A Radio Documentary Feature Program in Three Movements
produced for Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Radio Helicon
(Proposal to Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
(Proposal to Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
2. TUCAN UMAN: Meanwhile in the Mayan lands, a great civilization is in decline. It is written in the Mayan religious texts of the Popol Vuh (the Mayan bible and Bhagavad Gita) translated from what remains of the codex – the written history of the Mayans which will be burned by the Catholic Church. By the fourth century BC, the Mayans had achieved their mathematical and calindrical skills and by 900AD, had constructed massive stone cities and temples deep in the jungle, cities that traced an inner vision in the external world. It is said there are hundreds of years of digging to do before we know how vast it is.
Tucan Uman meets the Spanish conquistador, Pedro de Alvarado who arrives filled with Spanish glory, religiosity and new hope. The legend tells of the great Mayan priest killed by the conquistador and that the quetzal bird, the national bird of Guatemala and the name of the currency, floats down from the sky to cover the chief and keep a death watch through the night. At dawn it rises with its chest scarlet with Mayan blood.
3. CONQUISTATOR: For five-hundred years they have lived in Mayan land. The quetzal bird, which can only survive in the rain forest, has almost disappeared, replaced by the black vulture, a bird that lives on carrion. Catholicism and animism have merged into a hybrid and Indian dance music and practise is overlaid with Christian and Spanish legends that includes history of both cultures. The music of Castile and Andalusia is modified by rhythms of Negro and Indian origin – the marimba from Africa has become the instrument of modern Central America. Spanish America is created from the blood, bone and muscle of Spain’s explosion in its golden years.
Bird of Life, Bird of Death
The bus to Antigua from Guatemala City is not crowded. The seats are comfortable, the windows open, fragrant warm air flows across my face. Climbing a steep mountain on a wide, smooth road leaving the city behind shrouded in a mist of yellow smog. The sun is bright and the landscape dry with green swathes of vegetation. Then riding steeply down to Antigua, to the old colonial capital of Guatemala, a cathedral dome in the distance and the town spread out and shimmering below. The trip takes less than an hour.
We alight at a bustling bus terminal stinking with diesel fumes and crowds of people, music from portable radios, and food vendors, police, soldiers and tourists. A boy finds us a taxi and we head for the Lutheran Mission we’d be advised provided cheap accommodation.
Vivianna and I are in search of poetry. She is a brave, winsome creature from Finland, fluent in five languages, Spanish among them. We met in the cold of New York City in November, 1986 as the Iran-Contra drama unfolded. Under president Ronald Reagan, a devious scheme was hatched to bypass congressional laws designed to halt export of arms to military despots in Central America. But American mercenary, Eugene Hasenfusa's transport plane had been shot down over Honduras and suddenly the word was out – the U.S. was arming soldiers called The Contras murdering men, women and children in Central America.
At radio station WBAI, I co-created a daily radio program that would become known as Contragate. My colleague, Dennis Bernstein was the investigator, I was the producer, and it was broadcast at eight o’clock, five days a week exploring and exposing the lies and deceit of America’s foreign policy in Central America. It was here that Vivianna and I met each morning, fused in our passion for investigative journalism that soon transcended into our own physical needs and then love.
I had been commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to produce a three-part series of radio programs called War, Peace and Poetry. I read of the atrocities, hundreds of thousands killed, mostly Mayan Indians, in a civil war that has lasted more than twenty years. Whilst journalists report the facts, poets tell the truth. For me this is another holocaust, one in my time and I am here to taste the blood of it. Let it not be said that I did venture into the cauldron. Let me tell this story.
I sink into the beaten up old taxi’s backseat and the springs are so weak I wonder if my ass might scrape the road. The driver grinds the gears and with a blast of noise because the exhaust system no longer works, we lurch forward. He touches two wires - “Baaarp. Bararp” - the horn sounds and pedestrians scatter.
We find the mission on the edge of town, behind a tall white stucco wall. Eucalypts trees grow behind it and a purple carpet of jacaranda petals spills onto the street in front. Sparse dry hills rise up at the back of the white walled mission-house and its red tiled roof traces a crisp outline against the blue sky. Wooden bars protect the shaded windows and brilliant bougainvillea and exquisite blood red roses surround the entrance. Inside it’s cool as we walk across the clay-tiled floor. A deferential man called Juan shows us our room. And night falls.
Next day begins Semena Santa, Holy Week, the holiest time of year for Catholics, the time to mourn and celebrate the crucifixion and resurrection of the Christ and I feel the weight of a mighty metaphor. The streets are crowded with people and the smell of incense and frangipani petals fills the fresh new morning.
