Fireworks and pan dulce
Lake Atitlan is one of the most gorgeous places I´ve ever seen–perhaps the one thing I have in common with George W. Bush, who said the same during his first and last visit to Guatemala last year. I headed to the Lake for the Christmas weekend for some relaxation and (slightly) warmer climes. The village where I stayed is called San Pedro la Laguna, and due to flattering Lonely Planet write-ups, it is unfortunately overrun with dreadlocked tourists. As in, the ¨bohemian¨types who do hallucinogens, play bongos, and wear tie-dyed harem pants. The strip of cafes and bars running along the lakefront were more reminiscent of Lake of the Ozarks tack than anything resembling Guatemala, especially since there were few Guatemalans in sight–either as shop owners or employees. It made me feel pretty icky.To see actual brown people, you had to climb a steep hill to the city center, which is not much more than a church and vegetable market in surroundings that were markedly squalid compared to the quaint, stray dog-free cobblestone streets of lakeside San Pedro. With tourism in decline following the environmental disaster of Lake Atitlan, street vendors and local tour operators were even more pushy than usual, literally following anyone with a backpack yelling about licuados for three quetzales or shitty blankets for sale. One man tried to explain to me in English that I should buy a shawl because my country had money and his did not (true) while draping cloth after cloth around my shoulders as I repeatedly told him I was not interested.In the midst of all this are young North Americans and Israelis partying and studying Spansh, sort of, in a town offering all the amenities of home without any of the actual Guatemalan-ness: coffee in to-go cups! draft beer! nice white English-speaking staff at all the restaurants! a pool! gluten-free pasta! I was struck by all the white people staffing the bars and restaurants–I guess it makes some kind of sense that foreign-owned businesses, which most of the places were, would gravitate toward hiring foreign staff so that they could communicate better with their foreign clientele, but just as in Antigua, I´m afraid this means that all the money pouring into San Pedro from trust-funded tourists is not actually staying in San Pedro. Are we taking jobs away from Guatemalans, or never offering them the opportunity in the first place? It´s an interesting reversal of the ¨the immigrants are stealing our jobs!¨argument in the States: here, foreigners can actually afford to work for much cheaper than Guatemalans, as they are often supported through other means, taking bartending or coffeehouse positions simply to supplement their drinking habits, to meet girls, to feel seasoned and hardcore…I don´t know.
Despite the fact that I am a tourist for all intents and purposes, I did manage to enjoy part of the weekend. Being a haven for white kids into drum & bass, fire dancing and bongos, San Pedro´s gringo-oriented nightlife leaves much to be desired. The sleepy atmosphere of the town is punctuated (as is pretty much everywhere in Guatemala, as far as I can tell) with the staccato popping of fireworks being thrown into the street by way of celebration. Nothing says ¨Happy birthday!¨, ¨Merry Christmas!¨, or ¨Yay, it´s Tuesday at 4am!¨than setting off a shit-ton of firecrackers in the calle all night. Fliers posted on all the streetlights (oh my god, there were streetlights!) advertised bars as ¨the most chill place in town!¨or ¨come and relax with us!¨, and by the end of my four-day stay I realized that I am not the type of person who can relax. I guess I get bored too easily, or maybe I don´t do enough drugs. Whatever the case, by Friday afternoon I had exhausted all potential lakeside activities (besides swimming, as I was somewhat put off by the threat of flesh-eating bacteria from the current toxic algae blossoming forth from the lake´s center): kayaking, drinking beer in the sun, drinking beer by the pool, drinking beer in a cantina, walking to the market, drinking beer while looking at the water. The one thing I didn´t do that seemed to be a popular diversion for tourists was take a horseback ride. Really? Do people actually take horseback rides? Animal rights aside, isn´t there an age cut-off for this kind of recreation?
Places like Antigua and San Pedro leave me with a bad taste in my mouth for reasons my presence contributes to and yet I cannot fully explain. While it´s beyond annoying to listen to white people trash these places as ¨not the REAL Guatemala¨and pat themselves on the back for choosing more ¨TRULY Guatemalan¨places to visit, such as Xela (which, by the way, boasts a fluctuating North American population so large it is nicknamed Gringotenango during the summer months), it´s also startling to be in a place so artificial, so contrived, so carefully arranged solely for the benefit of foreigners, to the point where the poverty and loveliness and dirt and dogs and colors and fried chicken and diesel fumes and splendor and harshness of Guatemala is completely hidden from view–or conveniently trotted out in designated spaces only, for our consumption. I suppose the economy of any town which depends on tourism during all or part of the year could be accused of these things, but the contrast seems even starker in a place like Guatemala, one of the worst democracies in Latin America, one of the poorest countries in this hemisphere, with people still emerging cautiously from a brutal 30-year civil war, the United Fruit Company, dictatorship and scorched-earth policies.There are undoubtedly responsible ways to see this gorgeous country, but I think it involves a little more searching and perhaps accompanying inconvenience to ferret out which places are Guatemalan-owned, which tourist agencies or hiking outfits or even NGOs utilize local contacts, guides, labor, etc., thus helping to ensure that your dollars are supporting the people who need it rather than a guy who lives in Honolulu half the year. For me this is often difficult. I like organic shade-grown coffee and I eat tofu, which makes gringo-oriented tourist trap restaurants particularly inviting when I´m on a break from Xela. I don´t like the fact that my dollars are both a cause and remedy to many of the problems in Central America because it´s uncomfortable, but I´m learning that it´s best to be up front about it–as with most things in life.
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January 10th, 2010 at 8:43 pm
Hi. Sounds like strange times in Guatemala. Cultural friction all over the place. What a world…glad you are still in it. Peace.