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 [Marsboy683's Weblog] Under The Volcano: We were chatting to pass the time and Romulio volunteered that he used to work for the Guatemalan Defense Intelligence Agency.  I guess I should have been more impressed.  “What did you do for them”?  “We intercepted communications from the Mexican military”.  “They attacked us and took a lot of land from our country”.  “Isn’t your country controlled by the military and the intelligence services”, I asked.  I was trying to push his buttons.  “No more than your country is controlled by the CIA”, he sneered.  I took exception to this statement and said that we were a democracy and that his country was a dictatorship.  We continued in this vein for a while till we both grew tired of arguing.  The highway was punctuated by bridges every few miles.  The bridges were generally about 50 yards long and traversed deep ravines.  Almost all of them had been blown up by guerillas and had been rebuilt by temporary spans that allowed only one car to pass at a time.  The only bridges that had not been blown were the ones with homemade signs that claimed the bridges in the name of the guerillas.  Presumably if the authorities took down the signs the rebels came back at night and blew them up.  Nightfall was coming soon and we wound up following an army truck as it dropped off two soldiers at each end of the bridges to guard them during the long night.  Once again we drove all night and as we neared the capitol, Guatemala City, the sun was still several hours from coming up.  Romulio said, “The road here near the capitol is very bad”.  ”˜I know, the bumps will tear a car suspension up after a while”, I replied.  “No, you don’t understand, the road is very bad, the guerillas are very bad here”.  I hadn’t seen anything but blown up bridges until now so I took it with a grain of salt.  We came to one more blown up bridge no more than five minutes later.  The novelty of crossing blown up bridges had changed into a routine.  There was one car in line in front of us and two waiting on the far side.  Our turn came after the car on the far side crossed in front of us.  It was traveling at a high rate of speed which was unusual because the temporary bridge was treacherous and best traversed at about 10-20 MPH.  We crossed carefully with the oversized load and then I noticed the Toyota pickup truck waiting on the far side.  There were two men in the cab, one man had on a ski mask and the driver did not.  Standing up in the bed of the truck were four men, all of them wearing ski masks, and two of them were carrying AK-47 assault rifles with the distinctive banana clips.  They made eye contact and it dawned on me that these casual fellows were not waiting to cross the bridge, but instead were waiting for the next car to cross.  They gave us the once over and then did a double take.  They seemed surprised to see a local traveling with an Anglo.  One man in the cab was smiling, probably at the look on our faces, while the heavily armed men in the bed of the truck were not.  We crept off the end of the bridge and hesitated to see what they would do, then Romulio had the presence of mind to gun the motor and we sped away.  We both had a feeling of euphoria and relief.  “Do the guerillas shoot the people”, I asked.  “No, they might stop us and ask us to make a gift of the truck it is only the army that kills the people’.  I digested this information is silence.  We passed through Guatemala City in the dark and it seemed that there were a lot of people in evidence.  The intersections became crowded and Romulio began to curse the other drivers in frustration.  “These are your people Romulio”, I teased.  “My people are shit”.  He had had a long trip as well or perhaps his personality change was complete now that he was at home.  We stopped in the city center before dawn as the cars and buses surged around us.  I ate some food out of the roach wagon and the part I didn’t finish the owner put back in the display.  We drove to the outskirts of the city and a woman was standing near the road as cars passed to and fro.  She had six children with her who seemed fairly well cared for.  The woman  seemed very alone and wanted a motorist to stop and pass some time with her.  “Ha”, Romulio laughed and pointed at her in amusement.  “It looks like her friends have given her children and left her”.  He seemed to enjoy her predicament immensely, but I could only wonder how she was going to feed herself and her six children.  At long last the truck pulled up to the neighborhood that was Romulio’s.  He told me to sleep in the truck and went inside.  It was a cinder block structure with iron doors and bars on the windows.  I sat in the truck as the first faint light of dawn seemed to begin on the horizon.  Just as I was about to doze off the sound of firecrackers filled the air.  It seemed that this was the ritual of morning and that like some far away eastern kingdom of old the evil spirits of the night must be driven away by the sound of firecrackers.  It seemed to continue for some time and then people began to pass me on their way to work or school, stiff and cold, their hair still wet from a morning bath.  It was very cool at night in the mountainous country, but I had sweated through my sleeping bag, getting very little rest.  I felt waves of nausea come over me and got out of the car, walked across the dirt road to a vacant lot and threw up a couple of times.  Nausea, night sweats, and now this, wonderful.  I thought no one had seen me, but when Romulio’s 20 year old daughter emerged from her house on the way to catch a bus to school she greeted me with, “How are you feeling”, stated in a manner totally devoid of interest.  Romulio rose late, motioned for me to enter the house, gave me a towel and soap, and showed me to the “shower”.  Even though he was the head man in this neighborhood his shower consisted of a large plastic garbage can filled with cold water.  The water only came on for several hours a day and so when it did you did the laundry and filled up containers for later use.  We got back in the truck and dropped off the microwave at his mother’s house and the bicycles and children’s clothes to family members.  I stayed in the car during the whole exercise, feeling awful.  He had obviously warmed up to me because when I asked about a hotel he said I should stay with him.  He introduced me to his pretty wife and daughter and that night we went out to dine with friends of the family in town.  They were very nice people who accepted the stranger in their midst without reservation.  I was both ill and tired from the journey so after trying to speak Spanish for the fourth straight day I passed out on their sofa.  The ugly American, no doubt snoring with my mouth open.

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