by Norman Lewis
The high spot of previous stays in Guatemala had always been the ritual excursion to Lake Atitlán, for a day or two to be spent in one or other of the twelve villages on its shores, where the cones of so many volcanoes, skirted with black forests, seemed almost to duplicate the enchantments of South-East Asia. Writing of it back in the Thirties, Aldous Huxley had described himself as almost surfeited by its beauty, and coming down from the highlands when the shining contours of water under the volcanoes first came in sight, the hope was that this beauty had survived. It was not to be fulfilled. Huxley, in those days, might have watched a palisade of white cranes up to a mile in length wading in the lake’s margin, while others, awaiting their turn to descend on the fish, made languid patterns of movement in the sky. Since then Atitlán had suffered from the vandalism of war and of tourist development, and now the great birds, and most other forms of wildlife, stayed away.
So I took the ferry to Santiago where, under misted volcanoes, the beauty of Atitlán returned. Santiago had managed in some way to resist the influences that had despoiled other lakeside villages. Perhaps there was something in the character of its people, who were Tzutuhils and notable for their pugnacity and independence, that made this possible. Whereas the Cakchiquels had shown little resistance to the Spanish invaders, the Tzutuhils put up a fight.
Above all, these people resist change and are defenders of the status quo, and bearing this in mind, it surprised me to discover that two Protestant evangelist missions had opened up, entering not only into vigorous competition with each other for souls but with the easy-going and somewhat Indianised Catholicism of the Church of Guatemala. It was at the end of the Second World War that the first of the evangelists arrived, and one of these launched a campaign to outlaw garments which, as he believed, were woven with pagan designs. He caused frustration among collectors, particularly foreign visitors, by paying above market prices for items with suspect weaving, which—although sometimes valuable antiques—went straight onto the bonfire. In the end the Council decided he was damaging the tourist business, and he was sent on his way. Nowadays, I learned, the evangelists no longer ordered members of their flock to dress like ‘normal’ Guatemalans, but at most suggested that they might suffer from a loss of status by the use of ‘old-fashioned’ modes of dress and, if employed, could expect to be paid lower wages.
By good luck an Indian wedding was being celebrated at the smaller mission at the time of my arrival. It was a highly Westernised affair. An old car with a sticker on the windscreen saying, CRISTO TE AMO was parked at the front entrance, and I snatched a glance through the window at the tiny brown triangle of the bride’s face through her veil. Revivalist music burst out of the door we had reached at the back, and I had a view of tight-jacketed Indians, some in black, at the moment when the hymn ended and the pastor signalled for clapping.
The music, played on a variety of unfamiliar instruments, now changed to an Indianised version of The Wedding March and the small bride and her groom were about to enter the building by the further door. It may have been that in clambering down from the car, her Western-style wedding dress had become disarranged, for in the instant before she passed out of sight there was a glimpse of skirt beneath, and the dramatic purple and white of the Indian style of Santiago. I was relieved. There had been a change, but at least the Indians here were still far from a transformation from proud Tzutuhils into poor whites.
In Atitlán I was mercifully out of touch with newspapers for a few days, but arrived back in Antigua to coincide with a spate of journalistic gloom. At the end of the years of military dictatorship the time was at an end when eight leading journalists could be murdered for revealing to their readers too much of what went on behind the scenes. Now at last the press was free and the awful secrets tumbled from a Pandora’s box in which, at the end, only hope remained.
Now it was safe for the mass graves of the resistance to be opened. While I was away, one had been found in a children’s playground, out of bounds for years, from which it was estimated that 200 corpses would be recovered. In nearby Uspantan the remains of ninety persons who had fallen under suspicion had been disinterred in a single week. La Prensa Libre listed seven villages where the bones of a thousand dissidents might still be hidden away.
