Post by Debbie on Feb 9, 2015 23:56:46 GMT -1
I haven't thought about this in a very long time, but last night I dreamed about this happening in my early life. Eldon says the Volcan de Fuego erupted the other night, near our home at the base of Volcan de Agua in Guatemala, which was the same that brought this 'nightmare/memory' from my dreams.
articles.latimes.com/1992-07-21/news/mn-4344_1_guatemalan-officials
I'll never forget it because when we innocently walked into town in '92, unsuspecting of the tragedy, we were met in the town square with the corpses lined in the square. It was surreal, like something from the 1800s, out of the Wild West, bodies in white shrouds lines in front of the square. I was only 20 and in this day and age, I don't think anyone's fully prepared for that many corpses.
It's not like locals were uncaring, there were dancers in our local hospital fighting for life, and these, these were the one fresh from the crash who didn't make it, but they didn't have room for the bodies. As we walked by the hospital, at that very moment those dancers and hospital staff, doctors, few though they were, all were fighting to give them life. I don't know how many, if any lived. The bus they were travelling in had gone over one of the mountain cliffs.
The thing that upset me today as I looked for some memory of these dancers, was that there wasn't one. Only this sparse paragraph in an LA Times. My Spanish has only been enough to manage at a restaurant and a pharmacy, but this memory is forever imprinted on my mind. It fills me with tears that these beautiful people, this Mexican Dancing troupe that was coming to tour is lost to the sands of time. They were all so young, so beautiful, and to find them lost... no mentions in the records like this ... is hard for me 
I weep not only for the families and friends who lost them, but also that they were travelling into Guatemala for their art. They were young, and I know the world does not truly understand, but the peoples of Mexico and Guatemala hate each other, or at least there was a very deep cultural/heritage hatred in 1991, so any form of reaching out was phenomenal.
The mountain passes from Guatemala City (the Capitol) to Antiqua (the old Colonial Capitol) are extremely trecherous. I can't count the white crosses I saw in passing for each trip, and I know they only account for a small amount of those truly lost over the turns. So for each person lost to this endeavor, I give a rose in memory. I don't know your names, but may you each shine brightly in the stars to remind us some things do reach beyond the cultural hatreds. Somethings do shine purely 