Life is a Trip (9 page)

“I think the conjugal visits—which are legally permitted in Mexico—help to prevent violence by releasing pent-up sexual tension,” Victor explained, adding, “There are children conceived and born here when both parents are inmates; they raise the kids together. Many prisoners have families who come to visit them and we provide a playground area. One of the inmates is a clown, and he performs on Sundays.”

Prisoners had access to a well-stocked library and could take classes in IT, Spanish, English, and even French and Japanese. They played soccer and belonged to sports teams. There were AA meetings and inmates were encouraged to pursue whatever interests they had so that they could develop skills and seek employment when they were released. When there was lingering anger or resentment between two prisoners, they were given padding and put in a boxing ring to duke it out. By the second round, they were often so worn out that they just shook hands or hugged and put their differences behind them.

Terrazas Cervera considered the inmates as human beings who had made mi
s
takes in their lives and were capable of redemption. He treated them with the h
u
manity and kindness many of them have never known before. He encouraged their creative self-expression and helped them to maintain dignity and self-respect by living in a co
m
munity setting.

“It’s just like a pueblo—a little city here,” the unassuming director stated.

Although I would venture a guess that none of the prisoners enjoyed being i
n
carcerated, if they had a choice they would probably opt for the facility in Ch
e
tumal. It seemed lax and laissez-faire on the surface, but there was a constant d
e
mand on the inmates: they were given every chance to grow, change, and be reh
a
bilitated. They were expected to function as a community. If they behaved like human beings, they would be treated that way. They were invited to be the best they could be—a radical shift from their previous lives. They were not co
d
dled. They were exposed to communal values and norms and encou
r
aged to develop the positive sides of their personalities.

The second time I went to the prison, I took twenty-seven adult journalism st
u
dents with me. Some were lawyers, teachers, scientists, accountants. I wondered what they would think and how they would react. At first they were apprehensive, but within minutes they were talking with inmates, taking photos, buying art.

“Of all the wondrous things I saw in Mexico,” one of them told me, “this is the place that moved me most. It completely changed the way I think about prisons, prisoners, and rehabilitation.”

Another student cradled a foot-high wooden sculpture of a sensuous, volupt
u
ous woman that she had just purchased.

At home, I smile every time I open my closet and see a large,
brightly-colored purse made from the foil shrink wrapping from plastic soda bo
t
tles. I bought it for $20 at the prison, and I can still see the beaming, round face of the man who sold it to me. Victor told me the money would help feed his family, so I got a purse and a good feeling for a few dollars.

My experience in Mexico greatly influenced how I think about crimes and punishment.

For many years, I have corresponded with Raphael (not his real name), a Mex
i
can national incarcerated in the southwestern U.S. He was convicted of a violent crime and has affiliations in prison that he refuses to renounce. Rafael spends every day and every night in isolation, only leaving his depressing and claustrophobic cell for about an hour to go to the yard.

I am constantly agog at Rafael’s brilliance. He has taught himself English and writes with the fluency of a native speaker. He is a philo
s
opher, artist, and poet. The verse he writes is so powerful and authe
n
tic that my friend Nancy collected and published it in a book.

The only thing I didn’t like about Rafael was that he was homophobic and ha
r
bored prejudice against black people; Hispanic and black people are at odds in the facility where he lives.

I decided to try a bit of Victor’s philosophy. I asked a gay friend named A
r
temes, who is a singer and actor, and an African American friend if they would be willing to write to Rafael. Both said yes. A
r
temes and Rafael have developed such a deep relationship that it can easily be called love. They admire, respect, and fa
n
tasize about each other. And ever since Rafael started writing to my African Ame
r
ican friend, he has dropped all hostility and judgment of the latter’s race. He has stopped generalizing about groups of people and shows gratitude to his corr
e
spondents by sending them cards, drawings, and p
o
ems.

In my opinion, Rafael is totally rehabilitated. His head is full of dreams of the future now and his writing is laced with hope, compa
s
sion for his guards, and clear thinking about what landed him in prison, and how he will never make those d
e
structive life choices again.

Rafael grew up surrounded by violence. He was never exposed to healthy, peaceful human interactions. In prison he encountered rage, racism, confinement, sadism, and squalid conditions. But because people on the outside treated him kindly, believed in him, wrote to him, published his work, nurtured him, I feel fully confident that he can return to society and contribute to it. It’s just a matter of when he gets released.

