The Pueblo Press is a series based on the strange, intriguing experience of living, working and existing in a Mayan pueblo in rural Guatemala as a US American woman. This is my second year living in Santa Clara La Laguna, Sololá, and everyday I discover something new, wonderful, strange or a spring variety of all three.

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Rumors are dangerous, not to be believed, destructive. They all say this. Those who say this spread rumors.

Living in a pueblo has introduced me to the original purpose of rumors. Before the soshe meeds (social media), newspapers and microphones, there was hearsay. There was literal door-to-door story-sharing, tall-tale dispensing via word of mouth. Nobody wants to be out of the loop. Maybe it was even for religious purposes: “Please pray for Clara. She has been in the hospital since Monday.” Let me clarify a few things: we have social media in the pueblo, televisions and newspapers, but for people like my 90 year-old abuelita who doesn’t read, hardly hears until you velcro your mouth to her face and doesn’t speak enough Spanish to understand televised news (no, there isn’t a K’iche’ news channel), rumors aren’t for the sake of hurting people or destroying reputations (though that may be a result), rumors are news. In my pueblo, rumors are the number one local news source, not the newspaper, not twitter and not the radio.

What I am pondering is that before the concept of ‘private life’ was ever constructed, most things happened in the semi-public sphere of small town existence. And before there were telenovelas, the most fascinating thing that happened was to your neighbor, good, bad or ugly. I often watch my host mom lean over to my host grandmother and project her voice: “Maaaaama” she says, and she repeats what happened to the other ancianita named Clara who got hit by a microbus on Sunday and is in the hospital. Which hospital? Xela. When? Earlier today around 3pm. By who? a microbus driver. Is she okay? She is injured badly but still alive. Conversational pabulum. “Jesuuuuuuuuus” ‘Buelita responds, and if she is really shocked: “Jesus María Santísima.” “Ah no.” “Ya no.” Or one of my favorites: “Je aliiiiiiii.” She says, and leans back on the wooden beams of her seat, a look of “qué pena” on her wrinkled visage. It’s not ill-intentioned, the spreading of these rumors. My host family is honest, hard-working, generous, loving and kind.

You can tell she is upset, you can tell she feels sad for the person, you can sense that she empathizes for the family. And most of all, you know her mind will be occupied when she sits for hours cleaning off avocados, pulparing coffee or shelling a large, red bean called piloy. She will know what is going on out in the street, with her neighbors, in society. And isn’t that the original People Magazine?

BUT THIS WEEK I came to understood the power of rumor through a different lens. Sometimes living in a small town can really intensify and encourage rumors, but never did I expect this.

Disclaimer: This is a very intense story. I don’t recommend reading it if you check-in at a precarious topography. But, nothing shines a more definite light on what pueblo life is like than this series of events. So it’s up to you.

Over lunch on Monday last my host family says: a young boy hung himself. My host family expresses their concern. My host sister tells me how sad it is, that he was very young. I am sad to hear this. I have to remind myself that, as I could simply go about business as usual like when I hear about deaths in my pueblo, this boy suffered to the point that he didn’t want to live. And I take a moment to consider the pain his family must be in. And I imagine how tragic it must have been to discover him, hanging. I didn’t know who it was, nor did they, but the news was sad. “They say he went to go get leña (firewood) and he hung himself with that rope” said my host mom. I noted that my host sister thought the word ‘suicidar’ only referred to if you took pills. If you hung yourself, she didn’t consider that suicide. That would be ‘se ahorcó” he hung himself. That led me to wonder how new the term suicide is, given that she is 40 and doesn’t define it as I do.

Santa Clara is a pueblo of 6,000 inhabitants in the town center. I have never felt unsafe, or unaccepted, in this pueblo. But the person who took his life must have felt one of these feelings to the point of fever pitch. Or maybe it was an accident? If he was really young, it probably was an accident. But how do you accidentally hang yourself? The questions remained. I went to work.

The next day at lunch my host sister said: “You know the young boy who came up to us and wrapped his arm around you and asked for money? The lustrador?” And the face of the little guy came to mind. The one who asks me for money every time he sees me. It’s not that often that I run into him. But my former site mate told me that there was a picture of the young boy posted on the microbuses, the public transit, that says: “Don’t give this boy money. He is a robber.” I had never seen the signs but I took her word for it. I still believe that the signs were posted because why would Abby make that up? Also, I’ve been listening to unsolved mysteries podcasts which are making me question everything. But the point is, I’m not questioning that. So yes “I do remember that boy” I told Clara.

