Chatting with Citizen Cruz

Although Cruz Hernández is 100% illiterate and has trouble stringing a sentence together, he is very angry at having his money stolen during the first round of elections in Guatemala

Citizen Cruz (Cross being his first name), is a pleasant man who has never been to Guatemala City, is the poorest of the poor and has only seen the ocean once in his life. He doesn’t remember much about it as he and his drinking buddies were very drunk when they suddenly decided one afternoon to pay a visit to the port of San Jose, a few years back.

© J. Russell October 18, 2015
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At 4’6” he reminds one of a garden gnome or hobbit who might live amongst the copious foliage, coffee plants and large trees that abound on the property. Occasionally, one is aware of his presence by the sound of his machete hacking away at something or other that he considers worth trimming.

Don Victor who pays his salary, is of the landed gentry and regularly reminds Citizen Cruz that he’s lucky to have a job, that the Q800 Quetzales he pays him each month is far more than he’s worth and that he knows people who would love to have his job, for much less pay.

Consequently, a large part of Citizen Cruz’s day is often spent trying to figure out who the fuckers are, that are actively seeking his coveted job and willing to work for much less, not realizing that Don Victor’s gene pool commands him to maintain Citizen Cruz in desperate poverty.

On the other hand, Citizen Cruz sees Don Victor as a good man and benevolent “patron” (master) for having given him this amazing opportunity. Don Victor is old, sick about to be boxed at any moment and lives in  Guatemala City, but that doesn’t stop him talking to Citizen Cruz like a dog and wishing he could give him an occasional whipping. 

Notwithstanding all his disadvantages, his measly wage and the constant threat of dismissal, Citizen Cruz has four different women, all with children, who live in different villages around Ciudad Vieja that he tries to keep happy. Some of the children are his and others have been fathered by males unknown, in moments of carelessnes.

Unable to provide any sort of direct economic support to any of the four women and their children, Citizen Cruz enjoys the warmth of their respective beds in turn, by providing each woman with a load of firewood, on a regular basis.

Between trying to find out who want’s his job on the estate and recharging his sexual strength, he spends most of his day collecting twigs and bits of dried trees, stacking them into neat piles and readying them for loading onto the back of his bicycle.

Around about lunch time each day, he heads off with a load of firewood on the back of his bike, to deliver it to one of his brides. In the afternoon, he repeats the routine and takes a load to a different bride. Quite efficient really, as every two days, one of his four lovers receives a full load of firewood.

The only duties that interrupt this routine, is when it’s time to harvest the coffee or when he’s asked to cut the grass on the fairly large lawn. Don Victor considers a lawnmower or any tool such as a hammer, pliers or a ladder, to be nothing more that modern devices designed to spoil Citizen Cruz and encourage the many lazy traits he may have been born with.

So . . . his only work tool is a machete, which Don Victor insists on inspecting each time he visits. The file used to sharpen the machete is a cost that Citizen Cruz must outlay himself. Cutting the lawn with his machete takes four days of hard backbreaking work and by the time he’s finished, it’s grown so fast that he should really start again.

Don Victor enjoys phoning me at inopportune moments to inquire as to whether Citizen Cruz is on the job and I enjoy covering for him on the many days that he simply doesn’t turn up, having taken to the bottle to escape his wretched reality.

As a standing arrangement, Citizen Cruz and I have coffee each morning at about 10 am. I make the brew, we settle down on the porch and he tells me about all the important events in his life, gossips about the goings on in the neighboring properties and fills me in on what’s happening in Ciudad Vieja, where he lives.

I know that Citizen Cruz is a good person as my dog Pizca has evaluated him throughly and determined that he is one of her very favourite people. A pure breed Jack Russell and a racist, she detests most indigenous people and many Ladinos, although it’s not something I have taught her or encouraged. 

The other day, we chatted about the upcoming election results on Sunday the 25^th of October, that will decide who will be Guatemala’s President for the next four years and Citizen Cruz told me that he “no longer trusted any of the election people because they had lied to him” during the first round of elections.

As Citizen Cruz explained, prior to the first round of elections, he and his four brothers had been “recruited by important people”, who had come down from San Lucas, “where all the rich people live”, to organize the voting.

Each had been given Q100 Quetzales (USD $13) and told to cross the “red logo for president” and the “logo with three fingers for Mayor of Ciudad Vieja”, on the ballot papers and were each promised a further Q500 (USD $65) Quetzales the day after the election, if everything went to plan..

To Citizen Cruz, this was a done deal and he dutifully complied as instructed. With no idea as to how voting or counting works and ignorant of the fact that “buying votes” is illegal, to a man in his position, the money he expected to receive was a godsend.

The important people from San Lucas, never mentioned that if they didn’t win, he wouldn’t recieve any extra money and to no one’s surprise, they got almost no votes and lost.

But Citizen Cruz sees it very differently. He believes he was simply stiffed and summarized it thus; “Son unos hijos de la gran puta y nos babosearon” (These fuckers are sons of bitches, all they did was con us). “Dijeron que los otros cometieron fraude, por eso no nos pagan” (The told us the others committed fraud, that’s why they won’t pay us).

Consequently, Citizen Cruz has decided not to participate in the elections next Sunday, as he doesn’t want to be conned again o become a victim of fraud by the losing candidate. “Que coman mierda” (they can eat shit) he said.

As we were finishing our coffee, I asked Citizen Cruz how old he was; “no sé, nunca me apuntaron” (I don’t know, they never jotted me down) he said. Do you have a DPI (ID card) now? “Yes” he said, “I told them I was 45 and signed with a fingerprint”.

Don Victor, says he doesn’t have to pay Citizen Cruz the minimum wage, because they have a verbal contract saying that he’s paid daily, even though he pays him monthly.

Whoever wins the elections on Sunday, won’t do anything for this man or any of his families. As far as anyone is concerned, they don’t exist and live like furtive animals, scratching out a living. The dogs that camp out at the “rastro” (meat-works) down the road, fare much better.

Meanwhile, the boys at the top of the Guatemalan food chain continue to get richer and Citizen Cruz gets poorer. With no holiday pay, sickness benefits or health cover, his only hope is to pray to the Virgin for protection.

Unaware that that his pleas are in vain and that God doesn’t exist, Citizen Cruz is left with hoping that Jimmy or Sandra might improve his lot, but they don’t have any answers either, and just talk shit.

Jimmy promises that if everyone becomes a born again Christian, God will fix everything and Sandra promises to give everyone a bag of food once a month as a means to fix the poverty.

The Ladinos maintain their superiority by depriving the poor of their lands, their culture and their dignity, exploiting them at every turn, even haggling the shit out of the vegetable and fruit prices at the market, a practice enjoyed by the Europeans who visit and live in Guatemala, under advice from their Ladino friends. 

The people who lost everything under the recent mud slides that killed or buried alive almost 300.of their relatives at Cambray II have been offered a new estate where to live, however serious trouble is brewing as the Ladinos of the area don’t want the survivors relocated in their neighborhood.

We should all be exceedingly grateful that the indigenous ultra-poor in this country are basically nice people and don’t slit our throats in the middle of the night, with their machetes.

I plan to have another chat with Citizen Cruz in the near future, as to how to maintain four women happy at the same time, as up to this point, I have been a total failure just with one.