Crime Culture in La Brigada

There have been two violent murders within two blocks of my home within the past three weeks. Both victims were young boys, 12 and 16, and were both involved in local gangs. Both took place in the morning on a Saturday, and I unknowingly came upon each crime scene only minutes after the crowd had started to gather. I had never seen the dead body of a child before, and honestly I never imagined a situation in which I would. The first boy was wearing high top sneakers, which were poking out from beneath the small green blanket with which his body was covered. His ankles were so thin. I didn't even understand what I was looking at at first. By the time we encountered the second two weeks later, I didn't look.

The first one was gone in one shot that we heard that morning as we were getting ready to leave for a day downtown. The second was the same, but he had scrambled into a local shop hoping for sanctuary. Both were close range. The odd thing is how disaffected the community is. Within moments a crowd gathers within inches of the corpse to see what's happening, and most people know exactly who was holding the gun. The police take their time, even though the station is literally five blocks away. Only 3 out of 100 murders are ever even investigated in Guatemala City, .05% are solved.

Strangely enough, I don't feel scared to be here, but I do feel that I've been living under a false sense of security. I understand the desire of my program coordinators and my host family not to scare me, but no information or suggestions were ever given in terms of safety and security other than never take your eyes off your bag and don't flash your cash. We've been told that because we're not involved in any gangs we don't have much to worry about, except of course getting caught in a crossfire. Oddly enough it seems as though the killers take care not to get anyone else involved. The murders are generally very close range, early in the morning before the streets are full, and bystanders are not targeted, how nice of them.

These experiences have started me thinking about the amazing contrasts we've experienced here in Guatemala. On the day we encountered the first murder, we were leaving our extremely poor - in money, resources, and representation- neighborhood to have lunch downtown in the posh, very westernized Zona Viva neighborhood in the heart of the city. On the day we came upon the second, we were on our way to spend a quick weekend in the touristy, colonial city of Antigua because we were craving a certain restaurant. On the day we came back from a women's cooperative in Chichicastenango in which bullet holes are still visible in the walls, we went straight to the national theatre to see an opera with the Guatemalan elite, and sat across from President Alvaro Colom.

Although we are part of this place, we don't exactly factor in, if that even makes sense. We tell ourselves that this is our home for two months and try and act as though we belong here, but none of us can understand it and truly know it. We're peripheral. However, I don't think any of us have gone in with a grandiose plan to change the world starting with the community hosting us. We're pretty well set in reality and recognize that observation and understanding is better than service and western-ways evangelism. One thing I can say for this program is that I feel I have a deeper, more realistic understanding of what Guatemala is at this moment than any of the travelers I have met along the way. This post probably seems pretty disjointed, but when I think about these murders, the true face of my neighborhood, the silence of my program directors, the possible fate of my two little host brothers, and the two socio-economic extremes of Guatemala City, I can't help but feel scattered.