CAFTA & Chaos

The march was fine.

The march was great.

The march was peaceful.

OK, the university students taunted the cops some. And there was a fair deal of spray-painting of slogans damning the damage CAFTA will to do to Guatemala.

But the tensest moment of the morning was my pre-march realization that I only had one baseball cap to wear today... and it was a NY Yankees cap. Not exactly the kind of accessory you want to wear to a march where people are shouting "Yankees go home!"

Despite some smartass comments from friends and fellow marchers, I managed to avoid any type of lynching... and to keep the sun off my face... so what the heck. It was a good day.

Well, until all hell broke loose.

Without going into to much detail now (I just want to go home and rest), what basically happened is this:

As the protest march was coming to an end, confrontations between riot police and unruly youth broke out. I am 100% positive that these youth weren't part of the original protests. My guess is that they were mostly mareros (gang members). When they weren't tearing up the city, they were attacking the security forces with rocks and bottles.

The security forces were all too happy to respond with teargas, cork bullets, and rubber batons.

Today the part of the city where I live and work, descended into complete chaos.

Buses were destroyed. Windows were smashed. Captured youth were beaten by the police. I myself was on the receiving end of many a broken bottle and bouncing rock. Unharmed, thankfully, although my mouth still tastes like teargas.

I will, time and peace permitting, go into more detail and add muchos photos from these crazy days. I'll also try to explain why, when most people ran from the trouble... I ran towards it.

It has been a scary, informative, eye-opening, adrenaline-filled, and oddly satisfying week here in Guatemala. Wouldn't change it for the world.

Posted by elcanche at March 14, 2005 05:44 PM