The Agua Volcano dominates the landscape. It’s more than twelve thousand feet high and a wisp of white smoke and clouds hangs around its summit. Steep volcanic slopes and raw green hills surround Antigua. The streets are narrow and laid with cobble stones that have carried oxen and the turning wheels of wooden carts, bare brown feet of children and automobiles, army jeeps and black Suburban’s, large American station wagons with black tinted windows that cocoon the soldiers of the death squads.
In the shadows of the cathedral ruin, men in purple satin robes are gathering. They wear purple pointed caps and they look as if they’ve time traveled from the days of the Inquisition. Boys and young men of military age and old men, bent and shuffling, carry crude wooden crosses draped with white cloth. A somber bass drum beats in the distance as they prepare for the parade.
Mayan men and women kneel and bend pouring flowers on the road and slowly, intricate, fragrant patterns materialize. It’s like a Disney cartoon except the flowers and perfume are real and they stretch as far as the eye can see in a giant palette of color.
Hundreds of catholic penitents are gathering for Holy Week and the celebration continues for days. Somber music and biblical costumes, streets pungent with bellowing copal incense and pools of rose petals, frangipani and hibiscus and colored sawdust laid on the wetted cobbles which shine in the sunshine.
On each side of the narrow streets, thick adobe walls peeling Technicolor paint, balconies and porticos and leafy patios, deep shadows. The Plaza de Armas, the former government buildings surrounding it, is crowded now and the wide plaza dazzles in the sunlight. Thick trunked trees lend broad pockets of shade and ice cream vendors ring small brass bells, bunches of them that hang from the carts tinkle like shells washing in the waves on a beach.
In the shadows of the cathedral ruins, the walls all cracked and fading yellow, green and peach and pink; across the crumpled courtyard past the tall arched doorway inside the hallowed dimness, I see Christ clad in crisp white cotton standing in a tall glass case. His forehead is torn and bleeding from the thorns and at his bound feet is a tall vase of curling white lilies and in the distance I hear the slow beating of the drum.
In the shadows of the cathedral ruins an old man reaches for his flute and blows a sad note that echoes through the cavernous church. It is the Cathedral de San José, the oldest and largest Roman Catholic Church in Antigua, battered by earthquakes since it was built around 1541. The bones of the conquistador Pedro de Alvarado are interred here. And the ghosts of other conquistadors – Vaso Nunez de Balboa, Francisco Pizarro, Hernando Cortes and Christopher Columbus – their legacy infused in the bricks and mortar of this cathedral and every other built throughout the Americas in the name of Christ’s blood.
Legend has it that in 1524 when Pedro de Alvarado conquered the nation of Guatemala for Spain, he murdered the Mayan chief Tecun Uman, plunging his lance deep into the chief’s chest. As he did, the legendary and sacred quetzal bird, the totem spiritual protector of the Mayans, plummeted to earth and covered the dying leader with long, soft green plumes.
The quetzal bird kept a deathwatch through the night and at dawn was transformed, no longer the pure green of jade but was soaked in blood from the dead warrior king, was crimson. The bird rose from the dead king red with Mayan blood as it is to this day. And what began with a trickle soon became a torrent roaring through the centuries into an endless silent sea of suffering and death for the Indians of Meso-America.
Guatemala’s Nobel Prize winning writer, Miguel Angel Asturias described the Quetzal’s bird’s resurrection as embracing humankind and nature. Asturias was born in Guatemala in 1899. Studying in Paris at the Sorbonne, he explored the myths and religion of the Maya and he described the quetzal bird’s resurrection this way:
“Don’t you see
breast red as blood
arms green as the blood of plants,
blood of the trees
blood of the animals.
He is a bird
and he is a tree.
Don’t you see the long plume of his tail.
Bird of green blood
Tree of red blood.
Quetzal bird.
And now inside the church, leaving behind the hubbub, heat and excitement of the street, past the worn wooden table and a brass collection plate with a few coins, people kneel on the cool stone floor in the chapel in front of a diorama of Christ’s last supper. Lace curtains hang bathed in light filtered through the ornate windows. A wine goblet and loaves of fresh bread rest on a black garment and twelve pieces of silver spill form a leather pouch. The faithful are flowing past and the cathedral doors are flung wide open on the day before Good Friday as a spring tide gathers all across the Christian world to celebrate death and resurrection.
