The Blue Monkey Review

I also failed to gain more than a shallow sense of the distinctiveness of this city. I suppose that 24 hours just doesn't suffice to provide a pinhole into a different culture. The city looks outwardly like many parts of Mexico City or Cuernavaca. I haven't stumbled on any evidence of the harsh poverty here that has placed Guatemala among the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. Where I'm living at the moment, in the "Zona Viva" among nice restaurants and hotels, I could be in Southern California.

Except for the weather, of course. "Aprovehce la mañana!" one of my cab drivers said. "Take advantage of the morning, because it is full on winter here." When he said this my teee-shirt was mostly saturated with sweat, but his meaning was clear. We could expect rain by the afternoon, and lots of it. And that's pretty much the forecast until November.

Still, until the rain rolls in, the temperature climbs into the mild 70s, with modest humidity. On my walk, and during lunch at Claroscuro, I took stock of my few impressions. I've seen many women in traditional dress here--not so many as to make it common, but enough that they don't look like they're wearing costumes. The indigenous people tend to be short, perfectly proportioned for their size, and often quite handsome. Their enviable complexions age slowly, so I'm often frustrated at placing people by age. The woman who cleaned the floors this morning at Hotel Casa Santa Clara looked like she must have been in violation of child labor laws, and I saw one of the guards outside the Hotel Intercontinental, in full gear, who looked like he might have been 14. But, I'm sure in both cases, the people in question are older--though I have no clue how much older.

And, speaking of guards, they are everywhere! In Mexico, especially Mexico City, private security people are so common that you stop noticing them. But here, the number of guards go beyond Mexico. They tend to carry pump shotguns, and these look very business-like. Plus, the uniforms here vary quite a bit, and I'm not sure which belong to police, which to other security groups.

I also noticed many people making their living in the streets, whether standing in the avenues selling phone cards or cruising the sidewalks with offers of shoeshines, DVDs, or jewelry. But, there were far fewer children working here than in Peru, and the vendors were much less aggressive. And, of course, they can't even be compared to the Roma children in Podgorica asking for money.

My single fieldtrip today was to the Parque Arqueologico Kaminaljuyu. It really is a park, that is, a green area set off from the surrounding city. In this case, the park was established to save an arhceological site from being completely destroyed by development. As the city expanded, bulldozers leveled some of the monticulos that turned out to contain the physical remains for one of the earliest Maya centers, and apparently the dominant city in this region in Pre-Classic times (so, sometime B.C. until about 250 A.D.).

One of the workers (who carried a machete) took me into one of the two mounds that seems to have undergone extensive excavation. Although the people here built with "barro," or clay (I assume they made something like adobe), they constructed extensive buildings including pyramid temples and ballcourts. I was also gratified to see the kind of corbel arches that appear in Maya centers from much later periods (though, of course, I can't say when the arches may have been built).

While strolling through the green area (and trying to keep from getting too sunburned) I was approached by a group of young men. Although clearly students, I did wonder what they could be up to. But, I didn't have to wonder long--they asked to interview me. I stood a little dumbstruck by this, wondering if I'd understood them correctly, then said "¿Como no?" We ended up asking each other questions. They wanted to know what state in the U.S. I hailed from, and then I told them and asked if they'd heard of Pennsylvania. Astonishingly, they had not. They were all students about to complete their bacherillato, so they have university to look forward to. But when I asked them, "What's next?" one of them immediately said, "La chica." That's a local drink, made from corn, and fermentation goes into the manufacture.