My host sister says: “It was him. The boy who hung himself.” And I felt the compunction of instant grief as my hands met my face. Clara said: “I should have given him a quetzal when he asked.” And I replayed the moment she described. We were walking back from cutting coffee, my host mom, host sister and me. I cut coffee for 7 hours. While cutting coffee is a most repetitive and non-taxing choreography of the limbs that resembles amplified berry-picking, my body was nonetheless tired. While we went mata by mata, pulling ripened coffee cherries from their source, we laughed as I talked about my past relationships (2: count them) and amusing dates I’d been on. I don’t know why I was the only one talking, and about that, I suppose because it was otherwise silence on the hill as the three of us collected fruit. Have you ever wondered what the person was thinking or talking about who harvested the cup of coffee you were drinking? Afterwards, as we walked home literally dirty and tired, the boy walked up to me and wrapped his left arm around my hip. He walked uphill with me, called me ‘amiga’ and eventually asked me for money. I said: “no ahora, no tengo dinero.” And actually, I don’t think I did have any money on me now that I think about it.

He eventually left. But he was the perfect height to wrap his boyish arm around me and match my stride. He carried his shoeshine box in the available hand.

“It was him.” Clara said. She continued: “I told my mom: ‘I remember when he came up to us that day. I should have given him one quetzal’ I told her” And I thought about crying, strange that it was a choice, and decided that I wanted to cry. I asked them: “Can I go see his family?” and I asked what I should bring. My host sister told me the tradition was sugar or corn, so I walked to the corner store. My host family bid me adieu with hardly abated curiosity, like I was going to spy on a mystery neighbor and they wanted me to report back as soon as I saw their face. When I bought the sugar, I told María the store owner that I was going to see the boy who died. She sort of chuckled to herself. Let’s put a pin in this moment, I want to come back to it.

She put the two bags of sugar in a black bag typical to convenience stores and paid my 7 quetzales (2 bags of sugar for 1 USD). I began asking around for the house of the “niño que falleció.” It took me all of 7 minutes walking to get there, even me who can get lost leaving the bathroom. I saw a large tent straddling the street and I knew I was there. This is a custom of funerals, the family borrows the town hall’s tent and sets it up in the street for anyone to come eat. It’s how I knew the viewing was still going on.

As I walked toward the tent, I stopped a woman who was walking away: “Nan, is there where the niño falleció?” And she said: “Yes.” I explained that I had sugar, but I didn’t know what to do with it. I said: “It’s so sad.” And she said, in K’iche’, “He hung himself” accompanied by a gesture which made me understand. I don’t speak that much K’iche’ to understand consequential phrases like “hung himself” lets be real here. She asked another lady who was walking in, Juana, to lead me to the house. I knew neither of these women specifically, but everyone somewhat seems to know me. I followed Juana under the tent where men were eating and I dispensed the customary “Buen provecho” to their response “Muchas gracias”. I noticed that no one seemed too upset, just eating quietly, and into the house I went in Juana’s wake.

When I walked inside everyone seemed to shout out at me like they do on the street, as if they were expecting me to arrive. I asked sheepishly where to put the sugar and they gestured at the large costales in front of some men. Costales are bags in which you harvest crops, any crops, like what we collected the coffee cherries in that day. They thanked me for the sugar and I was led into a room with the casket around which people were sitting, eating, on benches at the edges of the room. I noticed that the casket had a lid open, but only that exposed the top half of the coffin. A glass pane shielded the body. I’ve never seen a glass pane over a coffin before: could it be to address the smell of the body, or to prevent people from touching, or just because that is how it is. I couldn’t see the body from where I stood. I thought: “I am not sure that I can look at that.” I think I sat, unsure of what to do.

