Two of the guards stepped in front of Pepe and me, blocking the doorway, AK- 47S aimed into the cavernous garage. The third, the leather-jacketed one, dropped to a crouch and moved out, his head and weapon swinging from side to side, scanning the area before him. Our two guards also stepped outside, each taking up a position next to the open elevator door.
I now had an unobstructed view of the garage. I was surprised to see that there were only six cars. All were U.S. made, Chevys and Fords. Five were black station wagons. The sixth was a red pickup truck. They were, in every way, nondescript.
Leather Jacket flashed a light inside each car and then under it. When he finished he once again scanned the entire garage. Apparently satisfied, he opened the door of one of the wagons, got in, and started the engine. Then he slowly drove it up to where we waited.
One of our two guards opened the wagon's back door. They both climbed in and moved to the third seat, which faced backward. I .eather Jacket jumped out, AK-47 at his side. Pepe followed me into t he second seat. Leather Jacket closed our door. He blew on a shrill whistle and then resumed his position behind the wheel.
The wagon ascended a steep incline. As it approached the top, a metal door rose up, exposing us to sunshine. Three men toting AK-47s stood at attention outside. They saluted as we drove past. The wagon stopped. One of the three opened the front door opposite the driver, Leather Jacket, and climbed in. He spoke into walkie talkie. Moments later, two sedans, one white, the other silver, pulled up to the curb in front of us. Tinted windows made it impossible to see inside. The man next to our driver waved. The white car headed out into the street. We followed it and the silver one fell in behind us.
Pepe patted my knee and broke the silence. "Awful, isn't it, to have to live this way?"
"Unbelievable. But your guys seem to know their business."
"They're the best money can buy, all trained at your School of the Americas." He frowned. "Just last week, a car carrying my sister was attacked by a bunch of Mayans. Thank God our vehicles have bulletproof glass. That and the guards saved her life."
"Was anyone hurt?" I asked.
He shrugged. "The guards say they wounded two of the bastards, but their friends carried them off. Our men are smart enough not to chase them. That happened to a business associate of mine. His guards chased the attackers—and ran right into a trap. One was killed and one wounded." He looked through his window at the wide boulevard we were traveling along. "Used to be a nice city," he mused. "Most of the violence happened in the countryside." He turned to me. "Not anymore. These damn Mayans have gone berserk." He stared back at the world outside his car, then looked at me again and chuckled. "If you're a guy like me, who do you fear the most?"
"What do you mean?"
"Who's got the best chance of killing you?"
I remembered Panama's Torrijos and the rumors that one of his security officers had handed him a tape recorder boobytrapped with explosives just before he boarded that fateful flight on his Twin Otter. "Your guards."
"Of course." He relaxed back into his seat. "You got to find the best and pay them very well. We have a large security force. Before anyone makes it to our private household, like these guys . . ." He motioned at the cars in front of and behind us. "They spend years in that force—at one of our factories, banks, or haciendas. They don't get near me or my family until they've proven themselves."
"How do they do that?"
"Prove themselves?" He nodded and smiled. "They have to put their life on the line, shoot it out in a firefight, demonstrate they got the balls and the loyalty."
For me, his words brought to mind what had happened in Iraq that triggered the U.S. invasion a year earlier, in 1991. When I mentioned this, Pepe nodded. "Tell me more."
"Our jackals tried to take out Saddam, but his security forces were too good, loyal. Besides he had all those look-alike doubles. Imagine if you're one of his guards and you're tempted to accept a bribe. You know that if you shoot a double, you and your family will die horrible, slow deaths. That's why Bush sent in the army."
"That's a good one," he chortled. "I'll have to get the word out that we can arrange for slow deaths—in case any of my boys are ever tempted."
We left the city and headed toward a majestic volcano. The sky was a bright azure. It was only then that I realized that the capital had been enveloped in a mist of smog. Beyond the city, the day was brilliant. We passed a small lake and the car turned onto a dirt road. Pepe explained that all the trees had been cut by campesinos who burned them for their cooking fires and to heat their homes. The hillsides were scarred with gullies caused by the resulting erosion.
"You would think," he said, "they might have learned their lesson. Their ancestors destroyed themselves by cutting the forests and building pyramids. Now they do this. Stupid, hopelesspeople."
I was tempted to point out that the urban pollution was much more destructive in the long run, that the factories and cars he and I depended on were the worst culprits, and that it was our policies that forced the campesinos to burn their trees. But I figured that he would just write me off as an "Indian lover," a radical ecologist, and therefore someone who could not be trusted. I stared out the window.
The barren landscape reminded me of the time I had come to this country to talk with a Mayan shaman. The nonprofit organization had sent me to ask the shaman to perform opening ceremonies at an upcoming board meeting. I was accompanied by Lynne Twist, a fund-raiser (and author of The Soul of Money). We encountered a great deal of resistance as we tried to arrange meetings; it became painfully obvious that the persecution suffered by the Mayas at the hands of the government—which was supported by Washington— was blocking our efforts.
Finally, Lynne and I found ourselves in the small adobe house where a famous shaman lived. He was wearing blue jeans and a traditional embroidered shirt; a red bandana was wrapped around his head. His home carried the aroma of wood fires and herbs. It was high up in mountains that, like the ones we were passing, had been ravaged by erosion. He listened quietly while I outlined our desire to involve him in our meeting, to enlist his help so we could work more closely with his people. I spoke in Spanish to a translator who repeated my words in the local Mayan dialect.
