The bus hurtled down the highway at the edge of the canyon, weaving back and forth on the twisting road. I was in the front passenger seat, right up next to the windshield, staring open-eyed at the exotic landscape. It was raining hard. I watched the river below through the thumping windshield wipers. The bus leaned on its side at every turn, and I grasped my seat to keep from falling over, but I felt strangely unconcerned about falling over the cliff and into the chasm hundreds of feet below.
     The giddy voices of my fellow trip members in the back of the big air-conditioned bus rose over the roar of the storm. I tried to ignore them, but I couldn’t help paying attention. They gossiped about romances, musical groups, jobs, acquaintances. It was all somehow painful to me. I had nothing to say to them. Our relations did not seem real. In all our interactions, there was not a single moment of mutual recognition.
     The clouds cleared as we made our way up the side of a mountain. The narrow road was a slit carved out of the jungle, and I breathed in deeply the humid aroma of the thick green vegetation. We came to a halt at a point marked by a large metal sign, attached to two wooden posts. In Spanish, in hand-painted letters, it read: ‘Welcome to this sacred ground, where our 45 brothers and sisters were massacred. We ask for peace and justice. We don’t accept government personnel. Please identify yourself before entering.’
     We descended in a single file along the path that led down to the village, past temporary dwellings built of wooden slats and standing on stilts. The whole village was perched on the side of the mountain. There was a single flat area at its center, where the church and community center were located, along with a small muddy area, in which a group of girls wearing traditional Mayan clothes were bouncing around a rubber ball.
     We entered the community building, a single room made of concrete blocks, which had been built by international volunteers. We sat on wooden planks, shoulder to shoulder. Three community leaders stood at the front, and reviewed the history of their village. Here in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas there was an uprising a few years ago by a group called the Zapatistas, an indigenous group which sought local control. The Mexican government responded by bringing in thousands of troops and setting up military camps throughout the state. Villages which did not support the military were attacked by paramilitary forces, trained and supplied by the government.
     The three speakers claimed that the villagers were non-violent, though they supported the goals of the Zapatistas. They told their tragic story, of how one day a group of paramilitaries evicted them from their land. They had walked for days to get to this place on the side of the mountain. Once here, they prayed for three days, fasting. At dawn of the fourth day they were attacked, and 45 people were killed, many of them women and children.
     I looked around the room. The cement walls were plastered with posters and letters from well-wishers all over the world. These villagers were very poor but they had a surprising sophistication. They knew how to use the tools of the West, like the internet, to broadcast their claims and gain international support. A steady stream of ‘internationalists’, mostly young, white and liberal Westerners, arrived in villages of Central America, like this one, to help the poor and dispossessed, and to atone for the actions of their own governments.
     I watched the three Mayan men, who sat with straight backs and intense expressions, their eyes full, words tumbling out, barely able to wait for our leader Amy to translate their responses. They were very thin, with sun-darkened skin, and colorful hand-woven clothing that was clean but tattered. After the talk they sat silently for a few minutes, and then walked stiffly out of the room.
     Amy went to the front of the room to lead the group in a de-briefing. A volunteer from the North, she was here on a two year stint to teach travelers and to actualize her dream, her commitment to political activism. She was confident in her beliefs. She also knew how to be gentle, and when the time was right, her big, even smile could win an argument with charm. But the smile could turn off in an instant, and then the cold edge and deadly seriousness that lay underneath would reveal itself.
     She was definitely not in a smiling mood now. This place and this meeting had really set her off. “It’s the policies of our own government that are the cause of what you see here,” she said. “Globalization and Western imperialism force the local elites to compete against other poor nations by giving up rights to fair labor practices, to safe working conditions, to environmental protection. In order to pay their external debt they have to extract resources from the land, and they’re willing to do anything to accomplish this. They use the most brutal tactics imaginable to destroy the culture of communities that have occupied this land for thousands of years.”
     Amy’s explanation frustrated me, and I had to respond. “I want to understand what the real problem is, too,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s politics. Political problems are just a symptom of something much more fundamental: our actual mediocre and narrow way of thinking and being. If we want to address the violence and suffering in the world, we have to be willing to see how we are personally responsible for what’s happening, and to be willing to sacrifice and suffer ourselves in order to help others. If we blame others for these problems there’s a danger that we’ll end up just making things worse.”
     Amy stiffened, her words hard and cool, her eyes burning. “This is not a time for philosophy. It’s time for action. People are dying, don’t you understand that?”
     “Do you really think that government policies and multinational corporations are the real problem, the real reason for poverty and violence?”
     “Yes, I do. It’s one side against another. This is just one phase of an age-old history of colonization and exploitation. We have to take a stand, against injustice and the perpetrators of injustice.”
     I looked around the room, hoping for a defense from my fellow trip members, but there was no hope in that. Their faces showed no emotion, except a mild restlessness. They were ready to get on with their program: to find and act on a simple political message, which would make sense of this adversarial world, and did not require soul-searching or sacrifice.
     After the meeting we walked down to the gorge, where a simple stone sanctuary commemorated the place that the forty-five villagers were murdered. Amy had planned a special event for this day. She made us stand in a circle, holding hands, and asked us to sing out the word ‘presente,’ after each name that she called off. She then began to read the names of each murdered villager, pausing after each one, and, in a clear, lilting voice, sang the response. Everyone but me joined in the chorus.
