Guatemala is a lesson in humanity. A country with more cultural identities than the city of Chicago and yet can still find a commonplace in kindness, good food, and a simple ‘Buenos Dias’ as you pass by on the street.

And the most obvious representation of this Guatemalan juxtaposition: its poverty gap. It’s not just that there are poor people here, it’s abject poverty next door to rampant wealth. Driving along the PanAmerican Highway you could mistake yourself to be on a roadtrip in Northern Oregon, passing on the left, coasting in and out of multiple, well-marked lanes, giving thanks to the Sugarcane Landowners and Drug Traffickers for every mile of immaculate pavement. But out the window, just a few meters off the highway where none of the 1% landowning elite need go, the juxtaposition of the poor cries its distinction and divergence.  Shoeless little boys trekking up the shoulder, carrying loads of firewood twice their weight.  Small, mysterious footpaths leading into the forest, where a precariously placed wooden shack lays on a steep hillside, billowing smoke from the open-fire kitchen. Women and girls, dawning their beautifully-colored traje, dredging barefoot through muddy fields, pulling up thousands of onions and cabbage buy hand, and tying them in bunches to be shipped to Guatemala City, where they will feed those hungry Lords of Commodity, and feed the system that keeps them there.

In Zone 10 of Guatemala City I get my morning coffee at Starbucks before strolling through the mall gawking at price tags three times my paycheck, then hopping in a new Chevy Spark Yellow Taxi where I pay with credit card, a receipt emailed to my smartphone within minutes. Meanwhile on the outskirts of town, the smallholder farming communities’ wake up instead to roosters crowing and the smell of tortillas being placed on the comal, rolling back mosquito nets from the small mattress on the dirt floor where mom, dad, and 5 brothers and sisters all share a room. Teeth are brushed with well water before strapping on a ripped, recycled ‘Go Gators’ shirt (or some other US thrift store hand-me-down), and heading off to the corn fields by 5AM for a full day’s work under the tropical sun, and a measly pay of $6, if you’re lucky. In Xela, the juxtaposition is less escapable. It doesn’t exist in a neighborhood or on the outskirts of town, its right on your front door step. Lawyers and businessmen dressed in pinstripe suits recently hand-pressed by their indigenous maid. They walk down the cobblestone streets of the city, performing their well-practiced tip-toe avoidance of the various blockades - stepping over dog-shit piles, side-swiping the unconscious drunkard splayed across the sidewalk, avoiding the emaciated, entreating woman kneeling on the ground with her newborn baby in tow.

This juxtaposition bumps into each other constantly, rolling our Mercedez Benz right up to the doorstep of the open-air markets, where Tablets clash with Tomatoes at 40 cents a pound, where Indigineity meets Modernity, where the kindness of strangers gives balance to the fearful reality of what humans in desperation can succumb to.  I’m glad I see this juxtaposition. It enlightens my experience here. It helps me see the layered reality that is Guatemala in 2014, struggling to find its balance in a quickly changing world.  

My plot of land.

And as I look out into this diverse disarray, I think, That could be me.  And that could be me. While I’m no longer shocked and awed by humanity’s most enigmatic and longest-standing peril of poverty, I am not sure if my conscience will ever cease repeating that mantra: That could be me.  What is it that separates any of us?

A man of relative middle class privilege, Walt Whitman was shocked and awed when he moved to New Orleans and the brutalities of slavery were unveiled to him.  Whitman was driven by a personal demon that compelled him to literally imagine himself as one of those ‘beautiful, olive-skinned, ignorant and illiterate’ human beings waiting to be traded on the corner.  Enraged, engaged, empowered and entrusted with the gift of activism, Whitman never ran for president.  He certainly never started an NGO to save the enslaved from evil capitalists. Whitman wrote. He wrote vehemently, controversially, and unabashedly about these perils of humanity.  Through his voice, Whitman attempted to vocalize the questions he believed were paralyzing his fellow countrymen. 

Every soul has its own individual voice.  I remember being enraged once after I read Nickled and Dimed, and I think there was a point in my college career where I envisioned myself as a social activist, I was sure I would find something I was mad about enough to march on Washington.  As I get older, I find it harder and harder to find injustices with an obvious and blatant solution, and easier and easier to succumb to a life of shrugged shoulders and a general feeling of ‘shucks’.  I admire and so deeply envy the Walt Whitman’s of the world, the risk-takers and stand-aloners and voice-for-the-voicless ones.  I wish I knew exactly what kind of world I thought was appropriate and exactly how to get there.  Unfortunately, I’m one of those with her head stuck in the clouds, congested by obstacles of the ever-present grey area of life.

