Writing on the Road

Guatemala

By Judith Fein
Photos by Paul Ross
For The New Mexican

We boarded the bus for San Antonio de Aguas Calientes, a town in the Guatemalan Highlands, on a recent blue-sky afternoon. It was an old U.S. school bus that had once schlepped screaming children to institutions of lower learning. But now it has been repainted a multitude of colors and reincarnated as a means of transport for guatemaltecos. Local riders called it a “chicken bus.”

Maya weaver María Elena Godines with a young apprentice at the village weaving collective.

My husband shuffled to the rear, and I sat down three rows from the driver, next to an elderly Maya woman from San Antonio who was attired in a black wrap-around skirt and a brilliantly colored, intricately woven, floral-patterned huipil, the sleeveless top that indigenous women wear. I smiled at her, she grinned back, and before long, we were chatting away. She spoke Spanish, and I communicated in some language ragout — Spanish, French, Hebrew, German, Pashto, Farsi, ancient Sumerian and any other language I could raid — and miraculously, the woman understood me.

She told me she was the grandmother of 10 children, her husband had died 28 years before, and she earned a living by cleaning houses in nearby Antigua. She used to weave — the textiles of San Antonio are world-famous — but her eyes had become too weak. She never went to school and couldn't read or write. But she was so friendly and openhearted that I’d rather spend a day with her than with a world-renowned scholar.

The ride into the valley where San Antonio sits took about 20 minutes, and when I left the bus, the woman embraced me. As I rejoined my husband, I mused aloud: "I wonder why they call them chicken buses?"
 
He laughed raucously. "Didn't you look on the lap of the woman you were talking to?"

"No, why?" I answered.

"Because she was carrying two live chickens. She'd probably bought them at the market in Antigua and was going to raise them to eventually make a great pollo pepián."

I was so busy talking to the woman, I hadn't noticed.

In San Antonio, we walked to the central plaza with its l7th century baroque church built by Franciscans who came to evangelize the natives. They obviously succeeded because 80 per cent of the town's population today is Catholic, and the remaining 20 percent belongs to other Christian denominations.

Members of a Maya family emerged from the church, carefully laying down brightly colored flower petals and pine needles to form a carpet. They were extremely hospitable — greeting us, posing for photos with their floral art and explaining the carpet was for the procession for Assumption Day, which would be held the following afternoon.

The women of the San Juan weaver’s collective.

We also wandered into a large shop to look at San Antonio textiles. Many of the huipiles hanging from walls and piled on shelves were woven on two sides — a feat that can take many months to execute on a backstrap loom — and they were adorned with dazzling fruits, trees, parrots and flowers. The shop was festooned with brightly hued handbags, tablecloths, and men's and women's clothes, all woven by the women of the village.

When the diminutive owner of the shop, María Elena Godines, emerged from a small kitchen, next to the display area, where she was making corn tortillas for her family, we locked eyes. And I felt instant affection for her. She gave us a buoyant welcome in Spanish and her native cackchiquel, and broke out in a huge smile.

She demonstrated how she sat on the floor, a thick belt around her waist tied to a wooden beam, and wove her textiles in the way her ancestors had. She was so present, alert, focused and friendly that I was reluctant to leave her store. As I headed for the doorway, she reminded us about the procession for Assumption Day. “Why don't you come back?" she asked.

Late the next afternoon, we took another chicken bus back to San Antonio. When we arrived, we didn't see any procession, and the floral carpet had been swept away from the front of the church. We knocked on María Elena's door, and she came out attired in a magnificent huipil and told us the procession had started inside the heart of the village, at someone's house, and hadn't yet arrived at the church.

We walked with her down the town’s main artery and through side streets until we heard the rumble of drums, the blaring of trumpets and the lilting sound of flutes. Then St. Anthony, the patron saint of the town, appeared in a thick cloud of incense smoke. Twelve Maya men, six on each side, were carrying the saint on a long litter, their shoulders wedged into scalloped openings in the wooden platform.

Behind him was another litter, and l8 Maya women were transporting the Virgin Mary through the streets — the festival commemorates the day God took her body and soul to heaven.

I couldn't take my eyes off the Maya women. Convivial, beautiful in their woven clothing, they were concentrating on the important task of carrying and honoring their universal Mother.
María Elena explained that San Antonio has two cofradias, or religious brotherhoods. One is for Mary, and the other honors San Antonio. When the festivities are over, each statue goes back to the designated house of its cofradia. Every year, the house where the saints are kept is rotated. The cofradias oversee the festivals and other aspects of civic life in the villages. And they also provide social cohesion and organization among the Maya.

Judith Fein participates in the processional, San Juan de Aguas Calientes.

In San Antonio, as elsewhere in Guatemala, the Maya practice a syncretized form of Catholicism. Sometimes called Folk Catholicism, it blends their ancestral religion with the faith brought to the country during the Spanish conquest in the l6th century.

I found the procession riveting. The smoke created a mysterious and holy atmosphere, and the women who carried the incense were elegantly adorned with folded-up textiles on their heads.

I saw only one other tourist — a tall, middle-aged woman — who was also captivated. She walked alongside St. Anthony's litter, and when the procession sped up, she jogged to catch up with the saint. We initially exchanged brief glances, and when I looked again in her direction, I saw she was wincing in pain. She had accidentally rubbed her arm against a chichicaste plant that grew along the street. The leaves sting, and the woman was clutching her arm. "It's burning so badly," she moaned.
 
Within seconds, one of the trumpet players approached her, offering his help. He asked the woman if she had a pen, and she proffered one. Using the pen, the trumpet player cut into the plant next to the chichicaste that had stung her. He extracted sap, applied it to her arm, and the stinging started to subside.
 
The plant that had injured her had a neighbor plant that healed her. To me, that was a miracle.

"I think the offending plant was a stinging nettle," my husband ventured. "And the one that helped her may be a sorrel." My husband knows everything, so maybe he was right. But for me, when I am in miracle mode, scientific explanations really don't matter.

I had fallen behind the parade, and María Elena appeared, grabbed my arm, and we ran to catch up with the statues. When we were alongside Mary, María Elena turned to me. "Would you like to carry the Virgin?" she asked.

I blinked. I nodded. María Elena tapped one of the porters on the sleeve, and she slipped out of the shoulder notch and gestured for me to replace her. I am sure my Jewish grandmother would be fainting in her grave, but I knew I had to do it.

I slid into the empty space, joining the Maya women, feeling as though I had a serious job to do — helping in some minuscule way to perpetuate the traditions in San Antonio.

The women were friendly. They joked with me and grinned at the gringa who was carrying the Virgin with them. These women and I walked for about 20 minutes, and then my shoulder began to seriously hurt. María Elena took my place, and I returned to the sidelines, where my husband was waiting.

"How was it?" he asked.

"Fabulous. Moving. What an honor. But I have a terrible pain in my neck and my shoulders. I wish there were a chiropractor I could go to. I'm ashamed to even admit this."

"Of course you’re in pain. You’re much taller than the Maya women. So you had to carry the brunt of the weight."

"Much taller?" I asked, incredulous. "How is that possible? I'm 5 feet tall."

I looked at the women who were carrying the Virgin. It was true. I was probably a head taller than most of them. It was the first time in my life I had been the tallest person in a group.

"How could you not have noticed?" my husband inquired.

I sighed. I hadn't noticed the two birds on the lap of the woman in the chicken bus. I hadn't noticed the height of the Maya women. But I had felt their presence, their spirit, their warmth. And for me, that was everything.

Judith Fein, an award-winning travel writer who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., has written for more than 60 publications. You can contact her at Judith@GlobalAdventure.us.

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