Guatemala City. We had dropped off the face of the planet, emerging out of the rich, rain-soaked jungles of El Peten into the grimy, ominous capital city. Our ‘vacation within a vacation’ nearly at an end, our hearts were heavy as we left the humid, musical labyrinth of Livingston behind and headed south, towards “home”, towards La Cambalacha, towards work and routine.
Chrissy once said to me, “Guatemala City is a slum. All of it.” After a grueling six-hour chicken bus ride from Rio Dulce, we landed right in the heart of it. At first glance, the City appeared to me not exactly like a slum, but a remarkably colorless, staggeringly enormous sprawl of beige and concrete buildings, most of which seemed to house dark histories and even darker futures. Anything resembling character or culture had evaded this part of the country, as giant billboards littered the major streets, women stood by the side of the road wearing bright green vests bearing the names of mobile phone companies in glittering letters and omnipresent American food chains occupied vast parking-lot sized tracts of land. Mayans, marked by their traditional clothing and small stature, were few and far between. Business owned the city. It was the lack of color that was most halting; after having visited the most beautiful, sensuous parts of the country, it was a loss to no longer be surrounded by extraordinary diversity in sight and smell. Loaded with backpacks, drenched in sweat, we staggered away from the bus, evading the gesturing taxi drivers. Preparing to cross the street, a darkly dressed man, spotting our white skin and excessive luggage, turned around and cautioned us. “What are you doing here? This is a very dangerous city. You should not be here,” he warned, brows furrowed, before hurrying across the avenue.
I had already settled on Hotel Fenix as the best option for our nights in Guatemala City – the only problem being that we were completely disoriented and unable to find even our own location on the tiny guidebook map. The guidebook (Lonely Planet, which I came to despise not only for its mediocre information but because every other backpacker we met also had it) warned us about several things: the first of them being that we should definitely not stand on a corner in the City, all our luggage in tow, consulting a map and looking lost. As we stood on a corner, all our luggage in tow, consulting a map and looking lost, panic set in. We decided that we needed to find the closest budget hotel possible so we could stop standing on a corner, all our luggage in tow, consulting a map and looking lost. Kirk decided on Hotel Capri, which seemed to the closest possibility. We hurried past murky-looking diners, pharmacies with heavy steel bars on the windows, large cerrado signs and crowds of people walking quickly past us, looking at the ground. Upon arriving at the hotel, we checked in at the desk where the concierge, surprised to see us, seemed to have emerged from a seventies-era used car dealership magazine advertisement. He gave us the key to our room, complete with oversized red plastic tag. The hotel was prison-chic. There was too much space – the ceilings too high, the brick walls too thickly slathered with beige paint, the hallways too vast and echoing. It felt like my elementary school, if the school had been run by ominous-looking nuns and a murder had taken place and all the kids had been evacuated and the ghosts of the dead still haunted the hallways.
We sat down on the bed and surveyed our new surroundings. The last hotel we had stayed in was Casa Rosa in Livingston, where we shared a bungalow with delicate, hand-painted furniture and hand-sewn quilts, a wooden chest of drawers and a screen door that opened to a view of the Caribbean sea, complete with a dock at the end of which was a hammock, where we could watch the pelicans and the fisherman, smoke endless cigarettes and drink endless gifiti; where we could ponder the nature of the universe and of ourselves, delving lightly but sweetly into any thought that drifted through our heads.
Our room in Guatemala City, however, had a window with a view of the opposite brick wall and the underground parking lot below. A single fluorescent light bulb flickered above the bed. A giant black television stared blankly at us from atop the dresser, while a large plastic sign tacked to the wall humorlessly informed us that neither the hotel nor its employees were responsible for lost or stolen articles. A single glass ashtray lounged on the bedside table. The sounds of the city drifted to us from outside; buses roaring, cars honking, brakes screeching. While Kirk had a rendezvous with the toilet (the giardia still on active duty), I opened up the guidebook to read more about where on earth we were. After the budget hotels listing was a brief paragraph on dangerous parts of the city:
“Calles 5a and 6a, while close to the bus stations, are generally to be avoided. This is the city’s red-light district, with the highest concentration of drug dealers and underground crime operatives. Watch your back, and your wallet.”
