by Bruce Wydick
But what would the guerrillas do to them if they did not help? They did not threaten, but they had guns. And it was understood that the villagers would help them because they had guns. And even though they were afraid of the guerrillas, they were also angry at what the army had done to the Quiché in other villages. So could it be so wrong to offer emergency help to those who were fighting the people who had done such things? Yes, she and Mildred had offered bandages and water to some of the injured guerrillas. But did not Father Dias say this was the Christian thing to do? Did not Christ say he was with those who gave a cup of water in his name? Yet she was afraid.
Yes, indeed she was afraid, for she knew that the soldiers would pressure people at gunpoint to tell them who in their village had helped the guerrillas. They would even threaten to kill that person’s children if they did not tell. And she knew that if they threatened to kill her child, she would tell, even if it was Mildred, even her best friend. Was it worse to give away a close friend than one’s own child? This made her afraid, for she could not blame the others if they had to make that decision. For this reason, she was glad only Mildred knew that she was hiding in the barn.
Angela
June 2, 2007
On its way to San Pedro Necta, the bus needed to ascend about two thousand feet through a twisty mountain road featuring several dozen unusually steep switchbacks. After their ascent they reached the rim of a giant gorge. Sofia caught Angela’s attention and pointed down to a small town at the bottom of the gorge. “That’s it,” she said.
Angela stared down through her window at San Pedro Necta as the bus began its similarly twisty descent. The first landmark that caught her eye was the cemetery, which lay uphill a few hundred yards from the town on the north slope of the gorge. It had to be the most cheerful-looking cemetery she had ever seen, its bright tombstones and crypts colored with the pastel palette of an Easter egg basket.
Angela, Alex, and Sofia dropped their bags in front of the checkin counter at the Hotel Chinita, the only real lodging in town, so far down the scale that it didn’t even make the roughest of low-budget backpacker guides. At three dollars per night, it would create the smallest of dents in the students’ grant funding. The hotel smelled strongly of must and faintly of burro manure.
“House sweet house,” proclaimed Alex as he breathed in deeply.
“Any sign of Rich?” asked Sofia. It was evening now. They were supposed to meet the fourth member of their team at the hotel. Richard Freeland, Sofia’s classmate from Berkeley, had been spending time in Guatemala on an internship with the World Bank, studying the impact of a tropical fruit export project the Bank had financed south of Quetzaltenango. “Let me try him on his cell.”
Fortunately, cell phone service in Guatemala was outstanding, even better than in the United States. A few years earlier, some European telecommunications companies discovered that boatloads of money could be made connecting remote rural villagers with one another in developing countries like Guatemala, especially among those who had never benefited from landline service. It also made field research a lot easier.
Sofia ended her call. “He’s on his way over,” she announced. “I caught him at the cantina having a drop with the locals. I’m going to pick up a few things down the street before the shops close. I’m sure you’ll recognize him. Ever watch Seinfeld reruns?”
Angela nodded and grinned. She loved Seinfeld reruns. Alex had no clue what she was talking about.
“George Costanza. Even huskier, but with a thick Southern accent.”
“Are you kidding?” said Angela, laughing.
About five minutes later, a prematurely balding, thirty-something-year-old American wearing an untucked Hawaiian shirt and khaki slacks sauntered confidently through the front door of the hotel. His skin tone was naturally pale, and his nose and the top of his head were in an incomplete phase of sunburn recovery, still very red. He was on the short side for an American, but still well above the average for Guatemala. Unlike most of his classmates at Berkeley, Richard Freeland was from the South—Georgia. Angela learned from Sofia that he had attended Emory University as an undergraduate, where he was valedictorian and president of the college Republicans. And when he announced at the family dinner table that he would be attending graduate school at Berkeley, his father apparently choked on a fried chicken wing.
