The first Guatemalan Cosmonaut trained by NASA, should have been heading into space in early 2015, aboard the third seat of a Roscosmos Soyuz space capsule, bound for the International Space Station.
The joint announcement by Guatemala and Russia, that President Otto Perez Molina had asked Russia to consider Vinicio Montoya as a candidate for a space mission, brought tears of joy to all Guatemalans, as they puffed out their chests with pride.
Ripping Yarns: © J. Russell October 04, 2015
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The news spread like wildfire. Schools invited him to address their students about the merits of becoming an astronaut. The Francisco Marroquín and San Carlos Universities, had him give lectures on the science of space travel and he was lauded by everyone in sundry, on his brilliance.
The media went into a frenzy. There were interviews, applause and admiration for someone who had reached such high achievements and was a national hero. Overnight, he became the pride of the nation.
Even my gardener Cruz (that’s Cross in Spanish, named after the Cross of Jesus), who is illiterate, has never seen the ocean or been to the capital of the country, was excited about the news. When asked if he knew what an astronaut was, he said that; “no, he didn’t know, but it was great for Guatemala to have one”.
I’ve always considered the Russians to be pretty smart and was rather surprised that someone of the stature of Serguei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, would have had anything to talk about with Otto Perez Molina, the shabby ex-President, subsequently sent to prison, for stealing millions from his country.
Guatemala is a land of opportunity:
An uneducated bodyguard who failed third grade primary and elected not to continue his studies, can become a Minister of State, by simply bribing a corrupt university committee to issue him with a Masters Degree, in whatever he wishes.
A female hairdresser can become Vice President and own dozens of multi-million dollar properties not only in Guatemala, but in Italy, Panama and the Dominican Republic, and those are just the ones we know about.
A fourth rate journalist, who can barely string two words together, has become incredibly popular as the local genocide denier and historic revisionist. By just cutting and pasting phrases written by European holocaust deniers, his rantings are published in a leading daily newspaper, as facts.
A weather girl with a great ass and huge tits, faked the stealing of her smart-phone, plastered raunchy pictures of her private bits all over social media, that left nothing left to the imagination, and was hired immediately by national acclaim as the “new weather girl”, by the top rating TV station. No matter what she wears, everyone knows what “it” looks like, under her skirt.
Anyone, can get their hands on a small Cessna with fake markings, registered to a fake company in Belize, print their own pilot’s license, ask the main control tower in Guatemala City to simply turn off the radar system for a few minutes, as they make a night landing laden with cocaine and taxi to a private hangar, owned by a leading Evangelist and become, not only incredibly wealthy, but respectable overnight.
You can own your own Mega-church. Marry your daughter (who is also a Pastor of this church) off to the son of one of the country’s leading cocaine traffickers, get caught with 1,000 kilos of cocaine aboard your personal plane at the airport in Costa Rica, and continue to worship the Lord with impunity, while you launder the proceeds, through the church’s International Ministry.
No one denies, that Guatemala has produced some very famous people. To start with, we have two Nobel Prize winners, which is way more than most nations can lay claim to;
First we have; Miguel Angel Asturias, possibly the country’s most distinguished bigot and vicious racist, that has trodden the “Land of Eternal Spring”, as Guatemala is often referred to. Thank Christ, he’s dead.
Second we have; Rigoberta Menchú, the Mayan Indian woman activist, who recounted a totally fictional tale to someone who taped and transcribed her ripping yarn, and sold it as a factual bestseller. There is of course, no Nobel Prize for fiction.
There are other famous Guatemalans as well and without delving deeply into any archives, the following come to mind;
There is the world famous Pastor and Apostle Carlos “Cash” Luna, who travels the American continent with a Spanish speaking Holy Spirit in a cage, that is only released to heal the sick, when the TV cameras are turned on. By the end of his two day crusade, the city is almost bankrupt, the local churches have been fleeced, the faithful are penniless and most of the pastors that sponsored “Cash” are in catatonic shock, unable to believe the mysterious ways, in which God works.
World famous heart surgeon Dr. Rafael Espada, who amassed malpractice suits in the US, like others collect stamps, fled back to Guatemala just in the nick of time, when offered the post of Vice-President, which conveniently included legal immunity, from any sort of prosecution.
We also have playboy Diego Dougherty Novella (mad Diego) co-owner of the Progress Cement (Cementos Progreso) monopoly that insists on retaining 80% of the cement market in Guatemala, as according to them; “The Guatemalan cement market is one of the most competitive in the world”. A member of Guatemala’s five wealthiest clans, Mad Diego is currently sitting in a South African jail awaiting trial, for brutally murdering his Mexican/American floozy during a cocaine induced spat of enthusiastic sex, ramming a hair curler up between her legs, disemboweling her and smearing her body with feces.
Then there is Ricardo Arjona, the Emmy winning singer songwriter, who has sold millions of records in Spanish speaking countries, but is fantastic.
We also have Luis von Ahn, the brilliant young Guatemalan that invented the CAPTCHA, that annoying thing on most web-pages, that insists you fill out some unreadable characters that supposedly proves you are not a robot.
One of the first high tech inventions to supposedly come out of Guatemala, was the traffic semaphore, better known as traffic lights, which was invented by Dr. Ernesto Calderón de la Vega, but, according to local legend, the invention was so marvelous, that it was promptly stolen the Gringos.
Luis von Ahn also developed DuoLingo, the language learning application, however, I am yet to hear anyone speak in English or Spanish that is understandable, from having used his invention.