I flipped again to the address of our hotel, and then to the map. Hotel Capri was smack in the middle of Calle 5a. Beautiful.
When Kirk emerged from the bathroom, it was decided that, as frightened and disenchanted as we were, we did have to venture out of the hotel room to feed ourselves. We rung up Charlie and Gabi back in San Marcos La Laguna, and Gabi – a former denizen of the City – recommended that we head for Cuatro Grados Norte, a trendy student area with bars and nightlife. Kirk found a promising-looking restaurant in that area in the guidebook, so we hesitantly left the room (bringing all valuables with us), and hailed a taxi. After a long, expensive ride, the very friendly driver let us out on a deserted avenue where we encountered a lovely wrought-iron archway emblazoned with the words Cuatros Grados Norte, behind which was a lovely little pedestrian avenue lined with tiny little barros and cafés, and a couple of jazz clubs. All of them – inexplicably – closed. Barred, locked, chairs stacked, lights off, shut down. It was a Monday. We learned later that apparently in Guatemala City nothing happens anywhere on Monday nights. The entire city shuts down like Labor Day. Defeated, we wandered up and down the deserted street. Not a single car or person could be seen. Except – ah! A man and woman emerged from one of the dark restaurants, locking the doors and talking quietly with each other. We approached them. In very basic Spanish, I asked them if there was any food near here. He asked me some things I didn’t understand, and when he saw my confused look he said in perfect English, “What kind of place are you looking for?”
“Oh, we’re just looking for someplace to get some dinner, somewhere nice.”
“Ah,” the man said thoughtfully. “Emm, well, there is not really any place around here. Up on that street there is a Pollo Campero, and there is a McDonalds, and there is a Taco Bell.”
“Oh, erm… okay. There aren’t any other places?”
“Not at this hour, no.”
We thanked him. He and the young woman walked away up the street. I turned to Kirk, grimacing.
“Oh my god. McDonald’s?”
“I know, man,” Kirk assented, “Pretty lame.”
We continued towards the busy street up ahead, thinking that if nothing else, at least we could find a taxi back to the hotel and we could eat at the tiny little cantina next to it. Why didn’t we just eat there in the first place? Why did we feel the need to go adventuring around Gotham City?
We meandered up another large, deserted avenue. One of the concrete walls was smothered in beautiful graffiti art – large animals converged with elegantly crafted lettering in English, Spanish and in-between, colorful illustrations bled into each other. This was the most pleasing sight we had yet seen in Guatemala City – a richly executed wall of graffiti. I mentioned that we should take a picture of it, for Collin.
We wandered past what was evidently a church service – perhaps services on Monday nights are what shut the city down? – attended by hundreds of people. Families lined the block with tables piled with brunch-like food, apparently waiting for something, waiting for more family members to emerge, or waiting for the service to begin. Everyone was sharply and brightly dressed, even in the night-time, and more and more families kept coming – in cars, around corners. We felt a part of the procession. The church building, square and concrete, loomed up on our left, with large windows lending a glimpse of vaulted ceilings, thousands of fold-up chairs, a large stage with a microphone – an evangelical service the likes of what we see at home on television.
Reaching the main street, I was reminded of the Lloyd District back home in Portland. Large, looming skyscrapers looked down upon a traffic-congested, impossibly wide avenue, lined with big box stores and fast food joints. To our right, Taco Bell. To our left, the ever-present global parasite – McDonalds.
Kirk paused, his face illuminated by the beckoning neon of the Bell.
“Oh my god. I think we gotta do it,” he said softly, eyes glistening.
“No. I don’t think we gotta do it. I think I can’t eat at Taco Bell in Guatemala.”
“Why not? Come on. We gotta do it.”
“No. I would feel so, so bad. I would feel so bad, Kirk. I don’t know about this. I don’t want to eat at Taco Bell.”
“Come on. We’ve been so good. We gotta do it.”
The decision to override my screaming conscience and walk through the doors of one of the biggest names in the American fast food industry can only be explained by a combination of the following factors: gnawing hunger, the knowledge that Kirk really needed something resembling the comforts of home, and a masochistic wish to explore my own reaction to American corporatism in the context of another country.
