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 The
plane ride from Guatemala City north into the lowland rainforest
lasted about an hour. We headed for Playa Grande, the regional
military base in Ixcán and the nearest airstrip to Santa
María Tzejá. Manz had first come here in 1973 when
leftist guerrillas were starting to organize in the area. Now,
having written the history of the village, she was coming back
with her book. With her was a casually dressed Spanish priest
named Father Luis Gurriarán. Father Luis gazed distantly
out the plane window as our single-propellor plane swooped over
the Guatemalan highlands, past eroded mountainsides and treeless
valleys, through spires of wood smoke rising languidly from newly
hewn milpas. Our aerial descent into the rainforest
was sudden and palpable. Beads of sweat ran down my forehead
and back as the air thickened, and I began to feel nauseated
from the combined heat and turbulence. Manz's voice popped above
the engine roar as she pointed excitedly to a few familiar structures
materializing from the green tangle below: Santa María
Tzejá's cooperative building, the school, and the road
to the military base.
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