18 June 2005
WORK HAS BEGUN!!!!
On Thursday, I started my first test unit at Trinidad. It has been a long time in coming, and only time will tell if it was worth it, but at least it has been started.
Now, this does not mean that the week was easy or that things went off without a hitch, but for me, working is much better than not working. I am content with small bits of progress.
The week started out a little scary. Matt did not come back in time for the meeting with the grumpy landholder, so I volunteered to stand in. Matt thought about it and sent Jeanette along, as an official Guatemalan project member(and
nominal co-director) .
And she started to talk to me about what I should and shouldn’t say, and
how I should act and finished by telling me that she wasn’t really going to
speak – she would let me do the talking, and only come in for a problem.
At that point we had a problem. I am the most junior member of the project, I don’t know the local or national politics, I have no experience in this sort of conflict resolution, and my Spanish ability is the least of all the members of the project.
The operating principle, of course, was that I am male. In Latin interactions, that is often the overriding hierarchical trait. As a woman, even though she is co-director of the project, Jeanette does not have necessary equality in a room full of men. Unjust, but true. And when she explained that to me, her reluctance to speak made sense.
It made no difference anyway – five minutes before the meeting, his sons barged in to the Alcalde’s office and said that their dad, Don Juan(hereafter
DJ) , had only this morning received the note inviting him to
the “sit down” with us. It had been sent
to his house the previous Thursday. He
would be out in his milpa and not able to attend the meeting.
We met with the Vice-Alcalde(Alcalde is still in Canada getting body
massages) and he agreed that we were within the law, and also
agreed to write the letter giving us permission, and promising legal problems
if we were not allowed to proceed.
We then sent Jeanette off to her site, and did some small pending activities(one of which involved getting chased off of another plot of land
rented from DJ) , before heading back to the municipio to get
the letter. We had also made
arrangements to get the director of monuments to meet with us at the site and
explain things to DJ. So when we showed
up in the alcalde’s office again, we had bigger guns with us. After getting a copy of the letter, Don Pedro
escorted us out to the house of DJ, and we met with his wife. She is a very nice lady who did not marry
well at all. After explaining the
situation to her, we followed her directions on a wild goose chase to find
DJ. We went first to one field, and then
to another, in a vain attempt to talk directly to DJ; I am half convinced he
was hiding under the desk in the alcalde’s office. Or maybe he has his own desk. The only good things that came out of the
meeting was that I got to know Pedro a little, and he got some cooking firewood
from DJ’s field (I helped him load it up) .
Finally, we made arrangements with the police to come with us to the site(with
visions of mapping between armed guards) , and went to meet with
the judge (already gone for the day) ,
should a court order eventually be necessary.
Tuesday we went and talked to the police, and hit up the judge again. He was in the alcalde’s office, and when we went there, we sat in the office for ten minutes before DJ and his two sons showed up, cut in line in front of us, and went in to talk to the vice-alcalde. We waited and after about an hour, followed suit.
“In the red corner, weighing in with letters and proclamations and degrees and the power of the law behind us, sat Jeanette, Jorge(Papatulo)
and Clorox Laptop. In the blue corner,
snarling and making no eye contact at all, was the DJ family.”
We faced off, and Jeanette opened(so much for her not talking) . We have our permits, signed by the
government. We have permission to work,
and a letter from the municipio, also giving us permission. We are hiring a number of local workers (who also vote, by the way, Mr. Vice Alcalde) , and we
have all of the force of the law behind us.
They responded with a story about a tail-less cow that somehow our workers are responsible for, a calf that fell into a pit and was irreparably harmed(but for which evidence was never produced) and
another (true) story about the
destruction of zacate – the preferred grass for grazing (we
probably carved up an area of 100x100m total in a pasture measured by the
kilometer) . We countered
with stories of destroyed test units and harassment of our workers and a daily
ritual of intimidation and aggravation.
My favorite moment of the day came when we spoke of the destruction of
the test units from 2003 – someone had come in at night and dug through a
stucco floor and carved up the profile of the unit, destroying the record
completely. I was interrupted at this
point to be told that hunters, without permission, often come on the land with
their dogs (one of our workers hunts with his dogs and
is another of DJ’s enemies) and they are likely responsible for
the destruction of the units.
I raised my eyebrows and asked, “Could they also be responsible for cutting the cow’s tail?”
Not much of a way he could respond to that.
