"Adventure Travel" in Guatemala: The Maya Heritage

By Mark J. Curran

“Adventure Travel” in Guatemala - The Maya Heritage is the fourth in the series of fiction - travel - culture - adventure books on Brazil, Mexico, Portugal-Spain, and now Guatemala. Professor Mike Gaherty and AT Leader Amy Carrier are in Guatemala researching that country as a destination for a future AT Travel Trip for its “Adventurers.” They investigate Antigua, Puerto San José, el Lago de Atitlán, Chichicastenango, Tikal in Guatemala and Copán in Honduras, checking out the history and culture of both the Spanish and Maya Heritages. Emphasis however is on the Maya people, their lives and efforts to survive under adverse circumstances in post 1976 earthquake and political turmoil in Guatemala. There are surprises and dangerous moments for Mike and Amy, and difficult decisions to come for AT Travel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jul 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781698712307

Mark J. Curran

Mark J. Curran is Professor Emeritus from Arizona State University where he worked from 1968 to 2011. He taught Spanish Language as well as the Survey of Spanish Literature, a seminar on "Don Quixote," and Civilization of Spain and Latin American Civilization. He also taught the Portuguese Language (Brazilian Variant) as well as a Survey of Luso-Brazilian Literature, Luso-Brazilian Civilization, and Seminars on Chico Buarque de Hollanda and Brazil's Folk-Popular Literature (the "Literatura de Cordel"). He has written forty-four books, eight in academic circles before retirement, thirty-six with Trafford in retirement. Color images of the covers and summaries of the books appear on his website: www.currancordelconnection.com His e-mail address is: [e-mail]

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Adventure Travel in Guatemala

The Maya Heritage

Mark J. Curran

©

Copyright 2022 Mark J. Curran.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-6987-1231-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6987-1230-7 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, real people or real places is used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Trafford rev. 07/19/2022

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CONTENTS

Author’s Disclaimer

Prologue

Chapter 1 In The Air to Guatemala City

Chapter 2 On The Way To And In Antigua

Chapter 3 A Little Bit of History But Not Too Much

Chapter 4 Next Day Antigua

Chapter 5 Antigua – The Churches

Chapter 6 On the Road to the Pacific and Puerto San José

Chapter 7 Back to the Highlands – The Magic of Atitlán

Chapter 8 The Maya World of Chichicastenango

Chapter 10 Respite and Planning in Guatemala City

Chapter 11 Adventure Research Travel to Tikal

Chapter 12 Exploring Copán

Chapter 13 An Unlucky Number Back to Guatemala

Epilogue

About The Author

AUTHOR’S DISCLAIMER

I’m writing this book in 2021 and 2022, but the story I’m telling is fiction, combining history, art, architecture, and tourism, and takes place in 1980. My own travels to Guatemala were first in 1962, then again in 1969 and 1970 for very short visits, and extensively with my wife Keah in 1976 and 1977. I must tell the reader that I was uninformed of the real situation, especially in those latter years. To the tourist, the country was still beautiful. There are no excuses for me. The color remained, Guatemala’s famous indigenous Maya villages, small farming, and weaving.

In 1962 I was on the buses, first in Mexico after classes at the UNAM, then to the Guatemala border and then on down to Quetzaltenango, all in a very folkloric trip. In that visit I experienced what amounts to a very sheltered view of Guatemala through an upper-class college friend from school days in Kansas City, Missouri from 1959 to 1962. The country seemed wonderful, a paradise of nature and with the vestiges of the Spanish Colonial Heritage and the modern views of the descendants of the Maya in their syncretic religious ceremonies, the cofradia or religious brotherhood in the church in Chichicastenango, the villages around Lake Atitlán and of course in Antigua. I fell in love with the country. I was even offered a job to stay, but graduate school was the goal.

The visit in 1969 and again in 1970 were the same, a whirlwind of tourism after Brazil.

I directed the Arizona State University Summer Program at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín (they called it The Harvard of Central America) in 1976 and 1977, accompanied by my wife Keah both times, in 1977 she well along in her pregnancy. Each year we had about twenty – five students housed in pensiones, and we all did the standard tourist forays on the weekends. (I think today it was a miracle that no disasters befell us.) The big change in Guatemala was the aftermath of the horrendous earthquake of early 1976. We at A.S.U. were seriously considering cancelling the summer program prior to June of that year but were assured that things were better. We saw the devastation of the better. But we also witnessed that off to the side business mentioned earlier: poverty was evident everywhere including the shanty towns down the hill from Guatemala City’s downtown and National Palace and evident in the countryside when we passed through villages and hiked at Atitlán.

