Honduras: Friendships on the Fringe (cont.)

“Do you know the history of the Maya?” I inquired of my own crew when we stopped for a water break, suspecting that these men had in fact learned little of their local history.  Commuting an hour by bus to work in a factory outside of San Pedro Sula, the nearest city, or tending corn, beans, and squash by hand under the hot Honduran sun left little time to contemplate their relationship with the past. Caught between the pull of the urban center to the north and the more immediate demands of the rural world surrounding them, many of the people I spoke with simply weren’t aware of the fact that their 300-year-old town stood in an area that the director of the Cacaulapa Project referred to as the Maya Fringe.

Back on the soccer field later that week, as I paused to catch my breath after a fight for the ball, I tried another angle with one of my teammates.

“Do you want to go to the United States someday?”  I wondered what kinds of dreams were cultivated among the cornfields here along the Guatemalan border in the western part of the country. If the adults in Pueblo Nuevo acknowledged no connection with El Coyote and the culture it represented, did any of these sprinters racing by me to score another easy goal want to be anthropologists, historians, museum curators, or preservationists? To the older generation, Marcela and I were co-workers, our field school was our employer. But in this less formal setting, facing off on a sporting ground, were we babysitters, community organizers, or perhaps potential friends?

My questions and those interactions during the time I spent Honduras that spring didn’t immediately give me a profound understanding of the nuances of life as it continues to be lived just a few miles from the highway that bisects the country. And yet answer by answer, as we let our guard down, opened up to each other, and laughed a little, I started to feel like I could fit in eventually. With all that I learned, my curiosity continued to grow by the day; and they wanted to know more about me too.

Although I would never be able to shed my nationality and the associations that come with it, no matter how long I stayed in town, I realized that it didn’t matter. We always have the opportunity to be the American that asks to join the soccer game, the academic who gives the laborer a break from the monotonous work of excavation, and the person that takes a seat on the ground to eat a cold tortilla next to someone else. 

Page 2 of 2  Previous Page

All contents copyright ©2006 Pology Magazine. Unauthorized use of any content is strictly prohibited.