As the parade passes outside, huge floats that weigh more than a car, sway rhythmically from side to side like ships swaying on the waves – eighty men sweat and strain beneath its weight, and they pay for the privilege taking turns to carry the load. Only the middle-class and wealthy can afford to act out such penance, sweating away a year of sin beneath the iconic figure of the tortured Christ.
Holy week is a tragedy – a way to see the pulverized identity of the Mayan Indian – the step by step ascent to Golgotha – turning Christ’s death and burial into a charade, an annihilation of the story but for the Indians there is no resurrection at the end of Holy Week.
And at dusk, the sun weaves its colors in the clouds, threads of pink and gold and sometimes a crimson swath slowly fades as night falls. And the stars burn with fierce whiteness. And the drum is beating still, and another, and another.
And at night the streets seem more crowded as the festival continues. Shadows huddle around burning braziers and the charcoal glows and smoke fills the air – smoke from fires and copal incense and tortillas burning on the grills - and the fragrant flowers, so delicately designed on the streets during the day, now are crushed beneath the penitent feet of the faithful. The intoxicating flowers, flickering fires to scare away the devil, men dressed like Roman soldiers and purpled robed Pharoses sit in groups and mingle through the crowd as people party deep into the mystical night.
The Maya conjoin baroque Catholicism with their own animistic beliefs synthesizing meaning to make their own. The resurrection of the Christ, the resurrection of the sacred Quetzal bird, a belief system and faith that provides relief from the deadening weight of colonialism and an endless brutal war that scars this nation.
Mayan women passing.
Women wearing huipils
woven from the dead.
Weaving with their daughters,
unique patterns
woven and embroidered
threads of lives unraveling
the tree of life in red -
white lilies
and many sodden graves
and memories unsaid.
Mayan women passing
between the living and the dead.
Mayan women passing
along the selvedged edge
Into an endless, silent sea.
(From War, Peace and Poetry: Weaving Rainbows from Black Sacks of Silence
Guatemala, produced for Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
I am deeply moved by Holy Week in Antigua. I feel as if I’ve traveled back in time and partaken in some kind of holy communion; as if the terrible sins of colonialism are washed clean for a moment. But soon I am sitting with Doctor Valle Monge who lives in Antigua where the Anglos come to enjoy the best of what the country offers and he speaks of war. It’s a gracious old city with its five hundred year old cathedral and the faded panorama of most of Central America. But bitter memories infuse its history and the beating drum I’d heard during the processions was the beating heart and ineluctable past, present and future of humankind’s propensity for the unspeakable.
Uruguay writer, Edwardo Galliano in his book “Memories of Fire” wrote that in Guatemala:
“…things are more easily seen and felt than elsewhere. This is a regime that violently imposes the law of survival of the strongest; this is a society that condemns most people to live as if in concentration camps; this is an occupied country where the imperium shows and uses its claws and teeth. Dreams inevitably fade into nightmares and one can no longer love without hating, fight for life without killing, say yes without implying no.”
Dr. Valle is a small man, dark and handsome and he invites us to sit with him in his cool, dim study lined with books and artifacts. The shutters are closed to keep out the heat of the day and I can hear his children playing in the courtyard. A maid brings ice-cold lemonade as we sit to talk about war, peace and poetry.
The doctor is a poet and there is a sadness about him; a veil of tragedy. His voice is soft and weary and I lean forward in the baroque upholstered leather chair to hear his words. He begins by explaining the infamous Spanish Inquisition and I feel its legendary awfulness enveloping me like a heavy dark cloak.
II
By 1492 the Dark Ages were receding and a fresh new light was growing in the world. The Renaissance blows great gusts of change. It is a world adrift. The lines lashing it to the old age of blind authority are loosening. For eight centuries the Iberian Peninsula had been homeland to a rich diversity – Christian, Arab and Jew and the cultural ferment was unmatched in the history of Europe.
The Renaissance encourages scholars and common people to speak and write in their own voice and break the bondage of Latin. And now the world has the printing press to spread the news to those who can read
Constantinople has fallen, overrun by the Turks. To the east, the Mediterranean is closed to traders and the price of silk, spices and other luxury goods demanded by the aristocracy has risen ten times.
A second inquisition has begun in Europe and Ferdinand and Isabelle in Spain support It. For Spain it is a lynchpin in their history as the country unifies and the Catholic faith provides the impetus for unity – stern and compelling - especially due to the devout Isabelle. The Church must be purified and alien elements purged, especially Moslems and Jews.
