No sure where to put this. Here seems most appropriate.
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In the summer of 2005 I managed to land a small Department of Education grant to help pay for a research trip to Guatemala. I had completed my doctorate in 1999 and had been an Interstate Scholar in the years following. I had pieced together appointments at Guilford College, East Carolina, NC A&T, Duke, and Carolina, most of the time juggling two campuses and student bodies at once. All the while I also tended bar, and if I recall correctly those years, 1999 to 2005 saw me mixing and pouring at ‘Henry’s Bistro,’ and then The Orange County Socialist Club beginning in 2001.
In the spring of 2005 I had been double (triple?)-timing it, teaching at both Guilford College and in the Latin American Studies Program at UNC. A Carolina Morehead Scholar that I had taught had chosen an internship at the Guatemalan Embassy as his global perspective and professional experience for the summer. His name was Nick.
That summer because I had the federal grant I was expected to check in at the embassy - or at least I thought - so I did. The U.S. embassy was located in what was then Guatemala City’s most Miami-like part of town, Zone 10. It occupied a city block - a heavily fortified fortress projecting power and economic might. I had been there before that summer, spending several fruitless afternoons in the late 1980s there wrangling with immigration agents as a Guatemalan buddy of mine and I tried to secure a work visa for him. I never managed to get into anything but peripheral offices that time. All around the outside of the compound were Guatemalans - like my friend - standing in long, barely moving lines, all seeking entry to the U.S. In those days Guatemala was engaged in the hemisphere’s longest Civil War - begun in 1960. That conflict did not officially end until 1996.
In the summer of ‘05 my reception was quite different from two decades before as my DOE documentation resulted in my entering through what amounted to the front door. At the time I thought that since this was my second such grant in as many years that maybe that carried some weight. For what it was worth, I also carried the front end appendage of Doctor by then. I also had sent word to Nick that I was coming by. I actually figured that knowing Nick was probably more important in getting me inside than anything. Nick was also the reason that I got an invite to the embassy Fourth of July party.
Of course I — a backpacker even to this day — had nothing even the slightest bit formal to wear to an official U.S. Government function but one of the many used clothing operations, today called “pacas,” provided me with a nice $8 ‘Johnny Carson’ brand gray blazer and I was in business (I wore that jacket for at least ten more years).
In 2005 the ambassador’s residence was in the original embassy, a large house in the outer reaches of Zone Ten. I’m not sure how many at the party knew that. There were gaudily medaled Guatemalan generals attending that probably knew. The fine Italian suit clad ‘Ricos’, foreign and domestic not so much. There was a small formal ceremony, the “Star Spangled Banner” was sung, some firecrackers and bottle rockets set off (paseé in fireworks-crazed Central America), and good eats and beer.
I met the ambassador’s wife Donna, who as I recall was from South Carolina. She told me about the quilts decorating the house - all crafted in the Southeastern U.S.A. - and how they were her contribution to an international art exhibit/textile interchange of some sort. She reiterated what Nick had already told me - that the ambassador, John Randle Hamilton, was a Tar Heel Class of 1967. She was a warm and welcoming woman and expressed a good deal of respect for Latin America, especially indigenous culture. She and Mr. Hamilton had served in Peru prior to Guatemala. We talked a bit about such things and then parted - she was the host after all. I wandered around the house and wondered which rooms had been used to what purpose when the place was the embassy.
In the spacious back yard, toward the very back, was a very flat piece of ground. I surmised that here had once stood a tennis court - THE tennis court in fact where ambassador Sheldon Whitehouse had marched up against the sportsman-dictator (1931-1944) General Jorge Ubico in the days when The United Fruit Company dominated the country. Or so some sources say. I reflected that it was from this very place that the virulent anti-communist ambassador “Pistol-Packin” Peurifoy had orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in 1954 setting up the previously mentioned 36-year long Civil War.
About that time a suited fellow tapped me on the shoulder and said, “The ambassador would like to speak with you. Follow me.” Dumbstruck I dutifully trailed my summoner. I was guided to a closed door off of a side room and there sat a man, very friendly-looking, behind a big big desk. He beckoned me to sit. Ambassador Hamilton mused fondly about Chapel Hill. We discovered that we shared a professor, the vaunted Federico Gil, an anchor of UNC’s Latin American Studies Program, a Top Ten one when I passed through and building when a younger Hamilton matriculated.
I told him about the things that surely had once gone down in his home - the tennis court theory was a new one to him. He knew his Latin America Studies - he had studied it at Carolina and then earned a Masters in the subject at Stanford before entering the Foreign Service as a career. A native North Carolinian, I couldn’t help but like him. We shared a lot, a love of the region and an alma mater - even a beloved teacher.
It was a party though and his time was valuable - to schmooze diplomatically was his job today. But he had one last thing he wanted to discuss, and here I think Nick must has clued him in and may have actually been the true reason that we were sequestered away from the crowd. He leaned in and said, “We lost a lot of guys from a very good team. How are we going to be this year? Rebuild or reload?” The perfect Carolina Question from a man who had arrived in The Southern Part of Heaven and The Center of The College Basketball Universe for Dean Smith’s inaugural campaign as head coach!
I can’t say that I was put off guard. And I told him about this big, strong kid from Missouri that Coach Williams was bringing in along with a guard named Fraser and a forward named Green. There was a football player from Durham that was also going to play hoops. I told him that I thought that we’d be alright. Coach just may have Reloaded.
