Canada Day Guatemala Style

Happy Canada Day everyone at home! I hear the weather is beautiful in Ontario and decent in Victoria. Here it is hot and humid, though it sounds like the rain might arrive any minute to cool things off for a bit.

Though I am now the only remaining Canadian in Rabinal, we are celebrating Canada Day in style. This morning I stopped at Rico Pan and bought a donut (not quite the same as Tim Horton's but an adequate replacement nonetheless) and pan dulce for everyone in the office. There was coffee on when I arrived so it was the perfect Canadian breakfast.

This evening we are having a dinner, and while there will be no barbeque with hamburgers and corn on the cob, we are going to make macaroni and cheese, vegetable stirfry and tostados with beans, guacamole, tomatos mixed with Cilantro and cheese. And though there will be no fireworks across the street or cake served by the mayor, my Canadian playlist is set to go with Tegan and Sara, Feist, Jill Barber, Metric, The Weakerthans, the Hip, Barenaked Ladies, and a dash of Alanis. I'm pretty excited about tonights festivities. Even the guatemalans are excited...or at least they are pretending for my sake.

I'm going to gush just a bit about Canada. When people here ask me about it, I always have good things to say. I speak about its beauty: the mountains, the coasts and oceans with the accompanying beaches, the lakes and the trees. When people ask if there is work, I say yes there is. We have a good economy, though reports of the coming recession are out. We have four seasons, depending on where you live. We are free to live without significant state interference. We get to exercise our rights and freedoms daily. I like Canada, or at least some aspects of it.

If I were in a different region of Guatemala, I might not be so excited about Canada Day. If I were in San Marcos, there would be a lot of poeple who would equate my nationality with the mining companies who have come into the area in the last few years. They might resent me for being associated with "the capitalists" who have entered, taken their ancestral land, and asked them to work in the mines for a pitance. Surely, I would be less eager to celebrate this aspect of consumerist-driven Canadian international "development".


If I were of a different race in Canada, I may not be so eager to be celebrating Canada Day. If I were indigenous, I would be fully aware of Canada's shameful history regarding the treatment of my people. I would know about how my cultural traditions like the potlach were prohibited, then criminalized. I would be familiar with the government's dealings in past and present treaty negotiations. I would know a bit about the Supreme Court´s often oppressive interpretation of Indigenous rights under S. 35 of the Charter. My community would have recently received the governement's apology for residential schools. I would still face racism in many aspects of my daily life. No, I might not be so eager to celebrate Canada Day.

So tonight, when I am sitting at the table amongst my friends from Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Scotland and the United States, I realise I don't have a flawless country to be toasting. But of the other nations represented, I'm glad that I was born where I was and that I get to be Canadian.