I was driving Ana-Renee to the embassy when we entered a roundabout and she told me to keep circling, saying “there’s some things I need to tell you…” in that voice that says you’re about to hear something you’re going to wish you’d heard sooner.
“First thing is… I’m married.”
Ana-Renee was a sort of freelance social worker who organized women making traditional Guatemalan clothing into collectives who could better bargain with the constant stream of importers from the U.S., Canada and Europe. She also got funding from the Mexican Red Cross to operate an essentially clandestine shelter for battered women in Guatemala City. I was trying to become a journalist and she’d helped me write and send off my first story. Although we’d slept together for the first time the night before, we’d known each other pretty well for over a month. and to give you an idea of my talents as an investigative reporter, my first clue that Ana-Renee might’ve been married was her saying “I’m married.” just then.
“Where’s your husband?”
“He’s in prison.”
“What for?”
“He’s a political prisoner.”
“Fuck.” was all I could say. Guatemala was one of those places where being a “political prisoner” often meant you were dead. Knowing that’s what I was thinking she said, “I got a letter from him a month ago. He’s still alive.”
“That’s good… How long has he been in?”
“Two years… more. I think if they were going to kill him they would’ve done it by now.”
Part One: Mexico
Part Two: Guatemala
Part Three: Nicaragua
I tried to picture the sort of man she would marry, starting off using the face of the man she’d introduced me to the night before: a friendly, babyfaced guy with a beard. For prison I made him gaunter and added the usual sweat, dirt and grime, essentially combining him with Raul Julia in Kiss of the Spider Woman. Whoever he was, I figured he must’ve been remarkably smart, probably good looking, funny and kind: what women refer to as “a wonderful man” since I couldn’t imagine her marrying anyone less. Ana-Renee was 26, very beautiful and one of the smartest, most interesting and dedicated people I’d ever met. She spoke at least five languages fluently and devoted most of her time to helping the poor so she wasn’t going to marry some asshole. Whoever he was I felt damn sorry for him. The only thing I could think of worse than being in a Guatemalan prison was being there and separated from someone like Ana-Renee.
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s not really what I have to tell you though…”
I waited.
“The money for the shelter didn’t come from where I told you, it came from los muchachos.”
Los Muchachos was the slang term for the rebels in the Guatemalan civil war, which was the longest running in Central America. There were three or four main groups, mostly variations on Marxist-Leninist philosophy, united under the umbrella URNG. I’d tended to imagine them as the stereotypical clandestine armies up in the mountains - small groups of a couple dozen young men and some women, always depicted in the movies as tired but determined and accompanied by Peruvian pan-pipe music no matter what country they were from.
“So you’re with the muchachos…?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Long time. Since I was a kid.”
“So the shelter’s not a shelter?”
“Yes. It’s a shelter for women, but it’s a safe house too. It’s both.”
So Ana-Renee was with the muchachos… that made sense. In fact it should’ve been obvious all along. She was young, idealistic - dedicated to the poor. Although I knew revolutionary armies had urban components, I probably hadn’t given it much thought, or Ana-Renee’s confession wouldn’t have come as such a surprise. Apart from adding to her romance and mystique, her being with the muchachos didn’t really change my opinion of her… unless she’d actually killed people. That would make things different.
“Have you killed anyone?”
“No…” She said it firmly, but not quickly, so I waited. “I’ve seen people die though.”
“In the mountains?”
“No. Here in the city. It was stupid.”
“What happened?”
“We were doing graffiti one night and got caught by the army. One of us got shot and he died.”
“What did the graffiti say?”
“En Salvador Venceren. - In Salvador they’re winning. It was stupid.”
“Well… hardly worth dying for.”
“Yes. I was young.”
“How did you get involved with them?”
“I was recruited through some friends. I went to Cuba for training.”
I started to laugh.
“Why is that funny?”
“I’m just trying to picture you with an aka… damn gun’s bigger than you are.”
“I did okay…”
There was a pause for awhile so I just kept driving around. I’m sure by then I’d lost track of how many laps we’d made. Going over everything I couldn’t help laughing again, much harder, this time at myself. When she asked why I said “I’m just thinking how all this time I’ve been hanging out with a Cuban trained guerrilla fighter and I thought you were, you know, a social worker. Then I thought how I’m trying to be this hotshot journalistand… well, it’s just funny.”
She laughed and there was another silence before I finally asked “So why are you telling me this?”
Pause.
“I want to go with you to Mexico. To Mexico City. I need to go there and it’ll be safer for me if I’m traveling with you and Peter, you know?”
“Uh-huh.”
“If something happens at least you’ll know and I won’t just disappear.”
“I understand.”
