Fijese que...

I have a new favorite Spanish phrase. It's a phrase that is particularly Guatemalan and especially pertinent when it comes to research. "Fijese que..." translates roughly to "Well, you see..." but what it really means is: "so you're pretty much screwed." I've heard this term many times in the last few days. For example, fijese que...the documents aren't here; fijese que...the documents are lost; fijese que...the power is out and you can't access any of the files. That last one pretty much sums up my day today. The second one was yesterday.

I finally got into the Foreign Ministry, only to be told that all the documents I'm looking for were lost a few years ago. "And what a shame," says the archivist, "because they're really important!" No kidding. Oh well. Not terribly surprising. So I contacted CIRMA, another archive in Antigua, about 40 minutes away. To my delight, they were willing to let me in on a day's notice. So off I went to Antigua this morning, all ready to take a look at the Arbenz papers.* I rolled in just as they opened at 9:30 am, only to be told that the power went out last night and hadn't come back on. Just my luck, it was only that one block that was affected. The rest of the city was functioning just fine. So, I left my number and waited for a call to say the power had come back on. It never came. Don't feel too sorry for me though; there are worse things one can do than kill a day in Antigua.

For the record, my other favorite Spanish phrase is "ojalá," which essentially means "god willing." As in, ojalá, the power will come back on tomorrow and I can go back to Antigua. Ojalá, I won't leave Guatemala empty-handed. But even if I do, it was totally worth it.

*Jacobo Arbenz was the president of Guatemala who was overthrown by a CIA-sponsored coup in 1954.