Treating prisoners as human beings, encouraging their skills, their intelligence, their creativity, can help to reduce the horrendous problem of violence and recid
i
vism in our prisons.

This is not idealistic, pie-in-the-sky thinking. It’s real. It’s happened with R
a
fael. And it’s happening right now in that little known Mexican prison.

I
vividly recall the first time I saw him in Guatemala.
He was sitting on a chair in a native marketplace, dressed in a black suit, black shoes, and a black hat. His mouth was open, pursed into a small “o.” He was appealing, but also had a streak of danger about him.

“Who is he?” I asked a new Guatemalan friend.

“Maximon,” she answered, pronouncing it mah-she-mone.

The second time, it was a hot, humid day, and I was looking for a grocery store to buy a bottle of water. He was in a shop which sold masks and textiles. I looked away and then I looked back at him. He was clearly staring at me.

“I see you like him,” said the shopkeeper.

I nodded tentatively.

“Here,” he said, and he handed Maximon and his chair to me. You see, Max
i
mon was less than a foot high, and he was made of wood.

“Would you like to have him?”

I opened my wallet and then hesitated.

“I’m . . . not sure.”

“He may not be here later,” said the shopkeeper.

“Well . . . I’ll have to take that chance. I can’t really decide now.”

The third time, he was sitting in a room in the home of a Maya healer named José. José was a member of a
cofradía
, or religious brotherhood, and Maximon occupied the place of honor on an altar flanked by two Christ figures. He wore the same black, European garb, but he was also adorned with colorful textiles, and there were bottles of aguardiente at his feet. He had a big, unlit cigar in his mouth.

“Can you tell me about him, please,” I whispered to a Guatemalan man who had come for a healing.

“He’s a god, but he likes to smoke and drink like the rest of us.”

It was hard for me to understand this. A wooden god who smokes and drinks?

“Where does he come from?” I asked the man.

“Santiago Atitlán,” he answered, and so I went there.

Lake Atitlán is one of the jewels of Guatemala—a spectacular expanse of deep, blue water surrounded by three majestic, looming volcanoes: Toliman, At
i
tlán, and San Pedro. I took a boat to Santiago, a Maya village at an altitude of over 5,000 feet. Guided by a seven- or eight-year-old girl in worn and faded clothes, I wandered through hilly streets that were paved with uneven stones.

The young girl didn’t speak much, but focused on her task of getting me to a Maximon shrine. After about twenty minutes, she stopped in front of a low, c
e
ment house and gestured for me to go in. When I entered, I was not alone. There, in a small room, was a life-sized Maximon, and near him was his guardian, a member of the brotherhood of the Holy Cross. The guardian waved an incense burner made from an old coffee tin with punctured holes, filling the room with ribbons of copal smoke.

On cement benches that lined the wall facing Maximon, Maya people waited patiently and whispered in their K’iche’ language. When it was their turn, they made a cash offering of quetzals (Guat
e
malan currency), burned candles (different colors represent different favors that are requested), put cigarettes in Maximon’s mouth, and donated small bottles of alcohol. Some of the alcohol was poured into Maximon’s rigid, open mouth, and when the liquor began to dribble, the guardian lovingly mopped up the figure’s chin and neck.

A guide entered the room with a few Japanese visitors in tow, and we began to speak. He told me that Maximon is revered by Maya and many other people, and he may be the reincarnation of Maam, an a
n
cient Maya god of the underworld. His name may come from this god, or perhaps it derives from “
max
,” which means “tobacco” in the Maya language. Alternately, his name may signify “bound with string or rope.”

More people arrived, offering more candles, more to drink, more to smoke—single cigars and cigarettes or whole boxes. The atmosphere got noisy, hazy, permeated with the smell of alcohol. The more people I questioned about Max
i
mon, the more confused I became. He was a saint. A devil. The godfather or grandfather of the village who protected the inhabitants from evil and witches. A doctor. A trickster. A potent miracle worker and healer. An ancient Maya god synchretized with San Simon, or, perhaps, Judas Iscariot. A Maya leader who was hitched to a chair and burned by the Spanish in the middle of the sixteenth century. Pedro de Alvarado, the brutal conquistador who ravaged the Maya cu
l
ture and people.

Maya supplicants bowed low in front of Maximon or got down on their knees praying. They implored him for food, health for a family member, crops, a safe voyage, success at selling in the market. Red candles were lit for love, white to pr
o
tect the children, pink for health, and yellow for the elders. Some people spoke briefly, some for a long time. To them, Maximon was not a wooden figure—he was holy, someone in whom they believed, a miracle maker, a granter-of-wishes, an intimate god they could turn to in times of need.

