Evelyn
Guatemala, 2008
On Holy Saturday, March 22, 2008, and six weeks after Gregorio Ortega’s death, it was his brother and sister’s turn. The avengers waited until Concepcion had gone to church to arrange the flowers for Easter Sunday and then burst into the hut in broad daylight. There were four of them, unmistakable because of their tattoos and their brazen attitude. Arriving at Monja Blanca del Valle on two noisy motorbikes, they made themselves instantly conspicuous in a village where everyone either walked or rode bicycles. They stayed inside the hut for only eighteen minutes; that was all they needed. If neighbors saw them, none intervened or were willing to give testimony afterward. The fact that they committed their crime during Holy Week, a sacred time given over to fasting and penance, would be commented on for years as the most unforgivable of sins.
Concepcion Montoya returned to her house around one o’clock, when the sun was beating down and even the cockatoos had fallen silent in their branches. She was not surprised at the silence or the empty streets, because this was siesta time and those who were not resting would be busy with preparations for the procession of the Risen Christ and the high mass Father Benito was to celebrate the next day, wearing his white alb and purple stole rather than the pair of filthy jeans and threadbare embroidered stole woven in Chichicastenango he used the rest of the year. Still dazzled from the bright sunlight out in the street, Concepcion needed a few seconds to adjust her eyes to the darkness inside the hut, and to catch sight of Andres near the door, curled up like a sleeping dog. “What’s wrong with you, my boy?” she managed to ask before seeing the trail of blood staining the earthen floor, and the slash across his throat. A raw cry rose from deep inside her, tearing her apart. She knelt down, calling out to him, “Andres, Andresito,” and then suddenly Evelyn flashed through her mind. She found the girl lying at the far end of the room, her thin body exposed, and with blood on her face, her legs, her torn cotton dress. Concepcion crawled over to her, appealing to God, moaning for him not to take her, to show mercy. She seized her granddaughter by the shoulders and shook her, noticing that one of her arms was dangling at an impossible angle. She searched for any signs of life; unable to find one, she rushed to the door, shouting hoarsely and crying out to the Virgin Mary.
A neighbor was the first to come to her aid, followed by other women. Two of them restrained the crazed grandmother, while others discovered that nothing could be done for Andres, but that Evelyn was still breathing. They sent a boy on a bike to tell the police and tried to revive Evelyn without moving her because of the twisted arm and the blood coming from her mouth and between her legs.
Father Benito arrived in his pickup ahead of the police. He found the hut full of people talking and trying to help in whatever way they could. They had laid Andres’s body on the table, straightening the head and covering the slit throat with a shawl. After cleaning his body with wet cloths they had sent for a fresh shirt to make him look presentable. Meanwhile other women were applying cold compresses to Evelyn and doing their best to comfort Concepcion. The priest understood that it was already too late to preserve the evidence, because it had been handled and trodden on by these well-meaning neighbors, but also that it did not really make any difference, given the police’s lack of concern. It was unlikely that anyone in authority was going to put themselves to any trouble over this poor family. When the priest arrived, the villagers moved apart out of respect and hope, as if the divine powers he represented could undo the tragedy. He only needed to glance at Evelyn to assess her condition. He told the men to put a mattress on his pickup and had the women slide a blanket under her so that four of them could carry her out and place her on the mattress. He ordered Concepcion to go with him, and the others to wait right there for the police, if they ever showed up.
Evelyn’s grandmother and two of the women accompanied Father Benito to the clinic seven miles away that was run by evangelical missionaries. There were always one or two doctors on duty as it served several surrounding villages. Usually a terror at the wheel, Father Benito drove carefully for the first time in his life, because every pothole or bend elicited a groan from Evelyn. When they arrived they carried her into the clinic on the blanket as if it were a hammock and placed her on a stretcher. She was seen by a doctor, Nuria Castell, who as Father Benito later discovered was far from evangelical: she was Catalan and agnostic. Evelyn’s right arm had been torn out of its socket and to judge by all the bruises, she must have had several broken ribs. The X-rays would confirm that, said the doctor. She had also been beaten about the face and suffered a possible concussion. Although she was conscious and had opened her eyes, she muttered only incoherent words. She did not recognize her grandmother or realize where she was.
“What happened to her?” asked the Catalan doctor.
“Her house was attacked. I think she saw how they killed her brother,” Father Benito said.
“They probably forced her brother to watch what they were doing to her before they killed him.”
“Jesus!” shouted the priest, punching the wall with his fist.
“Be careful with my clinic. It’s flimsy and we’ve just had it painted. I’ll examine the child to see what internal injuries she’s suffered,” Nuria Castell told him with a resigned sigh born of experience.
