It’s not a painting by Van Gogh or Munch. (Photo: Prensa Libre: AFP)
January 5th, 2009.

A beautiful evening mist rolls down the surrounding hillsides here in Xela as I write. But in the meanwhile, sadly, in San Cristobal Verapaz, some two hundred kilometers north of Guatemala City, the recovery work continues after a landslide that killed at the very least 33 people last night, as a chunk of mountain—ten thousand tons of mountainside, rocks and earth— came tumbling down on coffee farmworkers who were walking along the road home from work. Since at least another 60 persons are missing, the number of victims is inevitably bound to be a lot higher (probably more than 80 people) as the recovery work goes forward over the next days; a job that’s immensely difficult due of the geological instability of the area. Landslides in Guatemala are commonplace, but they usually occur during the rainy season (now is dry season). When I first came to Guatemala, one of the first things that astonished me was how people work, the level of sacrifice and strength that goes into getting the mere daily beans and tortillas on the table, and of course this brings perspective to the type of life I’ve lived so far; the coffee workers who lost their lives in yesterday’s mudslide were no doubt among those many Guatemalans and millions more throughout Latin America who broke their backs working long days in the fincas for a meager, often miniscule wage. It seems somehow more unjust and meaningless that those who work the hardest and earn the least gratitude are the ones to go first when disaster strikes. Of course, nature itself is indiscriminate, but the priorities of the Guatemalan government, like so many others (my own backyard certainly included) are not. The first thing most people encounter upon entering the country is the impressively smoothly varnished and conveniently modern Aurora Airport—built, I suspect, mainly to impress incoming foreigners with bucks for the tourist industry, and at the expense of improving the dangerously precarious roads and highways. Apparently no tourists were involved in the disaster, or someone surely would have told us.

Here’s to

Estuardo García, 36,

Jesús Lajuj Xitimul, 39,

José María Caal, 51,

José Alfredo Mendoza, 30,

Diego Elías García Alonzo, 23,

Joaquín Ixpata, 31,

Luciano González Lajuj, 29,

Sebastián Jom, 70,

Pablo Solomán Tzunún,

and the others who didn’t come home last night.