divination

Last night in Antigua I spoke with a fascinating woman who works to find birth mothers for adoptive families who want to establish contact. She works alone, accompanied on her trips by her husband for safety. She has no agency, she doesnt use any institutional contacts, no lawyers, no social workers, nothing. She works, like everyone here does, straight from her gut. She goes to the adress of the woman that is listed on the cedula. She asks around, she gets a feeling, someone tells her that maybe they know the father of that woman and that maybe he is living in a town 30 km away. She goes and there is the mother, she is in the right place, and she intends to talk to the mother, and the husband is there, maybe she can only speak to the husband who speaks to the mother who speaks to the husband who speaks to my friend the finder. A few months ago in the highlands, twelve women had their hair cut off for giving up their children in adoption, Mayan punishment. One of these women has an eight year old son in the United States. The son wanted to know that his mother loved him. He asked for some sign from her. The finder brought pictures of the young boy to his mother in Guatemala. She told the mother that the young boy was looking for a sign from her. The mother had nothing to give. She put the photo of her son against her heart and asked that the finder take a photograph of her, and send it back to the United States where he lives with his family there. The young boy doesnt know yet that his mother was punished for sending him to the United States to live, but he knows that she loves him and maybe his parents in the States will tell him more story in the years that come. He cried and cried, but he said he felt more complete.

Here, people do not talk so much about politics, or about other places, about books they have read. Conversations it seems are much closer to the core of a person-- who are you why are you here what are you doing can i trust you are we on the same team or different-- there is so much to be learned from the tone and tempo of the conversation so that sometimes only this pitch matters and not the words.

Last night I went to a talk (with some folks from Hanover! who are here helping teach english) about the Mayan calendar and the power of day counting for divination. The man sounded foolish, was hawking his book too much. He was white, had learned quiche, had studied this sort of record-keeping and divination for twenty years. He didnt want to really tell us anything, but it came out in the q&A that all three of the shamen who were his major sources of knowledge had been killed in the last four years by people in the town (not mobs, murders) who feared their power. According to this man, and to the people in the town who believe, these men have the power to heal, to enrich a person, to recognize auspicious and inauspicious days for things, and they also have to power to harm the enemies of their "clients" (I did not get him to talk about who were the clients, how the shamen chose which clients to work for, if they had to be able to pay for example). The man giving the talk had obviously feared them even though they were also sweet old men. I wonder if his foolish persona is only for the gringos in Antigua and Panahachel or if he maintains it when he speaks in Quiche, too, as a sort of protection.

The Mayan cosmology seems to be about doggedly maintaining order in the face of chaos. The day you are born, the deity and the day that influence you, is supposed to determine your path, to determine what sort of person you will be-- precise and good with money, an agriculturalist, a warrior. And then the community sets out to make you like the person you are destined to be. Order. Control. Violence. Stability? Peace? Confidence in your role? The man had not thought enough about gender. He said there are very powerful women, and I said I know. He could not say what happens to the young girl born on the day of obsidian blade (precise, good with money and numbers) whose father wouldnt let her go to school or speak to people outside the house-- what is she supposed to become? Maybe I did not ask pointedly enough. And he was afraid to admit how much the possbilities had been limited as families split up, a son or daughter living in the city to bring in a little money to supplement the food they could grow. He was afraid to admit how limited the options had become as fewer people lived by the calendar. He was trying to soften the Mayan cosmology because he had let it get so deep into his life and it is a dark sort of cosmology. He said that Mayans love apocolypse, endings of things, completion, starting over. He said that in his new book (waving it around for us) he had tried to smooth over some of the darkness and make it more positive. Im not sure he has the power to do that.

I went to lake Atitlan on Sunday, and we arrived in time to leave our things and go down to the lake side and sit with some friends of John who he had met in the city, some young guys from there who lived in Panahachel as thousands and thousands of people passed through to see their lake. It was a particularly spectacular sunset. The five of us almost didnt speak at all for a couple of hours. Just sat and looked at that light on that water.

And the next morning we found that some people we knew from the Pension Meza in Guatemala City were staying right below. Circus girls from Spain. And travelling with them was someone who I hadnt seen in four years, four years ago in El Zonte El Salvador. I appears that I am on route.

Tomorrow I have a date at McDonalds in Guatemala City with a group of University students, organized by a young woman who just gave up her first child in adoption. We both want to know what they think, especially about condoms. Im safe and happy and Ill see you all when I see you.

Alice