Nuevo Horizonte and Finca Ixobel

I will start with the end: I was still quickly losing motivation on the bike, quickly tired on the bike, despite not having done that many kilometers and the temperatures being pretty good. So I will chill a day extra to just do something else and relax for a day in a beautiful location where not many tourists go: Finca Ixobel. Or, the location isn't that amazing, but the accommodation all the more so.

But the highlight of the last two days (yes, I am posting a lot of footprints!) was definitely a very small community called "Nueva Horizonte", which I didn't know anything about, except that it was only 33km from Flores and that I could sleep there. So I left Flores sometime around 11 or 12 on Thursday, found the very small town (if it is even that!) and, after having been led to my room, checked out the nearby cute little lake. There was a big group of other tourists there in town, all Guatemalans, and the tour guide was a guy from Belize who spoke immaculate English, so I had my first full conversation with a local here; nothing groundbreaking, just saying. However, back in "town" I checked out the Museum, museo de nuevo horizonte, which was incredibly detailed and well done. I found out the following during and after the museum (of which I don't understand everything yet...), but will summarize it here.

Nueva Horizonte was founded by men and women demobilized during the civil war to a small farm nearby Flores, having fought on the FAR, a communist guerrilla group, side during the civil war. They started a small community nearby, centered on community organization, and set up a museum in 2022 to showcase the history of Petén, the civil war, and the community. And here they did an excellent job.

It starts of with information of the old Itza-Maya culture—these were the people that also lived in Chichen Itza, and settled around Petén later —moves on the battles with the Colonialists, where they resisted for a very long time; something I already hinted at in the last footprint. Apparently, the Itza and Flores (or Nojpetén) were the last unconquered native kingdom to fall to the Spanish. Then, glossing over this part of history, there was a lot of internal fighting in the 19th century. But the most interesting is the modern history of the 20th century: after authoritarian and corrupt governments in which the United Fruit Company had something to say, when a social revolution took place around 1944 with the October Revolution, which led to the best period in Modern history in Guatemala: socialist government which led the country to a modern Capitalist state. But also, the government around 1951 tried to stop the influence of the United Fruit Company and the US, and tried becoming more communistic. That wasn't allowed by the US, and they installed one of their own authoritarian leaders into power in Guatemala with a CIA operation PBSuccess. Like they did in so many other countries.

Well, the civil war kicked off and lasted until the agreement of 1996, and the Museum showed a lot of pictures of camps within Guatemala, in Petén, of victims and refugees of the civil war. Truly impressive. I also got to talk with one of the artists who did some of the paintings in the Museum, and had a very brief talk with him about politics and the Museum.

Also interesting is that, in the Museum, I again ran into the guy from Belize mentioned above: he said that currently, in his opinion, Guatemala now has the worst president of all time. I didn't know who it was, but this is also interesting: it is the son of one of the most beloved presidents, Arévalo. People feel betrayed by him. I did some research though, and it turns out that he is mostly facing an uphill battle against a highly corrupt system, where the Attorney General, María Consuelo Porras, has constantly tried to obstruct him at every single move, and is considered highly corrupt. And as such, the promises of his campaign have mostly failed. He also lost a lot of popularity with the declaration of the state of emergency this year, which arose due to his actions against the Cartels, where no arrests were made. Conclusion for now: it seems like a premature or somewhat naive conclusion to call him the worst president, when corruption and crime makes his job rather impossible. But maybe it is me who is being naive.

Ok, that's enough of that. In the evening the town also gave a cultural presentation for the group that was visiting, and I was allowed to also join. I slept in a hall in which they put up a dormitory, and I imagine army bunk beds to be better: it was hard, with a rock for a pillow. Then the day after (Friday) I also visited a small museum of Maya pieces in a small city called Dolores, where they were super happy to have me as a guest. They showed me around and insisted on taking pictures of me: I think I look tired. Nevertheless, the Museum was very interesting.

Last thing: to get where I am now from Flores, I took the main road because otherwise it would have taken forever. Well, drivers here are crazy, and trucks can be very, very dirty (African level dirty). They frequently overtake before blind corners when you cannot possibly see what's coming behind, with not enough speed, where it could only go well if there were no traffic coming. Which they cannot know. It is really crazy and scary to see; I haven't seen an accident yet and I don't know how—just a dead dog freshly killed on the road.Read more