After I returned from Bangladesh in December of 2010 I wrote that I wanted to stop trying to save the world, and stop thinking that the world needed saving.  I just wanted to find my own little plot of land that was appointed to me in the universe and work like hell to make it as great as I imagined it could be.  Mostly, I just wanted to live, to breathe in the aromatic offerings of life’s games.  I still can’t define Guatemala’s middle class and I still can’t define the nerve endings that squirm into an oblivion of emotion every time I kindly nod, smile, and keep walking when the blind woman on the corner asks me for change, and I'll probably never stop thinking, that could be me.  But I think I've found my plot of land for now, literally and figuratively, with this job and with these communities.  And I'm working like hell to do the very best I can with it.

Roots and Rhinestones, and what is culture anyway?

I love airports. Airports always make me nostalgic and pensive, and make me want to write. I feel like I could write on everything, everywhere, on every piece of this seat I am sitting on, every piece of the barren wall in front of me, on every inch of my own skin. The words I have right now would spill over the ceiling of the library’s walls and run marathons over its bookshelves. Sometimes I wish my brain just wrote everything down somewhere every time I thought it. But then I would have an entire novel for every day of my life, and I would never have time to read them all.  

Airports make me think about my roots. I am at the waiting area. There is a sign in front of me that says Tulsa, Oklahoma. I remember the last time I was here - is that crazy? I know the exact last time I walked through the corridor into United gates b76-80 in the Houston airport.  I was leaving for the first big adventure of my life, but Mother Nature chose to make me wait, showering her power over the US South with one of her famous June Thunderstorms. After all the built up anxiety and anticipation, Michael and I would have to spend an extra night in a smokey hotel room in Houston before we could officially begin our Trip Round the World.  I remember the naivety I possessed that rainy night, hiding my fear behind a feigned excitement, hiding my insecurity behind a feigned love. Or maybe it wasn’t feigned, it was just young. I wonder if I am truly any older than I was that night, walking through this same corridor. Maybe older doesn’t even matter. Maybe there is no older, no more mature, no better understood. Maybe its all just different experiences and they all need to be told.

Now I’m back in that same corridor, flying back to that same place I came from, Oklahoma – where the wind comes right behind the rain. There is a family sitting behind me boasting their country-ness, that Thing I have always been so turned off by, or so ready to refute from my roots. This guy has a giant belt buckle with a big “OU” engraved on it, an emblematic artifact of sorts that explains where our values lay. One of the daughters is showing off the sparkly rhinestones she got after her recent visit to the Natil salon, and telling Mom she is disgusted by Starbucks’ recent decision to start using Greek yogurt in all of their fruit cups.  There seems to be a Family Brawl a brewin’ regarding who has what seat, next to whom, and in what boarding group. I have yet to look at my plane ticket.  I have spent $8 on a damn fruit cup in the airport (not from Starbucks but yes, with Greek yogurt). I’m confused - is the fruit sweeter here or something? Maybe its this weird perception us expats get when we fly back into the States, like our mind plays tricks on us with all the fanciness and we begin to think everything is just nicer here. Maybe it’s the impossibility of it all, like my brain can’t process the idea of sweet pineapple in April in Texas, so it imagines it to be some miracle. Sometimes I wish I didn’t know what a fresh, tropical pineapple tasted like so I could stop complaining about these things. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

But things are fancier here. And I judge myself for not participating, and then I judge others around me for participating, and then I judge myself for judging. The last time I had mangos and pineapples I was sweating in a tropical cornfield. I watched a slight breeze blow my skirt back and I remember literally thanking ‘god’ for the phenomenal movement, then praying that the well water used to wash off the pineapple didn’t give me parasites.  During that particular fruit fest I licked my hands and my face, and used that same skirt to wipe my sticky fingers before heading back to the open fire where the tortillas were being prepared. During today’s particular fruit fest, I have three times as many utensils than I need, all of them made of unrecyclable plastic that will contribute to a landfill soon, wrapped in five napkins that I can’t figure out the reason for. I still can’t seem to keep myself clean. I dropped a strawberry on the ground, a perfectly red and perfectly quartered strawberry on the ground.  Oops. Here comes the judgment.

I sat next to a man from Sololá today. His eyes agape and his adrenaline skyrocketing, we lifted off and he captured every moment on his digital camera. He told me it’s his first time on a plane. He is going to Nebraska as an exchange student. I asked him if he was excited, as if his smile didn’t tell me enough. “It’s hard to leave my family, my community, Sololá.”  I thought about all the times I have gotten on a plane, eager to escape my family, my community, my culture, whatever I thought it was. Yesterday I wrote down a question for our Semilla Nueva Community Survey – “Usted pertenece a algun grupo indigena?”  Now I find myself asking the same – “Y tú Kristina? To what group or culture do you belong?” Isn’t it so funny how my culture, the X, Y or whatever letter they are calling us now, this generation of middle class yuppie twenty somethings with too many things to choose from – we run from our culture. We justify this by citing our society’s lack of culture. We run looking for culture. We say the US is just a big melting pot of materialism and obesity and narrow-mindedness. And here I am next to a young man from quite a narrowly-defined culture who is running towards that melting pot, running toward the diversity and opportunity and ‘culture’. Damn, I guess the grass really is always greener on the other side.

