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Sunday, December 8, 2002
Pain & desperation
Copyright © 2002 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. | ||||||||||||||||||
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Also on this page: FOREIGNERS WORKING IN MAINE | |||||||||||||||||
LA DEMOCRACIA, Guatemala — In a hilly cemetery deep in the western highlands, children stumble past flower bouquets and unopened beer cans displayed for the dead. Bouncy tunes of a marimba band playing by the tombs mix with ear-splitting cheers from the neighboring soccer field. Across the road from the cemetery, teenage boys peek into a wooden shack showing kung fu movies in English at full blast. It's the Day of the Dead, a time to pay tribute to dead family and friends, and thousands of people from remote, mountainside villages have poured into the town center for a fiesta. But not everyone celebrates. On this hot November morning, large knots of solemn-faced women and children gather by four tombs where the rust-red dirt is loose and the epitaphs speak of premature loss: "The American Dream deprived us of your presence." "The American Dream ended in Maine, U.S.A." "He died at age 42 in Maine, U.S.A." Each year, more than 100,000 Guatemalans toil in American fields and factories to pay off debt, feed families and climb out of poverty. For four local men cutting brush in Maine's North Woods, that dream ended Sept. 12 when a van ferrying them to work skidded off a bridge on a remote logging road, killing all but one of the 15 occupants. After the accident - Maine's deadliest vehicle crash - the residents of La Democracia reached out to the victims' widows and families. The women have not wanted for a bag of sugar, a pound of salt, or a hand to hold. But in a town where people accept things as God's will, the tragedy has begun to fade. For some, the men's deaths, splashed across local newspapers and television, have rekindled interest in Los Estados Unidos, where grueling, sometimes dangerous labor shunned by most Americans can be 10 times more lucrative than picking coffee at home. For the widows, the Day of the Dead, usually so joyous an occasion, is now a time to mourn in public. The poorest and youngest of them, Natividad Maldonado, has been crying over her late husband, Cecilio Morales-Domingo, and arrives late with her five children. "This is going to be a fun day for everyone, but a mournful day for me," Maldonado, 31, says through an interpreter. Workers' compensation checks will allow the dead men to provide for their families. But that is of little consolation to their widows. While other people have wish lists - farmland, a truck, television, a cinder block house - the women, impoverished all their lives, say they have more pressing matters. Among them, there are 27 children to worry about, and more than $10,000 in debt to pay off. Since Maldonado's husband died, this vibrant, chatty woman has lost her appetite, her concentration and her nerve. The fact that she misplaced $13 - several days' worth of wages for many in town - this morning only upsets her more. "I don't remember where I put things anymore," she says, fighting off tears in front of her husband's tomb, the only one missing a plaque. During the Day of the Dead, men greet each other with handshakes and nods, the women people-watch together under oversized, rainbow-striped umbrellas. About 97 percent of La Democracia's 30,000 residents are scattered over a sprawling network of villages ringed by mountains and clouds. But people like to say they know each other by face, if not by name. The open-air market is a common place to run into people, as is the town square, home to municipal offices, a small, leafy park and a cultural center with computer stations and a one-room library. On a typical midafternoon downtown, dogs run loose down a one-way street while a man totes a cow carcass into the butcher shop. A vendor selling tortilla chips and beauty products leisurely clips his moustache. That locals straddle the line between tradition and assimilation is evident here in the western highlands, where Mayan Indians - who comprise at least half of the country's population - are heavily concentrated. Growing numbers have shed their traditional, colorful clothing for baseball caps and women's flared jeans worn by Spanish-speaking ladinos - people of mixed Indian and Spanish heritage, or assimilated Indians, viewed as higher class in Guatemala's deeply stratified society. And though locals revisit indigenous beliefs during fiestas like the Day of the Dead, most identify themselves as Catholic or, as an evangelical movement gains ground in Guatemala, Protestant. Yet many in town proudly speak Mam, the unwritten language of the once-powerful Mayan tribe, instead of Spanish. It's a way to hold onto a culture, first imperiled by Spanish colonialism and, more recently, by civil war. During this bloody era lasting from 1960 to 1996, Mayan Indians got caught in the crossfire between a right-wing government and Marxist guerrillas. An estimated 150,000 people were killed, and tens of thousands more disappeared. Hundreds of villages were destroyed. In La Democracia, people were scared to go out at night. And local men forced by the government and paramilitary forces to join civilian patrols lay awake in bed dreading a raid by guerrillas. The town, however, never saw the intense skirmishes that scarred communities to the northeast, locals say. And since the peace accords were signed in 1996, it has escaped the violence and vigilante justice that has erupted in mob lynchings of suspected rapists and thieves. "We're better off here," says Antonio Andres-Garcia, a coffee merchant and a lay leader in the town's Catholic church. "The