Finally it came to a head. DJ wanted money for the destruction of his zacate. We offered to replant. He did not want somebody else botching the job; he wanted to be paid for the destroyed zacate. We said we didn’t have to pay, and were not allowed to pay. Countered with an offer to ask for permission to pay for a replant. DJ requested that we build fences around the excavation units while they are open to keep the cows from getting hurt. We agreed. He wanted us to avoid cutting down trees. That is a bit sticky – we are mapping, and simple sight lines will not suffice. But we agreed to take Taca(Number 2 son) out and show him where we would be
working.
By the end, we had agreement from pretty much everyone, and, if not happy, the participants were at least satisfied that they had been heard. So our next stop was to the police, who seemed disappointed that they were not needed, and the judge, who was glad to be left out of it.
So at that point, all we had to do was start digging. And although that did not start until Thursday, it was a wonderful feeling to actually make progress. Matt has encountered a garbage dump on the back side of the group I am digging and there is a lot of stone tool debris in it. My test unit in the platform is intended to date the structure. The ceramics in the fill are pretty sparse, but I have great preservation of a bunch of stucco floors – six total. This makes Elly happy, because she takes samples of each one, thin-sections it, and looks at it under the microscope to see its composition and any interesting features. She is also working this year to see if she can directly date the charcoal found in the floor.
So everybody is working and seems happy, if a little bit stressed. The food situation is getting to critical mass. There is simply no variety and little nutritional value in what we are eating for most meals. Our cook is wonderful – she works really hard, comes early and stays late, but most days we eat noodles for lunch and breakfast. Sometimes eggs for both meals. One day lunch was a spoonful of mashed potatoes – very tasty, but not nearly enough. We keep making suggestions that she ignores.
To be fair, Jeanette has been in charge of buying vegetables, and she has now been relieved of that task. She makes sure that not one piece is bruised and that all of our vegetables look good, but she is accustomed to buying for one or two people. Not eight. We would much prefer throwing away some spoiled veggies at the end of the week to having no veggies remaining at the end of the week. By the end of Saturday, we were so desperate for real food that we drove in to Flores for a meal. We ate at La Luna and every one of us ordered red meat and vegetables, and there was not a scrap left on the table. I was worried for a minute that the next table over was in danger of having the locusts from our table descend on theirs.
The week also brought some nice events. Tuesday was Ingrid’s birthday. After the meeting with DJ, I snuck out with Elly to “survey a trail” we had seen earlier, and went to San Andres to pick up the piñata and cake I had ordered on Monday. Luki, a friend of ours who lives in San José with her dad(Papatulo) and two kids (Detleff and Sylvia) , had gone over to San Andres with
me on Monday and helped me track down a piñata maker (I
ordered the pig) and a bakery.
On the way back, we picked Luki and the kids, then back to Nuevo San José
to pick up Carlos and Benito, who also had a passel of kids to take back. By the time the party started, we had about
40 kids running around. And we had a
piñata full of candy.
Now everyone knows what a piñata is – a hollow figure filled with candy, bounced around on a string. Kids take turns whacking at it with a stick until the candy spills out. But until you have actually seen the results of it, you can not imagine the delightful spectacle. It is like a bullfight, only with more gore, since the matador is blindfolded. Heaven help the poor kid who sneaks in to grab the piece of candy near the matador. Remember the scene with a blindfolded Luke Skywalker training with the light saber? He was never guided by the Force so well as these kids. One inner eye on the pig, another on keeping the horde of non-blindfolded kids at bay with a broomstick. Definitely the stuff of epic movies.
Everybody ate cake and played games until it was time to go home. It was one of the happiest birthday celebrations I have ever seen. The kids really made it special. And, fortunately, there were no stitches involved.
The event with the stitches actually came later - Wednesday was a pretty tough day, between an incident involving the car and an unrelated injury. Matt came in from the capital(sleepless overnight bus ride) as we were leaving for
the field, and he crashed for a few hours before I went and got him. By then, we had cleared a couple of
structures and had started doing some finer work, but still no excavations. After walking the site for a while, Matt
grabbed the car and went to find more workers for Thursday. Somehow, the trip from Trinidad to San José
took him in a straight line through camp and into my hammock for a while. After he was done, he started up the hill
again.
We have had some rain this week. And some of the rain has been pretty hard. The driveway is very steep, and more than a little slick. Tuesday we had some difficulty getting up the hill, resulting in a minor explosion from me and the laying down of some sand, which was washed away Tuesday night by the rain. Matt started up the slippery slope and did not make it. Second time, tampoco. Third time, he thought he would put two tires on dirt instead and try to maneuver his way to the top. Problem is, the “dirt” was supersaturated with water. Result: he slid downhill about thirty feet and came to rest against a sapling. No damage to the car, but it did mean that everybody had to walk home. It also meant that the car could not be left at the camp, since we could not get the car out of the camp if it rained.(I hired a guy the next day to take a pick to
the concrete so that it would not be slick, and now we can use the drive
again.)
