Honest Day's Work
5:30 A.M., we make our way groggily to the curb to catch the once-a-day minivan from Lake Atitlan in Guatemala to Chiapas, Mexico. You can imagine our annoyance when, at the next stop, the curb was bare and the scheduled pick-up still in bed. Five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes the van idles while the driver disappears into a hotel to wake this guy up. We had been running bleary eyed through dark streets with stray luggage when it seems we could have had the driver powering up our kitchen coffee maker.
Finally, a forty-something-year-old Mestizo, with rumpled clothes and hair, emerges from the gate with a large worn backpack. There is a loud PLUNK as it is slung through the back door of the hold. I think, finally, we are on our way. Then the guy disappears again into the hotel and another three minutes pass. Another large duffle bag. PLUNK. Then another. I glance over the seat to notice that, with the help of the driver, he has rearranged our Gringo bags so that they are on top and his are on the bottom. Finally situated, we are off on our eight-hour journey. About an hour in we stop for gas. The guy disappears into the bathroom for another good twenty minutes. The driver patiently waits. We throw one another an inquisitive look. What the heck is going on? And what might this guy be packing?
Also on board is Lincoln, a 55-year-old expat from California who has taken up Mexican citizenship to make his mint in local real-estate. He is quite a character. Claiming to be good buddies with Bill Walton, the former basketball star, he seems to know other heavy hitters all over the United States, yet he has abandoned the USA altogether to strike his own gold in Mexico. He, too, notices the odd behavior of our rumpled passenger, and the fact that our stuff has been placed in an inconspicuous mound around his own in the hold. The van stops for lunch. The three of us and the driver sit down in a Mexican truck stop cafe. Lincoln orders a large steak, strikes up good natured small talk with our fellow passenger in Spanish, then steers the conversation toward our inquiry with a sly smile: "So, what's in the bags, man?"
Our new friend returns a knowing smile and jumps from his seat for a trip to the van. I think to myself, have I just unknowingly entered some Colombian drug club? A minute later he reappears with several plastic bags in hand. Plunk. Plunk. Plunk. He unwraps them one by one. Out of each emerges a statue; heavy, blue-green, intricately carved, pure jade; thousands of dollars of the stuff, pulled from deep within the Guatemalan Earth where the finest jade in the world is made by the fiery compression of two continental plates. The Guatemalan government is well-aware of the value of this treasure, and for this reason, transport of raw jade across its borders is illegal.
My brain wraps itself around the fact that this guy isn't a drug runner coming down from a reckless binge. He's an artist, using diamond saws to turn the second-hardest substance in the world into the likenesses of early Mesoamerican folklore. Out of his stash he pulls the primitive round head of an Olmec Indian and then the intricately detailed square head of an Aztec jaguar. Then, for a good laugh, he pulls out a picture of Bill Clinton in his San Cristobal shop.
It was a mere twenty miles back that he had transferred this weighty loot across his carefully chosen border—a single raised red and white crossing gate on a two-lane highway crossing the hilly frontier. The driver of our connecting van waltzed from Mexico to our Guatemalan parking spot to assist our former driver in the transfer of the artist’s bags. The few border guards milling about what appeared to be seamless commerce on both sides of the border took no notice as we passed under the “Welcome to Mexico” sign, our unchecked passports in hand. This guy clearly had them all paid off. And three children's college educations paid off, too.
(7/21/06)
The Preacher Man
Hill Taxi
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