gangs don't kill. In other places, they do." Economically, the town is doing a little better than other places, too. Only 10 miles from Mexico, La Democracia benefits from inter-country trade of coffee and sugar. Travelers crossing the border, for example, stop off at the town's rows of modest motels and restaurants painted the colors of tropical fruit. But many people still live in poverty. And since the 1960s, there's been a steady exodus of townspeople from La Democracia to work in the United States. Some return regularly. Some never come back. How many are in the United States is not known, but everybody seems to know of a resident who has gone, or plans to go. The call of the States has grown louder since coffee prices have dropped to worldwide lows in recent years. Coffee-planting jobs have dwindled and the local economy has become depressed. Eking out a living becomes a struggle. And borrowing money means monthly interest rates of up to 25 percent. Some people head south to coffee plantations along the Pacific coast, where work is steady, but pays less than $3 a day. Others want bigger returns, and head north. Natividad Maldonado and her husband, Cecilio Morales-Domingo, had their five children, each other and little else. No plumbing, telephone or car. Their two-room adobe hut in the village of Bella Gracia sits at the edge of a thickly wooded ravine, a 45-minute walk from a paved road. With their eldest son, Marcos, turning 13 this year, Morales-Domingo began to worry about the future. The 30-year-old wanted all his children to finish high school and find jobs outside of farming, like teaching - uncommon dreams in La Democracia, where few study beyond elementary school and young people aspire to farm the family land or work in the United States. His job making beds and cleaning at a local motel - and growing coffee when he had the time - wasn't going to put them all through school. So he decided last year to go to the United States, telling his wife he wanted to do it for the kids. With a limited number of work visas to go around, residents say that most townspeople decide to enter the States illegally and get fake Social Security cards and green cards there. Morales-Domingo decided not to risk the hassle of the U.S. Border Patrol, or unscrupulous smugglers, and contacted Silvano Villatoro, a longtime migrant worker known for helping people find jobs in the U.S. timber industry. For just under $900, Villatoro buys the men round-trip airfare and works with Idaho-based Evergreen Forestry Services Inc. to get them the H2-B work visas that temporary nonagricultural workers must have. The terms of the visa mean working as an Evergreen subcontractor for no more than a year. But it is a sure-fire deal and frees workers from deportation worries. Maldonado didn't want her husband to go, but how could she argue with his intentions? Besides, she knew her husband, a talkative, excitable fellow with many friends, needed to sate his curiosity about the United States, where life is touted as easy and plentiful. In January, Morales-Domingo hugged his family goodbye and flew out of Guatemala City with about 45 other men from La Democracia to plant trees in Louisiana. In May, the group migrated to Maine to trim brush in the North Woods. Paid roughly $10 an hour - more if they cleared more acreage - the men could earn more than $400 a week. Lugging power saws was backbreaking and the commutes were long, but Morales-Domingo enjoyed himself. Every month his wife rode a rickety bus to Mexico, where it was cheaper to use the phone. During one of their conversations, he described a visit to the U.S.-Canada border. "There was a river there," he told her. "It was absolutely beautiful." She laughed at his excitement. "Thank God you're seeing these places."
Before sunrise on Sept. 12, Morales-Domingo left the large apartment he rented above a gun and jewelry shop in Caribou. Filing out with him were eight roommates from Honduras and four from La Democracia: his brother Sebastian, 31; Alberto Sales -Domingo, 42; Juan Mendez, 44, and Mendez' 24-year-old nephew, Edilberto Morales-Luis. It was the Guatemalans' first year in the States. They joined two other Honduran men in a rented 2002 Dodge van outside the building and began the 2 1/2-hour drive to work. The men were only five miles or so from their remote logging camp when they reached John's Bridge, a one-lane, 260-foot wooden bridge without railings that spans a section of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. Police later said the driver, Juan Turcios-Matamoros, was traveling up to 70 mph when he lost control of the van on the bridge. The van hit the curbing and flipped off the bridge, then crashed roof-first into the water. In the rear of the van, Morales-Luis inhaled some air, while the 14 other men sucked in icy water. He then escaped through a broken back window. Losing his pants in the water, Morales-Luis swam 30 feet to shore. He went back to look for the other men but, unable to reach the van, swam back to land. There, he waited, dripping wet, until forestry workers in a truck drove by. "I asked those people to see if my friends were dead," he said through an interpreter. "They were." Reporters and police converged on the scene. Morales-Luis was asked to identify all the dead men and to reconstruct their last moments. Several of the men, he said, had shouted at Turcios-Matamoros to slow down. As he answered endless questions over the next week, word of the accident began to spread through La Democracia. Someone needed to tell the widows. Morales-Luis' wife, Idalis, braced herself for the gut-wrenching assignment. She made the rocky climb to Bella Gracia to talk to Cecilio Morales-Domingo's wife, Natividad Maldonado.
