The Future of Petén

As the sun emerges from the gray-brown smog that hangs over Guatemala City’s wet streets, we board our plane and are inundated by the sounds of English words, and babies crying — for the most part a universal language of frustration.

Our time here is ended (for now) and I point the Blackberry in different directions while on the plane with the hopes that I’ll be able to send at least one text or one blog entry while in the clouds. I am a horrible role model when it comes to connectivity politeness; make no mistake, it’s a lifeline and it can get Hobbesian quickly.

One of the freeing things about being able to write from the mobile is that I am not distracted by the production possibilities a laptop holds. I don’t go into the inbox, I don’t upload and Photoshop pictures, I don’t re-organize my iTunes library, I don’t video edit, it’s about as close to a blank sheet of paper and pen as I’m going to get. And so it is here, while seated on the plane in 30D with Nadia Sussman passed out next to me and a fully-charged iPod with 10 gigs of songs and podcasts that I begin to write.

Next to my foot I have my Indiana Andrade hat which all the airport security and screeners took a moment to examine, peering at the Mayan hieroglyphs that somehow spell out my name. They smile and move me along after I say Mirador. Many Guatemalans have not journeyed that far north to Petén, much less Mirador, so their eyes glow with curiosity when I mention it in passing.

“I’ve never been there, what is it like?” the taxista asked me this morning on our way to the airport. I tell him what I believe now to be true, it is one of the rawest and most authentic experiences of surviving in nature that I have ever experienced. It is at once a privilege, a gift and a quickly approaching anachronism as the day of the eco-train or million dollar narrow gauge train that cuts straight through the rainforest is quickly approaching. It has been done in Mexico already with their Mayan ruins, Nadia tells me. Hansen sits poised to make it happen as he collects stakeholders to back up the idea of a train into the heart of Mirador as a way to create ecotourism. That is, as soon as Guatemala offers up a more protected status to the forest. In Guatemala, if enough money backs up anything, the speed at which decisions are made is remarkably expedited. I can only think of all the arrieros and mules that will be displaced once the train comes in. The not so remote possibility of this train creating access to Mirador, does make us realize that our experiences of walking through swampland into archaeological discovery wonderland will be one of those rare experiences that anyone will be able to do comfortably in the near future.

Technology is disruptive and slowly I am seeing my country change with it. As we enter Chiquimula terrain for a small family detour, we almost miss the entrance because there is a new supercenter that blocks the entrance and the supermarket Paiz looks above the Chiquimula city sign. Paiz is Guate’s answer to Wal-Mart and for now it is blocking my view and affecting my nostalgia.

From the days of my childhood, Chiquimula was much like Uaxactún, a sleepy and isolated town made so by its mountains and it’s almost desert-like climate that make herding and ranching the only viable business. Not the case anymore as narcotrafficking also pushes more inland. While we sat at three tables with mounds of freshly cooked beef, tortillas, salad and an endless supply of Gallo beer, I realized how quickly things change and perhaps how much like centarians I’ve met who have lived through the invention of electricity, television, the internet, the atom and hydrogen bomb, I too might live unimaginable changes that will alter my reality in at least two countries that I call home. When I become aware of this, I hold my memories tighter to my chest and clutch at them as they happen.

Climbing into my aunt’s hammock where I would fall asleep as a child in the heaviness of afternoon, I saw the broken threads of its use and realized that the hammock I had bought in Flores really belonged here. I ran to the car, pulled out of my bag and presented it to my aunt.

“Here, Tia, for the next thirty years to come. It will hold us all through it.” She smiled and I hugged her until I could no longer just stay in her arms and hold back time. We all climbed into Hector’s red mini-van and did our next four-hour leg into Guatemala City. We climbed out of the Chiquilmula valley and sludged into outlying sprawl and traffic that awaited us. At 7 p.m., 11 hours after our departure that morning, we reached the dingy streets of a rainy city with the flapping plastic covers of streets vendors so much like tattered flags welcoming us on our penultimate day of the trip. We asked ourselves why in Central America all the capitals are like a plunge into purgatory to spit us out of its bowels only to swallow us again when we returned.
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