Father Benito called Miriam and this time had to tell her the harsh truth. He asked her to send money for the funeral of another of her children, and to pay a coyote, or people smuggler, who could take Evelyn to the United States. She was in imminent danger, because the gang would try to get rid of her to avoid her identifying the attackers. In a flood of tears and unable to take in this latest tragedy, Miriam explained that to pay for Gregorio’s funeral she had plundered the money she was saving to pay for Andres’s trip to see her when he finished school, as she had promised. She only had a small savings left but would borrow as much as she possibly could for her daughter’s sake.
Evelyn spent several days in the clinic until she could swallow fruit juices and cornmeal and was able to walk again. Her grandmother went back to the village to organize Andres’s burial. Father Benito presented himself at the police station and made good use of his booming voice and his strong Basque accent to demand a copy of a signed and officially stamped report on what had happened to the Ortega family. No one took the trouble to go and interview Evelyn; even if they had, it would have been of little use, because she was still unable to speak. The priest also asked Nuria Castell for a copy of the medical report, thinking it might be useful someday. During this time the Catalan doctor and the Basque Jesuit met on several occasions. They had long discussions about the divine without reaching agreement but discovered that on a human level they were united by the same principles. “It’s a pity you’re a priest, Benito. Such a good-looking man staying celibate is a real waste,” the doctor joked between two cups of coffee.
The MS-13 had carried out its threat to wreak revenge. Gregorio’s betrayal must have been very serious to deserve such punishment, thought the priest, although possibly it had simply stemmed from an act of cowardice or a misplaced insult. It was impossible for him to know, as he had no idea what codes operated in their world.
“Rotten bastards,” he muttered during one of his meetings with the doctor.
“Those gang members weren’t born so rotten, Benito. They were once innocent kids, but they grew up in utter poverty, with no laws and no heroes they could emulate. Have you seen the children begging? Selling needles and bottles of water on the roads? Digging in the garbage dumps and sleeping out in the open with the rats?”
“Yes, I’ve seen them, Nuria. There’s nothing I haven’t seen in this country.”
“At least in the gangs they don’t go hungry.”
“This violence is the result of an endless war against the poor. Two hundred thousand indigenous people massacred, fifty thousand disappeared, a million and a half displaced. Guatemala is a small country; just calculate what percentage of the population that means. You’re very young, Nuria, what can you know of all this?”
“Don’t underestimate me, Father. I’m well aware of what you’re talking about.”
“Soldiers committing atrocities against people who are just like them, from the same race and class, born into the same bottomless misery. It’s true they were following orders, but they carried them out intoxicated by the most addictive drug: power with impunity.”
“You and I have been lucky, Benito, because we’ve never tried that drug. If you had power and impunity, would you make the guilty suffer as much as they do their victims?” she asked.
“I suppose I would.”
“Even though you’re a priest and God tells you to forgive.”
“I always thought that story about turning the other cheek was stupid. It only means you get a second slap,” he retorted.
“And if you are tempted by vengeance, just imagine what it’s like for mere mortals. I would castrate those who raped Evelyn, without anesthetic.”
“My Christian faith keeps failing me, Nuria. I guess it must be because I’m just a dumb Basque like my father, God rest his soul. If I’d been born in Luxembourg perhaps I wouldn’t be so indignant.”
“We need more angry people like you in this world, Benito.”
The priest’s anger went back a long way. He had been struggling with it for years and thought that at his age, with all he had lived through and seen, it was time to accept reality. Age had not made him any wiser or gentler, only more rebellious. As a young man, he had rebelled against the government, the military, the Americans, the usual rich people. Now his rebellion extended to the police, corrupt politicians, narcos, traffickers, gangsters, and all the others responsible for this mess. He had spent thirty-five years in Central America apart from a couple of interruptions when he was sent as a punishment to the Congo and to a retreat for several months in Extremadura to atone for the sin of pride and to dampen his passion for justice after a spell in prison in 1982. He had served the church in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, what was now known as the Northern Triangle, the most violent part of the world not at war, and in all that time he had never learned to live alongside injustice and inequality.
“It must be tough being a priest with a character like yours,” Nuria said with a smile.
“The vow of obedience weighs a ton, Nuria, but I’ve never questioned my faith or my vocation.”
“What about the vow of celibacy? Have you ever fallen in love?”
“Constantly, but God helps me and it passes quickly, so don’t try to seduce me, woman.”