Seven weeks later, families of 20 or more people spill into each other as they navigate the craggy, dirt cemetery on the Day of the Dead. Marcos Morales weaves easily through the crowds, a bounce in his step. His hair is glossy and parted just so. He wears brand-new Trail Guide leather hiking boots, a polo shirt and brown jeans cinched by a man's black belt, with a long piece of strap hanging out of the buckle. The sharp new look comes courtesy of Papi. Just yesterday, Marcos accompanied his mother, Natividad Maldonado, into town to pick up his father's belongings at Silvano Villatoro's home. The bags, along with those of the other dead men, arrived in the bed of a pickup truck. Two of Villatoro's sons, his brother and brother-in-law took turns driving the black Chevrolet more than 3,000 miles from northern Maine. After eight days, the truck crossed the Mexican border into Guatemala, jostling along the pock-marked Interamerican Highway through mountain cloud forests before taking a turn into La Democracia. A few days later, the same truck helped mother and son get two black carry-on suitcases and an Aiwa stereo system back home. On the caked-dirt floor, amid roving chickens and dogs, Maldonado unzipped a bag and lifted two rayon dresses from the mass of shoes and bright children's T-shirts. Gazing at a black-and-white print dress with tie-knot brass buttons, she glowed at her husband's thoughtfulness. At the sight of a pair of men's pants, though, she stiffened, and began to cry. Not until that moment, she said later, did she truly understand that Cecilio was never coming back.
Cecilio Morales-Domingo's tomb is right next to his brother Sebastian's. Standing next to Natividad Maldonado on the Day of the Dead is her older sister, Fabiana Maldonado, Sebastian's wife. The two sisters make for a study in contrasts: short and wide-faced Natividad, in the black-and-white dress Cecilio bought her. Fabiana, gaunt and taller, in a brilliant, embroidered Mayan outfit. Their lives, however, read much the same: They married into the same family, lived in homes near one another. Each has had a succession of children, 13 between them. Then their husbands made that fateful trip to the United States together. Their sisterhood has deepened beyond anything to do with blood, and has come to include La Democracia's other widows, Florinda Sanchez and Josefa Dominguez. Together, the four women met with two men who flew down from Florida with legal papers, one a paralegal at a West Palm Beach personal injury law firm, the other a Catholic priest. They said they would represent their interests in the United States, and the women signed on. Together, they have gone to Guatemala City to pick up their husbands' caskets, to get death certificates from the Foreign Ministry, to meet with local counsel for Evergreen's insurance company, Liberty Mutual Group. The sprawling metropolis with its luxury car dealerships and high-rise buildings offers temporary distraction. And the well-dressed, polite lawyers assure them that their fiscal matters are in good hands. But after the six-hour drive home, they are left alone with memories of their husbands. Fabiana Maldonado recalls how Sebastian, a masonry worker, built her a concrete house capped by a tin roof. He wanted a nicer home even though it meant borrowing large sums for the 60-by-60-foot lot and building materials. When he left, he owed roughly $5,800, including money he borrowed for the U.S. trip. The workers' compensation benefits checks should help the widows pay off their debts. Weekly checks, ranging from about $250 to $300, depending on how much each worker averaged, will come for 500 weeks, or until each widow's youngest child turns 18. For families with children as young as 6, the total will surpass $150,000. Each family will also get $5,900 in donations from a relief fund set up after the van crash, and potentially more money if their U.S. attorneys press ahead with wrongful-death claims. Locals are describing the widows as rich women, and a certain widower is rumored to be prowling about. But the money has only begun to trickle in, and Fabiana Maldonado refuses to rest easy. She does not ask her children to study past elementary school, because books and supplies are too expensive. And she expects her eight children to work on their small plot of coffee plants. "If more (money) comes, God willing, I'll try to make things better for my family," she says. "But I haven't taken that money into account." She suspects her husband's death resulted from foul play. A neighbor angry with her husband may have used witchcraft to harm him. The other widows, however, say their husbands' deaths were God's plan. "I only ask God that my husband's soul rest peacefully," said Josefa Dominguez, whose husband was Alberto Sales-Domingo. When her father-in-law brought Dominguez her husband's luggage and a boxed home entertainment system from Villatoro's house, she began to shudder