MEMORY OF GUATEMALA. LOW MEMORY PANAJACHEL
By Waldemar Verdugo. 
The author in Santiago Atitlan, with Maya-Quiche. With the reflection of surrounding mountains in the golden water of Lake Atitlan, ask the boatman to stop in the middle of the pool. María Elena wealthy relaxed sunbathing. I see the man's calloused hands firmly stagnating and the small rowing boat was nailed between waves hesitant for a moment became green and foam due to the move. By quieting resumed their tinsel tint and my eyes were fixed on the rustic man rowing eaten pulled from the waters, to place them on both sides of the fragile vessel. That rocked by the gentle waves, wandering around Lake Atitlan and its mysteries. The story goes that the lake bottom is all sand gold, the Maya kings here bathed their bodies dressed only in more expensive gold dust that covered their bodies.
Al over the years the place was a gold vase with all the ancestors of the Aboriginal race of Guatemala, which was in the Lake Atitlan and the best mirror of fantasy. Around magic flowed like a happy box. At bottom, the great volcanoes as watchmen immovable. They awoke in the morning and slept pink sunsets. Quiet to the shore is the small town of Panajachel, the land is planted with corn fields and a large garden with a bouquet of jungle. In order to calm the stormy rains, the red rays, the flash of fire, religious rituals were met with parades of girls, quetzal feathers and colorful textiles framing the arrival of the kings to purify your body in the holy waters. Fascinating universe full of secrets, candle light and full moon. In single file invoked his favor, as a promise of escape in that trunk image he had his own key philosophical ... is that man is a creator who dances between two worlds ... mused, when a sound diverted my eyes to the modest man who stood before me, dressed in white shirt and yellow trousers wide knotted at the waist with a sash of many colors and decorations. With dark skin and features a chisel cut, the features of his face were copied from a stone god of their ancestors. His feet dressed mulatto and rustic hemp sandals. The small hat on his temples gave shade to the book that the rower began to read carefully. I was curious to know what book he asked with such dedication ... If God had not done it, I thought rower this man had been a poet ... His calloused hands firmly imprisoned a worn volume of "Tenderness" by Gabriela Mistral. Seeing my interest in reading, said
- always read what she writes. It is very nice and knew what she says. Did you know that a king invited her to his country and gave him a big prize? The Nobel Prize is the name. All we want here and we are happy that the teacher has returned to live among us.
- Do you live here? I asked smiling surprised at the statement of the boatman, who gave to the writer by living and dead for several decades. And the man said, sure:
- The teacher Gabriela lives in that house on the rocks.
And rising from the table that was seated in the boat, said a large white house red windows, surrounded by wild plants full of multicolored flowers, was on the lake right in front of us.
- Each morning, she went on leave in the sun, and we, his friends, Greetings from our boats. She responds with a gentle gesture our silent gesture.
Dumb and disturbed by what he heard did not know how to deal with his words. I decided not to remove it from the error and only managed to post some of his books, but the boatman was obviously a deep connoisseur of the author of "Sonnets of Death" because it started to speak saying At times poems and news of Mistral's work I never heard before. Fortunately impressed had seen in several Central American countries the windows of the bookstores without ever missing a book of it, but I could not imagine that it passes through these lands had made a mark so deep that even here took for living. When we finally got back to the mainland, the conversation with the boatman fills my spirit and if he was what triggered what I have lived here.
That day came in the afternoon rain to Panajachel. A dusk and between showers fickle, I went to Maria Elena and her brothers to walk the cobblestone streets of the waterfront village. Was evening of dancing devils rite that traditionally celebrates the people there a cult of Judas Iscariot, they say-created with wooden core. We walked aimlessly when we wrapped the procession of people who lit candles barely looked like a ghostly train pulled out of maybe what the distant past. They walked to the sound of the distinctive music of rattles, carrying the wooden figure wrapped in native tissue in the middle of smoking incense. Iban toward the lake. We join them.