The loss of my car put me in a pretty bad mood. One of the guys has a garage and said he would come and get us any time we wanted, but it is not the same as having the freedom to leave whenever you want.
With that blow to the mood over, I grabbed my cell phone and went down to call Kathe(I only get reception on the dock) . I didn’t make it. In the dark, one of the stairs
disappears. I was looking at the phone
and stepped onto the landing, which was actually two steps down, instead of
one. In the dark, I pitched forward,
flung the phone away and caught myself with my hands and tumbled down the
stairs. For a few seconds I groaned as I
took inventory. Head, check. Arms, check.
Hands, check. Legs, check. Toes scraped, but check.
The scraped toes were not a check, after all. I had removed all of the skin off of a toe on the left foot, pulling off skin from the tip to the knuckle. Including the toenail. There was a flap of skin hanging there, full toenail embedded, dangling from the side of the toe. Christina heard me and came to check me over. She doctored the toe(alcohol was not a fun part of her medical training)
and then went back to work.
A final side note. The television show previously mentioned has elicited some email response(people
asking for details that I cannot provide) , so I will not
mention the name of the show now. But as
we were coming down on Wednesday from hiring workers, we stopped to see some
boat builders at work. The guy
overseeing the construction was a New Zealander, and he said that they were
only using the boats for 39 days. Then
they can burn them or whatever. Why only
thirty days? we asked. Filming, came the
reply. May I ask what? Nah.
They’d kick my ass if I told you.
But we’re working in an archaeological park.
Ahhh, we all said. Yaxhá? Yep. We never once mentioned the name of the show. But we all knew what it was. Funny thing is, they are trying to approximate native life as closely as possible, so they are modifying the form of the boats. The typical boat being built today for use on the lake has a flat stern, used for mounting a motor. That is how “the natives” do things. But in “going native” the producers want boats that have pointed ends. Ahhh. Reality. Hmmm.
WORK HAS BEGUN!!!!
On Thursday, I started my first test unit at Trinidad. It has been a long time in coming, and only time will tell if it was worth it, but at least it has been started.
Now, this does not mean that the week was easy or that things went off without a hitch, but for me, working is much better than not working. I am content with small bits of progress.
The week started out a little scary. Matt did not come back in time for the meeting with the grumpy landholder, so I volunteered to stand in. Matt thought about it and sent Jeanette along, as an official Guatemalan project member
At that point we had a problem. I am the most junior member of the project, I don’t know the local or national politics, I have no experience in this sort of conflict resolution, and my Spanish ability is the least of all the members of the project.
The operating principle, of course, was that I am male. In Latin interactions, that is often the overriding hierarchical trait. As a woman, even though she is co-director of the project, Jeanette does not have necessary equality in a room full of men. Unjust, but true. And when she explained that to me, her reluctance to speak made sense.
It made no difference anyway – five minutes before the meeting, his sons barged in to the Alcalde’s office and said that their dad, Don Juan
We met with the Vice-Alcalde
We then sent Jeanette off to her site, and did some small pending activities
Finally, we made arrangements with the police to come with us to the site
Tuesday we went and talked to the police, and hit up the judge again. He was in the alcalde’s office, and when we went there, we sat in the office for ten minutes before DJ and his two sons showed up, cut in line in front of us, and went in to talk to the vice-alcalde. We waited and after about an hour, followed suit.
“In the red corner, weighing in with letters and proclamations and degrees and the power of the law behind us, sat Jeanette, Jorge
We faced off, and Jeanette opened
They responded with a story about a tail-less cow that somehow our workers are responsible for, a calf that fell into a pit and was irreparably harmed
I raised my eyebrows and asked, “Could they also be responsible for cutting the cow’s tail?”
Not much of a way he could respond to that.
Finally it came to a head. DJ wanted money for the destruction of his zacate. We offered to replant. He did not want somebody else botching the job; he wanted to be paid for the destroyed zacate. We said we didn’t have to pay, and were not allowed to pay. Countered with an offer to ask for permission to pay for a replant. DJ requested that we build fences around the excavation units while they are open to keep the cows from getting hurt. We agreed. He wanted us to avoid cutting down trees. That is a bit sticky – we are mapping, and simple sight lines will not suffice. But we agreed to take Taca
By the end, we had agreement from pretty much everyone, and, if not happy, the participants were at least satisfied that they had been heard. So our next stop was to the police, who seemed disappointed that they were not needed, and the judge, who was glad to be left out of it.
