Protesters, Preachers : Plaza Scene Reflects Shifts in Guatemala

During the week, Guatemala’s central square is host to an array of student and labor demonstrations, a sign of political change that has earned it the name “the wailing plaza.”

On Sundays, the massive plaza is a gathering place for hundreds of young Indian women who moved to the capital to work as maids in homes of the wealthy, where they lose their youth and village ways.

In the shadow of the Roman Catholic cathedral, the plaza also serves as a pulpit for scores of evangelical preachers. Between appeals to join with Jesus, men and women gossip on their only day off, trade the latest rumors of a coup or complain about high prices.

View of Social Change

Traversed by army jeeps, wooden pull carts and noisy city buses, the square might best be called “transition plaza,” for the view that it offers of social change in Guatemala.

Once a tree-filled park, the plaza was paved over by Gen. Oscar Mejia Victores, one of a series of military presidents who ruled Guatemala until 1986. Mejia, an admirer of Spain, renamed the central square Plaza Mayor after its more grandiose counterpart in Madrid.

The plaza is bordered by the 19th Century cathedral on one side and by the Baroque-style National Palace, with its honor guard and flower garden on another. Opposite the palace is a block of small shops under the shade of a portico--La India Watch Store and Miscellania Bridal Gowns. A fenced-off construction site borders the fourth side.

At the center of the space, about a block square in size, is a fountain, lighted at night but usually dry.

For as long as anyone can remember, beggars have crouched in front of the cathedral and pigeons have nested on the ledges of its bell tower. Many people saw it as a bad omen when early this year dozens of the pigeons suddenly dropped dead on the eve of peace talks between the Nicaraguan government and the Contras in the adjoining archbishop’s offices. Indeed, the talks failed, although some people blamed right-wing poison rather than black magic for killing the birds.

Before Mass on Sundays, the plaza fills with vendors of lottery tickets and fluorescent pink cotton candy. Elderly men in button-down shirts and worn suit jackets circulate with their Polaroid cameras hoping for a first communion or a baptism. At the very least, they might snap a tourist.

Archbishop Prospero Penados del Barrio, a small, dark man with a staccato Spanish accent, bustles in black robes through the colonial courtyard of the offices from which he steers his church--once under siege from the military and now from the evangelicals, as Protestants are collectively known in Central America.

During the worst repression in the late 1970s and early 1980s, priests and catechists figured heavily among the tens of thousands of civilians killed in the army’s counterinsurgency war. Today, church leaders estimate that as much as 20% of the country may have joined various Protestant churches.

Trying to keep the faith of the country’s poor and Indian majority, Penados and the Bishop’s Conference recently released a pastoral letter called “Outcry for Land.” In it, they pleaded with the powers-that-be to address the issues of poverty and landlessness. Infuriated by the letter, right-wing businessmen asked Penados who his misguided advisers were.

“I told them my advisers are the poor,” Penados said.

Outside the church, demonstrators have spray-painted “No to Repression” on a wall. The plaza is the site of protests by relatives of the dead and those who have disappeared, by striking government workers and student protesters. Recently, about 200 secondary school students and parents spent the night there after police rousted them at 2 a.m. from the neighboring Belen school they had occupied for 25 days.

Presidential Protests

During the week, chanting protesters gather within earshot of the offices of President Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo, a Christian Democrat elected in December, 1985. While failing to wrest significant power from the military, Cerezo has at least allowed political demonstrations while his military predecessors did not.

But the blue-eyed president with the playboy reputation has ensured that there are no weekend protests.

“There aren’t any demonstrations on the weekend because the president isn’t here,” said vendor Maria Elena Velasquez. “He’s off having a good time.”

No use shouting at the president if he isn’t there.

Instead, the plaza fills on Sundays with vendors of traditional Indian dress, men and women from the countryside catering to those who no longer have the time or know-how to weave the brilliantly colored blouses, called huipiles and long skirts, called cortes .

Vasquez, 45, says high inflation and eroding salaries have been bad for business. The thick cotton and wool outfits run up to $37--a month’s salary for most maids. Synthetic fabrics and machine-made dresses are much less costly.

‘Prices Have Gone Up’

“A lot of people don’t buy anymore. Since the president came in, prices have gone up and people only have money to buy food,” she said.

Many Indians, originally from the cool highlands, give up their traditional dress in the city because the climate is too warm. But there is another reason many girls and young women have stopped using the traditional traje or costume: assimilation.

Ana Maria Bala, a 23-year-old from rural Chimaltenango province, moved to Guatemala City at the age of 11 to take her first job as a maid. In the last decade, she not only has given up wearing a huipil , but also has forgotten her native language, Kachiquel.

“I came here to work after they started to kill people,” Bala said, referring to massacres widely blamed on the army. “A friend from our village helped me find work.

“My parents and two brothers died,” she added, falling silent when asked for details about her family. “I don’t have anyone to talk to in my language. I can’t speak it anymore.”

Chewing bubble gum and avoiding the eyes of passing men, Bala waits to meet her girlfriends. She picks at the calluses on her hands and listens to the incessant tingling of bells from ice cream carts. Nearby, elderly women sell sliced mangoes with chili and home-made candied fruit.

Talk About Bosses

“We meet here every Sunday. We talk about our patrones , our bosses, whether the patron was good or bad, whether he gives us good food to eat or treats us badly, or if he paid us on time,” Bala said.

For many immigrants from the countryside, Sunday is the only day to escape the isolation of a suburban home and shed their starched uniforms; a day in the plaza can be like a return home. Julia Tzul, a 15-year-old maid, dresses in the bright skirt and huipil from her town of Totonicapan to meet her brother, Juan Alberto, 21, who works during the week as a carpenter.

The two sit close together whispering in their native Quiche.

“We miss our land. We were born there,” Julia said. “But sometimes we can see people from our town here in the plaza.”

Behind them, evangelicals strum guitars and shake tambourines.

“God, Savior of the soul. . . ,” sings one.

“There is a death for all sinners who have not repented,” shouts another.

Expressionless Crowd

An expressionless crowd gathers around the preachers, and around the spectators hover men with blackened hands offering a shoeshine for less than a quarter.

“How am I supposed to live off this with everything so expensive?” a hot-dog vendor said to his friend, slapping his palm on the wooden stand.

Some girls flirt shyly with their suitors. A few women say they are shocked by the things they see and hear in the city--couples kissing in church, women “taking up vices” and so many men taking off for the United States.

Amid the gossip, Maria Masariegos, 22, heard a most frightening rumor: that if you don’t speak English in the United States, “they” kill you, although she didn’t catch who does the killing.

Masariegos says she has enjoyed learning to speak proper Spanish and to cook well while working as a maid, but she would not like to stay in the capital and would never marry someone from the city.

Don’t Trust City Folk

“I wouldn’t trust someone who wasn’t from my village because you don’t really know what he is like, who his family is, if he is honest,” she said.

In the distance, a prim woman wearing a straight gray skirt and black pumps beseeches her listeners with the Santa Biblia in one hand and a microphone in the other: “Sinners, it does not matter what your vice has been if you put your faith in God.”

For Masariegos, a little bit of change goes a long way. She not only prefers the Catholic Church to the Protestants but she likes to hear Mass in her own language, the way it is said back home.

Nearby, young boys snap dirty rags in offering a car wash. Taxi drivers dally in the shade beside an arcade of miscellany shops. On the sidewalk, vendors sell Western-style clothes to the Indian women who do want to make the change.