We Indians have always hidden our identity and kept our secrets to ourselves. This is why we are discriminated against. We often find it hard to talk about ourselves because we know we must hide so much in order to preserve our Indian culture and prevent it being taken away from us. So I can only tell you very general things about the nahual. I can’t tell you what my nahual is because that is one of our secrets.
IV
FIRST VISIT TO THE FINCA. LIFE IN THE FINCA
‘This is why there is no hope of winning the hearts of our people.’
—Rigoberta Menchú
After forty days, when the child is fully integrated into the community, the routine of going down to the fincas begins.
From when I was very tiny, my mother used to take me down to the finca, wrapped in a shawl on her back. She told me that when I was about two, I had to be carried screaming onto the lorry because I didn’t want to go. I was so frightened I didn’t stop crying until we were about half-way there. I remember the journey by lorry very well. I didn’t even know what it was, but I knew I hated it because I hate things that smell horrible. The lorry holds about forty people. But in with the people go the animals (dogs, cats, chickens) which the people from the Altiplano take with them while they are in the finca. We have to take our animals. It sometimes took two nights and a day from my village to the coast. During the trip the animals and the small children used to dirty the lorry and you’d get people vomiting and wetting themselves. By the end of the journey, the smell–the filth of people and animals–was unbearable.
The lorry is covered with a tarpaulin so you can’t see the countryside you’re passing through. Most of the journey is spent sleeping because it’s so tedious. The stuffiness inside the lorry with the cover on, and the smell of urine and vomit, make you want to be sick yourself just from being in there. By the time we got to the finca, we were totally stupefied; we were like chickens coming out of a pot. We were in such a state, we could hardly walk to the finca. I made many trips from the Altiplano to the coast, but I never saw the countryside we passed through. We heard other lorries and cars, but we didn’t ever see them. We never saw any other villages on the way. I saw the wonderful scenery and places for the first time when we were thrown out of the finca and had to pay our own way back on the bus.
I remember that from when I was about eight to when I was about ten, we worked in the coffee crop. And after that I worked on the cotton plantations further down the coast where it was very, very hot. After my first day picking cotton, I woke up at midnight and lit a candle. I saw the faces of my brothers and sisters covered with mosquitos. I touched my own face, and I was covered too. They were everywhere; in people’s mouths and everywhere. Just looking at these insects and thinking about being bitten set me scratching. That was our world. I felt that it would always be the same, always the same. It hadn’t ever changed.
None of the drivers liked taking us because, naturally, we were filthy and burned from the sun. No-one wanted to drive us. The lorries belonged to the fincas, but they were driven by the recruiting agents, the caporales. These caporales are in charge of about forty people, or more or less what the lorry holds. When they get to the finca, the caporal becomes the overseer of this group. They are usually men from our villages too, but they’ve been in the army or have left the community. They start behaving like the landowners, and treat their own people badly. They shout at them and insult them. The finca offers them opportunities to get on, if they do what the landowners want. They get better wages and they have a steady job. It’s their job to order us around and keep us in line, I’d say. They’ve learned Spanish so they can act as go-betweens for the landowner and his workers, because our people don’t speak Spanish. They often take advantage of us because of this, but we can’t complain because we never see the landowner and don’t know where he lives. We see only the contracting agents and the overseers. The contracting agents fetch and carry the people from the Altiplano. The overseers stay on the fincas. One group of workers arrives, another leaves and the overseer carries on giving orders. They are in charge. When you’re working, for example, and you take a little rest, he comes and insults you. ‘Keep working, that’s what you’re paid for,’ he says. They also punish the slow workers. Sometimes we’re paid by the day, and sometimes for the amount of work done. It’s when we work by the day that we get the worst treatment. The caporal stands over you every minute to see how hard you’re working. At other times, you’re paid for what you pick. If you don’t manage to finish the amount set in a day, you have to continue the next day, but at least you can rest a bit without the overseer coming down on you. But the work is still hard whether you work by the day or by the amount.
Before we get into the lorry in our village, the labour contractor tells us to bring with us everything we’ll need for the month on the finca; that is, plates and cups, for example. Every worker carries his plate, his cup, and his water bottle in a bag on his back so he can go and get his tortilla at mealtimes. Children who don’t work don’t earn, and so are not fed. They don’t need plates. They share with their parents. The little ones who do earn also have plates for their ration of tortilla. When I wasn’t earning anything, my mother used to give me half her ration. All the mothers did the same. We get tortilla and beans free, but they are often rotten. If the food varies a bit and we get an egg about every two months, then it is deducted from our pay. Any change in the food is deducted.
The same goes for anything we get from the cantina. As well as alcohol, the cantina in the finca also sells things that children like: sweets, cakes and soft drinks. It’s all in the shop.
The children, who are hot and tired and hungry, are always asking their parents for treats and it makes parents sad to see their children asking for things they can’t give. But everything they buy is marked up on an account, and at the end when you get your pay, you always owe so much for food, so much at the shop, so much at the pharmacy. You end up owing a lot. For example, if a child unintentionally breaks a branch of a coffee bush, you have to work to make it up. They deduct for everything and you end up having to pay debts before you can leave.
Every finca in Guatemala has a cantina, owned by the landowner, where the workers get drunk on alcohol and all kinds of guaro, and pile up debts. They often spend most of their wages. They drink to get happy and to forget the bitterness they feel at having to leave their villages in the Altiplano and come and work so brutally hard on the fincas for so little. I remember my father and mother going to the cantina out of despair. It was sometimes terrible for us. My mother and my brothers and sisters often had to bear all our household costs when the month on the finca was over because my father owed all his wages to the cantina. He was a very sensitive man. When anything went wrong or when times were very hard for us, he used to drink to forget. But he hurt himself twice over because his money went back to the landowner. That’s why the landowner set up the cantina anyway. Once I remember my father working the whole day picking cotton but somehow didn’t pick the required amount. He was so angry that he just wanted to forget everything and spent the whole night in the cantina. When the month was up, he owed nearly all his wage to the cantina. We honestly don’t know if he really drank all that rum or not, but it was awful to see such a huge debt chalked up against him after a whole month’s work. You get into debt for every little thing. This taught us to be very careful. My mother used to say: ‘Don’t touch anything or we’ll have to pay for it.’ My mother used to see that we all behaved ourselves and didn’t get her into debt.
This is what happened that time we were thrown out of the finca. (We were told by one of our neighbours who stayed on there.) When they came to get paid at the end of the month, the overseer included my mother and my brother and me, and a neighbour who was thrown out with us, in the list of workers to be paid,