Christmas Day, sitting in the park in Antigua, Guatemala eating a 3 Quetzal ice cream cone....life doesn´t get much better. BTW...3 Quetz. (40cents US) gets you a double scoop of homemade ice cream topped with blackberry syrup. It´s mid-day, warm and the park is crowded with an interesting cross section of humanity. A little Mayan girl...maybe 5 years old...tries to sell me a jade necklace. Very seriously she goes into her spiel about the quality of the jade, it´s workmanship and excellent price ...$8...which we both know is double it´s real value. I smile and shake my head no. She giggles and moves on to the next potential customer. She´ll be here 10 hours today. On a nearby bench are three old guys from the States. It´s their bench during these hours. They meet here each day. Left behind at home are grown kids, ex-wives and careers that fade in memory. Guatemala is where they can live in eternal spring. These are members of our finest generation,. veterans of WWII and Korea. They earned a retirement in dignity. Down here a social security check and some Veteran´s benefits mean you live in comfort, a maid keeps the house clean, gardner mows the lawn and your deepest voiced concern is where to go that day to have a cup of the world´s finest coffee. Do their friends and families back home understand why they come here? Probably not. Mine don´t and I haven´t made that final move quite yet. But we share the knowledge that this is a wonderful place to live...and die. Familes stroll by...kids clutching balloons or Christmas presents. Guatemalan women, in groups of 3 or more for propriety´s sake walk through the park. From mid teens to early twenties they span that point of shy beauty to sultriness that lasts but a brief time until they suddenly transform into their mothers.

Out of no where the air is filled with statico explosions. To the untrained ear it seems like automatic weapons fire. Can´t be though. The guerrilla leadership is either running landscaping businesses in Bel Air or occupying unmarked mass graves on the far side of Lake Atitlan. If it was a coup I would have at least had the courtesy of a code word. Turns out it is fireworks, just another part of the Christmas celebration. The churches set off the big stuff. The municipal government buys cases of the small fireworks and then hands them out to kids to set off at noon. A sleazy trial lawyer from home would be wringing his hands  in anticipation of a law suit. But down here that´s not a possibility. If the fuse burns too fast some kid loses a finger or two, but no one screams for a lawyer.

In those seconds before I reallixe that it´s no gun fire it takes me back to my first years down here during the civil war. The Guatemalan Civil War as it was called, more an insurgency of communists, university students and clueless labor union folks, began in the 1950´s when the CIA, in one of it´s more brilliant moves combined a handful of exiles, military officers and a clandestine radio station to make it appear as if a large army was invading to overthrow a pro-communist governement. The plan worked but failure to follow up left in place a rag tag band of insurgents who instigated a compaign of low key warfare centered around asassination and infrastructure destruction. For much of the remainder of the 50´s and 60´s the insurrgency had enough success to cause a flight of foreign capitol and keep tourism to a minimum. Generals became president on a revolving door system. Finally, in the 1980´s General Rios Montt became president due to a power vaccum and some quick thinking by his case officer. I was working here at the time helping some folks with security issues. Rios Montt was most likely schizophrenic...he claimed to hear instructions from God...more likely from Langley. Let´s just say that needs to remain a murky part of history for a few more years. He instituted a particulaly brutal episode of Guatemala life. Civilian militias were created to forcibly keep guerrillas out of highland towns and deprive them of their supply base. The Guatemalan army had key units created and trained in rapid deployment manuevers and counter insergency tactics. Another decade went by, thousands died, probably more innocent than guilty. But that is the natue of unconventional warefare. The transition to peace was rough. Out of work guerrillas, civilian militia and regular army personnel turned to crime. The US and other foreign governments had to put their foot down. Local vigilente groups got fed up enough and lynchings and torchings slowed down crime. Today the Maras Salvatruchas keep the crime and murder rate at high levels. But resports of resurrgence of the so clalled dapth squads have been linked to increases in killings of the Maras. Guatemala has crime and economic issues to overcome, but it is free from the danger of a communist take over. For those of us who know what really happened and can discount the pro-socialist propaganda of Amnesty Iternational it stands as an example of what can be accomplished in Iraq. Merry Xmas to all.