After the day out, comes the guilt trip, in the form of Augustina and her two daughters. They knock on our door while Paul is out, throwing me into paroxysms of panic.
Augustina is married to Manuel, who worked as Paul’s translator when he was first out here. They are purely indigenous, as opposed to other friends like Enrique and Mariet, who are mestizo (mixed Spanish and indigenous). In this still racist society that makes a huge difference to a family.
At home, Augustina speaks Tzotzil, and her Spanish is lacking in linguistic subtlety, for which I am grateful since I can’t do the conditional tense. I sit the three of them down, offer them coffee, and pass a hugely uncomfortable fifteen minutes that seem like an hour.
In my halting Spanish, I introduce Daisy, and Augustina says she has a cough and won’t kiss her. We talk about our trip here, how long we are staying, and about Manuel’s work and the girls’ study. Last time we were here, Lucia was hoping to become a doctor, but she has had to drop out because they don’t have enough money for her to stay at school and she has become a secretary.
Cecy was unwell with some stomach trouble last time we visited, and we saw her in the capital city, where she was being treated and was staying with her father. She’s grown into a beautiful (and healthy) young woman, but she has dropped back two years in school because of her illness, which must be tricky for her.
The family has a hard life. Manuel owns a hamburger cart from which her works from nine to nine six days a week, and Augustina works as a washerwoman, washing clothes by hand, while the girls help. For them, Sunday really is the only rest they get, and they spend it going to two church services.
The family are ‘expulsados’, from one of the villages surrounding San Cristobal, thrown out of their village for straying from the traditional animist/catholic faith (a weird polyglot mixture of Catholicism and old Mayan religion that sees shamans sacrificing chickens in front of images of St John the Baptist).
They are now evangelical Christians (and Communist/Socialist in their outlook), attending a charismatic church, and Augustina’s talk is peppered with “Gracias a Dios”, “Thanks to God”. Hard as her life seems now, the family would tell you it is better than it was in the village.
Manuel, like some other men in the village, used to drink a sugarcane alcohol called posh, and he used to beat his wife and children. The healthcare up there is rudimentary, and the family lost two children. Augustina really is thankful to God for a life that sees her constantly washing clothes despite her bad back and lungs.
With typical Mexican directness, she asks me how much we are paying for the apartment, and when I tell her, she is horrified. Our monthly rent might be as much as Manuel earns in a year, and a meal out in Mayambe is as unlikely as me flying to the moon.
I’m glad when Paul comes back, as my Spanish seems to have run out, and we arrange to see them again later in the week.
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