As Vinicio Montoya’s fame as Guatemala’s first astronaut grew, it was only right to ask; Who was he? Where had he trained? What was his background? and more importantly, Where was he going?
The elite investigators from Nómada Magazine, decide to put a blowtorch to Motoya’s bare feet and extract some facts. His answers were surreal and like everything in Guatemala, God was involved.
Montoya’s tiny dimly lit office, that doubled as his dental clinic, was attached to his house in zone 10 of Guatemala City. Dark, damp and ominous, things improved when he turned on the vertical light box, used to examine dental x-rays. Dr. Josef Mengle would have felt right at home.
Vinicio began to recount his tale; “My whole life was a failure until December 1998, when God blessed me beyond my expectations” he said; “There was nothing at which I hadn’t failed”. Driving in Guatemala City that night “another car hit mine and when I got out to confront the driver, he shot me, twice”.
After “many years of addictions and substances” (unspecified) and a divorce in 1994, the accident made him a believer. “God knocked at my door twice, the first was the accident and the second was when I was shot”, he said, as he rapped his desk with his knuckles, as if was his destiny;. “I realized that life on earth, the world and the physical, are not real”.
“I am an “Avatar”, said Vinicio solemnly, “from the third, fifth, tenth and eleventh dimension” and a recognized “extraordinary Minister” of the San Martín de Porres parish in Guatemala City.
Up to this point, the conversation with the 48 year old dentist had been pleasant enough, however as the hot blow-torch move closer to his bare feet, he began to get very irritable.
The Avatar tensed when asked for the third time, “Did you do a NASA course?” and mysteriously replied, “No one has been so insistent with their questions and YES, there are confidential things that I can’t divulge, but you will read about them. There are other secrets you won’t have access to”.
“Didn’t you announce last year that you were going into space with NASA in 2015”? The Avatar; “No, not any more. The Xcor spacecraft isn’t ready”. Although the Xcor does exist, it’s a suborbital craft, cobbled together by a private company. “But never mind” said the Avatar; “I’ll go in 2015, if the Russians will have me”.
The Avatar, claims that he reached the Summit of Mt. Everest in May 2004 as part of a NatGeo team. The Nepalese Government register of such an achievements doesn’t mention his name, “why is that”?
“It was a secret mission” said the Avatar; “it was all done hush-hush and in 20 years time when the secrecy embargo on the Nepalese legal registry is lifted, I will receive my red and white certificate, issued by their Ministry of Tourism. Mine has been retained as I was investigating things against the government of Nepal”.
The Avatar continued; “We reached the summit on the 23rd of May, 2004, via the South Route. We worked as Sherpas, but were assigned tasks that Sherpas don’t do”. (Whatever that means) “The Nepalese have punished me and if I was to enter Katmandu again, I will be criminally prosecuted”.
NatGeo obviously have a lot of faith in this Guatemalan Avatar. In 2005, he claims to have been summoned to help monitor sharks in the Atlantic, followed by an expedition in 2006 to the Artesan’s Tombs in Egypt’s Sahara Desert, exploring the Magnetic North Pole in 2008 and the study of Penguin shit, at the South Pole in 2009.
Not forgetting his 2,000ft deep sea dive in 2010 into the Caiman Island crevasse in an experimental submarine, setting a Central American record. Clearly, the Avatar is not aware any tourist can do the same for $900 dollars, from Roatán in Honduras.
But, why would Natgeo contract a dentist and an Avatar, unsure of which dimension he is from? “Because I work out cheaper for them” he says; “they don’t pay me and we interchange services”.
“My problem” says the Avatar; “is that I have never had any money”. At age 31, having put the drugs and addictions behind him he fixed a diving instructor’s teeth, which were a mess and that paid for his diving lessons. This was the key to Montoya’s flight into the world of imaginary adventures, that made him a national hero.
Having explored the oceans of the world, he decided to explore the skies and following a two week parachuting course with the Guatemalan Army, received his Civil Parachutist certificate for jumping from a tower, with a fixed wire.
Next he climbed the volcano of Agua (3,760 meters) and obtained a Voluntary Firefighter’s certificate in 2002. “If anyone doesn’t know the significance of life, they should become a firefighter”, says the Avatar.
But . . . There was a small problem. The Avatar, tired of being a looser, had convinced the Guatemalan Government in 2014 that he was a NASA certified astronaut, by showing them a folder with a couple of photocopies of himself atop Everest, at the South and North Poles, trudging through the Amazon jungle and scooting across the Sahara desert, that he had doctored on his home computer.
He had no training certificates, diplomas or witnesses to verify any of his claims, apart from spending two days at a space joy-ride center called Nastar in Florida, that gives all the kids a certificate. Asked by the investigators to show his passport to verify that he had even been to any of the places he claimed, he refused.
“I’ve never been one to go around proving anything with documentation” said the Avatar, as he pointed to the dingy ceiling, as if it was space, where qualifications would no longer be needed; “some day I’ll get up there”.
When the shit hit the fan, Estuardo Meneses, the Guatemalan Ambassador in Russia said; “Montoya is who he says he is, according to his CV”. The Guatemalan Foreign Ministry’s Eduardo Hernández, said; “Verification of these things is the responsibility of the space agencies, we don´t verify astronauts or cosmonauts”. Otto Perez Molina, the president at the time, just looked stunned, but that was most likely, over his upcoming demise.
Not one single official in the Guatemalan Government, had bothered to check out Vinicio Montoya or his Avatar. An excellent example, of the incapacity and ignorance of the people tasked to run and represent this nation, at all levels.
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