Reflections By David Hargreave

It is February 11, exactly one month after saying goodbye to the Yucatan and I am adjusting to my return as I always do, slowly and somewhat reluctantly. This is the fifth year that we have spent our Christmas season with the Mayan people in the rural villages of that part of Mexico. During that time, my family, Lyn, Scott, and Craig who was unable to come this year and I have lived & worked in the ejidos of Nicholas Bravo and Orthon P. Blanco marked on only the most detailed maps of the Yucatan, as well as in the Guatemalan refugee camps of Maya Tecum, Los Laureles and Quetzal Edzna which, in mute testimony to the plight of those people, are shown on absolutely no maps whatsoever.

Not long after my return this year I happened upon a magazine article describing the travels of two young American males in the Yucatan and the State of Chiapas. The story was one of high adventure with accounts of being confronted by the sometimes hostile inhabitants of rural villages. How utterly unlike my own experience of these gracious and wonderful people. We have encountered warmth and affection in all of the villages we have lived in, even amongst the Mayan refugees of Guatemala who have many reasons to dislike Americans whose CIA was responsible for arming and training the military forces who laid waste to their countryside and slaughtered their kin.

My mind returns to December 29^th of last year. It is late when we enter the village of Orthon P. Blanco. It has been a long ride from Cancun, complete with the seemingly obligatory flat tire. Daylight is fading as our group stands on the edge of the basketball court waiting to be assigned to our host families. There is a bit of anxiety at this moment, even among those of us who have been on previous trips. Some of the townspeople have also gathered now a few yards away to look at the enormous group of gringos who have suddenly descended on their village. Then a woman comes forward, her children in hand. She passes among us, shaking our hands and welcoming us in Spanish. Other women follow her lead and soon I am surrounded by a small knot of Mayans and North Americans engaging in halting conversation about los ninos.

It is even darker as Lyn and I step forward to meet Don Julio. He will take us to the home of his son and daughter-in-law where we will stay for the week. We are met there firsts by his son Julio Junior and some of his grandchildren who watch us as we hang our hammocks in the newest part of their living compound. It is a cement block structure with one spacious room, the bedroom of Julio and his wife, Elizabet. However, for this week the family will stay together in the older and smaller traditional Mayan building next door – mother, father, and five children all in one room. Lyn and I will have a room all to ourselves for the first time in five years. We don’t meat Elizabet for some time. However, when we do, she gives us each a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. It is an amazingly outgoing gesture for these normally reserved people. I feel very honored.

The week goes by very quickly. It always seems to when you are putting in long hours doing manual labor. But we have gone about as far as we can with the construction project. The floor has been poured and the wall blocked up for a medical clinic. It is Sunday. After we clean up the construction site and pack up the medical clinics, we will have the remainder of the day, our last in the village, to look about and visit with the villagers. Visiting is a poor choice of words, I suppose, for Lyn and I speak very little Spanish. There are, however, translators in our group and we do manage to tag along with some of them and a group of village farmers on a very interesting trip to the melon fields outside the village.

We are back in our room now beginning to pack some of our things, for tomorrow we are scheduled to leave the village early. Elizabet enters and tries, as she has for so much of the week, to carry on a lengthy conversation. Without a translator present is it difficult, but there is still a certain warmth that permeates the room. After a few minutes she goes to the cabinet, the only piece of furniture in the room capable of holding material possessions, and takes out a number of photographs. She looks at each one lovingly, shows it to us, and indicates who is in each snapshot: the children at a far off beach, daughter Daniella perched on the hood of a car, Elizabet standing with her now-deceased parents. When she has gone through each picture in the packet, she gives them all to us - gives them to the strange gringos who have come into her life for one week.

I have looked at these photographs several times in the past month. They are not duplicate prints, the largess of some K-Mart promotional gimmick. They are the original and probably the only set of pictures this family owned. Each one is a bit dog-eared and the surface is covered with fingerprints. Names have been written on the back of some photographs and on the very images of others. And to think, we only gave her, and the others of the village, a week of our time.

My colleagues have been asking me, as they always do, if I had a good experience in Mexico. I try to tell them, but of course I can't. I can't convey to them the value of those initial handshakes, of a simple hug, or a packet of faded, well-handled snapshots. I can't tell them what it means to me to know that I might have the only image of Elizabet's parents. Those colleagues want to know what I did down there and that I can tell them. I can let them know what I gave, but not what I received. They listen politely, maybe even admiring my willingness to do this each year. In the end they often say, "I bet you're glad to be back in civilization." I can only smile. I wouldn't want to hurt their feelings.

This is the second year that I have also taken University students with me from our Environmental Studies Program: four last year and three this year. The trip doesn't coincide with our academic calendar, so we all miss the first week of the Winter semester. I have been asked whether I can vouch for the educational value of the experience and I say, without hesitation, yes. They ask me, "How?" I tell them to listen. Listen to the students who have spent time in those villages talk about their experiences. Pay attention to their unsolicited comments to friends, classmates, faculty, to anybody who will listen to them. Listen to the two words that are said over and over again and ponder their significance. Hear them when they speak of, 'my family..."

David Hargreave recently retired as a professor of Environmental Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Mich.

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