Ayudante Wars

The promised post about my site visit is on the way, but in the interim until I find the time to write it, I thought I would share a little incident that occurred on the trip home from Alta Verapaz.

Without any governing body organizing public transportation here and without any differences between one camioneta and another (except maybe the paint job), the only way for a camioneta driver to make more money is to pick up more passengers. And the only way for a camioneta to pick up more passengers is to be the first one to pull into a bus stop or on the side of the road where people are waiting. For this reason, camionetas race, cut each other off, and pass each other on curves, adding a little more excitement to their already dangerous driving habits.

On my journey back to the training center, after taking a pullman into Guate and a taxi from the pullman office to the bus terminal (we are banned from taking any intracity buses in Guate because there are an estimated 200 armed robberies a day), I boarded a camioneta headed towards Antigua. Still within the city limits of Guate and far from capacity, my driver seized the opportunity to increase his passengers by cutting off another camioneta headed for a large group of people waiting at a stop.

In a cultural defined by machismo, it was no surprise that the ayudantes from the two competing camionetas disembarked, and a heated argument commenced. As the shouting match intensified in the street, my driver rummaged through the glove compartment and pulled out a machete (mental pictures of a school bus driver in the states wielding a giant knife to control unruly children were running through my head). In the time it took for my ayudante to retrieve the weapon, the other camioneta had already started to drive away. Emboldened by his machete and unwilling to let a perfect situation to display his manliness slip by, my ayudante ran and jumped on the moving bus. Chest puffed and brandishing his knife, he stayed on the camioneta long enough to establish his male dominance before returning to ours.

Despite how it may sound, the incident was far more entertaining than frightening (perhaps the other ayudante feels differently). Providing a soundtrack of gasps and ahhs, us passengers watched the confrontation unfold from the safety of our seats, almost like watching an action movie but without the popcorn. Just to be on the safe side, though, I made sure to flash a big sweet smile as the ayudante collected my fare.