There is culture here. Maybe I never wanted to see it before, or maybe I saw it and didn’t like it. Or maybe I’m just an XYZ generation yuppie who constantly needs something new. But there is culture here. At least half of the clothing worn on this plane is either Carhart material or OU propaganda. There are more cowboy hats than huipiles and more gawdy silver jewelry than machetes.  These are my roots, and so what? A que cultura pertenece tú Kristina?

Homage to History, Homage to Art

Tonight I knelt down on the cool, concrete floor of the Centro Intercultural de Quetzaltenango. This is a building that I have known in passing, those few times I wander outside of Zone 1 of the city I live in.  It’s a public place, maybe a community center of sorts, with a name that touts an idea that welcomes art, and creativity. But, at least until now, the reputation hasn’t lived up to its name. It has taken a long time, a long history of starting as a train station, passing to the hands of the military during a perilous civil war, and finally being returned to the people. I find myself enjoying the coolness of the floor along with the heat of the creativity flowing in the air. I am proud to call myself a friend of some incredible artists that put the sweat and tears into enlivening this place, making the Centro Intercultural really live up to its name.

On March 30, 1930 while the rest of the world waited for the word of the Germans and the results of the first  World War, Guatemalans were swimming in pride and celebration in honor of the opening of the Ferrocarril de los Altos. This was the first train station installed in the country, representing a literal and figurative opening of opportunity – trade, commerce, transportation, recreation. They had good reason to celebrate, although I doubt the campesinos struggling to make a living working on large Spanish plantations had the time to attend the festivities. Yet the glee was short lived – only three short years later the celebrations ended along with the train station. A revolution was stirring in the countryside with the landless peasants, which meant commerce was down, and the government determined the train station could much better serve the people as a military training station. This famed, old, dark and damp building remained in the hands of the military from those days through the revolution, the land reforms, the gory years of the 36-year civil war, and managed to eek past the Peace Accords in 1996. Eventually, the Municipality of Quetzaltenango, the second largest city in Guatemala and arguably the most progressive, made a decision to return the space to the people.  A community center, an inter-cultural center, a museum of indigenous traditional wear, a soccer field for the locals, and a somewhat abandoned warehouse in the back.  Abandoned, until March 30^th 2014.

84 years after the famed opening of this building, here I am, this gringa kneeling on a cold floor, eager to soak up the history of the grand space I am in, eager to fill the space with my own history. My friends Bonifaz and Lucas, two Quetzaltecos with endless imagination and expression in a number of other projects, organized the Homage to the Ferrocarril de los Altos.  I can only begin to imagine all that has passed in the privacy of these tall walls and broken windows in years past, all of the commands whispered, the trainings conducted, the atrocities planned. But I am fairly sure this is the first time these walls are experiencing such an explosion of innocent creativity. The Homage was a history of the building, presented through a myriad of artistic expression – from historical photographs and cello music, to shadow puppets and the traditional marimba, to interpretative dance and afrobeat. I should also mention a stellar tap performance from a fragile, elderly woman and some local university students broom dancing. I have lived in Quetzaltenango more than 1.5 years now and still struggle to find genuine representations of art and expression. The city is not lacking in artists, you find them everywhere. Perhaps what it is lacking is the cultural value of art and expression. I like the Spanish phrase they use here, sigamos la lucha, lets continue the struggle to take back these spaces, take back the culture, take back the art.

I don’t consider myself much of an art connoisseur, and often find myself almost intimidated by the eliteness of it all. I am not an artist, in the typical sense of the word. Sometimes, I find my art is my presence, my participation.  I, twenty something extranjera, kneeling on this cool floor and breathing in the energy of history, creativity, and inter-culturalism in a building that has represented so much of what is wrong with my culture, my country's history, my peoples involvement in a horrid history of this country. My art is being here, sharing and representing what is new about this space and helping take back the culture.  I give my apoyo to these activists, my friends and my fellow Quetzaltecos, transforming the history of this building, this city, this country, and making the name Centro Intercultural mean something again. 