We of course noted the guards at the National Palace with submachine guns (standard practice in such places as Peru or Brazil where I had spent time) and occasional military trucks or small convoys armed to the teeth at various places, but the color was still there, the Maya ladies with their weavings, the battered remains of churches in Antigua, Guatemala City, and the highlands. Someone did point out to us the bullet holes in the walls of buildings in Sololá on the way to Lake Atitlán, but no one, and I mean no one, including that spiffy faculty at the University talked of the Guatemala Solution to the supposed threat of Ché, Fidel and the Left in the Country. I did have an inkling of the bandied about phrase – Land Reform, - but only in bits and pieces. It turns out to all be very complicated, and so much was not revealed in the international press until the 1990s from firsthand witnesses like Rigoberta Menchu. And I hesitate to say, the role of United States’ politics, military aid and intervention to in effect make Guatemala an armed, military state.

I do not pretend to delve into Guatemala’s Dirty War which lasted thirty some years. Suffice to say it is yet another of the great human tragedies of our times. I today have enough experience to know that most on both sides sincerely believed in their version of the reality. I have been chagrinned and saddened by what I have learned, and today’s mass migration north is therefore no surprise. I am not here to write a condemnation nor even a description of those days and years.

Much of this book will be the re - creation of my memories of pleasant times (not all, most) and what this small country idealistically could offer when at its best. I have had to do the same with writings in fiction of Brazil. I do not intend to ignore the ugly reality but strive to create a read that basically expresses my mindset before I found out the other side. I’m just starting, so let’s see how it goes, how it evolves. My only defense: I loved what I saw of the country and its people.

PROLOGUE

The reader (hopefully a few more than that) may recall the book combining culture and fiction, Portugal and Spain on the ‘International Adventurer’ of 1977. It recounted the trip and adventures of Mike Gaherty and uh, … colleague, friend, sometime lover, ex – fiancée, Amy Carrier in Portugal and Spain of that year. All was successful, albeit with some surprises, and we made it home, but now we are just friends. Amy was the one who is responsible for that decision. Okay.

It all ended in the post – trip meeting with Adventure Travel’s CEO James Morrison in the office in Los Angeles. He had great praise for our work in Portugal and Spain and an amazing commendation from no less than veteran Harry Downing (he of more than one hundred AT trips) for both Amy and me. James at that decompression meeting expressed a desire for us to continue with projects and trips, the one on the table would be an AT trip to Guatemala, with a side trip to Copán in Honduras. A significant part of that choice was my extensive research, travel, and teaching respective of that area highlighting both the colonial charm of Guatemala but especially the Indigenous heritage today and the outstanding Pre – Columbian sites like Tikal and Copán. In fact, I had done a preliminary outline adding Guatemala to our original Mexico trip, but it turned out, wisely, that it was just too much for one trip. Hence the tabled notion. James had kept the original itinerary plan in his files, so there was nothing new, I mean, nothing to sell him on.

Time has passed; it is now 1980 and I’m still a happy Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, teaching those languages plus respective cultures both of the Peninsula and the Americas. It goes well with significant research completed on Brazil, and publications, hence the boost to the rank of Associate Professor (with a freeze on the promotion dollars but that small raise came a year later).

Amy has continued with her full-time dedication to AT and trip planning the past three years. We are in touch but there are no romantic developments to report. Me, I’m lonely, not finding anyone serious in Lincoln although there has been a lot of dating of one or two of the Department of Languages and Literatures colleagues. So, it remains to be seen what may be in store for Amy and me. She did get enthusiastic about a reunion on the research trip to Guatemala, reiterating we had enjoyed some wonderful times together but re – reiterating she liked just being good friends. I’ll take that for now. We met in Los Angeles in April and set up the plan for our investigating the layout for a possible AT trip for the summer of 1981.

The reader may also have seen my book on our joint research for AT in Mexico in 1974, Pre – Columbian Mexico. Plans, Pitfalls and Perils. I won’t spoil it for a new reader or two due to mentioning it now; just buy the rare book (in terms of sales) if you want to know the whole story (the same message my literatura de cordel poets in Brazil tell the public when they recite only part of their story – poems in the marketplace or fairs). What you do need to know is that good ole’ Mexico provided incredible travel adventures but also Amy and I almost lost our lives trying to complete the research. One word – Xolotl. That did bond us together.

Amy wanted to know right away if the upcoming project would be dangerous like Mexico, If that is the case, count me out! I assured her I could not ever believe that the Mexico perils would be repeated and just expected a fun trip, some travel adventure to be sure, but no more than that. And I expressed my joy at, well, just us being together again. We would be sharing accommodations and be together for about three weeks, close company one imagines. Amy seems fine with that so she began her usual competent work for travel, hotels, restaurants, and all, making decisions on all that for the AT travelers for the trip, ahem, should it all work out.

Here’s the original plan as approved by James Morrison (but subject to change) with the usual agreement on salary, expenses and the like, travelers’ checks, and the AT credit card. Amy always had passports and such up to date, but we both had to obtain the tourist cards for Guatemala and Honduras, all to be done prior to June. It would be the rainy season, but I reasoned we wanted to see a green Guatemala and not the browns of the winter dry season. That meant tropical downpours at times, muddy roads, but worth the discomfort in my view. After all, it was I who was on the hook for what we would see.

History and Travel in the Maya World - Guatemala and Honduras