HOPELESS ETERNITY


                                  Ansuelo Lopez was born in a remote area, in the highlands of Guatemala, some 103 years ago. That was not certain, for there were no records at that time. The ruling Spanish minority did not consider the Maya native inhabitants human. Thus it was not necessary to record their births or deaths. They were eternal serfs, without souls, who were born to serve, rather than anything else.

                                  Ansuelo's real name was Aj Pop, but the Missionaries changed that and his Christian name became Ansuelo Lopez. That was 100 years ago according to their judgement. The former three years remained in his conscious only. Perhaps they represented the nutriment of his true being, before it was defaced by what it had to be.

                                 Ansuelo was chosen from out of his village to go to a Catholic school and he did so well, that he was allowed to live in the other world, outside the indigenous pale.

                                 For the first 50 years of his life, he worked as a field laborer, despite his education.Then things began to change. The country was informed that it must form a Democratic Republic, by its patron, the Yankee Empire to the north. That meant there had to be liberty for all...almost. Because the indigenous population was the majority, it had to be represented in a Democratic government, as stipulated in the new constitution. The country was still in the hands of the Spanish landlords, but it became necessary to seek out a tractable individual to act as a liaison between the two factions: the rulers and the governed. This individual proved to be Ansuelo Lopez.

                                At first he was appointed governor of the Provence where he came from. He obeyed the wishes of the military rulers and spoke Spanish so well, that he was given, through popular vote, the rank of a national Congressman, representing the Provence where he was born. In a sense, he was the indigenous representative to Democracy.

                             Ansuelo was now 70 years old. His hands were calloused and so were his feet, so that he could only wear sandals. That amused his Congressional colleagues, who encouraged him to do so. The result was he appeared in his traditional dress in  the Congress.

                             Ansuelo tried to issue legislation that would help his people, but very little of it was approved. Most of it was filed in the trash can. This went on unchanged until he was 90. That was when  the Civil War broke out. A portion of the people protested against the despotic Democracy that the military rulers maintained. Thus, they precipitated a guerrilla war. They sought and received international money for armaments. The other side did the same thing and the peasants began to suffer. Ansuelo was threatened because he was a Maya Indian, so he fled to the mountains where he was born. There he directed the guerrilla forces through the hidden secrets of the terrain  he knew so well. He was so successful that the other, better equipped, government forces, were paralyzed. This went  on until he was physically incapable of leading that kind of suffering life.

                          There was nothing else that he could do, save return to the adobe dwelling where he was born. His family and friends were all dead. He was alone and treated as a ward of the village. No one knew he was 103 years old. He could not walk; see or hear and his existence was counted in days.

                          He was born a Maya native, then baptized a Catholic spirit, before serving his country's landlords and then sub subsequently becoming their enemy. The people did not know that he had survived all that and he remained a living symbol of Hopeless Eternity.