And everyone carried on in a jovial manner, saying things to me in K’iche’ to see how I would respond like a wind-up doll that always dispenses the same phrases to everyone’s amusement. I wasn’t even egging them on, I just didn’t know how to act so I relied on tropes. Even though I do get tired of this I am used to it, but in the setting of a funeral divined by suicide, well it was super uncomfortable to me instead of annoying. The Nan I sat next to ate the tamalitos and rice off of the styrofoam plate. Though I didn’t recognize her, she tried to talk to me in K’iche’. I asked her if she had looked at the body yet and she said no. As usual, I spoke in Spanish and she responded in K’iche’ always leaving me uncertain to if I was even responding correctly to her words. I wonder how many times people are like: “What did you eat for lunch?” And I respond: “To work. See ya!” because I think they are asking me something else. I think they are too amused to correct me, and they like the fact that I can say: “To work” in their language in the first place. “Pa chak, hombre. Ajsik!” (To work man, arriba).

I was so confused by how jovial everyone was. The dad of the kid (I am assuming he was the dad because he looked just like the kid) stood at the edge of the door with a smirk over what we were all saying. How did he feel about the fact that the town gringa had come to his son’s funeral? Honored, intrigued, attentive? How could I even know.

Eventually I got up. I addressed my friend with frizzy hair who always calls at me in the street. I don’t know if I made a conscious choice to look at the boy or if I just started walking towards the coffin, one foot in front of the other, and just didn’t stop until I saw a face. I needed to know if it was true, if the lustrador died. And sure enough, even though his face was largely wrapped in cloth (I am assuming due to the condition of his body) it looked like him. What sent me to tears was his death, and what alarmed me was one eye cracked open as if he was trying to spy on me without giving it away. For a moment I wondered if he would spring up and bang on the glass. “Surprise! I saw the gringa and I want to ask her for money.” A bit of snot- I think- under each nostril, remained on his face. I moved away from the casket quickly, not sure what to do with my own body.

I gravitated towards the doorway by the street and a man began to speak English at me, my favorite thing. People don’t realize sometimes that I am not going to high-five them for knowing English, even though it is unexpected in Santa Clara. His accent was very thick but I deciphered his words, most likely worked in construction in Texas until immigration caught him and sent him home. I engaged in a very brief chat with him, said Buen Provecho to everyone and walked out of the doorway with tears slowly rolling. Why was I the only person crying?

I walked home. I sat down at the kitchen table, I got a tissue from upstairs then sat back down again, and I cried to my host family. My host mom told me: “No llores, Natalia. Ya estuvo” as if to say: “He’s gone now. What can we do?” and my host sister and host mom drew close, asking for details. “What happened, Natalie? Was it him? Did you take a picture?” as if I had just spotted Conan O’Brien on calle principal. I told them what I saw. “You should have asked how he died!” I responded: “What are you all saying?! I was not going to do that at a viewing.” They laughed and said: “yes, yes.” Only more word-of-mouth to conflate with what they had already heard. I went to work and was distracted from the image of the boy’s face. I called my volunteer friend Tanya who had 2 students take their lives this year. I told her about the death and the whole affair, the joviality of the funeral and the condition of the boys body, my unaccompanied tears. When I got back for dinner, I remembered that I had looked at a lifeless body today. Was that really today? Seemed like it was from a book about the wild west. I walked home from school and two of my students told me: “Elena is sad because her cousin died. He was 17 years old.” “No” I told them “I saw him today and he was 10 years old.” Adding to the rumors.

The next day at lunch the rumor mill refreshed: “Natalie. It wasn’t the boy who died, it was his older brother.” And I said: “well that makes a lot more sense even though it is just as sad.” And we all agreed. I was relieved that a 10-year old didn’t hang himself, for the kid, myself, and humanity, what kind of world would we then live in? I suppose that suicides, tragically, happen at any age, but the 7-year difference made the suicide make sense. I got upset at myself for being so gullible to the rumors. But with the way the body was covered, I couldn’t really distinguish who was in that casket.

On Friday, I finally saw The Lustrador. (People who shine shoes are called los lustradores because they offer “lustre” which means shoeshine). He sat in a pile of PACA clothes for sale, just like everything was normal, innocent, eyes squinting from the beaming sun. I said: “What are you doing?” I felt both relief and happiness to see the face who usually asked me for money and disappeared. He said: “I’m helping them sell the clothes.” He is not mentally agile, you can tell that he is developmentally slow. I wanted to hug him and say “I’m so glad you didn’t hang yourself, you really shook me up yesterday!” Instead I said: “I’m sorry for what happened to your brother.” And he said: “It wasn’t my brother, it was my cousin.”

