By Ken McCormick
© 2003
Most
people in Guatemala can't afford cars or even motorbikes, so the chaotic
autobus system is what moves people around the republic. You realize when you cross the border from
Mexico that Mexico is not truly a part of the Third World. Guatemala is where the Third World
begins. You won't find ATM's, banks, or
even cambio booths anywhere near the Guatemalan frontier like you can
expect in nice, orderly Mexico. If you
want to change money, you will find a bunch of guys in straw cowboy hats waving
around big rolls of currency and offering to change money by the side of the
dirt road which forms the main street of the border town. No rates are posted on a nice, clear placard
in the front window of an exchange house.
You haggle for the best price you can get.
You'll
find no ticket window at the central de autobuses, or even a terminal of any
sort: just a big, dusty, or, depending on the weather, muddy lot with dozens of
little, old buses parked in it. Since the
destinations written on the fronts of the buses may or may not bear any
relationship to where the bus is actually headed, and since there are no
published schedules, the only way to find your way is to ask around.
Guatemalan
buses have been dubbed "chicken buses" by foreigners because the
buses are the sole means, other than walking, for the people of the countryside
to move their produce and livestock into town on market days. This will include not only live chickens,
but also goats, pigs, and turkeys. The
growth of supermarkets (of a sort) and of modern food storage techniques has
cut into the traffic in live chickens considerably, though, and nowadays,
you'll usually encounter only fruits and vegetables on the bus, although one
guy I met did tell me that traveling near the coast, he had rather nervously
shared a seat on the bus with some buckets full of sea water and live crabs and
lobsters.
Most
of the chicken buses are retired school buses from the United States, done over
with flashy, multi-colored paint jobs, names and slogans painted on the front,
rear, and sides, and sometimes such added flourishes as flames painted on the
hood and emerging from the wheel wells.
Occasionally, though, the buses are not repainted, but retain the school
bus yellow and black, and instead of sporting the name of a bus line such as
"Dorita" or "Norma" on the sides, will carry such
signification as "Albemarle County School District."
Emblazoned
across the windshield in large, multicolored block letters will also appear a
pet name for the bus selected by the driver, or piloto, such as "MARIA
JOSE" (Mary Jo), "CHIQUITITA" (Tiny Little Thing), "LA
GATITA" (The Kitten) or "NENA" (Baby Girl), or a slogan such as
"DIOS ES AMOR" (God is love), "EN DIOS CONFIAMOS" (In God
we trust), or "DIOS BENDIGA ESTE BUS" (God bless this bus). I traveled from Huehuetenango to
Chimaltenango on a bus with a name suitable for a sixteenth-century galleon:
"FE EN DIOS" (Faith in God).
Religious symbols are pretty much the norm in bus decor, with large
plastic crucifixes adorned with artificial flowers inside the windshield,
pictures of Jesus in the rear window, and slogans painted above the driver such
as "It's a long road, Lord, but you await me at the end." In addition to the unabashed religious
symbols, little metal plaques in the shape of the profile of a seated nude
woman adorn the rear bumpers of almost all chicken buses.
Whether
or not a bus receives a new paint job, many chicken bus companies change the
placement of seats within. The room
allowed to accommodate North American school children is generally considered
extravagant by Guatemalan standards, and so the seats are moved closer together
and new seats are added in order to admit a greater density of seated
passengers.
At
five feet, nine inches, I'm just about a normal-sized person in the USA, at
least for a person of my own somewhat aging generation, but in Guatemala I'm a
great big guy. Most Guatemalans can
actually fit their legs in the tiny spaces between the bus seats. I can't. I have to sit with my legs at a
45-degree angle to the side to fit in, which usually presents something of a
problem, as there are normally six people seated abreast in a cross-section of
the bus, with one or two more standing in the aisle. The aisle position on the seats only allows enough room for
contact with one butt cheek, so it is usually necessary to extend one's arm
across the aisle and behind the back of the person who has one butt cheek
planted on the aisle seat on the other side of the aisle, and to brace oneself
against the back of that seat in order to keep from falling to the floor.
