The Guatemalans, sullen at the best of times, display a scolded resignation - bordering at times on guiltiness - when the subject of earthquakes is raised. Charles. Darwin is wonderful in describing the sense of dislocation and spiritual panic that earthquakes produce in people. He himself experienced an earthquake, when the Beagle was anchored off the Chilean coast. 'A bad earthquake,' he writes, 'at once destroys our oldest associations: the earth, the very emblem of solidity, has moved beneath our feet like a thin crust over a fluid; - one second of time has created in the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would not have produced.'
And, speaking of his own frequent earthquakes, the Guatemalan seems to imply in his undemonstrative way that the punishment is deserved. It is a judgement, and it was foretold in Revelation ('what must soon take place'), in Chapter Six, the opening of the sixth seaclass="underline" 'I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale; the sky vanished like a scroll that is rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the generals and the rich and the strong, and every one, slave and free, hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains . . .'
Guatemalan earthquakes are no worse than this doomsday spectacle.
The city has been rebuilt. There is no other place to shift it. Succeeding earthquakes have left their marks on Guatemala City, but these wrinkles - part of the look of Guatemala - are less of a disfigurement than the styles of building that supplanted the Spanish architecture. Terraces of huts, the spattered stucco of mock-colonial houses, two-storey blocks and now the taller American-style hotels (how long, one wonders, will these monstrosities last?) constitute the city today. Some of the churches have been put back together, their refinements blunted in the rebuilding.
I found the churches gloomy, but after a few days church-going was toy single recreation. 'The inhabitants of Guatemala appear to have little of the desire for public amusements seen in most cities,' wrote Robert Dunlop in 1847. It was hard to knock holes in any of these old assessments. 'Almost the only recreation of the natives being the religious processions, at which the figures of saints are paraded ... of these, there are two or three every month.' For historical, religious and seismic reasons I chose the church of La Merced. It was the feast day of Our Lady of Mercy, to whom the church is consecrated. The church showed earthquake damage, though not so much as the Cathedral which, with its cracked arches and pillars and part of its ceiling missing, ought to be condemned as unsafe. La Merced also was damaged, but it had been recommended by the Chevalier Arthur Morelet (described by his translator as 'a French gentleman of leisure and extensive scientific acquirements'), who in his Travels in Central America (1871) called it, 'a pretty church with a fine site. From an artistic point of view, its massive towers are open to criticism, notwithstanding that they give to the edifice a great part of its originality.'
There were several hundred people in front of La Merced, waiting to go in - so many, that I had to enter by a side door. Inside, there were three activities in progress: a very large crowd in the centre aisle were pushing to get near a robed priest who held a tall candle in a silver candlestick - the object was about the size of a shotgun; another group was more scattered - these were families having their pictures taken by men with Polaroid cameras; the last large group had congregated around a table set up near a brutal crucifixion and they were signing a clipboard of papers and handing coins to a man - this, I discovered, was a lottery. And at the small chapels and minor altars people were praying, lighting candles, carrying tapers or chatting amiably. At a side chapel was the Virgin of Chiquiniquira, a black madonna with an ebony face. Black Guatemalans (there are many; a settlement of blacks at Livingstone on the Caribbean coast is English-speaking) had prostrated themselves before the nigrescent virgin who 'loaded down with sumptuous toys,' remarks Morelet, 'receives exclusively the homage of the faithful of the African race.'
Travellers less sympathetic than Morelet - one supposes them to be unyielding Protestants - have seen Guatemalan Catholicism as barbarous. Dunlop regarded saints' days in Guatemala as no more than occasions for the combustion of 'great quantities of fireworks' and disgusted by the statues Dunn wrote, 'most of the images of the saints . . . are very common pieces of sculpture, and disfigured by absurd and vulgar dresses.' Aldous Huxley, who affected a kind of comic, stuporous Buddhism (his senile transcendentalism he gave fictional form in his silly novel Island) jeered at Guatemalan penitents until his package tour called him to Antigua, where his jeers were resumed.
Anyone who finds a frenzied secularity at a church service in Guatemala - and thinks it should be stamped out - ought to go to the North End of Boston on the feast day of Saint Anthony and consider the probability of redemption in the scuffles of ten thousand Italians frantically pinning dollar bills to the cassock of their patron saint, who is borne on a litter past pizza parlours and mafia hangouts in a procession headed by a wailing priest and six smirking acolytes. Compared to that, the goings-on at La Merced were solemn. The priest with the silver candle appeared to be fighting his way through the crowd of women - there were only women in that part of the church. Actually, what he was doing was allowing the women to get a grip on the candle. A woman waited, lunged, gripped the candle in both hands and yelled an ejaculation; the priest yanked the candle from her hands and another woman made a dive for it. The priest continued to move in a circle; his perspiration had turned his white surplice grey.
The Polaroid cameramen were slightly better organized. They had touts who were rushing up to family groups and, for two dollars, posing them near especially punished-looking saints in order to have their pictures taken. There was heavy competition. I counted fourteen photographers and as many touts. They had deployed themselves from the sacristy door to the baptismal font, and in every niche and near every altar - there were two photographers near St Sebastian: that martyring was particularly prized - flashbulbs popped and credulous Indians gasped as they saw their startled faces sharpening in full colour on snapshot squares. It was in a way the miracle they had hoped for, though the price was high - two dollars was a week's pay.
The lottery was much cheaper. At that table near the crucifixion the crowd was so large I had to stand for fifteen minutes before I could get a glimpse at the clipboard or the fee or, for that matter, the prize. This was not a literate country - that much was clear. Only a handful of the people were able to sign their names; the rest told their names to a lady in a black shawl. She slowly copied the name down, with the person's address; the person handed over ten cents and received a slip of paper with a number on it. Most of the people were Indian women, carrying babies on slings on their backs like slumping rucksacks or papooses. I waited until a man signed the paper and followed him as he walked away smiling at his coupon.