with grief. The 42-year-old mother of eight remembered a good man who never hit her and a father who wanted to give his children more than he could as a coffee grower. Five of her children, along with her in-laws, huddled with Dominguez in a dim room and for 10 minutes, everyone cried in a mournful singsong that carried over the rooting pigs and playing children outside. Later that day, all the families went to tidy up the men's tombs and drape them with colorful plastic ribbons. Florinda Sanchez, 42, had two tombs to visit. Last year, her son, the eldest of seven children, died in a car crash. Now, she had to arrange offerings for her husband, Juan Mendez. "Juanito" would get his Mexican beer, a pack of Rubio cigarettes and, of course, some matches. A coffee grower, he lived large and well. The shy, soft-spoken Sanchez recalls how he used to pull her out onto the patio to dance with him between the lines of laundry. When he died, Sanchez stopped eating. "I wanted to go far, far away from here. I couldn't stand it." By serving him tombside, it's like he's still alive. "I feel like I'm just being a good wife by bringing him all that," she says. As people streamed into La Democracia for the Day of the Dead, many passed a stretch of the Interamerican Highway that is bordered by dozens of white crosses and pastel-colored shrines. Seventeen days after the crash in Maine, a bus had plunged off the road, down a steep ravine and into a river, killing more than 20 people, among them a handful of people from La Democracia. As people shook their heads over how the driver lost control of the bus after apparently trying to beat another bus to the next stop, the Maine crash receded from the public eye, becoming yet another tragic byproduct of the American Dream. A handful of car accidents have befallen Guatemalan migrant workers in the United States. One of the best-known occurred in 1991, when six men from the highland town of Aquacatan who were cutting sugar cane in Florida died in a car crash on their way to work. The accident brought U.S. attention to migrant worker safety and led to a $5.6 million settlement, one of the largest ever awarded under migrant protection laws. That accident did nothing to stem the tide of Guatemalans going to the States. And, it appears, neither will the Maine accident. The lure of the greenback, of American money, is too strong, even for the sons of the dead men. Fabiana Maldonado's 18-year-old son wants to go to Maine - against her will - to make money and to see where his father died. Josefa Dominguez's 19-year-old son wants to make the trip, too, but she has not objected. "The need is so great we need him to go," she says. Silvano Villatoro, who helped the victims find work in Maine, says there is no mystery behind people's fixation with the United States. "People don't have jobs," he says. "The situation is very bad with the fall of coffee prices. People have to find a way to earn money." Since the accident, Villatoro has received inquiries about U.S. work visas from all over Guatemala. Prospective workers even approached him at the funeral for one of the victims. Taken aback, Villatoro told them, "Look, c'mon. Look what happened." "It was the men's time," they replied. "Don't worry about us. We'll be fine." Even the lone survivor of the accident, Edilberto Morales-Luis, is talking about going back. He has three young children to support, and points out that job opportunities are slim in La Democracia. "If God gives me life, I will go again," he says. Morales-Luis is waiting for several things to happen. First, he needs money for the trip north. Workers' compensation payments would help but Liberty Mutual questions whether he deserves them. Also, his left shoulder, injured in the accident, has to heal. And he needs to shake those bad dreams in which all 14 of the dead men show up, laughing at him. "It's frightening," Morales-Luis says. "I asked a doctor and he says he can erase all those memories from my head for 3,000 quetzales (about $450). But I don't have that kind of money."
On the Day of the Dead, the sun beats down on Natividad Maldonado as she stands still as a seraph in front of her husband's tomb. To mark the day her husband died, she and the children will come to the cemetery on the 12th of every month with fresh flowers. "I'm going to do that for one year," she says. She has mapped out little else. Ask her about the future and she looks no further than today. Once the votive candle she's lit for her husband flickers out, in a few hours, it will be her cue to go home. She will prepare chicken tamales in the open-air kitchen. Where she and her husband used to bathe the little ones together, she will do it on her own. At night, she will nestle in bed with her children and think about Cecilio. Eventually, sleep will come, and a new day. Staff Writer Josie Huang can be contacted at 791-6364 or at:
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