Like Sofia, Richard was skilled in econometrics and was doing a master’s degree in statistics as well as a PhD in economics. He also had taken a specialized field in international trade. It made him an ideal collaborator for the study, and his advisors, who were also Sofia’s, had urged him to take a couple of months’ leave from his internship to join the coffee project.
“Y’all’s tummies enjoy the bus ride?” He grinned as he introduced himself. He pronounced “ride” kind of like “rod,” and Angela looked over at Alex, who seemed momentarily confused about what he meant by the bus rod. “Welcome to Guatemala, you two. Call me Rich, but don’t ask me for money,” he said, chuckling, as he greeted Angela and Alex, shaking her hand a little too firmly. Angela guessed it was probably not the first time Rich had used that one. But his eyes looked straight into hers when he greeted her, not straying over to the birthmark, which she appreciated. There were two categories Angela had for people when first meeting them, people who noticed and people who didn’t, something of course that she always kept as a secret. Rich helped them with their backpacks.
After checking in, they headed to dinner. “Rich, have you done any advanced scouting on the dining establishments of San Pedro Necta?” Sofia asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” he affirmed. “We’ve got the award-winning tortillas and beans at the little comedor down on that corner. We’ve got the second-place runner-up tortillas and beans down the block a stone’s throw or two that direction over there. And last we’ve got the booby-prize tortillas and beans across the street that made me retch my freakin’ guts out last night.”
“What does this mean, booby-prize?” asked Alex, sounding intrigued. Angela laughed inwardly and looked over at Rich.
“Well, young man, that depends entirely on context,” drawled Rich, tongue-in-cheek, glancing charmingly at the two women, now both grimacing. He put his arm around Alex’s shoulder. “I’ll give you the subtle nuances man-to-man when we’re alone. For now let’s just say . . .”
“I vote for the first one,” interrupted Sofia, before things got out of hand.
“Me too,” replied Angela, and a consensus quickly formed.
“This project may become quite the effective weight-loss program,” Angela commented to Sofia as they headed out the door.
The little comedor was filled with the aroma of hot oil and an active grill. They all opted for the award-winning tortillas and beans, which indeed were outstanding, some with chicken and others with planchada, the thinly cut grilled steak. Angela had a Coke. “The Coke tastes different here,” she remarked.
“That’s because it’s made with real sugar, and not that corn syrup crap they defile it with in the States,” explained Rich.
“Why is it that they must utilize corn syrup?” inquired Alex.
“Because protectionist morons in my beloved country prioritize the interests of a few thousand sugar producers at the expense of three hundred million sugar, uh—I mean corn syrup—consumers.” Rich tended to chew with his mouth open as he explained. In order to suppress a grin, Angela tried focusing on her plate as she listened to him. “Because of protectionism, the price of sugar in the United States is multiple times the price it rightfully should be as determined by the market. Since the 1980s they have substituted corn syrup in soda and just about everything else you can think of—Mars bars, gumdrops, the fake maple syrup you put on hotcakes, just about everything that’s fun to eat, and some that’s not. But here you’re gettin’ the real sugar.”
“This steak tastes different too. It’s really good,” commented Angela again.
“Same thing. Up in the States it’s all corn
-fed beef. Down here the cows eat grass, but really all kinds of stuff lying around that comes natural to ’em. My Guatemalan mama who owns the little Sheraton where I stay down here fed me with a bull she slaughtered that seemed like it mostly just roamed around eatin’ the trash in the backyard. Didn’t have a gun, so she had to hit it over the head with the curly end of a crowbar.”
Angela winced and watched Rich dig his fork aggressively into another healthy piece of planchada. He continued. “That trash-fed beef surely tasted different—but I’ll tell you—not bad at all. Back home it’s all corn, corn, corn. Makes fatty meat. Beef I ate here was real lean. Not gonna help my hair grow back, but might deflate the old spare tire a smidge.”
They finished their dinner and then retired to the musty charms of the Hotel Chinita. Rich and Alex took one of the two rooms and Sofia and Angela took another down the hall. Angela tossed her backpack on the cheap linoleum floor and flopped down on the hard mattress.