So at that point, all we had to do was start digging. And although that did not start until Thursday, it was a wonderful feeling to actually make progress. Matt has encountered a garbage dump on the back side of the group I am digging and there is a lot of stone tool debris in it. My test unit in the platform is intended to date the structure. The ceramics in the fill are pretty sparse, but I have great preservation of a bunch of stucco floors – six total. This makes Elly happy, because she takes samples of each one, thin-sections it, and looks at it under the microscope to see its composition and any interesting features. She is also working this year to see if she can directly date the charcoal found in the floor.
So everybody is working and seems happy, if a little bit stressed. The food situation is getting to critical mass. There is simply no variety and little nutritional value in what we are eating for most meals. Our cook is wonderful – she works really hard, comes early and stays late, but most days we eat noodles for lunch and breakfast. Sometimes eggs for both meals. One day lunch was a spoonful of mashed potatoes – very tasty, but not nearly enough. We keep making suggestions that she ignores.
To be fair, Jeanette has been in charge of buying vegetables, and she has now been relieved of that task. She makes sure that not one piece is bruised and that all of our vegetables look good, but she is accustomed to buying for one or two people. Not eight. We would much prefer throwing away some spoiled veggies at the end of the week to having no veggies remaining at the end of the week. By the end of Saturday, we were so desperate for real food that we drove in to Flores for a meal. We ate at La Luna and every one of us ordered red meat and vegetables, and there was not a scrap left on the table. I was worried for a minute that the next table over was in danger of having the locusts from our table descend on theirs.
The week also brought some nice events. Tuesday was Ingrid’s birthday. After the meeting with DJ, I snuck out with Elly to “survey a trail” we had seen earlier, and went to San Andres to pick up the piñata and cake I had ordered on Monday. Luki, a friend of ours who lives in San José with her dad
Now everyone knows what a piñata is – a hollow figure filled with candy, bounced around on a string. Kids take turns whacking at it with a stick until the candy spills out. But until you have actually seen the results of it, you can not imagine the delightful spectacle. It is like a bullfight, only with more gore, since the matador is blindfolded. Heaven help the poor kid who sneaks in to grab the piece of candy near the matador. Remember the scene with a blindfolded Luke Skywalker training with the light saber? He was never guided by the Force so well as these kids. One inner eye on the pig, another on keeping the horde of non-blindfolded kids at bay with a broomstick. Definitely the stuff of epic movies.
Everybody ate cake and played games until it was time to go home. It was one of the happiest birthday celebrations I have ever seen. The kids really made it special. And, fortunately, there were no stitches involved.
The event with the stitches actually came later - Wednesday was a pretty tough day, between an incident involving the car and an unrelated injury. Matt came in from the capital
We have had some rain this week. And some of the rain has been pretty hard. The driveway is very steep, and more than a little slick. Tuesday we had some difficulty getting up the hill, resulting in a minor explosion from me and the laying down of some sand, which was washed away Tuesday night by the rain. Matt started up the slippery slope and did not make it. Second time, tampoco. Third time, he thought he would put two tires on dirt instead and try to maneuver his way to the top. Problem is, the “dirt” was supersaturated with water. Result: he slid downhill about thirty feet and came to rest against a sapling. No damage to the car, but it did mean that everybody had to walk home. It also meant that the car could not be left at the camp, since we could not get the car out of the camp if it rained.
The loss of my car put me in a pretty bad mood. One of the guys has a garage and said he would come and get us any time we wanted, but it is not the same as having the freedom to leave whenever you want.
With that blow to the mood over, I grabbed my cell phone and went down to call Kathe
The scraped toes were not a check, after all. I had removed all of the skin off of a toe on the left foot, pulling off skin from the tip to the knuckle. Including the toenail. There was a flap of skin hanging there, full toenail embedded, dangling from the side of the toe. Christina heard me and came to check me over. She doctored the toe
A final side note. The television show previously mentioned has elicited some email response
Ahhh, we all said. Yaxhá? Yep. We never once mentioned the name of the show. But we all knew what it was. Funny thing is, they are trying to approximate native life as closely as possible, so they are modifying the form of the boats. The typical boat being built today for use on the lake has a flat stern, used for mounting a motor. That is how “the natives” do things. But in “going native” the producers want boats that have pointed ends. Ahhh. Reality. Hmmm.
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