“Did you make a donation and request something?” a woman asked me.

“I don’t have quetzales,” I replied.

“Maximon takes dollars too.”

I reached into my wallet, but I hesitated, as I had done in the store. I wasn’t ready to make an offering to Maximon because I didn’t really understand him. And then a man from Guatemala City came into the room. His English was almost pe
r
fect, he worked as a guide, and he had a Canadian couple in tow.

I listened carefully as he told them about Maximon.

“He is a divinity, but one who is very revered because he understands human vice and sin. He enjoys smoking, drinking, and carou
s
ing, just like people do.”

“Why do they worship someone like that?” asked the Canadian man.

“He forgives and offers hope to people, even to those who have done desperate or terrible things,” he answered. “Because he himself is a sinner, he is able to fo
r
give.”

It was precisely the information I’d hoped for. Like every other human, I had done things wrong. Acted thoughtlessly. Missed oppo
r
tunities when I could have done better. I had asked The Big One in the sky to excuse me, I had felt bad, guilty, remorseful over the course of my life. But I never had a chance to request absol
u
tion from a god with alcohol dribbling down his chin and rolled tobacco protruding from his mouth. I placed money in the offering box, lit a candle, and looked at Maximon. “I am sorry for anything I have ever done wrong,” I told him. “Can I sort of ask for global absolution instead of enume
r
ating every petty error of the past?”

I looked up. Was it possible? I saw a twinkle in Maximon’s right eye, and I somehow knew I was forgiven, and I could go forward with a clean slate in life.

“Enjoy your booze and cigarettes,” I told him, as I exited the room. And I walked into the sunny outdoors, feeling like a better, lighter, happier person.

It didn’t take long to have a Maximon-induced experience in my own life. I have a friend who drinks, pops pills and has done a dance of death with heroin for years. He has been on and off the horse more times than a Pony Express rider. He recently told me about a serious relapse, and as he lacerated himself for his wea
k
ness, his worthles
s
ness, and how he disappointed everyone around him, his eyes filled with tears.

I told him about the wooden god in Guatemala who drank and smoked, and how I learned in his shrine that perfection is a crazy dream, an ill-conceived ill
u
sion. To inhabit a human body is to be i
m
perfect.

My friend looked at me and said, “There is a little voice that worms its way i
n
to my mind every time I give it space. It says ‘you are not good enough’ so often that I have come to believe it. I’m always comparing myself to others, and they always seem to be more produ
c
tive and successful than I am.”

“Maximon thinks all of that is cabbage!” I said. It came out of me so suddenly that I was surprised. “You have vices and so does he. He accepts people the way they are: imperfect, trying their best but not always succeeding. I can understand why he’s a god in the Guatemalan pantheon. He’s willing to help anyone who asks him, without jud
g
ment. He’s not holier than thou and he doesn’t hold up a standard h
u
mans can’t achieve.”

My friend exploded in laughter. “Maybe I should keep my eye out for Max
i
mon the next time I’m in a bar,” he said. “He’ll probably o
r
der a whiskey and light up a Cuban cigar.”

I recently heard that my friend has sworn off drinking and using again. Far away in Guatemala, Maximon, who is certainly swilling, is also smiling. And if  this little-known god can forgive human error, I’m willing to wager that whatever God you pray to can too.

I
t’s called “La Tierra de Brujos”
—the land of the witches. Juventino Rosas, a traditional agricultural town in Guanajuato state in Central Mexico, has a reput
a
tion for being home to good witches, bad witches, and folk healers. What all three have in common is that they work with energy—the unseen force that keeps every living thing functioning and connects all entities to each other. This energy goes by other names in different cultures, like chi, prana, or life force. Without energy, you and I would be big blobs of dead matter.

The special power of
brujos
enables them to read, interpret, manipulate, and move energy. When something is amiss in an individ
u
al—physically, emotionally, or spiritually—the energy is thought to be blocked, and a powerful brujo knows how to move it.

The brujo tradition is handed down from parent to child or from teacher to st
u
dent. Sometimes a brujo is self-taught; he or she gets a dream, a message, or a myst
e
rious transmission of information about how to heal. And of course, as with any other profession, there are really gifted brujos and run-of-the-mill or even bogus brujos. Some are world-famous and others are only known to family, friends, and folks in the neighborhood.