I imagine Guatemala as a drunken clown of a little country, wobbling along on a tightrope to the tune of a classic marimba song. The rope stretches over a steep mountain divide, with a chasm of tyranny on one side and a chasm of dangerous anarchy on the other. Gusty plutocratic winds sweep up from the valley of tyranny, causing the drunken clown on the rope to wobble more precariously. The clown's imbalance provokes periodic populist whirlwinds in the valley of anarchy to roar up the steep slopes to counteract the winds of tyranny. Meanwhle, the rope is frayed by endemic corruption that eats away at the fibers of the rope, threatening to bring the whole balancing act to a catastrophic end. From afar, at the international level, an unconcerned audience of exploitative governments and corporations wag their fingers with disapproving condescension at the little Republic's inability to regulate itself, while the local population – made apathetic by utter lack of transparency and fatalistic by perennial lack of good options, mostly just gives a collective shrug as they struggle to stay alive.
I've held this image in my head since 1990, when I first went there, and saw how casually, and seemingly happily, Guatemalans accept living on the edge. Over the next three decades, as I came to know the country and people better, I learned to recognize strains of desperation just under the surface, and in many cases a supressed undercurrent of desperation and depression relating to the unpredictability and lack of opportunity in their lives. I don't have a good feel for whether the levels of depression have diminished or increased since I adopted Guatemala as my spiritual home. But during the course of my more than 30 years of watching the drunken clown on the tightrope that is Guatemala, nothing has really happened to change that impression of a precarious balancing act that could end disastrously at any moment.
To be sure, life has improved in some ways since we first landed in Guatemala in June of 1990. There is undeniably more wealth – the rising tide of neoliberal development lifted most, if not all, boats; fewer and healthier babies, better health care, and in most cases improved residential accommodations. But now, almost 80 years since the end of the last Banana Republic Caudillo and the creation of a constitution … and almost 45 years since the disastrous earthquake that provided focus and fuel to an ongoing low-grade civil war … and about 35 years since an epoque of brutal and bloody repression supposedly came to an end, life is still lived on the edge, and lack of opportunity fosters despair that a better life in Guatemala can be attained. This despair, in turn, nurtures a worldview in which escape to the U.S. is seen as the easiest and most likely route to a predictably secure future..
This is the first real post to my website room, 'The Guatemala Thing.' It's a good one to start with, because it brings into clear relief how fragile my beloved little Guatemala is. Referencing the title of the oustanding collection of 1970s and 1980s photos and essays by French journalist and human rights worker, Jean-Marie Simon, Guatemala remains The Land of “Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny.” This article from the New York Times emphasizes how little has changed, in that regard, as the plutocratic wind machines in the Valley of Tyranny are once again trying to dislodge the already drunker and more wobbly Clown of State above. And how, once again, in an unexpected and sudden populist attempt to keep the clown dancing on the tightrope, the people have created a whirlwind that perhaps, just maybe, keep the balancing act aloft.
I have posted it here free … for a while … as a 'gift link' from the New York Times. The “gift” status of these links goes away after a short time. But in the near future I'll sumarize the highlights of the article for the posterity of this post, and of what Guatemala is going though right now.
As we might have said in Church back in the years and days when I went to mass.
Petition: 'That Guatemala can recover and balance and realize its potential to provide a dignified life for all its citizens…'
Response: 'Let us pray.'