Away from Guatemala

I feel the need to add a footnote here. I no longer live in Guatemala so I can't continue Guatemala Gulps. Its just not the same writing about a place from the other side of the globe.

I was so overwhelmed in the months before I left that I couldn't find a topic small enough to write on for this blog. I followed a major corruption/murder case involving the assassination in Guatemala of 3 Salvadoran members of the Central American Parliament, followed by the arrest of four members of the National Civil Police for their murder, followed by the assassination of those same four police while being held in custody.... but it was too big. It was, and still is, a book. I hope I write it, but I hope I can write it with hope.

Guatemala is especially in my mind because today it is the second and final vote in the Presidential election. The trouble is, I'm no longer sure it makes much difference who is elected President. The river of corruption seems to run so deep and so wide that these democratic institutions have started to look to me like bobbing paper boats. I hope this is just a passing bout of cynicism and that I'll soon regain my faith in the ability of Guatemala's own people to make themselves a better future. Because they are amazingly resilient people and I don't want to forget that, with the distance that comes from reading news analysis rather than the reality of daily contact.

My experience of writing about Guatemala, where I lived for more than two years, was that the better I got to know the place the harder it was to write about it. Things that seemed clearcut at first, became tangled. The versions of history I read were crumpled around the edges in conversation. People who were cautious at first, started to tell me their real stories and views. Anything I wrote started to look like a photo-kit portrait of a good friend or loved one.

It wasn't my choice to live in Guatemala, but it was an arranged marriage that grew into love.