Murder
And Horses
Todosantos,
Guatemala ~
by Daniel Wallace
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| I
arrived in the Guatemalan mountain town of Todosantos Chuchumantan hoping
to improve my Spanish. Some hours after my first lesson, my teacher's brother
was shot dead by a local police officer. The dead man turned out to have
been the head of a local gang - the next morning the entire town police
force fled in fear of lynching. As the town began the preparations for
its annual horse racing fiesta, preparations mainly involving getting fantastically
drunk, the infamous Guatemalan army rolled in to keep the order. That weekend,
six other people would die, and the host family I was living with would
fall into crisis when the father punched his wife in the face. Todosantos
was a town of welcoming, curious people, with great pride in their Indigenous
Mayan traditions, surrounded by stunning mountains, and full of happy children
who would shout, "Hola, Daniel!" whenever I passed their house. Despite
the sometimes-terrifying events that took place, it remains my favorite
place in Guatemala. |
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Friday,
31st October 2003: I wake to find my language teacher's brother dead
and my host family distraught at the news. The family are pure indigenous
Guatemalans - the rather diminutive mother and four daughters have fantastically
long blue-black hair. Everyone in Todosantos wears the same clothes - the
traditional blue woven dress for the women; red trousers and white shirt
with a huge red, purple or green collar for the men. They speak Spanish
to me, and the Mayan alien-sounding “Mam” language to each other. The two
youngest daughters, the sweet Juana (age ten) and the bubbly Melissa (age
nine) are my main Spanish conversation partners. Without much apparent
direction or scolding, the daughters cook meals, tend the log fired stove,
wash vast amounts of clothes and blankets, sweep, wash the floors, and
weave in their spare time. One magical evening, with everyone else out
in the family shop, I watch Juana sit singing to herself while Melissa
cooks a simple meal for about seven people.
By Friday afternoon,
the three-man marimba bands have begun in earnest, as has the drinking.
One of my neighbors is taking part in tomorrow's fiesta, decked in sashes
and a tall hat, he dances as much as his whisky brain will allow. He and
his friends drink all night.
That night,
an old man drinks himself to death and a young man dies from a knife wound
- why, no one knows.
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Saturday,
1st November 2003: I wake up at six am - my horse-racing neighbor is
unconscious lying face down in the mud. By eight am, his friends have revived
him and seated him on a horse - he is led across town to the racetrack.
The Todosantos
horse race fiesta is not actually a race at all. There are no winners;
the aim is to ride one's horse all day back and forth along the two hundred-meter
track, taking a drink at each end. At lunchtime there is a break for more
drinking, and then the race begins afresh in the afternoon. Already by
eight am, the riders are already very drunk and many have not slept at
all - as the day goes on, their eyes become mirrors and many ride swaying
back in their saddle, arms outstretched at their sides. During the race,
one man falls from his horse and is trampled to death - many riders finish
the day proudly wounded. |
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That night,
my friends and I go to the town's annual fiesta disco: tourists and locals
dance in a huge cold hall while a semi-circle of twelve soldiers watch
impassively, assault rifles at the ready. Early the next morning, a man
lying in the street is killed when the arriving bus runs over his sleeping
head.
The remaining
deaths discovered that weekend were less well documented - rumor and counter
rumor were so widespread it was hard for me to know what was real. Many
attendees of the fiesta were making their annual return to the town from
their jobs in the United States – stories spread of old scores and inexplicably
pregnant wives dealt with violently.
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| Monday,
3rd November: I wake to find my host family’s house turned black. The
husband Augusto has drunkenly punched his wife Dominga, her face is swollen
and left eye turned red.
I try to decide
what to do. After taking advice from the long-term foreign residents of
the town, I decide to move out, to send a message to Augusto and to avoid
getting involved in any violence from him. I move out to a "Ladino" (as
opposing to Indigenous) family, who drink Pepsi and power their stove with
gas instead of logs. The sense of rejoining the cold West is jarring.
I had, and
still have, little idea what the correct moral decision would have been
in a situation like this. But I was missing the girls too much; the new
family I was assigned to weren't that keen on me - so after a few days
I moved back in with Dominga and her daughters. As before, Augusto spent
most nights sleeping in the family's shop further up the hill, so I rarely
saw him, but suspect it didn't even occur to him why I'd left the house
for a while. |
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My last week
in Todosantos, I worked in the language school, doing the job of the day
manager while he took a break to Lake Atitlan. Each of the three schools
in the town hires an English native speaker to be the “coordinator”, as
very few of the teachers speak any English. I shopped among the Todosanteros
for bread and light bulbs, organized a big meal for all the foreign residents
at the weekend, and arranged teachers and host families for any new students.
It was great to interact with the ever-friendly people of the town on a
deeper, less-touristy level. I would have come back to the town to do the
language school job full time – the current school coordinator was leaving
in February. The pay covered little more than my subsistence, but the opportunity
of doing a job I knew I would love and getting to know these unique people
was too much to pass up. However, a month later I discovered that they
had given it to someone else, and so my travels around the world continued.
Daniel Wallace,
November 2003
To contact
Daniel Click Here
Daniel’s travels
continue at http://blogs.bootsnall.com/dw
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