“Ouch.”
“Yes, the mattresses here are a little . . . er . . . on the firm side,” remarked Sofia.
“By choice, or because they can only afford to fill them with sand bags?”
“You know, I haven’t figured that one out yet.”
Angela dug into her pack and put on some sleeping clothes, flicking off the plastic switch on the bare bulb next to her bed. She knew it was time to sleep, but something was still bothering her, the unanswered question.
“Sofia, about what we saw today . . . why? I know I’m probably being too persistent, but why is there so much poverty in places like this?”
“Again, I don’t have a satisfying answer to that question.”
“Try me. I just might be satisfied.”
Sofia turned out her own light and lay in a sleeping bag that she had thrown on her bed. She gazed upward where some lights from the town illuminated the pine boards that made up the ceiling. “Well, it seems to be related to a couple of basic things, one being how people in society organize themselves.”
“You mean institutions? That always sounded kind of boring.”
“Trust me, it’s not boring. Understanding them is something people win Nobel prizes for.”
“I guess I don’t really get it,” said Angela.
“The rules of the game that a society makes for itself. Institutions either encourage people to make a living by creating or doing things that benefit other people, or by siphoning off what other people have earned doing just that. In rich countries it’s mainly the former, and in poor countries it’s more of the latter. When people learn that the rewards of creativity and hard work are mostly confiscated, they don’t bother. So a lot of people say that it’s all about the institutions.”
Sofia stopped. Angela figured that Sofia wanted to go to sleep, but she’d had a cup of coffee after dinner, her bed was hard, and she was surprisingly wired even though it had been a long day. So my relatives are poor because their rules of the game aren’t any good, she thought.
“So what’s the other part of it?” Angela asked. There was another pause.
Sofia turned her head on the pillow back to face her. “Well, probably another part of it has to do with things like the aspirations people have for their lives and their identity. Sometimes it’s hard for, say, the son of a peasant to see himself as capable of being anything other than a peasant. But if your dad was a doctor or an engineer, then you might have higher aspirations.”
Angela thought about herself for a moment. “My dad was a doctor, at least my American dad. I have plenty of aspirations, but I think also plenty of identity issues.”
“In what way?” Sofia asked, now sitting up and resting on her elbow.
“Well, you know that I was actually born here, maybe like even right around this region somewhere. But my dad in my adoptive family in the States is Anglo and my mom is Mexican.
“Can I tell you a story?”
“Sure.” Sofia listened.
“One day, I think I was in the sixth grade, at some family reunion in LA my uncle, Tio Juan, he dared me to put a handful of chiltepin peppers in my tomales.”
“Wow, that was really mean,” commented Sofia.
“I think he was doing this to get me to prove I was a real Latina. But when I bit into those tomales, my mouth turned numb, and this blazing fire filled my throat. Sofia, it was so bad. I tried to hold back the tears and be a real Latina, I honestly did, but I ran screaming to the bathroom in front of my mom’s whole big Mexican family at the table. I heard my mom cuss out Tio Juan really bad in the back room. He apologized later—I don’t think he meant to do any real harm—”
“But he did.”
“Yes . . . I suppose he did.”
“I’m sorry, Angela.”
“Thanks for listening . . . Good night, Sofia.” There was silence again for a minute or two. Angela thought Sofia had gone to sleep, but Sofia suddenly turned toward her.
“Buenas noches, amorcita. Que Jesús te lleva a los angeles,” she said to Angela, as if to a child. “My dad was a pastor of a small church back in Argentina, and he used to tell us that to say good night when we were little. It can only be said to a genuine Latina.”
Angela smiled, and a small tear slid down the birthmark on her cheek and fell onto her pillow. And then she fell asleep.
