tlf news

Vol. xxiv #2

June, 2003




The Toad and the Flower






Chito: The toad's mission was to care for the flower,
although the flower didn't realize or appreciate that.

Yuma: Once more teatro la fragua embarked on a tour. This time the destination was northwestern Guatemala: the Ixcán, an indigenous zone which in the 80's suffered the worst part of the political repression unleashed by the government and the military of that time.

Chito: Once upon a time there was a beautiful flower which everyone admired for her beauty. But very few ever went near her because at her side there was always a toad.

Tuesday, 11 March 2003

German: It all began at 6:00 in the morning on March 11, when with a great deal of enthusiasm we hit the road on the way to Guatemala. Within a few hours we were at the border, where we had to wait to get through the customs paperwork. Then we continued on toward Cobán, one of the most important cities of Guatemala.

Odgar: When we arrived at Cobán we had to look for the place where we would spend the night. At first everything went well; the center was a pleasant place. The watchdog was a seeming wolf named Russian who was the center of our attention during our few hours in Cobán.

German: It was about 6:00 in the afternoon when we arrived at Cobán. We unloaded our luggage and gear, ate a simple but hearty dinner and all of us were more than ready to hit the hay early.

Chito: Every time the animals came near, they saw the flower and said, "What a beauty!" But when the animals looked down and saw the toad, they were frightened and immediately ran away, forgetting the great beauty of the flower.





Wednesday, 12 March

Odgar: The early morning hours on Wednesday were the cruelest of all in the story that was just beginning. The water in the shower was colder than an iceberg! And on top of that the shower was in the middle of the open patio.

German: After showering and breakfast, we were greeted by Sergio Barciela, one of the organizers of the tour, a Spanish friend whom we all knew from Honduras, from the time he spent working with the Reconstruction Committee of the Catholic Church in Progreso in the period after Hurricane Mitch. We loaded everything into a van and a pick-up which would take us to the jungles of Ixcán; it was a four-hour trip. When we arrived at Cantabal (the largest town of Ixcán), we had lunch and rested a while.

Odgar: Then a truck arrived and we began to load equipment: sound, lights and personal gear. Héctor took charge of organizing the process. We got a bad start because everybody started bickering about who would go where; but once we were on our way all that calmed down.

German: The trip to Cuarto Pueblo was the beginning of a great Odyssey: we were bouncing along in the truck for more than 3 hours, in the hot sun and amid clouds of dust. When we arrived we realized there was no electricity in the town, and that it was quite small. We bought sodas and then had to climb the hill to the church, which was situated on top. A group of people from the town, mostly women, was waiting for us with a welcome prepared.



Odgar: We felt more dead than alive from exhaustion after the trip to Cuarto Pueblo. In spite of the fact that the sodas weren't cold, the simple fact of injecting a bit of caffeine relaxed us a bit. In the church we met Marcelino, one of the legendary leaders of the Ixcán. He presented us to members of the community, and then gave us an introduction to the history of Ixcán: a story of blood and suffering and sorrow, to survive which the inhabitants had to posses great optimism and fighting spirit.

German: They explained to us how Cuarto Pueblo was once a prosperous town; but that aroused the envy of the government, which sent a group of soldiers to kill all the town's inhabitants, taking them by surprise and eliminating every person they encountered without making any distinctions of sex or age. More than 300 people died in this massacre, including children, women and men. Those who managed to escape fled across the border to Mexico, where they lived as refugees. Others decided to remain and fight for their lands, and became known as the Communities of Population in Resistance (C.P.R.).

Odgar: Cuarto Pueblo is a remote place. The inhabitants are a mix of all the ethnic groups -- 23 different Mayan-root languages are spoken, according to what Marcelino told us -- but the largest group is Mam. The groups retain many of their traditions such as their distinctive dress and their language: most speak Spanish as a second language which they have in common. After this short but intensive introduction, we split up for dinner, each to a different house to get to know the families.

German: I was taken to the house of Rosa, a señora about forty years old, who lives with her husband and four children. Once Rosa had finished serving the dinner and we had all eaten, we sat at the table and talked for a long time. She told me that she had lived through the massacre and had lost her family: her husband was murdered while he was working. She had to flee to the mountains with her two sons. She lived in the mountains for a year, and then they went to Mexico where she lived twelve years. Today the two sons live in the United States, and she has remarried. When she told me the story I saw that her eyes filled with tears and frankly mine did too: I couldn't understand why all those people had to die.

Yuma: The massacre of Cuarto Pueblo is a memory whose history always seems to be floating around in the air of those remote places that even today remain forgotten by the government.

