Review — WALKING WITH EVARISTO by Christian Nill (Guatemala)

Peace Corps memoir

Walking with Evaristo: A Memoir of Celebration and Tragedy in the Land of the AchÍ Maya
Christian Nill (Guatemala 1978–82)
Peace Corps Writers
May 2024
383 pages
$17.99 (paperback), $9.99 (Kindle)

Reviewed by Mark Walker (Guatemala)

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Christian Nill
(Guatemala)

Fellow Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Christian Nill has written an engaging story about the impact and consequences of his experience as a volunteer in the highlands of Guatemala. He’s also made a timely contribution to our understanding of the devastating ten-year period of violence there.

Although I was a volunteer five years before Nill, the similarities were amazing. I worked on a study for CARE identifying some of the management and conservation practices used for the Food-for-Work program implemented in conjunction with the group Nill worked with, INAFOR (National Forestry Institute).

My second site was also in Baja Verapaz, where I found my bride. I raised money for the program in the late ’80s, and led a donor trip there as Regional Director for CARE in Denver. And when Nill mentioned that the Vice President at the time he was there, Villagran Kramer, had quit because of the corruption, I could only chuckle, as he was also the Presbyterian pastor who wed my Guatemalan wife and me. I was in Guatemala setting up a Guatemalan development agency when Nill volunteered. So, Nill’s story resonated on many personal and professional levels.

What I didn’t realize was that Rabinal, a small Mayan village in the highlands, had been an epicenter for the violence and massacres of the 1980s. He does a masterful job weaving together the stories of the local reality as he immerses himself in the culture.

Throughout the first part of the book, Nill alludes to some of the underlying injustices and unrest in and around Rabinal. After three years, he was aware that a battle was brewing. He also refers to several excellent books that provide the backdrop of the violence, like Thomas and Marjorie Melville’s Guatemala: The Politics of Land Ownership.

He is uncomfortable with the “sheer ubiquity of those companies’ (like Monsanto) products all over this tropical paradise. The pervasive use of hazardous agrochemicals in every single stage of planned farming in Central America laments, “We had, in a sense, become hypocrites before we even began our tour of service in Guatemala.”

Nill expresses frustration that none of his Peace Corps training provided more than a “scant, cursory knowledge of Guatemala’s troubled history.” He then goes on to describe the 1954 coup, which introduced an era of violent suppression of any voices for justice or equality.

He also describes his transformation from a “naïve, modern altruist, over the course of three years living in the community where I was assigned, I became increasingly committed to Guatemalan self-determination.”

Nill takes us inside one of the insurgent movements, the EGP (Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres), and how their influence grew in the area, as well as the government’s response to the formation of Auto Defense Civil Patrols in which local men organized by the regular army in 1982 hiked over the Rio Negro and slaughtered 177 villagers who were considered “insurgents.”

I knew some of this history, since this was the same strategy the government used in the Ixil area of neighboring Quiché. But I didn’t know the story behind these groups and their “scorched earth” policy, developed between Guatemalan “General Benny” and U.S. Lieutenant Colonel George Mayes, with advisors from Israel and Argentina and 15,000 troops.

Nill reveals the role of Benedicto Lucas Garcia, the Army Chief-of-Staff and the brother of the Guatemalan President who deployed troops on a broad sweep through Mayan villages, accounting for many of the 200,000 killed and 40,000 “disappeared,” as well as many more forced into exile.

In the author’s extensive notes at the end of the book, he reveals the production of a documentary played on the television show “Point of View” on the escape of one Denese Becker from the Río Negro slaughter, which is now available on “YouTube.”

I knew nothing about the Achí Maya group, since San Jeronimo is a Ladino population (they wear Western clothing and speak Spanish). According to Nill, the guttural sounds of Achí, supported by an alphabet comprising twenty-two consonants and ten vowels, are closely related to other native Mayan Languages such as Kaqchikel, Tsu’utijil, and K’iché. Achí is spoken by over 160,000 Mayans living primarily in the Baja Verapaz department. (This also helps explain how I could work in the highlands where they say 10 of the 22 Mayan languages and never learned them).

The cultural gap and mistrust were aptly reflected in one scene where Nill tries to help an injured Maya girl who is in great pain,

“As I kneeled to examine her hand, the girl took a step backward. When I looked up at her, I saw her face contorted into a grimace of horror. And yet she said nothing, she just stood there. What wisdom lay behind those black, squinting eyes? What secret knowledge lay dormant in a deep recess of her afflicted brain? I could only imagine the torment and hardship she must have suffered in her short life. Yet, I felt a connection, almost electric or deeply organic like symbiosis, between myself and the poor bedraggled girls with wild black hair… They stared at one another for a “long minute,” then she turned away and ran.”

Throughout the book, Nill deals with what he calls “baggage.” “Self-doubt that was never in short supply, lost loves that would take a separate book to write about, recurring bouts of depression, religious questions…”

I was bogged down by the extensive quotes from Euripides, bringing some Greek tragedy to the story. Nill also expresses a lot of remorse for those close to him who were injured or killed, which is understandable. It took me a long time to appreciate why my mother-in-law, wife, and her brother burned my entire library of books when I was away around this same period. (They were all leftist/Marxist-oriented books, which would have compromised everyone’s life with military hit squads on the loose in the Capital City).

Nill was also contrite for waiting over 40 years to tell his story. The important thing is that we tell our stories when the time is suitable for the writer and those concerned. Many secrets still exist about the wonders and violence hidden throughout history in Guatemala, and people still need to be reminded what it was about and what our country’s role was—for good and evil. I agree with fellow Returned Peace Corps Volunteer writer Paul Theroux when he said, “Writing is not a job; it’s a process.”

“This book makes a worthwhile contribution to our understanding of this dark period in history, and we should be grateful to Nill for having had the courage to write it,” Gavin O’Toole, Latin American Review of Books.

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About the author

Christian Nill is an environmental professional who served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala from 1978 to 1982. After his Peace Corps service, Nill continued working in Guatemala for another five years as a project manager for CARE. A native of upstate New York, he holds a master’s degree in natural resources from Cornell University and resides with his wife, Mireya, in El Paso, Texas.

About the Reviewer

Mark Walker was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala (1971-1973) and spent over forty years helping disadvantaged people in the developing world with agencies like Food for the Hungry, Make A Wish International, and Hagar USA.

His book, Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond, was recognized by the Arizona Literary Association. His second book, My Saddest Pleasures: 50 Years on the Road, won the 2023 Peace Corps Writers’ Award for Best Travel Book.  His latest book, The Guatemala Reader, is a Best Seller.

His wife and three children were born in Guatemala.