After burying Andres alongside his brother, Concepcion rejoined her granddaughter at the clinic. Father Benito took them to a friend’s house in Solola, where they would be safe while Evelyn convalesced and he looked for a coyote he could trust to take her to the United States. Evelyn had her arm in a sling and every time she inhaled her ribs were a torture. Since Gregorio’s death she had lost a lot of weight; in recent weeks her adolescent curves had vanished. She was so skinny and frail that it seemed the slightest gust of wind could sweep her into the skies. Not only had she said nothing about what happened that fateful Easter Saturday but she had not uttered a single word since she came to on the mattress in the pickup. The only hope was that she had not seen how they slit her brother’s throat, that by then she had been unconscious. Dr. Castell ordered them not to try to ask her any questions; she was traumatized and needed peace and time to recover.
As they were leaving the clinic, Concepcion Montoya raised the possibility that her granddaughter had been made pregnant. This had happened to her when she had been raped by soldiers in her youth: Miriam was the result of that abuse. The Catalan doctor shut herself in a bathroom with the grandmother and told her in a whisper that she need not worry about that, because she had given Evelyn a pill invented by the North Americans to avoid getting pregnant. It was illegal in Guatemala, but no one would find out. “I’m telling you this so that you won’t go thinking of some homemade remedy for the girl. She’s suffered enough.”
WHEREAS BEFORE EVELYN HAD STAMMERED, after the rape she simply stopped speaking. She spent hours languishing in the house of Father Benito’s friends, showing not the slightest interest in all the novelties there: running water, electricity, two toilets, a telephone, and even a television set in her room. Concepcion intuited that this word sickness went beyond the doctors’ competence and decided to act before it became lodged in her granddaughter’s bones. As soon as Evelyn could stand properly on her feet and breathe without stabbing pains in her chest, Concepcion said goodbye to the kind people who had sheltered them and left with her granddaughter for Peten on a lengthy, bone-shaking minibus journey to visit the shaman Felicita, a healer and guardian of the traditions of the Maya. Felicita was famous: people came from the capital and from as far as Honduras and Belize to consult her on matters of health and destiny. She had been interviewed on a television program, where they estimated she was a hundred and twelve years old and must be the oldest person in the world. Felicita never denied this, but she still had most of her teeth and two thick braids hanging down her back, too many teeth and too much hair for someone so old.
It was easy for them to find the healer, because everyone they asked knew her. Felicita showed no surprise when they appeared: she was used to receiving souls, as she called her visitors, and always welcomed them warmly in her living house. She claimed that the wood of its walls, the beaten earth of its floor, and the straw of its roof were alive, breathing and thinking like all living beings. She would ask their advice for the most difficult cases, and the materials of the house would answer her in dreams. Her house was a round hut with only one room, where daily life went on alongside her ceremonies and cures. A curtain of serape blankets enclosed the small space where Felicita slept on a bed of rough boards.
The shaman greeted her new arrivals with the sign of the cross, asking them to sit on the floor, and served bitter coffee to Concepcion and mint tea to Evelyn. She accepted a fair price for her professional services and put the banknotes into a tin box without counting them. Grandmother and granddaughter drank in respectful silence and waited patiently while Felicita watered the medicinal plants in pots lined up in the shade, threw grains of corn out for the hens wandering about, and then put beans to cook on a fire in the yard. After she had completed her most urgent chores, the old woman laid a brightly colored woven cloth on the floor. On it she placed all the elements of her altar in strict order: candles, bundles of aromatic herbs, conch shells, and various Maya and Christian religious objects. She lit some sprigs of sage and cleansed the inside of her house with the smoke, walking in circles and chanting incantations to drive off the negative spirits in an ancient tongue. It was only then that she sat down opposite her visitors and asked what had brought them there. Concepcion explained the speech problem afflicting her granddaughter.
The healer’s eyes glinted below the wrinkled lids as they examined Evelyn’s face for a long couple of minutes. “Close your eyes and tell me what you see,” she instructed the girl. Evelyn did as she was told but could not find a voice to describe the scene at the bridge or the terror she had felt when the tattooed men seized Andres and beat and threw her to the floor. She tried to speak, but the consonants stuck in her throat. With the despairing efforts of someone drowning, she produced a few spluttering vowels. Concepcion interrupted to describe what had happened to her family, but the healer shushed her. She explained that she channeled the universe’s healing energy, that this was a power she had received at birth and cultivated with other shamans throughout her long life. This was why she had traveled great distances in a plane to visit the Seminoles in Florida and the Inuits in Canada, among others, although her greatest knowledge came from the sacred plant of the Amazon, which was the way into the spirit world. She lit some herbs in a clay pot painted with pre-Columbian symbols and blew the smoke in her patient’s face. Then she made her drink some disgusting ayahuasca tea that Evelyn could barely swallow.