Ok. This Town.

And then he asked me for a quetzal and I, with more than a shred of relief, gave it to him. I asked him: “Are you going to ask me for a quetzal every time you see me?” And he said: “Yes! I mean no.” And I smiled, and he smiled. He might not be bright but he’s not in the dark. He knows what he’s doing. I said: “okay” and he left. I snooped through the PACA clothes for a while and went to work.

Later that afternoon I walked home and saw him again. It’s not often that I run into him at all. He had a cut on his forehead and red on his shirt. I asked him what happened? And he said: “I got cut. But then they helped me” or something to that effect… I said: “What’s all over your jacket? Ketchup or blood?” He said: “blood.” And there was a sizable red stain surrounding the collar of his jacket.

And I’m honestly not sure if it was blood or ketchup. Mean boys could have easily squirted ketchup on him. I’m not quick to trust his words, or any words in town, now. But it didn’t matter what the red stuff was now. I said: “Okay. Be careful. I’m glad you’re not bleeding anymore.” And he hugged me again, this time both arms around my middle, and walked away like it was normal to have ketchup/blood all over himself.

That week, I gave 5 charlas on what Salud Mental means and how to care for your mental health. We discussed “Bienestar emocional, bienestar psicológica” and “bienestar social” as the three elements to mental health. I mentioned the suicide, I told them: “Solo Dios sabe” but perhaps this young man struggled with his mental health and that is why he committed suicide. The lesson felt very important, given the suicide, and even though maybe only 20% of them took it seriously, I hope that it meant something to some of them.

I want to go back to the reactions of laughter regarding the suicide. I’ve noticed that some people here have lighthearted reactions to serious events. “My friend is pregnant and isn’t sure if she wants the baby” ::> laughter. “I am going to see the young boy who killed himself” ::> laughter. Wait, why is this funny? But then I remember that laughter is A: a coping mechanism and that this is a war-torn country, still recently released from a 36-year civil conflict that drug the Mayan community through literal hell. Perhaps the decision of a young boy to kill himself is funny because it is perplexing and seems so unfounded. We survived, as a people, a truly horrific war only for young people to be taking their lives because they aren’t happy? While I don’t see the humor in this, I can understand why they might not be sure how to respond at all. I have to recognize my own privilege as a US American and I readily admit: life in Guatemala is simply difficult, is simply harder, than the life I know in the States. But above all, I can’t put values or analyze the way people respond to situations.

I do think that suicide is a fairly new “thing” in this country. I think that when people have to fight for their lives, their food and their families every day, survival is so preeminent that to consider suicide is so backwards it’s comical? I wonder if suicide can be encouraged by privilege, and I don’t say that lightly. I also recognize that suicide is often the result of mental illness which is NOT in any way, shape or form a privilege. But I do think there are societies filled with angst that often encourage the question: “Do I really deserve a life of suffering?” which can occasionally lead to a decision that “No. I’d rather die than struggle.” Who am I to opine the reasons people take their lives? No one, and how could I speak to anyone’s experience? I know that I can’t and shouldn’t. But I am only reflecting on what I have noticed in my experience living in a rural, developing society compared with my experience in a developed, urban society and noting the differences.

What I want to wish is peace to the young boy, the cousin, neighbor, brother, son, Santa Clareño, who is no longer with us. I hope that he, like my host sister said, descanse en paz, rests in peace.

And regarding the rumors, the only way to put them to rest was to see for myself. But even after I saw for myself, I still didn’t have it right. And that fact only highlights the mystery of the deeper unknown: why he died. I stood inches from his body and still didn’t identity him correctly. How could I begin to know why he decided that existence was too much a burden?

Something about this rumor, this situation, set against the backdrop of the foreign experience of Peace Corps had me feeling like I was further in the wild, brutal way of the world. The setting of the mountainous Mayan pueblo heightened the discomfort, the eeriness, and the brutality of suicide. My host grandmother pointed up the mountain where he was rumored to have been discovered, the one I pass by everyday.

The mystery of death is no more a shock here than it is in my own country, but being foreign and already being uncomfortable in a general sense united my spirit with the extremity of his loss. I already feel displaced, which married me to his displacement, only for a moment. Now I will continue on like everyone will, because what else can we do?

Rest in peace, young man. I still don’t know your name. Rest in peace.