SWARTHMORE

I N M Y L I F ES W A R T H M O R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I NL e a r n i n g t o P a c k L i g h t l yBy Kirsten Schwind ’96Today, I’m returning to Guatemalaafter six months at home in California.I heft my backpack around themetal bar that divides Guatemala fromMexico, shove my passport at anamused immigration official, andsqueeze onto a semiretired Blue Birdschool bus along with about 70 indigenousfarmers and local merchants sitting6 across. I’ve made the 14-hourtrek from San Cristobal de las Casas,Chiapas, to Guatemala City manytimes, and it still feels awkward: mybackpack, full of stuff that seemedimportant when I packed that morning,won’t fit in the overhead luggage rackalong with the modest bundles of theother passengers.Once again, I lose out in the subtlecompetition for shoulder space againstthe seat back and end up leaning forwardfor two hours with an elderlyman’s sleepy head knocking at myshoulder blades over the bumps. Butthe good thing is that I’m next to a window,with a view of some of the mostbreathtaking scenery in Central America:a soaring black canyon and dramaticallytilted plateaus, where improbablecornfields sprout from sheaths ofrock. Then I realize my arm is stuck toa pink blob of recently chewed gumsquashed on the window pane. My lifehere isn’t always as romantic as Iremember it.Two years in Guatemala and Chiapashave injected me into an experienceso incongruous with my comfortableSilicon Valley childhood; Swarthmoreacademia; and former Washington,D.C., government contract job thatI’m still trying to figure out how theseworlds can coexist on the same planet.In my second week of working forWitness for Peace, a social justiceorganization that educates U.S.activists about the effects of our foreignpolicy abroad (and stores itsarchives in the Peace Collection ofMcCabe Library), I visited survivors ofone of Guatemala’s 626 governmentsponsoredmassacres of civilians duringthe 36-year counterinsurgency warthat ended in 1996.I thought the first time hearing massacretestimony must be the hardest,How can peoplewho shoot theirneighbors go hometo their families?But then, knowingmy family’s taxmoney fundedU.S. military aidto Guatemala,how can I?AN ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST ADDRESSES ACOMMUNITY MEETING IN NORTHERN GUATEMALA,WHERE REMAINING RAIN-FOREST LANDS AREHOTLY DISPUTED AMONG OIL, LOGGING, AGRI-CULTURAL, AND CONSERVATION INTERESTS.but it wasn’t. I got to know the survivorsas people I could joke with laterthat evening over a meal of beans andtortillas around their kitchen fire andcame to think of them as no moredeserving of tragedy in their lives thanI. In Acteal, Chiapas, a Tzotzil Maya villagethat was the site of Mexico’s worstrecent massacre in 1997, I was pulledinto a throng of dancers bouncing to abuoyant cumbia pumped out by thesame local band that had played at amass for the 45 victims a few weeksearlier. “Long live human rights!” theysang. These expressions of defiant joyand fun made their losses most humanto me, not just woeful headlines fromsome underdeveloped country, wherethese things just happen and will probablyalways keep happening.For about a year, my main reactionto hearing about human rights violationswas a low-burning, self-righteousoutrage. This was evil on a scale I hadnever met face to face in the UnitedKIRSTEN SCHWIND64