Story 2

I admit, I was nervous. My twelve gangsters- turned- jungle guerrillas were in position around the porch, but our radio silence necessitated perfect timing. An easy task during broad daylight, but fraught with difficulty at 10 PM. Radio silence, a necessary prerequisite to any ambush, was especially necessitated by our lack of radios. I couldn´t have understood them anyway. Guatemalans talk way too fast. And in a language I don´t actually understand, at least not very much. Even if I could, I felt viscerally-- and racistly-- that I should never trust Guatemalans. That this particular group of twelve Guatemalans was adolescent, perfectly godless, circumspectly nonhygienic, meticulously unscrupulous, and addicted to various pharmaceuticals did not help their case. Perhaps that sentiment was why I felt like I needed to add at least as many civilized gringos to my incipient militia to balance matters.
The erudite reader may find himself wondering, ¿why would a self-respecting American ever want to join a rag-tag band of roving Guatemalan thieves? I dismiss this question, however, by pointing out two facts which I have not yet mentioned. One: I have an appealing ideology. Two: I also have guns, and they didn´t.
The ^they^ in question you have met before, dear reader. My target was the same group of college students on a study abroad trip with whom I, in another life, was supposed to be classmates. Because I had their entire itenerary, I knew that they were finishing up a relaxing stay at the Hotel Las Marias, a rustic hostel near Semuc Champey, an area of beautiful waterfalls, pools, and caves. On their last night, they debaucherous late adolescents would be partying large on the porch of Las Marias, and the lightly armed staff would be distracted by the steady stream of Gallo and other merriments. Sitting ducks.
Yet in my moment of crisis, I realized that if my chicos` timing was off, the mistakes- and bodies- would begin to pile up. Loose college students in the jungle. Dead locals. The involvement of authorities. And, worst of all, despite my most extreme injunctions, dead American students and an international incident.
It wasn´t until the ball was already rolling that I seriously considered these distinct possibilities. One would think that, at some point on my four-day hike through the rugged badlands of central Guatemala, I would have thought through some contingency plans. Yet, visionary that I am, I had no time for anything but Plan A. In Guatemala, after all, Plan B was always quite simple. ¡CORRES!
My tardy prescience, though offering no practical advantage, nevertheless prepared me psychologically for the unravelling of my plan. Only moments before I was going to give the signal for the attack, Las Marias` large perro, Polka, woke from his slumber on the front porch, gave off three distinct woofs, and made a beeline for my second-in-command Juan Carlos, hidden in the bushes off to one side of the party porch. Once he fired his weapon at the animal, the night`s glassy reverie was shattered. Automatic gunfire, oddly reminiscent of Gideon`s 300 clay pots, set off a panic among the employees and clientele of Las Marias upon which volumes of social commentary could be written. Friends who may have just expressed their fondness for one another immediately began using each other as human shields or, as the case may be, rugs to be trampled. Ironically, the kitchen became the destination of choice for the group, which was exactly where I was headed.
I emptied a few rounds into the back door to clear a space for me to enter. When I closed the door behind me and turned to face the panicked fray, I saw the light of recognition dawn upon about half of the faces before me. Rhett and Lee, in positions reminiscent of mother hens, seemed to barely believe their eyes. Alex, David, Patrick, and Andrew all peered around various kitchen implements with varying degrees of trauma registering on their pale faces. John was screaming hysterically in the back of the kitchen, but was quickly silenced by the butt of Juan Carlos` rifle. The screams of females seemed to fill the air to bursting, until finally I settled them down with a few dozen rounds into random porcelain and stainless steel pots and pans. I spent the next few hours in impassioned discourse about such diverse topics as drugs, guns, infectious disease, jungle medicine, pollution, violent crime, and other forms of pillaging, eventually taking every conceivable stance on each of these topics. Although the college students had long lost any discernible train of thought, I felt my passion sway them to my cause at about 5 AM.
Mission accomplished. As I write this, it is now time to head back to the peaceful city of Antigua, a city rife with ideologies and ripe for pillaging.
Although daylight would prove that I had lost half of my Guatemalans, I recovered enough automatic weaponry from the area to arm my new recruits.