Tomas de Torquemada was appointed inquisitor-general of the Spanish Inquisition in 1483. In twelve years the Inquisition condemned the Marranos, 13,000 men and women who continued to practice Judaism in secret. Marrano means pig impugning the character of the recalcitrant crypto-Jews. It had the connotation of “filthy-dirty” and “unscrupulous”. The Jews were tortured in La Casas Santa, the Holy Houses, burned alive at the stake and their property was divided between the Pope and the Spanish King.
For eight centuries the Iberian Peninsula was homeland for a rich mix of Arab Moslems, Christians and Jews. Their coexistence in this insular Mediterranean region created cultural foment unmatched in the history of Europe. It is into this world that Christopher Columbus is born. It is said he was born near Genoa and named after Saint Christopher the ferryman who carried Christ on his shoulders – the Christ bearer. Christopher Columbus’ father was a poor weaver and Christopher worked with his father until his early twenties.
The seaport of Genoa bustled with activity. Great shipyards, map makers and the docks swarmed with traders, navigators and sailors from the known world. Some said there were new lands to the west. The old trade routes from the east were now closed by the Turks and seamen sought new directions to explore and find wealth.
Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal had already sent ships south searching for a sea route to India around the Cape of Good Hope and each voyage ventured further. In 1471, a little more than a decade after the Henry the Navigator’s death, Portuguese ships reached the equator to find the sea did not boil there. A few years later, in 1475, Christopher Columbus began serving on various ships plying the Mediterranean Sea. Heading through the Straights of Gibraltar, he was attacked by pirates and thrown into the sea off the Portuguese coast. He made it to shore and found is way to Lisbon.
In Lisbon he learned Castilian, the lispy language of upper class Portuguese, and Latin, necessary to study the ancient navigational texts. He poured over the charts of the great navigator and learned about new ships designed by the Portuguese –the caravel with its revolutionary reshaped hull and recut sails that made ships faster – two-hundred miles on a good day. It was in this atmosphere that Columbus’ idea was born to sail west to Asia.
The new printing presses of Europe produced streams of books and pamphlets. Bibles and books of marvels, astronomy and astrology – stories of travel, real or imagined were popular. Columbus poured over Marco Polo’s report on China. And Pierre d’Ailly’s discourse that helped demystify the nightmare fantasy worlds of the Middle Ages called “The Image of the World. He scribbled notes in its margins.
Columbus approached John the Second of Portugal who inherited his great-uncle, Henry the Navigator’s zeal for discovery but was rejected. John was looking southward for a sea route around Africa to India. Columbus moved back to Spain to Castile and cultivated powerful allies in the Spanish court. Queen Isabelle received him and referred his proposal to committee. She liked the idea but didn’t have the money for the venture. She was already hard-pressed financing the conquest of the Moslems in Grenada. In the meantime Columbus took a mistress who bore him a son he named Fernando who was to become Columbus’ biographer.
In 1488, Columbus returned to Lisbon and witnessed the triumph of Bartholomew Dias who returned from Africa with the assurance that the eastern route to India was feasible. In Portugal Columbus renewed his pleas to John the Second and was refused a second time. He sent his younger brother, Bartholomew to Henry the Seventy in England – he asked the king of France, Charles the Eighth but Columbus could find no support for his dream to sail west. But he was persistent.
In 1490 Isabelle’s committee termed Columbus’ plan impractical and denounced them as inconsistent with the teachings of St. Augustine. One year later Columbus tried again and yet another committee rejected him. Back in France he appealed to Charles the Eighth again.
And then Grenada fell. It was January second, 1492. Christian prisoners were released from Moslem dungeons and eight centuries of Moslem occupation ended. Isabella sent a message to Columbus and invited him back to Spain. She accepted his plan and proclaimed him Admiral and Viceroy and Governor of lands he might find. She granted him one-tenth of all profits to his heirs and successors forever. And to Columbus Isabella entrusted royal letters to the Grand Kahn and to all kings of India.
And then Grenada fell. It was January second, 1492. Christian prisoners were released from Moslem dungeons and eight centuries of Moslem occupation ended. Isabella sent a message to Columbus and invited him back to Spain. She accepted his plan and proclaimed him Admiral and Viceroy and Governor of lands he might find. She granted him one-tenth of all profits to his heirs and successors forever. And to Columbus Isabella entrusted royal letters to the Grand Kahn and to all kings of India.
Before sunrise on August third, 1492 Columbus embarked from the Atlantic port of Palos. Cadiz. The Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria with ninety men and boys, sailed west into the Atlantic. The fortress and naval base and Spain’s main Atlantic port would have been a more logical choice but it was too busy shipping thousands of exiled Jews. (...to be continued)
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