the banks of water left hanging from a beam willowy figure of Judas appointed Maximón. There I saw his head. Was that of a hanged horror immense eyes and open mouth with a long tongue hanging. In a second everything went quiet, which was broken by sad music of marimbas, drums and horns. Someone touched my shoulder, I turned and was startled a human body with chunks of mammoth proportions. He had begun the ritual dance. It was a struggle between the forces of good and evil, the devil and his people sought to increase the legion of the damned, and archangels lowered the sky began their fight to save souls. Made threatening gestures against each other. While ferocity whip someone handed me a bottle of pulque, the maguey milk. I drank. The movements spawned by the ritual of the devil and his hosts were hellish as angels with swords fire break in two as they played. The dancers enveloped me with its long ribbons of blue, white, red, yellow, with their faces painted cardboard disproportionate bugs resembling repulsive features interwoven with fantastical creatures and all kinds of critters out of their noses, extending their tongues, their exorbitant eyes from the forehead of some three horns in forms of tree branches shot out the sky, men with tails, dressed in red, black, green ... other faces wrapped around me were those of archangels, that being a lesser extent, will always triumph, because good triumphs over evil end, and the full moon reflected on the still waters of the lake house on the rocks; where Mistral claimed lives. Immediately caught my eye in the figure broken away from a woman who was reading in that house in the light of a weak lamp: it was all spectral from where I watched. And a chill ran down my back ... Other bottle drinking pulque that was provided when someone whispered in my ear:
- "Dance, dance like everyone else. Only death awaits you not dance. If you do not dance and you're dead ... Dance! "
and dance, sure I would die if he failed with the sacred ritual of dance that everyone practiced. All enveloped me and I missed each other, faces are deformed, between games, in the middle of hell and archangels fighting to the death, which was attacked relentlessly, with furious rage, releasing centuries of domination, repression by cutting channels in the area are endless, with unbridled fury ... and everyone danced ... Dancing to stay alive ...! instantly turned back to look toward the house, and she had risen from his chair and went out to the terrace from where they watched the procession went. She looked so alone in that big house, a long sentence that flooded my soul ... someone told me that the gods were gratified with my dancing and I could ask them what they wanted. Instantly my mind filled with the figure of a woman watching from a distance, alone, emerging weakly illuminated, and asked the gods for her, so he would not imprisoned there by the death in that region lost in the mountains of Guatemala, so he could rest at last. She danced and drank their health, while calling for her to cry and nobody cared. Marimba sounded very painful, Monod, when I knelt, two picked me up in the air and dancing followed, trembling with new forces, and the sound of the marimba pounding in my temples, with their happy song that never stopped animating, resounding in my forehead, like a soft bell inside my skull that is increasingly enlarged as if to drill my brain, and marimba wrapped up not letting me hear another sound in the world around me, a louder sound that eventually wrap ... and I ran, I ran as fast as the soul that the wind, ran along the lake to be exhausted in front of the white house red windows, air volume and play in front of the gate furiously with anger, fear and anguish over that fact that pressed on me and wanted to understand, afraid that the whole dream, that the charm end up there but also intimately pleased to have reached that point, when was I to know Gabriela Mistral was not behind that door, that my mind would be quiet when reason forced me to react.
touched, now gently, over and over time. The door opens and she is the one who comes to greet me, is actually Gabriela Mistral, she actually lives in Panajachel, is undoubtedly the master of Neruda, tall, stately, enigmatic. My eyes were fixed on hers and her green eyes were beautiful, and I knelt before her, startled, when I felt his hand caressing my head I tried not ever get up again, only looked up to her breasts as a shield guarded by a medal Santa Teresa de Avila that hung from his neck with a thin gold chain. I could not speak, only mumbled nonsense words and turning I walked back into town, along the lake, in another dimension, between shades of colors, live plants that their way alone in my step, without ever walked the procession of lights that followed, shouting and marimba music that away from me in the distance.
woke up late, sleeping in my hammock affirmed the rocks on the shore of the lake, at the home of María Elena, still drunk from pulque, music and noise. I walked slowly along the lake reflected light from the sun that envelops all that exists there, headed off by the cobbled streets of the village entrance, with a devilish thirst forced me to enter my first business at a pace and drink eat up fresh tamarind water and ice that soothes my throat. More clear, walking slowly, stop my walk in front of the lighted window of a bookstore in my step. With excitement my eyes immediately saw the image of Gabriela Mistral in a book with his works, I set my sights on the photo of the teacher that the volume reproduces, from his neck hangs a thin gold chain that holds the medal that sees St. Teresa of Avila.
(C) Waldemar Verdugo Fuentes. Chilean writer
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