“So I had to tell you all this so you’d know.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
She gestured to the portfolio in her lap. “These are all the things I have to show to Mexico to get a visa. I have to prove I have a job, that I have property… all these things…” She put the portfolio back down and sighed pensively. Instead of the torn jeans and hippie-chic I was used to seeing her in she was dressed conservatively for the embassy in a long skirt and white blouse. I want to say it was a maroon skirt and a button up blouse, but really have no idea.
The rest of our conversation was mostly about the passport and papers she’d be using being different than the ones she normally used, how they were forgeries but good ones, made by the Cubans. She said her normal papers were also forgeries but had been tested many times while the new ones had not. When I asked she said she’d only used them to get into Mexico once before. She said the biggest risk would be at the border, but if she was arrested that Peter and I could easily plead ignorance and that being Americans would protect us, especially with my connection to the US ambassador to Honduras.
To be honest I don’t remember if I simply agreed or agreed with reservations, though I do remember saying I’d have to tell Peter. I’m pretty sure I just flat out said I’d take her, because it was really the only answer. We’d just slept together after all - for the first time! In fact, given the benefit of hindsight, I’m pretty sure it was why we’d slept together.
When we finally took the turnoff for the embassy she said to leave her off a couple of blocks away because of cameras and not having my car associated with her. Although she tried to pass it off as just bureaucratic hassle it wasn’t hard to see she was scared about whatever she was about to do at the embassy and that wanting me to leave her off a few blocks away was probably what had precipitated her whole confession. Watching her walk away all the romantic nonsense was quickly replaced by the cold realization of the kinds of danger she was actually in. She was Mayan, less than five feet tall, and dressed the way she was, clutching her portfolio made her look more like a schoolgirl in uniform than anything else, and that underneath all her casual bravado, education, savvy and five different languages, she was a scared little girl who knew she was in something way over her head.
I drove back to the Casa Margarita and told Peter everything in what I can best describe as probably the most bromantic conversation of my life. Our mission was to transport a fugitive traveling with false papers a thousand miles or so to Mexico City and Peter said he was basically up for it. When he asked why she had to go to Mexico City I said I didn’t know but that it was probably some kind of revolution stuff. Ultimately we decided the thing to do was to take her under the condition that we got to search through anything she brought with her. After all she was essentially an outlaw and it wasn’t hard to imagine her transporting diamonds, cash, drugs… secret plans - who the hell knew what she might have on her?
Of course when we left and the time came to actually do it, the thought of going through her stuff, which had seemed so reasonable before, seemed practically unthinkable. It was pretty much just “Hop on in!” and off we went.
* * *
Note: This all happened in December 1987 and was recorded in my journal a few days later. Apart from a few things about her husband I can’t really recall except that they were sad, this is what she told me in the order that she said it. While I can’t be sure of our exact words, these weren’t too far off the mark, although it’s safe to say there were more “Uh”s, “What?”s and the like and an overall suavity level somewhere between 15 and 20% lower than what I’ve written here. But memories tend to disintegrate in order of reverse importance, so that while the conversation is more or less emblazoned in my mind, the peripherals have faded: apart from our going around and around a traffic circle and dealing with cars entering and exiting, I couldn’t describe the surrounding buildings, whether it was sunny or cloudy, or the basic dimensions, number of lanes, etc. of the roundabout itself. I thought I could, but it turned out I was wrong.
While I’m sure I could’ve described it well enough for a few weeks or months, maybe even a year or two, for most of my adult life I’ve remembered the roundabout as relatively small and chaotic, with lots of horns honking, taxis, fruit trucks etc, speeding around something that was at most a 1/4 mile in circumference and some four or five lanes deep. In the midst of writing this and idly wondering how many laps our conversation would’ve taken, I realized it was 2018 and I could just look at the thing on google earth. (On the very same machine I was using to write the story no less!)
When I typed in “Mexican Embassy Guatemala City” and zoomed out a bit, the roundabout pretty much leapt off the map. It was huge - many times the size of what I’d remembered - circling around what was more of a park than some statue or obelisk. And while there were plenty of entrances and exits, there was a lot of space in between them, with the street view showing nothing like the chaos and anarchy I thought I remembered, which in retrospect made a lot more sense as a setting for Ana-Renee to tell her story.
So where did all the taxis and horns and fruit trucks come from? Like I said, memory fades in order of reverse importance - the film decays from the outside in. Since the conversation was the key thing, apart from the fact it was a roundabout, most of the peripheral sights and sounds faded away after a few years. But when we try to reconstruct memories we don’t just leave the parts we’ve forgotten blank, we have to fill them in with something. My theory is that once the original background details had faded away, somewhere along the line my mind just replaced them with what was essentially stock footage of a third world roundabout, which over the years became my truth.
You might want to try it yourself: take an old but relatively familiar memory and examine the unimportant parts, poke around the background a bit and try to figure out how much of it is actually real and how much is just props and stock footage placed over time by the art director in your mind. If the setting was outside and on or near a road somewhere, you can compare notes with google earth. It’s 2018 after all…