Temples of tribute and illusion.

• Author: Rendon, Catherine

In 1934 Aldous Huxley took a side trip from a Caribbean cruise to visit Guatemala. He boarded a train in the Atlantic port of Puerto Barrios, traveling along the banana plantations that flanked the railroad line most of the way to the Guatemalan capital. Along the way he spotted some unusual structures, not Maya ruins as one might expect, but something Huxley described as more akin to the silhouette of a Greek temple. He was baffled by these and thought them coarse imitations of the originals. He was particularly mocking of one in the desert town of El Progreso. What Huxley saw were the remnants of what had once been the center of the social life of every main town in the republic, yearly feasts that culminated in speeches and processions before every town's own temple to the goddess of learning: Minerva.

What were these pseudo-classical structures doing in tropical America? Huxley probably never discovered the answer and had he done so, he would have been surprised. Thirty-five years before, in 1899, Rafael Spinola, advisor to the new president of the Guatemalan republic, Manuel Estrada Cabrera, conceived of the idea. The president, who had only been in power for a year, wished to be recognized by some distinctive feature that would set him apart from other Central American leaders. Spinola, his minister of the interior, suggested that a big celebration be held at the end of every school year to recognize the academic achievement of every school child in the republic and the work "well done" by their teachers. In addition to this, the academic year, which ended in October, was also a good excuse to lead into a salute to El Senor Presidente, whose own birthday was on November 21. Spinola recognized the beneficial effects of flattery on an able politician, and Estrada Cabrera made Spinola's idea completely his own. It was especially useful in convincing other governments, especially nations like Great Britain and the United States, that in Central America an enlightened despot could at last be found.

As Estrada Cabrera's regime took root, the republic began to fill up (like a Monopoly board game) with Greco-Roman temples--from the Guatemalan capital to the remotest provincial town. Quetzaltenango, Guatemala's second largest city, and Estrada Cabrera's birthplace, was home to the second most important temple in the country. These civic temples became essential symbols of fealty to the new president. As the years passed, the Minervalias, as the annual celebrations held at these monuments were called, grew more elaborate and became the hallmark of the regime. Jefes politicos, or local political chiefs, were often forced to tax citizens and recruit the poorest Guatemalans to build the structures.

The Minervalias were the subtlest but most visible example of Estrada Cabrera's control over the republic's people. Although initially townspeople were inspired to have their own temples of Minerva and a healthy dose of competition spurred them on, over the years the additional duties to prove loyalty to El Senor Presidente grew more onerous. On a much smaller scale, one could compare the erection of these temples to the construction of churches and cathedrals in French towns during the Middle Ages, but ultimately the situation that resulted was closer to the French eighteenth-century's rotes revolutionnaires, where a shrewd psychology ultimately controlled political behavior of a whole people using knowledge and play as a lure. The story in Guatemala was much more complex, however, since Estrada Cabrera's army and cabinet made sure to know everything that might affect his position. Therefore, the state system that evolved was one that operated on spies, prisoners, exiled Guatemalans...