When I finished, the shaman launched into an angry speech. He gestured passionately and shouted. "Why should I help you?" he demanded. "Your people murdered mine for five hundred years. Not just the Spanish during colonial times. Your government has sent secret agents and uniformed troops here throughout my lifetime, including right now. You attacked my capital city and overthrew Arbenz, the one president who tried to help us. You train Guatemalan soldiers to torture Mayas. Now you ask me to help you?"
"These Mayans," Pepe said, as though he had read my thoughts, "are obsessed with anger. They blame the rest of us for all their troubles. We give them work, they complain that we enslave them. When we don't hire them—my family imported Haitians who work for pennies—they riot and try to murder us. And it isn't just here. Similar things are happening throughout the hemisphere. In the Andes, the Amazon, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia. Name any country south of the Rio Grande. You gringos don't get it because you killed off all your Indians. We should've followed your example." He tapped my knee for emphasis. "Mark my words, the challenge of the next few decades will be to keep the indigenous people—the Indians— down. You can talk all you want about democracy, but these countries are going to need strong leaders to hold those Indians in their places. The Mayans don't care a damn about democracy. Nor do the Quechua. Or any of the others. Given the opportunity, they'd slaughterevery one of us."
I did not tell him about my experience with the Mayan shaman who in the end agreed to work with us. The breakthrough came when I told him that the only reason I could think of for him to help us was so that together we could build a bridge between his people and mine. "Many of us in the United States," I said, "share your disgust for the ways our government treats your people. We want to change." I opened a bag containing Incan stones presented to me by Quechua shamans from Ecuador. "We're trying to do similar things in other parts of Latin America." After that, to my surprise, he switched to Spanish, which he spoke fluently.
By the time Pepe's caravan arrived at the geothermal site, I suppose I had already decided what I would recommend to SWEC. This project was not just about using World Bank funds to enrich the wealthy and leave the poor in deeper debt; it would also rob the Mayas of their sacred rights. When the three vehicles pulled to a stop, Pepe once again kept me inside while his men—totaling twelve now—searched the area. Outside, great clouds of steam bellowed from the earth.
As Pepe and I strolled around, he recited engineering statistics about pounds of pressure, kilowatts, and construction costs. We stood at the edge of a pool of bubbling water, inhaling sulfur fumes; he pointed through the steam down the hill to a valley and described the spa-resort his sister envisioned there.
I felt compelled to state the obvious. "The Mayans will certainly fight you tooth and nail."
"Aha," he said. "You're wrong there. They may be stupid, but they know me and my family . . ." His voice drifted off. He grinned. "I'm certain we can come to terms with them. And it won't cost much; just a pittance really. That's all they need. It's the reason you must have partners like my family. Bring in a gringo negotiating team, the party's over. We, on the other hand, can handle them." His eyes met mine. "I think you know what I mean."
I nodded and turned away. Of course I understood, and it infuriated me. I walked to the other side of the pool. I picked up a small stone. Throwing it into the bubbling water, I sent with it my respects to the Mayan spirits or whatever force it was that created such an amazing phenomenon.
Our return trip was so delayed by rush hour traffic that I missed my flight. It did not phase Pepe; he called his pilots. They picked me up at his building and drove me to his private jet. It seemed terribly ironic that two pilots and thousands of dollars of jet fuel would fly me all the way to Miami so I could squelch Pepe’s project. At first I felt guilty accepting his plane, then exonerated; I figured the Mayan shaman and the geothermal spirits would be amused—and grateful.
One statement Pepe made haunted me for years: "Mark my words, the challenge of the next few decades will be to keep the indigenous people—the Indians—down." Those words took on new relevance as we approached and entered the third millennium.
Beginning in 1998, seven countries in South America, over 300 million of the continent's 370 million population, had voted for presidents who campaigned against foreign exploitation. Despite the proclamations by our press and politicians, the votes were not for communism, anarchy, or terrorism. They were for self-determination. Through the democratic, electoral process, our neighbors sent us a strong message: They do not seek our altruism; they simply want our corporations to stop abusing them and their lands.
Latin Americans are following in the footsteps of Paine, Jefferson, Washington, and all the courageous men, women, and children who stood up to the British empire in the 1770s. It is a fascinating twist of history that, marching at the forefront of today's revolution against empire, are the indigenous people. While our Founding Fathers based their new government on Iroquois principles and our Continental Army used Indians as scouts and soldiers, in the end our nation rewarded them with exclusion and genocide. For many South American countries they are the vanguard. A new generation of heroes is emerging. Although born of pre-Columbian cultures, these leaders view their constituency as the poor and disenfranchised, regardless of race, heritage, and religion or whether they live in crowded slums or on remote subsistence farms.
As I followed the Bolivian presidential elections in 2005,I wondered what Pepe was feeling. How did he react when an indigenous farmer from the humblest of backgrounds—an Aymara Indian— won with an overwhelming mandate? Evo Morales's victory was the materialization of Pepe's nightmare. Watching TV coverage of the postelection celebrations, I was transported back to the time when I was offered one of the most powerful jobs in that country. The way it happened is illustrative of the corporatocracy's attitudes and actions.