With a decline in the statistics of current murders, the police corruption capturing the headlines was of an order never experienced before. Guatemala Weekly reported instances of police officers robbing pedestrians in Guatemala City, and gave details of a system of daily quotas paid by patrolmen to their superiors as a portion of their income from corruption. Criminals sent to jail, the report alleged, could buy their way out and be back in action in a few days. It was a situation in which vigilante justice was everywhere on the increase. In Patzún, householders took habitual robbers from police custody and beat them to death. The residents argued that in the past such men had always been able to pay for their freedom.
Some newspapers still seemed a little nervous at drawing attention to the misdemeanours of persons in high places. Others, such as Siglo XXI, trod resolutely on thin ice. It published, for example, full details of the strange case of Colonel Cruz Mendez, Commander of the Aurora International Airport in Guatemala City and a gang of car thieves. These had driven off in a brand-new and highly desirable Mitsubishi belonging to an influential foreigner, who carried enough weight for the three squad cars to be dispatched in chase. Their headlong pursuit led to Colonel Mendez’s house, where the thieves took refuge. The police were refused entry, and the Colonel’s lawyer, appearing on the scene, told them they must leave unless they could produce a judicial order. This could not be obtained. Although Colonel Mendez received the powerful support of the Minister of Defence, his explanation that what had happened was ‘the result of a simple confusion’ was hard to accept and he was suspended from duty.
There was a glut of sensational news items that week. Indian peasants who had clearly not yet learned their lesson had invaded eighteen estates. What were described as ‘official’ bands of criminals were under investigation by the military, and kidnappers had abducted a party of girls from a school bus. Yet among all this drama and violence a single incident, which in earlier times would have been considered a minor offence, resisted all efforts to dismiss it from the front page. This was the case of the President and the milkman.
On the first Sunday of the month of February, the newly elected President Alvaro Arzú was riding with his wife and a party of army officer friends in a country lane on the outskirts of Antigua when a Suzuki pickup driven by twenty-four-year-old Sas Rompich came charging out of a side road and ran over a rider and horse before charging at the President. According to the Ministry of the Interior’s report, the attack was foiled by an escort car racing forward to place itself between the President and his assailant, and blocking the assailant’s escape. With this, a Captain Lima, throwing himself from his horse, wrenched open the door of Rompich’s car, caught him by the throat and shot him three times. It can be taken for granted that, apart from accepting the news of Rompich’s death, nobody in Guatemala believed this account.
However, whereas according to experience the story should have been dropped by the press after a couple of days, for once this did not happen. Few eyebrows of old would have been raised over an obvious fiction, but in the new era of openness things were different and disbelief had slipped in through the back door.
For the fact was that Rompich turned out to be no obvious assassin, but a milkman out on his rounds with a car laden with milk bottles, until it was his huge misfortune to encounter the President’s cortège. Newspapermen were told by the family that he might have had a drop too much to drink at the time, and once in a while was drunk for two days or so. At worst, then, this might have been a case of dangerous driving. No horse or rider had been run over or damaged in any way. The newspapermen now referred ironically to ‘a pseudo-attentat’, or ‘the supposed attack’, and whatever hope there might have been in some quarters
that public interest might now subside vanished with the publication of the Attorney General’s charge that material evidence had disappeared. This included sabre scabbards found near Rompich’s car, provoking sinister rumours of sword-play as well as proven gunfire. A further report from the Attorney General’s office was that Rompich’s shirt, with possible evidence of wounds other than those produced by Captain Lima’s bullets, had been spirited away. Next the public was to learn that the victim’s family had received mysterious warnings to keep their mouths shut ‘or else…’. It seemed to some Guatemalans that the bad old days had returned.