Odgar: After we had eaten, we got together at a corner store in Cuarto Pueblo to talk a bit about the conversations we had with the families who had adopted each of us. We realized that the teatro had important work ahead at that moment: to heal a wounded spiritual space in the inhabitants of the Ixcán.

Yuma: We had to sleep on the floor of a hall with just the blankets we had brought. But we were all so tired that we figured out how to accommodate ourselves quickly.

German: As I was falling asleep I kept hearing the words that doña Rosa had told me: "In this world we are alone without the help of anyone, only of God".

Chito: This happened many times, until one day the flower noticed the existence of her "ugly" neighbor. And so with a haughtiness fitting her vanity, she courteously asked the toad to go live somewhere else. So the little batrachian hopped away with sad and humiliated jumps.



Thursday, 13 March

German: We began the day with a bath in the river. The water was very cold, but we had to wash. I had breakfast in doña Rosa's house. She seemed happy that morning since that day was the beginning of the celebrations to keep alive the memory of the victims of the massacre.


Odgar: Our performance was scheduled for 6:00 in the afternoon, in a large shed that was used as a community multi-purpose hall. We tried to bring in electricity from the generator of a cooperative, but it wasn't enough to power the sound system of the plays. So we decided to redo the pieces so they could be done acoustically. Edy and Jack began to rehearse the acoustical version of El asesinato de Jesús so that it could have the same force but without the electronic musical accompaniment.

Yuma: During that day which was very special for Cuarto Pueblo, we had the chance to share with the young and the old from many indigenous communities who had arrived to celebrate another anniversary of the massacre.

Odgar: There were people invited from other parishes of Central America, including some from Honduras and even from Progreso. In the midst of this atmosphere of celebration, Edy and Jack were adapting the movements to the new space. For the first time I saw Jack directing a music rehearsal, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that I felt the energy which emanated from every one of his movements and gestures, which invited me to try do to a good job, and I'm sure that the guys all felt that same energy.

German: We all began preparations for the performance. At first I was really nervous, since this would be the first time I acted and I wanted to make sure it came off well.


Odgar: Our program started with the children's story The boy who went looking for yesterday, by the writer Claribel Alegría. Then there were various acts of representatives of each of the countries present. The actors changed behind the stage in a dressing room improvised that very day, thanks to Sergio's astuteness, using the tarp that covered the truck. The last piece was the acoustic version of El asesinato de Jesús and it came off very well. We struck everything in the twinkling of an eye and went back to our sleeping hall to re-organize and plan the next day's activities.

Chito: Time passed, and one day when the rains made the toads playing in the puddles croak with joy, the toad remembered his beautiful friend the flower and went to visit her to see how she was. He thought that she must be very happy now that he wasn't around to cloud her beauty and frighten her admirers.



Friday, 14 March

Odgar: Friday morning we all helped load the truck, which left for Pueblo Nuevo. Five of the crew went with it, while the rest of us stayed for a bit of socializing. First we got a tour of Cuarto Pueblo, where they had a monument in honor of Padre Guillermo Woods (one of the first priests assassinated in Central America for his defense of the Indians); then we went to the Mass and waited for our departure for Pueblo Nuevo. And we moved up a notch in the luxury of our sleeping quarters: we now had mattresses on the floor to sleep on, but we still weren't free of the scorpions which always seemed to find the place where German and Herlyn were sleeping.



Saturday, 15 March

German: Once we got to Pueblo Nuevo, a much larger town, we organized things to start to give the theatre workshop. At first I felt pretty lost, because I had never received a workshop, much less taught one. But as things got moving I began to feel more confidence and I helped in what I could.



Sunday, 16 March

German: After Mass the kids who had participated in the workshop did a showing of what they had done; everybody I talked to afterward said they had liked the dramatizations a lot. That same day, in the evening, was the performance of El asesinato de Jesús in the church, which is to say my second time on stage. This time I felt a lot more confidence in what I was doing since we didn't have to change and adapt things, and also because the rest of the cast helped me a lot. After the show we all went to eat at a small diner in the town.



Monday, 17 March

German: On Monday we started another workshop, with the students of the Guillermo Woods Mayan Institute. We began with an introduction to what we were going to do; then on to physical exercise. After forming work groups, all begin work on various Gospel readings. The workshop lasted three days, and the groups got up seven different Gospels.

Chito: When the toad spied the flower in the midst of some bushes, very close to some haughty orchids he had never liked, he was shocked and surprised by what he saw: his friend was abused, defoliated and sad, her beauty in shreds.



