If San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico, is Montreal's Westmount, then Xela, Guatemala is just at that line where Westmount turns into NDG. That line is where all the manicured grass, good sidewalk, and well watered impatiens end, and the trash, dust and highway show up.
Or maybe it's like this: San Cristobal is like a trip to Disneyworld, and Xela is the tour of your local paper factory. I'm only comparing them because the windy mountain bustrip, five hours of dynamited cliff, steeply cultivated fields of corn and cabbage and sickening switchbacks reminded me a lot of our trip last winter to the mountain town in Chiapas. There are also a lot of women walking around with traditional Maya dress, balancing bowls of tortillas and tamales on their heads.
Maria and her husband Hugo, who I'm living with here, are not your common Guatemalans. Yesterday, over a breakfast of sweet, milky oatmeal, ginormous banana and good coffee (!) Maria told me no mi gusta la religion. She is emphatic about everything, but this is a passionate subject, and though Hugo has gone through about as many religious fads as exist (my source is a guy at the school who stayed with her last year...we're talking hari krishna, mormanism and the ever popular catholicism) Maria is not into church. She thinks it's done a lot of harm to her country, and puts people in their shivering places.
There are two other students living with us. The house is rambling, my room is by far the most creative, and sometimes Maria and Hugo rent out a front studio room to a random painter.
At night, a chorus of barking dogs (domestico y no) sings me to sleep.
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