Crazy Days

Please fasten your seatbelts. It seems we’re in for some turbulence.

What started as a wild enough ride this weekend, promises to become an even crazier one tomorrow.

On Friday afternoon I accompanied a march held by a group called the Anti-Imperialist Block, comprised of youth, political and religous activists, human rights workers, and others. The march was held in the context of the 50th Anniversary of the CIA-backed coup in Guatemala. At the end of the march they "occupied" an abandoned building, and reclaimed it as a community and cultural center. The massive building, previous home to the Guatemalan Immigration Offices, had been locked up for over a decade.

(Ironically, I had probably spent more time in that building than anyone else involved in the protest. I lost some serious hours of my life waiting on line in that bastion of beauracracy.)

Anyway... about 50 people spent the night there. I was not one of them. Not that I had an easy night though; I stayed there until about 10:30pm, and then returned to the office to download and edit photos, for the group's use. I finished around 2:30 in the morning.

Saturday was a nonstop celebration in the Casa Tomada (“Occupied House”) with cultural and political actitives lasting well into the early hours of the following morning. It all started at 5pm, with the projection of a video (narrated by Martin Sheen!) about the School of the Americas, where the US army trains Latin American soldiers on the finer points of torture.

After that there were speeches, poems, live music, and popular theatre. I lasted until 11:30pm, when I ran out of both energy and memory cards for the camera.

Those otherworldly experiences (was I really swaying to live guitar music in the lobby of the ancient and abandoned Immigration offices, now the site of a radical political protest?) were mere preparation for the madness that will be unleashed tomorrow.

June 7 and 8 have been declared days of National Protest by social movements around the country. Three themes: an unfair tax law about to be passed, violent evictions of peasants from their lands, and the impending doom of a Free Trade agreement with the USA have united labor unions, students, campesinos, indigenous people and others in a two-day strike designed to bring the country to a standstill.

Occupations of the Congress, Courts, Finances, and Airport, along with blocked highways in the capital and throught the countryside, are planned for these two days.

The government has promised swift and heavy-handed punishment for anyone disrupting the normal flow of activity in the country.

Which basically means... tomorrow’s going to be another crazy Guatemalan day. And, without a doubt, I will find myself immersed in the madness.... with camera in hand.