The next morning they began their research. The professors in California had set up a contact with a local fair trade coffee cooperative in San Pedro Necta. A representative from the cooperative, José-Ernesto, also a local coffee grower, met them at their hotel. Angela and the others greeted him. He was short and friendly, with the winsome smile of a serenading mariachi singer. He wore a small cowboy-type hat made of straw. A white-collared shirt fit tightly over a little mound of a beer belly that partially eclipsed a large silver belt buckle underneath it. He welcomed the team enthusiastically, flashing his golden smile, “José-Ernesto Vasquez a sus ordenes,” a humble Guatemalan greeting literally translated as “at your orders.”
They learned that the local cooperative in San Pedro Necta was affiliated with Café Justicia, a fair trade cooperative that works with coffee growers across Guatemala. Their plan was to work with the local cooperative, obtaining a sample of growers with access to both fair trade and conventional channels for selling coffee into the world market. From the sample the students would carry out farm-level surveys to estimate the local growers’ average costs of production per sack. Then, after obtaining coffee prices received by farmers via the different marketing channels, they would be able to gain some kind of understanding of local profitability in coffee production, both in fair trade and conventional channels.
The students walked with José-Ernesto as he led them to the local cooperative office, located only a few blocks from the hotel. “What kind of coffee do growers cultivate here?” Angela asked José-Ernesto as they walked. She was only a moderate coffee drinker and, probably among all the students, knew the least about it. The others listened as they negotiated the uneven sidewalks bordering the cobbled streets of what might be called downtown San Pedro Necta.
He smiled and seemed to appreciate her inquisitiveness. “You see, there are two principal varieties of coffee. One, robusta, is a cheap and less flavorful variety that comes from the coffea canephora plant. It is harvested in parts of Brazil, Vietnam, India, and central Africa. The main advantage of robusta is simply that it can be grown in areas hostile to arabica cultivation. Robusta also contains significantly more caffeine than arabica, so it is useful to make highly caffeinated espressos.”
“Which, by the way, I highly recommend for turbo-charged performance on econ exams,” interjected Rich as he smiled at the others, most of whom uttered murmurs of affirmation, confirming the effectiveness of the robusta-laced espresso.
José-Ernesto continued, “In contrast, virtually all of the coffee grown in Guatemala is arabica, a highly flavorful bean that comes from the plant coffea arabica. Arabica is also cultivated in other high-altitude regions in East Africa, Col
ombia, higher areas of Brazil, and the Andes. Indeed, the hard-bean arabica grown in this area is some of the most flavorful coffee in the world. Climate and elevation are nearly perfect.”
They arrived at the local cooperative office, a one-room facility housed in an aging multiuse commercial building.
José-Ernesto reached for a file lying on one of the many dusty shelves from which he extracted a stapled document. “Aqui está la lista,” he explained, handing them the list of local coffee growers.
To obtain their sample, they needed to choose about 250 borrowers from the list. It was time to randomize. Using a variety of randomization techniques, they were able to select 249 growers. They needed one more. Sofia spoke up.
“Okay, everybody tell me the last digit of the day of the month that is your birthday.”
“Seven,” piped Angela.
“My number is two,” shouted Alex.
“Hey, Dutch Boy, that’s my birthday number,” interjected Rich, pretending to complain.
“Ocho,” said José-Ernesto, having understood the question with the little English he knew.
“Okay, we have 7, 2, and 8,” announced Sofia. “Is there a member whose number ends in 728?”
Angela quickly checked over the list. “Nobody.”
“How about anyone whose last three numbers contain those digits?” Sofia asked.
Angela and Alex pored down the list. Rich saw it first. “Here’s a guy whose last number ends in 278, Fernando Ixtamperic. How do you pronounce that? Ick-stamper-ick?”
“Ish-tamper-ique,” José-Ernesto corrected him.
“José-Ernesto, do you know him?” asked Sofia in Spanish.
“Sí, I think so. He lives up near Seis Cierros.”
“That a convenient place to start as any?”
“Claro,” José-Ernesto nodded. There were several other growers from that area on the list as well.
