Reflecíon de Vuelta

I have been in Copan Ruinas the last couple of days, giving a tagteam tour and cultural experience with Liz to Katie and Laura, Liz`s friends who came to visit. Its been really fun to come back to Copan after I know more Spanish and I`ve seen other parts of the country and I understand the people a little more.

But Copan is a ridiculous town. There is exajerado tourism here that brings in exajerado amounts of money. The number of cars in Copan are a clear sign of their wealth! And so many coffeeshops, bars, restaurants, tourist attractions, its insane! And my host family, who we stayed with this time, seems now to be extremely well-off as compared to 4 months ago, when I thought they were more middle-class. But really, they are comparable to the American `middle class´ because like the rest of the world, there are a very small percentage of people who own a massive amount of the capital. In Copan, its two or three families who own about half of the businesses. I think the American statistics are around 1 percent owning 40%. The flip side of this is that you have a large amount of the population who owns very, very little.

There are several volunteers who live in this town and benefit from the high level of activities and fun that the tourism promotes. On Saturday night, Arte Acción (about which I wrote in August) put on a cultural festival in the park. Really it was just a bunch of really talented kids on stilts walking around and dancing to a bunch of hippie drummers while several hippies took their turn at whipping flaming kerosene soaked pads in circles around their bodies in a mesmerizing lightshow. Quite entertaining. During that time, there was a really good flautist with awesome sound and light equipment who was amplifing his flute to a pre-fab drum rhythm. It was really good, we had listened to him for a while the night before. Later that night, a local, pretty sketchy bar hosted a chest-thumping (five high quality 20 inch speakers with the bass cranked!) dance party in the street, where 50 men watched while 5 or 6 couples danced in the middle. A little strange and uncomfortable, but quite the party! I commented that it would be pretty exciting to live (...volunteer?) in a town that had this level of free entertainment. Liz reminded me that our experience would just really be one of a tourist (inactive, superficial, complacent) painted with a veneer of Honduras. Shes got a point, and while it may be fun to have a weekend once in a while that has this much entertainment, I really appreciate the value and truth and humanity of my experience in La Campa.