No Mail For You

My sitemate, Michelle, and I ran into Tactic’s postman, Lester, the other evening. Michelle recently moved into an apartment in town and needed to inform Lester of her new address to ensure she got her absentee ballot in time. She had been trying to track him down for over week with no luck, and immediately used the random encounter to pass on her information. Lester’s response:

“Oh, I don’t work at the post office anymore.”

“Well then who does?”

“No one.”

“How is no one working there?”

“It’s closed. It has been closed for over a month. They can’t find anyone to work there.”

“So what are they doing with all the mail!?”

“It’s all sitting in Cobán. They’ll probably deliver it when they find someone for Tactic.”

“But when is that going to happen!?”

“Saber. But it is kind of important. People need to get their bills.”

Yes, people need to get their bills, and the gringas need to get their packages and absentee ballots from the states.

Now I probably shouldn’t be surprised that the post office simply closed without any announcement and no proposed reopening date, but I am. Although the Guatemalan Correo has never been a model of efficiency, I have always found it reliable. I mailed quite a few packages to the states when I was working with Nu’Kem, and while the lag time in delivery varied from two weeks to over four months, they did all eventually arrive at their destinations. (Concerned about the package I had sent three months prior that still hadn’t arrived, I went to talk to Lester about it. He told me the delay was caused by a backlog from Christmas. I mailed the package at the end of February.)

I think Lester always had a bit of an uphill battle running the post office here. He was the sole postman serving a municipal population of nearly 30,000 people (that includes not only Tactic, but also all of its aldeas and caseríos). He didn’t have a car or even a motorcycle, and the post office lacked some basic necessities to function efficiently. After tiring of the same, “Fíjese que I have to take this to Cobán to be weighed,” every time I brought in a package to be mailed, I eventually bought the post office a scale. It made both Lester’s and my life a lot easier.

So I don’t fault Lester that Tactic currently has no mail service. And I am not even going to put the culpability on Guatemala for that matter. I blame Canada.

But what do our inoffensive neighbors to the north have to do with the fact that I’ll not be receiving any peanut butter M&Ms and Diet Sunkist via the mail? Well, in 1997 Guatemala privatized their postal service giving the contract to El Correo. El Correo in turn contracted with Canada Post for advisory and technical support. Somewhere along the line during the consultations, the Canucks must have forgotten to tell the Guatemalans that employees are important. Thanks a lot, Canada.