Antigua

Description

My husband, John, has built empires on a paper napkin while with friends at the dinner table. He planned a two-week jungle trek on the border between Mexico and Guatemala, on a paper grocery sack under the advice of the famous travel writer for Rough Guides, Mark Ellingham. Never mind that unbeknown to us the planned route was in the middle of a conflict between the Government of Guatemala and the Lacandon Indians.

The Lacandon are one of the Maya peoples who live in the jungles of the Mexican state of Chiapas, near the southern border with Guatemala. Their homeland, the Lacandon Jungle, lies along the Mexican side of the Usumacinta River and its tributaries. The Lacandon are one of the most isolated and culturally conservative of Mexico’s native peoples.

This trip took us from Banana Bank to Antigua, Guatemala. In that it was planned by the author of the Rough Guide, it was a rough trip through uncharted country. We were foolish and innocent so God protected us. We were on the Lacandon River in a hollowed-out canoe with the Lacandon Indians, on the Usumacinta River to Yaxchilan and over a mountain pass on foot in the dark to a remote town called Flora de Café.

Finally, after five days of travel by local bus, by boat and on foot, we arrived in Antigua on Good Friday. It is a feast of color, pageantry and ritual unsurpassed about anywhere. The throngs of people had mixed agendas. Some, like we, were only observers. The local indigenous people were deeply sincere, devout and moved to tears, walking in slow moving processions over intricately patterned carpets of flowers and brightly colored sawdust.

This painting although not of the Good Friday commemoration, is a painting of the heart and soul of these people. Years of persecution of the native people by governments, killing of whole villages for harboring deserters of the military or for siding against the government, years of losing their land to the rich, all this has etched deep lines in weary faces.

The man in the upper left corner wears such a face. His babies, one born and one unborn have an uncertain future. As people strive to live their lives amid the thick, oppressive pillars of authority they pack the load foisted upon them by greed and corruption.
The women are often the ones who prod the men into having hope. They wear bright colors and carry on the tasks necessary for day-to-day survival. It is the woman who says “Come on dad. Let’s go to town with a basket of eggs to exchange for a skein of yarn with which I can weave a cloak.”