Rompich’s end had been defined in vague Guatemalan law as an ‘extra-judicial execution’, of which there had been a multitude in the country’s recent history, but perhaps his essentially gentle profession, in contrast with the extreme violence of his ending, touched a nerve of sympathy in the nation’s breast. Suddenly he was referred to not by name, but with a kind of affection as El Lecherito—the little milkman. Writing in La Prensa Libre, the distinguished journalist Fernando Molino said, ‘It is important that this episode should provide the government with the opportunity to defend what we see as right. If not, and what has happened is to be settled in the way things have so often been in the past, we shall be forced to abandon all hope of change, and put aside faith in a just future.’
It was a viewpoint exactly reflecting the feelings of most Guatemalans in the street.
1997
After the Moon-Walk
THE OBSERVER SENT ME to Honduras, which, barring Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and where I talked to a young man on a banana plantation who told me he hadn’t eaten meat since fed with it by his mother as a sickly child. Although poor, I found the Hondurans extremely devout, Tegucigalpa being the only capital city I have ever seen where traffic snarl-ups were caused not by normal traffic but by head-on encounters by competing religious processions in the narrow streets. Most foreigners preferred to stay by the sea down at La Ceiba in the picturesque tropics, where there were humming birds pinned by the beak into every flower, soft light romanticised the hulks of decayed planes at the edge of the airfield, and the Picaroon Hotel recommended six-ounce steaks and Black and White whisky mixed with Coca-Cola.
All journalists in Tegucigalpa were expected to present themselves to the President, General Paz, and in due course I called at the palace, a modest building by Latin American standards flanked by shops selling handbags and scuba-diving equipment in the main street of the town. International interest had been aroused by a covert war conducted by ‘Contras’ under Honduras’s protection against the country’s recently-turned-socialist neighbour, Nicaragua. The hope was that a way could be found to persuade the General to come out into the open about his intentions, and I had been given advice as to the best way of tackling him by one of our diplomats who had been posted here for a short while. Despite the rough-and-ready methods attributed to most Latin American dictators, he said, Paz was milder than most and, passing on what was evidently a valuable tip, he told me that the General collected stamps, in particular commemorative issues. Bearing this in mind I put in a few hours’ study of the subject before setting out on this trip.
I was seen at the palace by an exceptionally pleasant young aide, who spoke English well and lost no time in telling me that he expected to visit our country in the near future. The President, he said, was out of town but was expected back any day. There would be no difficulty in arranging an interview, he thought, but as the General’s movements were unpredictable he suggested that I call early next morning, and should there be no news of His Excellency, perhaps again on the morning after that. The photographer Alain Le Gazemeur had been with me throughout this Central American journey and now there was an urgent sotto voce interruption from him, asking if a photograph would be permissible. ‘Absolutely,’ the aide said. ‘The General is very well disposed towards the British people. He will be happy to be photographed.’
Alain had already mentioned an ambition to photograph a real live dictator turned out in the full-scale, ridiculously pompous style they often assumed. Would the General consent to don dress uniform for the occasion? he wanted to know, and the aide, smiling as encouragingly as ever, said he was sure he would.
‘All medals and eyeshades?’ Le Gazemeur asked.
‘Whatever you wish,’ the aide said. ‘His Excellency is accustomed to co-operate with the press.’
It was arranged that we be at the palace at 8 a.m. next day. This we did, to be told by our friend that the General’s return had been delayed. We presented ourselves on the morrow at the same time and for two days in succession after that, but of the General there was no further news.
The President’s aide’s name was Arturo; about now our friendship had reached a point when he asked to be called Arthur, and he placed a forefinger to his lips and took me aside.
‘You can keep a secret—that I am sure?’ he said.
‘Well, I certainly hope so.’
‘I think I must tell you now. The General has not been away from Tegucigalpa. He is here, but he has been in a drunken condition for one week.’
‘I see, but that’s a pity. So we’ve been wasting our time.’
‘Tomorrow it is certain you may see him. He is to be present at a dinner given by Christian Businessmen for Colonel James Irwin. You have heard of him?’
‘Didn’t he walk on the moon?’
