November 29

“…So after the leaves are fermented to the proper age, the inspectors select the leaves that will be used for the filler. This room here is where they do the rolling”

“Oh my god, my nostrils are on fire! There’s not even smoke but the air is thick with it”

“Yes, you can fill the nicotine even without smoking”

“This looks like a miserable environment to work in, they can’t build any ventilation in here?”

“They could, but that would affect the humidity of the room and therefore the cigars…it’s unfortunate but this is the most optimal setting to make the best quality product”

“I can’t imagine working like this, how many hours does each roller have to work per day?”

“They arrive about 8 and leave around four. It’s hard and repetitive work for sure, but they get used to it, would you like to try to roll one?”

“Sure, how do you do it?”

“Okay, grab a bundle of those leaves and start stacking them in your hand like this. Once you’ve gotten enough, you place it on the edge of the wrapper leaf here…and then with a tight push you push this rod to wrap it”

“Okay, here goes…”

“That’s not too bad”

“You don’t have to say that. This is the worst roll I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t put my lips anywhere near this abomination”

“Haha, don’t worry it takes practice. Here, one of the other workers rolled you one as a gift”

“Can I still keep mine?”

...

November 18

“So what do you do here?”

“I work for an NGO, more in the rural areas”

“You know I never actually know what people mean when they say they’re with an NGO”

“That’s because it could literally mean anything, haha. Personally, I work with coffee farmers to help them grow their business?”

“Oh nice! Is that the coffee we’re drinking?”

“Yeah! I brought these beans back from the farm I’ve been working on for the last three months but I’m about to change positions”

“Why?”

“It’s just…it’s a really difficult scenario. The farmers get completely ripped off because since the distributors own all the relationships with the exporters and retailers, they can pay whatever they want to the farmers, and if anyone tries to give them trouble, they just bribe them to keep quite, and they pay off the cops too. The culture of corruption here is just so deeply embedded that there’s very little chance for progress”

“Jeez, so what you’re saying is that the farmers get nothing?”

“Yeah, they make pretty much no profit, and if they do, it’s barely enough to survive on. We realized early on that we can’t solve the problem by going after the distributors simply because they have so much power. Pretty much all of the farming in Honduras is owned by nine families or so and they are practically untouchable. They can pretty much pay for anyone to do what they want, so the politicians are on their side, they’re not going to do anything. So what we try to do instead is make the farmers operation more efficient so they can make more profit, and then establish direct export channels to the United States so they don’t have to go through the distributor”

“That’s smart, is it working?”

“Yes, but so, so slowly. The problem is that the farmers are really unorganized, that’s what I’m trying to fix but it’s just so bad how unorganized they are. It’s a problem because it leads to inconsistency, which basically means U.S. buyers will not want to go through the trouble of establishing direct sales if they cannot get quality control. It doesn’t matter if you get a good crop this year if you can’t get the same next year…and then the buyer will want to go to someone else so you’re screwed”

“Is it really hopeless, though? Do you think one day the farmers you’re working with can make the leap?”

“In short, they will need money. The only farmers that will be able to reach the level of quality control that U.S. buyers are looking for are the ones who can afford the land, machinery and equipment to operate at scale, because that’s the only way you can make a decent profit. It’s not hopeless, some of them are getting there, but it will take a very long time”

“Too long for you to stay around, I imagine”

“Yes, that’s why”

...

November 16

“If you had the opportunity to live in the United States, would you want to do it?”

“I’ve actually had experience in United States, but I don’t think I’m so excited to come back”

“Why not? There’s these huge caravans of people moving from here to try to get to the states, it makes it sounds like the country is falling apart”

“No, I’ve lived there but if I wanted to move, I’d consider Chile first”

“Chile sounds nice! But where did you live in the States that didn’t give you a good impression?”

“I lived in Los Angeles, Miami, and Indianapolis”

“Well, that’s why you probably don’t like the states then. Indianapolis aside, Miami and Los Angeles probably have the worst people in America”

“Yeah, I have very mixed feelings about America. People are so unaware of their privilege and behave in such selfish and silly ways. All they care about is buying things and trying to be better than everyone. And I also don’t like the U.S. because they’re largely responsible for the poverty in Honduras”

“Wait how so?”

“Well the companies that come here really exploit the low-wage workers and pay off our politicians to break up the strikes and union efforts, and they take all the profits without leaving behind any capital. It’s been like this for decades. It’s just that….they’ve made it so that our economy is entirely dependent on the United States and they use that power to manipulate our government. Anytime we want to start trade with other countries they U.S. likes to step in and say ‘hey, what are you doing?’”

“I’m really sorry about that…”

“No, no, it’s not your fault. Like I said, it’s a two-way relationship. We receive a lot of good things from you guys. Like, I love that your country celebrates individual expression like nowhere else. I’m really into drag queens, and you would never find that sort of thing here”

“Yeah, I imagine it’s very difficult to live here if you’re gay or have any subversive thoughts”

“Exactly. You have so much things like punk rock and transsexuals and just people who are allowed to be who they want to be and it creates so many unique things. I grew up on underground culture here in Honduras, but it all came from the U.S.”

“And what do we get from you in return?”

“Fruits. Bananas, mostly”

...

November 11

“That’s my little cousin, she’s asking you what kind of music you like”

“Oh! I uh, I listen to a lot of, well everything…but lately I’ve been listening to nothing but podcasts to keep me from getting bored on long rides. What about her?”