Ladders
are mounted on the back of each bus to provide access to the roof, which is
reinforced and fitted with a sturdy luggage rack. Occasionally when the bus gets too full to squeeze anyone else
in, people ride on the roof. In recent
years, this practice has been outlawed as too dangerous, but in some of the
more remote areas, traffic laws don’t really count for much. People riding overhead can be a problem for
anyone whose luggage is on the roof, for it is quite common for such luggage to
be rifled by the rooftop passengers. It
is therefore recommended that anyone with luggage on the roof should also ride
on the roof, himself, in order to watch his luggage, if there are any other
people riding on the roof.
At
the stops, vendors come aboard selling newspapers, fruit, chicken sandwiches,
and what have you. If the bus is
crowded, in order to reach any customer not in the first couple of seats, they
have to come around the outside and hand the products and the money back and
forth through the windows. At one stop,
I witnessed a guy come on and give a detailed pitch, complete with photographic
illustrations, to his captive audience concerning a dollar-and-fifteen cent
skin cream supposedly good for curing athlete's foot, chafed skin, and heat
rash. You knew it was the latest thing
because, according to him, it was the same product used at a chic clinic
frequented by tourists.
Coming
down the mountainside one day from the town of Santa Maria de Jesus, I and the
rest of the passengers were regaled by an itinerant evangélico
delivering a fiery sermon whilst standing somewhat unsteadily at the front of
the bus, the pages of his prayer book flapping wildly in the wind, shouting
himself hoarse over the din of the bus’s roaring engine, grinding gears, and
jauntily tooting air horn.
In
this way, with the packing of the buses to capacity and the symbiotic
relationship of the buses and the vendors, absolute maximum use is made of the
machinery of transport. When I say the
buses are packed to capacity, I mean you have to actually push and squeeze your
way onto the bus, and if you are seated, you may very well wind up with
somebody else's toddler in your lap.
Amazingly, the driver's ayudante can still squeeze his way through this
mass of seething humanity from one end of the bus to the other, collecting
fares and making change. Politicians
speak of going out and shaking hands in crowds as "pressing the
flesh." They've never been aboard
a chicken bus. On a chicken bus, you
learn what "pressing the flesh" really is.
All
this is recognized as an inconvenience by the locals, but it is accepted with
good humor - a sort of a bemused shaking of the head as if to say "isn't
it crazy what we have to do?" But
Guatemala is a poor country, and every last penny's-worth of use has to be
squeezed out of these retired school buses.
As
the bus sways and jolts down the poorly-maintained roadways, the ayudante leans
out the door to call out the destination to people waiting by the side of the
road. He doesn't just call out the
name, but he dresses it up a bit and makes it more exciting, as in
"¡Chimal-Chimal-Chimal-Chimal-Chimal-ten-an-go-o-o!" The call for Antigua is the barely
comprehensible "¡Ee-whah!
¡Tee-gwhah!" And there is
the ubiquitous cry for Guatemala City: "¡Guate! ¡Guate!
¡Guatemala, Guatemala!"
The drivers and ayudantes all appear to take great pride in the importance of their operations. Indeed, without the services of the chicken buses, what would people do?
In
the cemetery at Chichicastenango, there is a rather crudely-executed concrete
and stucco monument to the men who make the buses run. The front of the monument consists of a
flat, table-like area with a miniature road layout in a rocky terrain with a
crossroads at the center, sort of like a Lionel-scale model train layout, but
with painted roads instead of train tracks.
The high back of the monument displays this inscription:
This
monument was established in memory
of
the Chichicastenangan bus drivers and co-drivers
who
gave heart, soul, and expertise for
the
transportation of their fellow man.
May
they rest in peace
along
the highways of the sky.
The
bus wends its way through the narrow streets of Sololá. To make a right-angle turn on a steep
downhill slope, the ayudante leaps off the moving bus, shouting directions,
darting recklessly back and forth through the small gap between the moving bus
and a masonry wall. The bus inches
forward, backward, gears grinding, bit by bit working its way around the
corner, clearing it finally by inches amongst much whooping, whistling, and
waving of hats. The ayudante runs a
block or two ahead to stop oncoming traffic to allow passage of the bus down a
one-lane road.
I
love the packed-in crowds. I love the
ayudante's boisterous call. I love
running desperately down the road to jump on the back of the moving chicken bus
as it pulls away with my luggage on the roof, raucous music blasting the whole
while from the bus's speakers. Thus do
the riders of the bus move off determinedly down the highway to their various
destinations, sharing this crazy journey that is life.