The potion soon began to take effect, and Evelyn could no longer stay sitting upright. She toppled onto her side, her head in her grandmother’s lap. Her limbs relaxed, her body dissolved like salt in an opalescent sea, and she saw herself enveloped in fantastic, violently colored whirlwinds: sunflower yellow, obsidian black, emerald green. The nauseating taste of the tea filled her mouth and she retched and vomited into a plastic bowl Felicita placed in front of her. Eventually the nausea subsided, and Evelyn lay back on her grandmother’s skirt, trembling all over. The visions came in rapid succession. In some of them, her mother appeared as she had last seen her; others were scenes from her childhood, bathing in the river with other children, or at age five riding on the shoulders of her elder brother; a jaguar with two cubs emerged, then again her mother with a man, possibly her father. All of a sudden she found herself beside the bridge where her brother was hanging. She cried out in terror. She was alone with Gregorio. The earth giving off a warm mist; the rustling of the banana trees; huge flies; black birds suspended in midflight; violent, carnivorous flowers floating in the rust-colored water of the river; and her brother crucified. Evelyn went on shrieking and shrieking as she tried in vain to run and hide. She could not move a muscle; she had been turned to stone. From afar she heard a voice reciting a litany in Mayan, and felt that she was being rocked and cradled.
After an eternity she slowly became calm and dared to look up. She saw that Gregorio was no longer strung up like a carcass in a slaughterhouse but was standing intact on the bridge, without tattoos, exactly as he had been before he lost his innocence. And beside him was Andres, also intact, calling to her or waving goodbye with his hand. She blew them a kiss in the distance and her brothers smiled, before gradually fading against a purple sky and vanishing altogether. Time became warped, twisted; she no longer knew if it was before or after, or how the minutes and hours were passing. She surrendered completely to the power of the drug and, as she did so, lost all fear. The mother jaguar returned with her cubs, and Evelyn dared to stroke her on the back. The fur was rough, with a swamplike smell. The enormous animal accompanied her as she entered and left other visions, watching her with amber eyes, showing her the way when she got lost in abstract labyrinths, protecting her when any evil being came near.
Hours later, Evelyn emerged from this magic world. She found herself on a mat, covered in blankets, bewildered, and with her body aching all over. She had no idea where she was. When finally she managed to focus, she saw her grandmother sitting beside her, reciting the rosary, with another woman she did not recognize until she said her name: Felicita.
“Tell me what you saw,” the shaman instructed her.
Evelyn made a supreme effort to speak and to pronounce words, but she was very tired and could only stammer “brothers” and “jaguar.”
“Was it female?” asked the healer.
The girl nodded.
“Mine is the feminine power,” Felicita said. “That’s the power of life that the ancients had, both women and men. Now it is asleep in men, which is why there is war, but that power is going to reawaken, and then good will spread over the earth, the Great Spirit will reign, there will be peace, and evil deeds will cease. I am not alone in saying this. It’s prophesied by all the wise ancient women and men among the native peoples I have visited. You also have the feminine power. That’s why the mother jaguar came to you. Remember that. And don’t forget that your brothers are with the spirits and are not suffering.”
Exhausted, Evelyn fell into a deathlike, dreamless sleep. Hours later, she awoke on Felicita’s mat refreshed, aware of all she had been through, and ravenous. She devoured the beans and tortillas offered by the shaman, and her voice when she thanked her came tumbling out, but sonorously. “What you have is not a sickness of the body, but of the soul. It may get better on its own; it may go away for a while and then return, because it is a very stubborn sickness; and it may never be cured. We shall see,” said Felicita. Before saying goodbye to her visitors, she gave Evelyn a card of the Virgin Mary blessed by Pope John Paul during his visit to Guatemala, and a small stone amulet in the fierce shape of Ixchel, the jaguar goddess. “You will know suffering, my girl, but two powers will protect you. One is the sacred mother jaguar of the Maya, the other is the sacred mother of all Christians. Call on them and they will come to your aid.”
THE REGION OF GUATEMALA CLOSE to the Mexican border was a center for contraband and trafficking. Thousands of men, women, and children tried to eke out a living on the margins of the law, but it was hard to find a coyote who could be trusted. There were some who after receiving half their payment left their charges abandoned anywhere in Mexico, or transported them under inhuman conditions. Occasionally the smell would give away the presence of a container bearing the bodies of dozens of migrants who had died of suffocation or had been broiled in the relentless heat. Girls faced greater danger, as they could be raped or sold to pimps and brothels. Once again it was Nuria Castell who gave Father Benito a helping hand and recommended a discreet agency with a good reputation among the evangelicals.
