Un buen Chapin, and a thanks to David Stoll

One of my college professors, David Stoll, who has spent much of his career studying Guatemalan society both before and after its guerra civil, introduced me to Curtis Chapin, an old friend/colleague/acquaintance of his currently living in Panajachel, right across Lake Atitlan from San Pedro. While I can’t say I know too many 77-year-olds still walking and breathing (and let’s be honest, neither is particularly easy for Curtis), Curtis Chapin is up there amongst the coolest and most interesting senior citizens and people in general on my radar. This past weekend Stacy and I stayed with Curtis and his wife Augusta in Pana.

So, I had called Curtis a week after arriving in San Pedro, but he was in the States, so we didn’t actually speak until a couple weeks ago. And while David did mention that Curtis did have a heart attack, I must have selectively forgotten this fact, because after our phone conversations, I was definitely not expecting Curtis to be 77. I don’t know, maybe it was the repeated and adamant insistence that we didn’t need to bring anything because “[Augusta and I] have plenty of beer and whisky.” No lack of hospitality, and the mental liveliness and sense of adventure that might fit better in a body 40 years younger.

Curtis likes to talk. Our phone conversations before we met in person ate up my phone minutes twice, and the one time he left me a voicemail, he left two, because he ran out of tape the first time. And he tells a great story. By the shear amount of experiences Curtis can recount, it’s easy to expect hyperbole, but everything seems to be backed up with some non-bs knowledge. Anything we talked about, Curtis knew by experience.

On the upcoming dynamiting on the road between Pana and Solola: “It’s horseshit that they need to close the road for two weeks to do this. I’ve worked in dynamite. Two or three days max to lay the dynamite in rows 100 feet apart. Then blow up the hillside, it slides down over the road, and a couple days to bulldoze a new dirt road.”

On maple syrup (why it came up I don’t remember): “I worked in maple syrup when I was living in Vermont.”

On the San Pedro mayor’s hatred of gringos because they’re supposedly introducing the locals to drugs: “I just don’t believe the hippies are going up to locals and saying, ‘here, try some drugs.’… I’ve done 86 different types of drugs in my life, so I know about that. Tried (one particularly addictive narcotic) every way imaginable, and the only drug I ever got addicted to was cigarettes.”

And an example of why it’s important to take the stories with a small grain of salt: “In a way I’m responsible for the end of piracy on Lake Atitlan a few years ago.”

Great stories, and Curtis has lived more than anyone I know. His service in clandestine branches of the U.S. military, abruptly ended when he married his first wife, a Hasidic Jew and card-carrying member of the Communist party. At the age of 50, he moved to Guatemala and was one of the only two gringos living in the most violent zone of the country during the civil war, the Ixil Triangle, sneaking in and out of Chajul under cover of night (kudos to David Stoll for being the other white guy). And now he runs a business employing Mayan families for their bead work, paying a living wage, and turning most of the profits into scholarships for the children in those same families.

He’s stubborn man, too. When Stacy and I arrived (about 2 hours late), we went for a walk, and even though we were afraid he was going to keel over (he didn’t), Curtis kept on going about twice as far as we expected. Luckily he wasn’t too stubborn to take a Tuk-Tuk back to the house.

Along the walk, Curtis seemed to know every vendor on the street, and stopped to talk to each in a Spanish that’s still broken after 28 years in Guatemala. He sponsors a local futbol team called the Chapines – in an awesome coincidence, Curtis’ last name is slang for a “true Guatemalan”, and in a way, he’s become one. And at the end of the walk, when we finally convinced Curtis to stop for a coffee, Stacy had the honor of buying Curtis a Wild Bull. Chapin drinks his Johnny Walker mixed with cold milk.