‘He was the eighth man. Now he is touring the world as a Christian missionary, and the General has announced he will choose this day to accept Christ by becoming a Southern Baptist. He will be at the dinner, and you and Mr Le Gazemeur are invited.’
The morrow came, and 6 p.m. on the dot saw the arrival of the Christian Businessmen, who discharged from the buses that had brought them from the airport, swept like a tidal wave of humanity into the vast, bare banqueting hall, and after a moment of genial confusion over place names began to settle themselves at the long tables. The Businessmen were very large and affable, discharging smiles as if under compulsion in all directions, and giving the impression of being unaware of the presence of the comparatively tiny and insignificant members of the hotel staff scampering to proffer their services.
Seated and settled eventually in a wide, hollow square, the guests were confronted by a long platform. Upon this at one end two empty chairs had been placed side by side, and at the other end General Paz occupied something that was not quite a throne. I heard, or imagined I heard, Le Gazemeur’s sigh, for far from the promised dress uniform with its rows of medals, the General wore a blue suit with a white shirt and striped tie and was of markedly Indian appearance, with a neatly trimmed moustache and an unimpressive chin. His eyes were closed and my guess was that he was asleep. Beneath the platform two small soldiers, both possessing an extraordinary resemblance to the President, stood facing the diners, tommy-guns held in the present-arms position.
The midget Hondurans now reappeared with trolleys of food. Steak is rarely banished from Central American menus, and here it was once again, overlooked on each tray by four leading varieties of soft drinks. Until this moment there had been no sign of the astronaut and, as plates emptied, conversation based largely on religious and financial topics swelled almost to an uproar. Several more small tommy-gunners had drifted into sight and distributed themselves strategically round the room and I realised with a touch of alarm that Le Gazemeur had slipped away and was moving in a stealthy fashion in the direction of the General, a camera with its enormous lens at the ready. No attempt was made by the General’s bodyguards to intercept him and, reaching the edge of the platform, he squatted down and raised the camera to his eye. General Paz’s posture remained unchanged, his head bowed and motionless over a tray placed before him and held in some way on his knees. Alain later assured me that the General had been asleep, obliging him to shout almost in the presidential ear before he opened his eyes.
The General’s return to consciousness coincided with the appearance of
Colonel Irwin, bounding suddenly from behind a screen at the back of the stage to reach the first of the awaiting chairs. An outburst of clapping was abruptly cut off, to be followed by something like a mass murmuring produced by many throats, invented, as we were later told, by this religious association as an expression of approval and encouragement. Colonel Irwin raised an arm, the murmurs died away and, speaking in a powerful, high-pitched voice, he told his audience how honoured and glad he was to be with them. He had come to Tegucigalpa as leader of the High Flyer Foundation Christian Ministry, whose aims for worldwide conversion were fully described in a personally signed document that each one of those present would receive.
The Christian Businessmen were accompanied on this trip by an American acting as required both as interpreter and steward, and now as the Colonel took his seat this man stood, to explain that it was time for those wishing to solicit both the Colonel’s blessing and advice to rise to their feet and do so. The steward had a prepared list of names, and he signalled to the man at its head, who stood and began a description of his problem.
It was a financial one, but there was an obligatory flavouring of religion not to be avoided in this context. A vocabulary based on market reports had been infiltrated with pious themes and the occasional mention of God’s name. The Colonel, it seemed, was no financial illiterate and showed no disapproval of wealth gained, for example, by insider-dealing. A Christian Businessman had run into trouble with his income tax and the Colonel chastened him not unsympathetically with the biblical ruling ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.’ Another questioner clearly in search of market tips was told that oils were strong and likely to get stronger. Then, raising a declamatory hand to his audience in general, the Colonel asked them: what did a man require to become a successful investor? ‘I’m a beginner in the market, so what do I do? Read all the financial columns, then stick my neck out? No, sir. I turn in prayer to the Lord for the vision that only he can give. Only then do I know I am ready to face the market.’