The agency was run by the owner of a bakery who had a sideline in smuggling people across the border. She was proud of the fact that none of her clients had ended up being trafficked, kidnapped en route, or murdered; none of them had fallen or had been pushed from a train. She could offer some degree of security in a fundamentally risky business. Taking what safety measures she could, she left the rest to the Lord, who took care of his subjects from his kingdom in the heavens. She charged the usual price smugglers demanded to cover the risks and costs, plus her own commission. Communicating with these coyotes on her cell phone, she would monitor their trail, always knowing which point of their journey her clients had reached. According to Nuria, she had not lost anyone so far.
Father Benito went to see the woman, who turned out to be in her fifties, wearing thick makeup and with gold everywhere: on her ears, around her neck and wrists, and in her teeth. The priest asked for a reduction in the name of God, appealing to her better nature as a Christian, but she avoided mixing faith with business and would not budge: they had to pay the coyote part of his fee in advance, plus the whole of her commission. The rest was to be paid by the relatives in the United States, or by the client—with interest, of course. “Where do you think I can find that amount of money, señora?” asked the Jesuit. “From your church’s collection,” she said sarcastically. In the end this was not necessary, because the money Miriam sent was enough to cover Andres’s burial, the agent’s commission, and 30 percent of the coyote’s fee, with an IOU for the rest once Evelyn arrived safely. This debt was sacred: no one could avoid paying it.
The people smuggler chosen by the baker to help Evelyn Ortega was someone called Berto Cabrera, a thirty-two-year-old mustached Mexican with a beer paunch. He had been doing this for more than a decade and had made the trip dozens of times with hundreds of migrants. When it was a matter of people he was totally honest, although with other contraband his principles were more flexible. “Some people look down on what I do, but I’m performing a social service. I look after people, I don’t take them in animal trucks or on top of trains,” he explained to the priest.
Evelyn Ortega joined a group of four men who were heading north in search of work, together with a woman with a two-month-old baby who was going to join her boyfriend in Los Angeles. The baby would be a hindrance on the journey, but his mother had pleaded so earnestly that in the end the agency’s owner relented. The clients met in the back of the bakery, where each was given fake identity papers and warned about the adventure they were about to embark on. From that moment on they could only use their new names; it was better for them not to know the other passengers’ real ones. Head bowed, Evelyn did not dare look at anyone, but the woman with the baby came over and introduced herself. “My name now is Maria Ines Portillo. What about you?” she asked. Evelyn showed her identity card. Her new name was Pilar Saravia.
Once they had left Guatemala they would be Mexicans. There was no going back, and they had to obey the coyote’s instructions without fail. Evelyn would be a student at a supposed school for deaf and mute children run by nuns in Durango. The other migrants learned the Mexican national anthem and some commonly used words that were different in the two countries. This would help them pass as authentic Mexicans if they were arrested by the migration police. The coyote forbade them to address people with the word “vos” as they did in Guatemala. To anyone in authority or in uniform they were to use “usted” as a precaution and out of respect; with others they could employ the informal “tu.” Since Evelyn was meant to be mute, she was to say nothing at all. If the authorities questioned her, Berto would show them a certificate from the fictitious school. They were told to dress in their best outfits and to wear shoes or sneakers rather than flip-flops, as it would make them look less suspicious. The women would be more comfortable in pants but should not wear the torn jeans in fashion at the time. They would need to take sneakers, underwear, and a thick jacket; that was all that would fit into a bag or backpack. “You have to walk through the desert. You’re not going to be able to carry much. We’ll change your Guatemalan quetzales for Mexican pesos. Your transport costs are covered, but you’ll need money for food.”
Father Benito gave Evelyn a waterproof plastic envelope containing her birth certificate, copies of the medical and police reports, and a letter attesting to her good character. Someone had told him that this would help her gain asylum in the United States, and although this seemed to him a very remote possibility, he did not want to fail from lack of trying. He also made Evelyn memorize her mother’s phone number in Chicago, and his own cell phone number. As he embraced her, he gave her the few banknotes he had.
Concepcion Montoya tried to stay calm when she bid her granddaughter farewell, but Evelyn’s tears spoiled her good intentions and she ended up weeping as well.
“I’m very sad you’re going,” she sobbed. “You’re my angel and I’m never going to see you again . . . little one. This is the last pain I have to suffer. If God gave me this destiny there must be a reason.”
At this, Evelyn uttered the first complete sentence she had spoken in many weeks, and the last she would say for the next two months.
“Just as I am going, Grandma, so I will return.”