Santiago Atitlán
fall off a cliff, land in...
Miguel said, “come on, we’re going to miss the boat.” I finished my business in the farmacia and we ran down the hill to the muelle. The ferry was just pulling away. “We missed it,” he said. Those days there was only one boat and it made its way around the lake slowly, serving each village between Panajachel and San Pedro and then finally to Santiago. It was dusk. “I guess we’re sleeping here again,” he said and we walked back up the hill.
Only 4 years before, on December 2nd, 1990, here in Santiago, the Guatemalan Army opened fire on a crowd of thousands of Tzutujil Mayas. They killed 14 unarmed protesters and wounded another 21. This kind of thing was the norm in Guatemala during the decades long civil war (military garrison’s in Mayan villages beating and killing the inhabitants), but this event was a breakthrough moment and catalyzed the criticism of the military to the point that the military was forced to leave Santiago. Miguel told me of this as we ate some fried chicken from a street cart. There were no police on the lake, no military. It was a total autonomous zone. Santiago was one of the biggest indigenous populated cities in Central America. Some backpackers would make the trip to Santiago to pay a visit to Maximon, the deity/folk saint worshiped in the Guatemalan highlands. Less known, Santiago was the sight of the assassination in 1981 of Stanley Rother, a Catholic priest from Oklahoma; “Father Francis,” as he was known to the community, was one of 10 priests murdered in Guatemala in 1981. Before his remains were sent back to Oklahoma, his heart was removed and buried beneath the altar of the church in Santiago. “Everyone here is telepathic on paranoid level.” William Burroughs writes in his Latin American journals. This was true in Guatemala. There was deep unspoken suspicion everywhere. After almost 40 years of civil war, the people had grown around their trauma. Everyone had lost someone to a death squad and the atmosphere in Santiago was intense.
At the same time, especially at the lake, Guatemala was familiar with the more far-out gringos and travelers. Panajachel was known as gringotenango, and had been on the hippie trail since the early 70s. Stories about UFOs emerging from the lake or one of the three volcanos were common. Arguellian missionaries carried The Mayan Factor in their backpacks. Palenque’s Mayan Astronaut was the perfect symbol of this aquarian fusion of ancient alien. There was no denying the unique energy of the place; the magic of the spectacular miradors of the lake were matched by an energy equally as magical; it was as if the atmosphere there was psychically fertile, so that a thought or intention would take root and manifest. This could be dangerous, as I found out. Indeed, the world of the Maya was teeming with sorcery; for the unwitting, it was easy to find oneself under the eye of a bruja.
The Rainbow Family - a roving anarchistic autonomous zone some say used to smuggle drugs through central america into USA since there was no leadership to bust.