Wednesday, 19 March

German: Wednesday afternoon was the showing of the Gospel dramatizations and we presented the Children's Stories for an audience made up of the students of the Institute plus people from the town. As soon as we finished we left for Cantabal; we arrived at about 9:00 that night and were taken to a clinic which was very close to the church where we were going to do the show. When we went up to the large room we saw at once that there were beds; after all this time we would finally sleep in beds. That night the conversation was all about the war in Iraq, which they told us had just started.



Thursday, 20 March - Free day.

German: In the morning we all rose and showered early since this was our day off, and we had an excursion planned. They took us to the Lake Lachuá National Park; to arrive at the Lake itself you have to walk for an hour through pure jungle, but I can assure you that the walk is more than worth it. That day we were able to forget about workshops and shows and just relax.



Friday, 21 March

German: Friday morning we did a performance of the Children's Stories in a community hall of the town; the audience was large, kids from various of the town's grade schools. In the evening we began the workshop for youth of different communities. We began with the same introductory talk explaining the different techniques we would use in the workshop.

Chito: -"But what happened? What have they done with your beauty?" And with the humility that life's blows teach us, she began to tell him that once he left her side, all kinds of animals came and started eating her leaves and petals; since clearly all the other animals were envious of her beauty.



Saturday, 22 March

German: The workshop continued on Saturday, beginning with physical exercises and breathing; groups were formed to mount Gospels and they started to rehearse. All day they were working on the dramatizations of those Gospels, because that same night they would have to show them to the whole group. And in the evening everyone got together for these showings.

Odgar: That same night in Cantabal, all of the muchachos had the chance to express their opinions about the experience of the workshop they had received. As always they were grateful for the patience they had experienced from the directors. There was one girl who said, "The life of Jesus must have been difficult," judging from what she experienced in the dramatizations they had done. That really came home to me: the teatro wasn't just teaching theatre, but was evangelizing in this simple but direct way.

Yuma: I have been able to see and feel how our work was transformed into smiles and happiness on the sad faces of the children, the young people and the adults.

Odgar: Edy said: "In this tour we have learned a lot from all of you, about your culture, your suffering, your joy." And I really liked the story that Chito told:

Chito: The toad said to her: "When I was with you that never happened. From now on I'm staying with you to take care of you." And that's what the "ugly" toad did, and with time the flower recovered her grand beauty. And just like the toad, all of us have a mission: which is to leave the world a better place than we found it.



Sunday, 23 March

German: The last show of El Asesinato de Jesús was in the large church after Sunday morning Mass. There were a lot of people in the audience and the work came off well; we even had to sign autographs afterward. After lunch we left on the trip back to Cobán, and spent the night there.



Monday, 24 March

German We left at 5:30 in the morning, finally on the way home. We had some problems during the trip, but those didn't matter since we all felt the emotion of returning to Honduras. You could feel the enthusiasm more when we crossed the border, because that meant we only had a few hours left to get back to El Progreso. We stopped for lunch in Omoa and were right back on the road. When we arrived at Progreso we discovered that in our absence they had inaugurated the new bridge over the Ulúa River. We got to the teatro, unloaded the equipment and set off for home.

Yuma: I've felt the difference between the life we lead in the city and the way of life in a jungle zone, where in spite of there not being visible external signs of "civilization", there also doesn't exist the same envy and evil, the same tension. These are people with a great capacity for giving affection to everyone who comes into their ambience; they are extremely warm and loving people.

German: The truth is that this trip was a great experience, because not only were we able to get to know a world we hadn't known before, but also we had the chance to teach and (something we hadn't expected) to learn. Now that we're home, I am sure that everybody has forgotten about the problems and the discomfort; I am sure that if we get the chance to return, nobody will think twice.

Odgar: The tour to the Ixcán was an unforgettable trip; it served as a space for personal reflection, in the sense of making us aware that we all have a mission in this world and that many times we forget about that and just live letting the current take us where it will.

Yuma: One of the images that remains very present to me is that of the faces of the participants in the workshops of El Evangelio en vivo, the last day when they have to present their work in the church during the Mass: the satisfaction, the necessity, the nerves, the preparation for the showing. Then suddenly they are doing theatre, something that it had never crossed their minds that they could do. It satisfies me because I feel the we have given a bit of ourselves, teatro la fragua; we can do it and we can teach it to these people who need it very much. And I was confirmed in my strong conviction that the theatre is an instrument that can give a new life to many persons who need it.





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