“She says reggaeton”

“Oh god, I have to say I absolutely despise reggaeton. It’s everywhere and it all sounds the same to me, but maybe because I don’t understand the music”

“No, no no. Don’t worry. There’s not much to understand, it really is stupid, I don’t like it either. And it’s…it’s so harmful, I don’t want my cousin listening to this crap”

“Wait why not?”

“First of all, it’s just like you said: it all sounds the same. Every song is just maybe three or four notes, and then each song just changes one note from the next and all of a sudden, it’s a different song. But also, the words of the songs, they’re just so bad”

“Like how do you mean, just talking about ‘let’s have sex’ and whatnot?”

“Yes! That’s all it is. It really frustrates me because I’m a teacher and my students listen to this stuff and some of them think all there is to life it to make money, buy expensive things, and fuck you know? That’s all it is, all the songs are like this…they’re just like ‘hey baby, let’s fuck’…it’s not real music”

“Haha, the same arguments are made about a lot of popular music back home. For a long time people said hip hop and rap were poisoning our youth with the same messaging, you know? But I think there’s a lot of smart songs in those types of music, you just have to look for the right ones”

“Well, not in reggaeton”

“Well, I guess it wouldn’t matter to me because I can’t really understand Spanish so well”

“It wouldn’t take you long to get all there is, trust me”

.

.

“Thanks so much for taking me out, you know…it feels a lot safer here than people led me on to believe”

“Yeah man, you’re in my village. It’s safe here”

“In your entire time growing up Juayua, you’ve never had run into any trouble with MS-13? You know, to be honest, when I entered the country, I was sorta looking out for the guys with the face tattoos”

“No no no, you won’t find them here. Most of them don’t come in villages like mine because they don’t really get much money here, and you won’t find them in tourist areas because there’s more police there”

“So where are they mostly?”
“In certain neighborhoods like San Salvador and other large cities, but you wouldn’t have any reason to go to the neighborhoods where they live anyways, there’s nothing to see there”

“But I still see houses around here that have electric fences and caged doors and windows. Violence still happens, no?”

“No, not that I’ve seen, not here. You know, people here can be very close-minded, you know? There’s a lot of older people here who just stay inside and watch the news all day, every day. And nothing good ever comes out of the TV news, you know? So if that’s all you watched all day, you’d be convinced that people shot each other over nothing every day. So that’s why they built those concrete walls around their houses. But, it’s not necessary. Look at us, we’re walking around at night no problem. Me and my sister do it all the time. It’s a small town so everyone knows each other, if someone commits a crime, someone will know them and then the whole village would know”

...

November 05

“You wanna go hike up the volcano with us tomorrow?”

“That sounds awesome! Which one are we going up?”

“Acatanango, we’ll start around 2pm tomorrow so we could see the fireworks around sunset”

“Wait, who’s lighting fireworks up on the mountain?”

“The volcano! The lava shoots out every night”

“We’re…not gonna get burnt, are we?”

“Well, depends on which slope you wanna climb”

.

.

“You got to celebrate Todos Santos in Todos Santos?”

“Yeah! It was the most amazing thing I’ve seen ever since entering Central America”

“Pretty crazy, huh?”

“Yeah, there was not a single sober man on the street. When I went around the next morning, it looked like there’d been a war…just bodies lying around everywhere”

“Yeah, haha. It’s one of our great traditions. One of the best things about Guatemala is that we still observe Mayan traditions. Todos Santos is my favorite because you can drink like there’s no tomorrow”

“Yeah! I didn’t even hear a lot of people speak Spanish there, it was some sort of indigenous dialect, and the clothes were completely different”

“Yes, the cultures in the altiplano are very different from the rest of Guatemala, but the important thing is that they are still able to adapt to the modern world”

“You’re right, there was a pretty sleek mall, similar to what you’d see in the states, but you’d think that the people shopping there were from the villages. I really think this is cool because there tends to be a patronizing Western attitude that wants traditional people to stay backwards for the sake of novelty, as if they’re not allowed to progress in our eyes if it means sacrificing their tradition”

“You can still progress without sacrificing tradition! There’s nothing that says we shouldn’t use computers and cars”

“Yeah but what I’m saying is that very often that’s what western tourists want to see. When traveling, we often fetishize poverty to a certain extent that it’s necessarily coupled with ‘culture’”

...

November 04

“You’ve been biking through Guatemala?”

“Well, I was…but I ran into some trouble on the way, so I had to take a bus”

“What kind of trouble”

“I was robbed on the way to Uspantan”

“On the road?”

“Yeah, it was getting too late to bike so I had to take a collectivo…and the guys in the back were all friends with the driver, they decided to take me out to a quiet area of town and rob me”

“I’m so sorry to hear that, what’d they take?”

“Just my money. They probably could’ve taken so much more if they’d wanted”

“Oh, you got lucky then. Those were honest thieves”

...

October 19

“Has this place changed much over the years? I get the feeling that what I’m seeing is the way it’s always been”

“Oh, no it’s a lot different. That strip you see over there? That used to be an airport, it was established by the Americans for deploying troops”

“And it hasn’t been used since?”

“Oh no, it was used to transport drugs at one point. The cartels used to land their planes there”

“No way, where would they have landed it before the airport? I don’t see any other strips around”

“They would land in the street over there”

“That one? That’s the main boulevard though, there’s traffic”

“Yep, the drug planes would use the same roads as the cars to land”

“That can’t possibly be safe…let alone legal”

“Well when was drug trafficking ever safe or legal?”

...