In the mountains of Sololá

Friday night I drove through misty mountains and torrential rains, literally over “Paso Misterioso”, into a quaint little quiche town in Sololá with Katie Miller, our new director of development.  My clothes reeked of mildew, my body reeked of sweat, my mind reeked of a week’s hard work.  I stripped down and wrapped myself in a towel before scurrying quickly but carefully through the rain across the muddy hillside into the family’s very own tamascal.  On hands and knees I made my way inside the miniature sauna, my naked bum cozying comfortably on an old wooden bench.  The coals sizzled as the rain drops slipped off of my neck and onto the fire as I leaned over.  The buckets of well water – one cold, one hot – patiently awaited my arrival.  I will build one of these for my house one day. I will bathe in it every week, I told myself.  The raindrops played their common concerto, moving forcefully in and out of the chorus of pouring. At 8,500 feet I sat in this little cave, feeling nothing but warmth and hearing nothing but calm.

Every Guatemalan I meet is in someway my superior (thank you Emerson), and each offers me something to learn.  All these different cultures, languages, names, sounds.  That the ingredients you put in your recado may define where you were born.  Perhaps it’s the lack of culture I’ve always felt in my own history that draws me to places like this.  Ella was born in Uspantan, Quiche (and thus makes her atol with honey and chocolate). Studying social work in Xela, she cozied up with a nice Quiche fellow from Sololá and thus transformed her life her. From a family of nine, Ella is 33 and only has two children with little plans to have any more.  She woks with peace corps projects, teaches literacy classes to local women, and seems to have a healthy banter with her husband, something resembling an equality I don’t see with many couples here.  I wonder how she started her education, how she blossomed to be this diamond in the ruff of sorts, a courageous independent female among a sea of oppressed.  Still donning her traditional huipil  and corte, where does her tradition and modernism meet and who brought her to that intersection? 

Malawi

As we drove down the surprisingly wonderfully-paved highways of Southern Malawi, spectacular mountains adorning the landscape, I couldn’t help but think of all the similarities between Guatemala and Malawi.  Trucks from the United Nations might drive down the left side of the road here, but they still kick up dust in the paths left behind them.  Bicycles are plentiful here, just like Guatemala, toting thrice the weight previously thought possible, the most accessible mode of transportation for farmers.  Women walk with a similar grace here, that uncanny ability to balance heavy loads atop their heads and wear an insatiable smile while they’re at it.  The markets are busy, the children are running in the street, the truck almost just hit a goat, the communities still shyly giggle and whisper about the incoming gringos (here in Africa, Mzumus) wandering their streets.   Malawians mill their corn and make porridge, we boil and mill our corn to make tortillas.   The farmers might have less land, the average landholding size here is 1 hectare (about 2.2 acres); in Guatemala our farmers a lucky enough to hold out a few more than that – average 8 acres. The women might cook their pigeonpea differently, grounding up peanuts and making a paste, but their children still play tag.  Running up and down the narrow dirt pathway meandering through endless fields of pigeonpea, bare feet scurrying over dead corn stalks and kicking dust into the joy-filled air.   It is these moments when you see an undeniable connection among all of humanity.  Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny.   What affects one directly affects all indirectly.”  And pigeonpea, this humble little bean crop, is doing that.  From the coastal plains of Guatemala to the mountainous terrain of Malawi, pigeonpea is transforming lives and landscapes, and facilitating an international collaboration of NGOs to do it. 

Malawi

As we drove down the surprisingly wonderfully-paved highways of Southern Malawi, spectacular mountains adorning the landscape, I couldn’t help but think of all the similarities between Guatemala and Malawi.  Trucks from the United Nations might drive down the left side of the road here, but they still kick up dust in the paths left behind them.  Bicycles are plentiful here, just like Guatemala, toting thrice the weight previously thought possible, the most accessible mode of transportation for farmers.  Women walk with a similar grace here, that uncanny ability to balance heavy loads atop their heads and wear an insatiable smile while they’re at it.  The markets are busy, the children are running in the street, the truck almost just hit a goat, the communities still shyly giggle and whisper about the incoming gringos (here in Africa, Mzumus) wandering their streets.   Malawians mill their corn and make porridge, we boil and mill our corn to make tortillas.   The farmers might have less land, the average landholding size here is 1 hectare (about 2.2 acres); in Guatemala our farmers a lucky enough to hold out a few more than that – average 8 acres. The women might cook their pigeonpea differently, grounding up peanuts and making a paste, but their children still play tag.  Running up and down the narrow dirt pathway meandering through endless fields of pigeonpea, bare feet scurrying over dead corn stalks and kicking dust into the joy-filled air.   It is these moments when you see an undeniable connection among all of humanity.  Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny.   What affects one directly affects all indirectly.”  And pigeonpea, this humble little bean crop, is doing that.  From the coastal plains of Guatemala to the mountainous terrain of Malawi, pigeonpea is transforming lives and landscapes, and facilitating an international collaboration of NGOs to do it.