Waiting in line. Here I am. A big, fat American coming into big, fat Taco Bell to eat my big, fat chalupa. I imagined the other customers thinking that I expected to be treated royally, or that I had been wandering around Guatemala, hating it, and now, here at last, was finally food that I knew and loved. Ah. And I’m just that ignorant, to think it’s funny, hey, isn’t it a hysterical notion, to go into Taco Bell, won’t that be funny and ironic? Oh, the wonder of the universe.
The implications of my presence in that restaurant were too vast for me to be able to stomach all at once. It wasn’t just a playful jaunt for food. I took a glance at the menu and was thoroughly disgusted at the sheer caprice of the United States. We give ourselves permission to take food from someone else’s culture, repackage it, sell it back to them, and then reap the benefits (though Taco Bell technically mimics Mexican cuisine, not Guatemalan, it was similar enough to hit home). And the worst part was that here, Taco Bell was as good as any family restaurant. Held in high regard, even. The cantinas were the cheapest places to go here, not Taco Bell. Rich families ate at Taco Bell. Rich people, comparatively, worked here. And here I was, waltzing on to my country’s giant victory dirt mound to proudly order from the menu I was so sickeningly familiar with. I felt every bit the conquistadora. I felt ashamed of my country, of the cultural homogenization we were helping to spread at a terrifying rate across the globe. I felt ashamed of our bad, hazardous food. I felt ashamed that because of this Taco Bell, local cantinas and tiendas were losing money. We were sucking the culture out of this country through a gilded straw. I felt disturbed that everybody here had decided that this was a great place to go. No one in sight recognized the giant ghostly American dollar sign floating through the restaurant. I felt like a pirate caught mid-plunder, surrounded by treasure chests, draped in red velvet and gold medallions, swilling the brandy I stole from the king. I felt that by coming into this Taco Bell, I was sending several loud and clear messages to Guatemala – I support your country’s economic dependence on my country. I support unhealthy food. I support the empire of America. I support helping your leaders rob you so my people can remodel their four-bedroom homes, vacation in the Florida Keys, and buy the new iPhone 3G. I support the neo-colonization of your country and your culture. I support the virtual enslavement of your government to large, American corporations. I support all of this, and by god, I am going to eat a taco because I fucking can.
And who’s to blame? How does the world not revolve around money? It dawned on me like a sucker-punch to the face that the very nature of capitalism is to rob, pillage, plunder and rape others. Our entire society has been built on a system meant to push others down. Individualism. Robbing as many people as possible in the most efficient way possible. Making money. Harming other humans and not giving a shit (or not being allowed to). Business. And it really dawned on me, in a way it never did in the classroom, how horrible that is: how this system encourages selfishness, isolation, greed. It completely overrides our human urges to love, to care for one another equally, to be kind, to give selflessly. And the whole world, the whole world is run like this. The whole world is run by the desire to kill each other and run away with the money. What monsters have we made of ourselves? No wonder so much of the United States suffers from depression, no wonder there are so many murders, suicides, divorces, drug addicts. Our economic system is built like a giant pyramid. There is only room for one at the top. Any concept of true and equal community is shattered at the conception. We are doomed never to trust each other, to compete for dwindling resources, to practice conditional friendship and conditional love. The world is madness.
These overwhelming thoughts struck me at the precise moment that two other terrible things happened. The first thing was that I bit into the worst chalupa I’ve ever tasted in my life. I had asked for chicken: Kirk, of course, had ordered beef. And the second terrible thing was Kirk issuing the following statement:
“I don’t believe in hurting other people, but I do believe in capitalism.”
The combination of these words, the terrible taste in my mouth and the sinking feeling in my heart produced a physical reaction common to many humans when under extreme stress: I cried. I ate my shitty, shitty beef chalupa, my face turned red, my nose ran, and I cried. About capitalism. Into the processed cheese and micro-waved tomatoes. In the middle of Taco Bell.
Kirk helped me through this by saying “Well, I don’t think you have to cry about it.”
I was devastated. Devastated by this horrible, robotic system running the world and oppressing everybody, horrified at being stuck in a foreign country with a man who was completely incapable of ever reaching me, and defeated by the shitty, shitty beef chalupa I was eating in shitty, shitty Taco Bell on a shitty, shitty Monday night.