     The reading had an immediate visceral effect. Tears began to flow, noses to run. I heard sniffles, and, one by one, each person broke their grasp to take out a handkerchief. Lilliana Marie Fernandez, age sixty-four. Katarina Ana Gomez, age two. Then the melodious response rang out, ‘Presente.’
     An emotional tide swept over the group. I stood my ground, unwilling to be carried along. This was a planned event, orchestrated to evoke a specific response to a specific situation, designed to justify the condemnation of specific policies. Why cry over this disaster, and not others? Was it compassion that we felt, or just some kind of group catharsis, a bit of fascism insinuating itself into our minds? But in spite of myself, my heart softened. I stood tense, a stern expression on my face, but my own eyes watered and my nose ran. I let out a stifled cry.
     During the afternoon I played with the children. The sun shone, and the muddy plaza began to dry out. It was a great moment of freedom for me. I cherished each instant of free time. The group activities were stifling, smothering me with a mass mind that choked off the simple clear beautiful native energy that I sought. I just wanted to walk, and breathe and look at the sky. But I was soon called in for another special event which Amy had created. We gathered in the community center, again forming a circle. “We’re going to take our bus back into town, but before we do, I want to share this song with you. It was written by a female inmate of a concentration camp during World War II. She didn’t survive, but the song did, and I’d like us all to sing it together, and as we do, walk around the room and look into each other’s eyes.”
     She began to sing a haunting, sensitive melody with Hebrew words. As the trip members learned the words, they began to mill about the room, singing to each other. I stepped back out of the circle, trying to find an inconspicuous place in the corner. I could accept a little singing, but this idea was formidable. To look into someone’s eyes while singing was a terribly intimate act, like looking right into someone’s heart. But to do so when one did not have an intimate connection was a violation. It was a pretense, and to pretend to do what is real is to treat the truth lightly and desecrate it.
     I didn’t have all those thoughts, I just felt them. I looked down, avoiding the eyes, mortified. It was embarrassing enough to watch the others in this performance. To participate myself was simply out of the question, but I could not stand there anonymously any longer. “I won’t do this,” I said, raising my voice over the song. “I’m taking a local bus back to town. I’ll meet you there.” I picked up my knapsack and was about to turn away when I looked up and met Amy’s narrowed, piercing eyes. I pulled the door closed, and stood outside, listening to the muted sound of the beautiful tragic melody, breathing deeply, untrapped, freed from falsity.
     I hiked up the mountain trail, and arrived at the road just as a crowded local bus pulled up. I pushed my way in, finding a seat in the back. A Mayan woman took the seat next to me, and she was immediately pushed against me when a whole family crammed into the remaining space. Seven of us sat on a row designed for four. I was jammed against the cracked window. The Mayan woman sat silently, hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed straight ahead. She wore the complete hand-woven traditional outfit, including a colorful embroidered blouse, full of flowers and geometric designs, which represented the ancient traditions of her own village.
     It was a very old U.S. school bus, now in its second life far from the place where privileged children once sat on new seats. The black vinyl seat covers were now torn, the padding spilling out. The walls were dented, and new steel plates were riveted onto eroded sections. I looked at the silent peasants, pressed tightly together, leading lives so unlike my own. Rooted in the land and in tradition, they suffered but persevered. I did not know any details about their lives, but I could see their solid bearing, their reticence and modesty. They possessed one of the only remaining cultures still holding up against our Western one, which in many ways is its opposite.
     The Mayan woman next to me was raised with a fixed culture in a fixed place with a fixed role. Her round, humble face was a picture of modesty. Modesty, a quality rarely seen in modern times. Modesty: that which does not easily reveal or magnify the self, and does not make claims about who one is or what one has achieved. It was almost a contradiction that she was now pressed hard against me, and at every twisting mountain curve pressed even harder, shoulder, waist, and legs.
     We passed through the green mountains and fields, and at last entered the city center, pulling to a stop at a traffic light. On the street in front of the bus a young European couple was walking, hand in hand. The lady was thin and tall, with long and flowing blonde hair, carrying an embroidered bag, a tourist ornament made in the Mayan tradition; the man wore shorts and sandals, and a Mayan bandana. They crossed in front of the bus, their hands clasped tight, locking themselves together in their secure and magical adventure to this exotic land, where they spent their days distributing the bounty of their wealthy homeland. They were young and they were powerful and they were free. They owned this Earth. At this time and place—though it flees, it transforms and disappears—they were unafraid and dominant.
     I looked again at the Mayan woman pressed against me, and her lips rose slightly in a half-revealed smile, and I sensed that she liked or respected me, or at least that she sensed me, and somehow understood me. I could have asked her a few questions, using my limited Spanish vocabulary. But I had no desire to learn a few facts. What I wanted was to look straight into her eyes, and smile. The differences between us meant nothing. Actually, they were useful, because they offered the challenge to overcome artificial and transitory limitations, and to find and meet each other on a level, unobstructed field of total equality and freedom. Yes, she would smile back at me: a still, broad smile, with unwavering eyes, filled to the brim. It would be a pure relationship of unity and love, instantaneous and eternal, resolving everything. No, we were not ready for that. Her modest glance and half-revealed smile would have to do.