As promised, I present herewith a few random thoughts on Bush's Guatemala visit, from a local perspective.
Guatemalans Underwhelmed
As I mentioned in an earlier diary, Guatemalans had low expectations that Bush's visit would result in any meaningful dialogue. An unscientific poll taken yesterday by the Prensa Libre, the country's largest newspaper, showed that the vast majority (67%) of Guatemalans were uninterested in the visit. Given the press attention the trip received and the inconveniences caused by rerouting traffic and sealing off some important commercial sectors of Guatemala City, the number is surprisingly high.
Part of the reason for the public's indifference might have been Bush's uninspired choices for photo-ops. The Iximché archaeological site is virtually devoid of interest and monuments. It was an humble, post-Classic, highlands city, founded by its Kakchiquel inhabitants in 1463. In Guatemalan archaeological terms, it is hardly ancient and only slightly older than the oldest colonial Spanish structures in the country. Worse, the Kakchiqueles played an ignominious role in the conquest, and sided with the Spaniards against their more powerful K'iché neighbors. Popular press accounts notwithstanding, it holds no special spiritual relevance for Guatemala's Maya people. (I'm all for driving the evil spirits away, but that's not really who the Maya are, for the record.)
No one would visit Guatemala to see Iximché. They come to see the great classic Maya cities of the Petén, like Tikal. Barring an archaeological tour, Bush might have visited the lovely colonial city of Antigua Guatemala, or the sublimely beautiful Lake Atitlán, although security logistics would have been more difficult. Guatemalans could have related to that. Each Guatemalan town has its own flavor and specialty. On a drive that took me through Chimaltenango, the capital of the department Bush visited, we kept track of what each town was known for as we passed through: leather goods, bean production, etc. When we got to Chimaltenango, we were stumped, until our driver broke in with "pinchazos y putas" (flat tires and whores). That pretty much sums up the area.
Fun facts: Kan, the Rattlesnake
George W. Bush was born on the day Kan in the Maya calendar. The Maya once used the calendar's twenty day names, coupled with their 13 numerical modifiers, as proper names for people. Particular attributes were associated with each day, much like our familiar horoscope. The attributes of Bush's name day, according to the Maya Books of Chilam Balam, from the Yucatan, include: Rattlesnake, fire, a bad future, assassin. Attributes associated with the name in the Guatemalan highlands town of Momostenango include: Strong, powerful, evil.
When the Going Gets Tough, Lock Up the Press
The Guatemalan press complained bitterly all day long, on the radio, on TV and in today's printed newspapers, about discriminatory treatment by the U.S. Secret Service. While Bush's traveling, U.S. press claque sailed smoothly through security checkpoints, already known to the SS, Guatemalan reporters were forced to stand for hours in long lines and were subjected to miniscule checks of their belongings. At one point, when a small group of Maya protestors snuck through a cornfield at Iximché and planted themselves, with signs, at a point Bush's group would have to pass on the way out, the local press was hurriedly shuffled into a small museum and locked up by the Secret Service. Guatemalans, probably correctly, interpreted this as a slight against everyone in the country by the norteamericanos prepotentes. It did nothing to help public relations and will be remembered by Guatemalans for a long time, although you won't hear about it in the U.S. Here's a picture of the lockup, from this morning's Siglo XXI newspaper. (To keep Kos out of trouble, I've taken the liberty of blurring the agent's face. I know it looks like Rove, but it's not.):
Sadly, these are exactly the kind of images that reinforce a negative view of Americans and do nothing to win us friends and allies in the world. It shouldn't happen. Period.
Immigration, and Bush as King Herod
The stage had already been set for Bush's Guatemalan visit by the U.S. Immigration Service, when it conducted its horrific raid in New Bedford, Massachusetts, that ripped Guatemalan immigrant families apart. Some context is required here. Immigration is Uncle Sam's big stick in Central America, and the embassies pull it out whenever they want something done in the region's countries. The U.S. embassy in El Salvador made threats about immigration and family remittances during the country's last election, to curtail chances of a win by the leftist party. In Guatemala, we saw planeloads of immigrants being shipped back in handcuffs when the State Department was pressing for greater speed in signing the 1996 Peace Accord. To imagine that the events in New Bedford and Bush's trip are connected is wholly within the realm of reasonable assumption, given known history: The U.S. wants something so here's a big immigration raid. Many Guatemalans made that assumption and President Berger apparently mentioned it to Bush, although Bush dismissed it, in his press remarks, as a conspiracy theory.
Immigration is one of those rare subjects that unites political groups across the board in Guatemala. Poor people depend on it, the Chamber of Commerce depends on it, and the Catholic Church is a highly vocal proponent of easing immigration controls in the U.S. (It should be noted that the Bergers are devout Catholics, and Mrs. Berger is a member of Opus Dei.) Despite whatever nonsense Bush might like to believe about CAFTA bringing prosperity to the single town he visited, any prosperity he saw is the result of family remittances, not agriculture.
It fell to Guatemalan Archbishop Rodolfo Quezada Toruño to set the tone for the trip at mass in the National Cathedral last Sunday, just a few hours before Bush's arrival, when he roundly denounced the events in New Bedford and U.S. immigration policy in general, while comparing President Bush to King Herod. Although Bush had nowhere to go but up after that, he did nothing on his trip to allay Guatemala's concerns about immigration or dispel widespread, negative impressions of the U.S. His dismal Spanish was no help at all, although Guatemalans are far too polite to mention it.
The thing that surprised me most about this trip was Guatemalan President Oscar Berger's firm insistence on talking about immigration, and on raising it, again and again, in the press conference. Bush, who is used to browbeating his host countries with an agenda entirely of U.S. design, was obviously caught off guard and became quite defensive. I don't know that I've seen a foreign leader anywhere turn the tables quite so nimbly on Bush. In the end, of course, it will make no difference. The U.S. will do what it wants and Guatemala's tiny voice in world affairs, like the voice of its press corps pleading to be released from confinement, will scarcely be heard.