elected president of Guatemala in what is described as "the first fair and democratic election" in Guatemala's republican history.  Arevalo serves his country as president from 1945-51.

My friend GB who travels frequently to Guatemala on businesss writes, "It is now the season for Easter Posadas when the faithful schlepp giant recreations of the Passion through the streets which are covered with elaborate floral carpets, then they blow off fireworks and drink beer.  I love this place."

    

I love when worlds collide.  I love the convergence of cultures, the way an indigenous people, the descendants of a proud race whose gods once appeared to them in gold and feathers and demanded sacrifice now recreate the Rose Bowl Parade but with brute human strength instead of cars and trucks hidden beneath the papier-mache floats.  

I love the juxtaposition.  I love the contrast, the contradiction.  I love it when the hero says something funny at the darkest hour.  When it first happened on "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" the network executives at the fledgling WB didn't know what to think.  "Should she be making a joke right in the middle of a fight sequence?" they asked, dumbfounded.  [In fact it was worse; they said to take the joke out -- I'm just trying to make them seem smarter than they really were.]  

"That's the whole point," the wise creator of the show said.  A visual and verbal trick, a tool of the good story-teller: Funny next to Sad, light against the dark, the guy driving the runaway bus that's about to explode making a joke to the girl he's trying to save at the same time.  You laugh and you're caught off guard, you forget to hold your breath and that's part of the charm, that's the delight of it all.  Plus beer when it's over.  

Now you see it everywhere.  Everybody does it. 

The pagan shoulder-to-shoulder with the Christian.  Magic in the air.  In the midst of life we are in death.  

They say nothing shocks anymore, but you'd be surprised the things I hear about.  Like a sophisticated friend of ours who had to judge a Cub Scout Cake Decorating Contest last night somewhere in the Midwest ("33 screaming and running 7 to 11 year-olds and 33 cakes decorated by the mothers.  One hour to judge.  Imagine!").  I had imagined a bunch of boys with pastry chef hats on and frosting tubes in every pastel shade, executing rosebuds ...).  Talk about a clash of sensibilities!

I've had some reaction to my Wilkes-Barre coverage.  To the tone, that is.  "Glib," they say.  Well, that's what I'm trying to say.  Underaged boys lured into making pornography in a town best known for coal mining disasters, and the man making the movies gets killed not out of moral outrage but by his competition.  Okay, so it's not exactly natives carrying Christ in His Passion through the streets, but it does seem sort of hard to get your head around, if you know what I'm saying.  Or maybe it's just me.  Oh, and by the way, the Latest coverage suggests the boys may have left a paper trail.

Juggernaut is a corruption of the Sanskrit "Jagannatha" (Lord of the Universe) which is one of the names of Krishna.  Statues of Krishna/Jagannatha were (and still are) wheeled through the streets on festival days.  It was Christian missionaries who spread the false and rather defammatory tales of fanatical devotees who threw themselves under the wheels of the statues -- hence the phrase "bone-crushing Juggernaut" as a popular expression in certain circles.   

But all a matter of perspective, isn't it.  Bone-crushing oppression?  Or an opportunity to blow off some steam and some fireworks? 

One of the young actors in the Wilkes-Barre case was reportedly given a Volkswagen in exchange (presumably) for sexual favors.  [Here in this town they mostly hold out for a Porsche.]  What the Spanish offered the natives of Guatemala in exchange for their souls was everlasting life, of course.  Presumably a better deal. 

And beer and sparklers when it's over.